Aliens of the same world: The Case of Bangla Science Fiction
Bodhisattva Chattopadhyay Locating Bangla Science Fiction SF as a genre has always presented problems of definition. Since Gernsback’s “scientifiction”, attempts to define the nature of this genre have been common, so much so that when we refer to District 9 or Avatar as SF, as we did in this seminar, we think we know exactly what we mean. However, when we extend our understanding of SF to include those outside the predominantly Anglo-American (and marginally European) space, I believe we must redefine SF tentatively as an index of cultural transformation which may be understood through what I call the “history of scientificity”. I use the term scientificity as a concept. The colonial era, in which actual political control became the progenitor of a number of myths of science, is an important site for the study of concepts as orienting components – words around which archival and paraxial histories may be constructed. These histories are utilized by the colonizer and the colonized in the context of Bengal in ways that enable different forms of the same discourse: the discourse of legitimacy that gives meaning to the colonial situation. What remains unquestioned in these histories is scientificity itself. The existence of non-relative truths that may be discovered is never under debate. Working on colonial science, one must isolate strands of debate that allow “scientificity” to become enshrined as the principle of political legitimacy for both the colonizer and the colonized while reflecting upon the historicity of the concept itself. SF is a space where the “transcendental” nature of science merges with its subjective “earthy” historical other in fiction; consequently, one must begin a history of scientificity and unravel when and by what means scientificity becomes an orienting component of the “future history” that is SF. This is as much a question in the history and philosophy of science as it is of modernity and the constitution of the modern self in the development of techno-scientific cultures. Since science functions as a constant field of cultural tension in the asymmetry of colonial relations, SF becomes an invaluable means of exploring the nature of cultural identity shaped by colonization. I have selected one specific kind of SF for analysis here – the category of the tall tale. This is because the tall tale most explicitly engages with the criterion of scientificity and reveals the questions which a history of SF must recognize. Games of Truth in SF-Tall Tales The stories of Joseph Jorkens written by Lord Dunsany, Edward Plunkett (1878-1957) and the ones of Ghanada (Ghanashyam Das) written by Premendra Mitra (1904-1988) belong to the category of travel tall tales. Tall tales that base themselves on travel have three basic dimensions. The first is the landscape and people of the travelled land. The second is the object or point of surprise. The third is the character of the storyteller, which defines the tale as a tall tale. The similarities between fantasy, SF, fiction and the tall tale are governed to a large extent by the presentation of the tale. The tall tale becomes a tall tale owing to the relation created between the teller of the tale and the event in which the teller participates. And the fundamental premise of the tall tale is that the tale is always described by the teller as absolutely true, exceeding the boundaries of fiction (which by definition is not-true). Unlike Munchausenesque tall tales, regarded generally as the forerunner of the genre, the similarity between Jorkens and Ghanada emerges in the precision of the narrated tale in scientific terms – including geographical specificity, use of expressions that convey the scientificity and hence seek to attest the truth of the narrated tale, and presentation of ideas and events which in themselves seem logically possible. The veracity of the tale is seldom under doubt due to the events themselves, the doubt emerges from the character of the teller of the tale and the tale itself is then compared to a framework of non-fiction outside the fictional world. All fiction is by definition false, the important part of the tall tale is not that which is clearly false, but that which posits itself as true. Thus if we are to pay attention to the actual source of textual meaning in the tall tale, we must locate it in the probable rather than the incomprehensible, because the latter derives its meaning secondarily from the former. By paying attention only to the locus of improbability, one is likely to miss out on the power effects of the images and ideas taken as true within the fiction. In the context of the adventure stories described here, the two layers of truth that are particularly important are the presentation of the foreigner and the use of science. In the preface to the first volume of Jorkens’s adventures, the narrator explains that one of the purposes of the stories is to “advance the progress of Science, and establish our knowledge upon a firmer basis; yet should they fail to do so, I feel that they may at least be so fortunate as to add strangeness to parts of our planet, just as it was tending to grow too familiar.”. This is a recurring idea in the Jorkens stories: the impact of these stories on scientific knowledge. But the novelty of the scientific idea is supported by the “familiarity” of the taken for granted, whose scientificity is never in question. Thus even if we mark out the story as a tall tale, the experience of the improbable is only tied to the novum, Darko Suvin’s term for the new object or idea that SF introduces, and not to the cultural assumptions within which the novum is placed. Moreover, the experience of the scientific is exclusively linked to the British colonizer, and indigenous experiences of these objects become irrelevant in the “scientific project”. “The tale of the Abu Laheeb” is a prime example of the way in which the scientific project assimilates local knowledge. In this story, Jorkens