Review of Uppinder Mehan’s “Postcolonial Science, Cyberpunk and The Calcutta Chromosome”

摘要

Literature and science studies have, to date, largely focused on science in the Western world and, to an extent, the literary production of 'the West'; the global history of science, and science as it figures in postcolonial and world literature, have remained relatively unexplored. Uppinder Mehan's article offers scholars an introduction to these topics as it surveys the complex history of science in colonial contexts and, using Amitav Ghosh's The Calcutta Chromosome (1995) and Nalo Hopkinson's Midnight Robber (2000) as case studies, examines how the seeming opposition between Western science and Eastern mysticism is addressed in postcolonial fiction. Mehan's contention is that these novels "trouble all manner of genre distinctions and by doing so draw attention to the constellation of science, colonialism and cultural production" (1).