IT I* virtually impoaalble to do juatlrr to the whole range of literary event* and experiences the world had presented In 1994 if one is to simply review them within a space aa limned a* I have here As the year 1994 came to an end to look hack -iww Is to have glimpses into so many tneidenis and event* which simply overwhelm oue Japanese poetry, for example exhibited a sirong desire to go back to Its older forms in reaction against the spell of Eurocentric modernism; Arabic poetry hail been full ol protests and oppositions under ilie ml!urine ol Sani s famous notion of oppositional writing Latin American fiction — particularly short-stories — had sought such forms and images as would articulate the angst of the moment stemming -from continuous conflicts between civilization and us barbarism . poetry in the United States as well as poetry In Canada Australia. Africa and India had been invoked, in varying degrees in what has come to be known as postmodernism, and then, there had been a huge surge of what is called cultural criticism from both the metropolitan centres and ex

Thus, indeed, one c.ui go on and on to survey at random lit erury phenomena and agenda of the year 1994: but. then, such an undertaking would re suit In n voluminous 1994 yearbook oi literature I must mention here that a yearbook Is not what I am up to. What, in fact. 1 can possibly do Is to Identify a few trends and text*, agenda and addenda which I have found dominating and fairly easily discernible In 1994

Again, such a task Involves inordinate risks of generallza lion and omission; for the narrative of the kind I wish to come up with would lore ground and privilege one tiling at the expense of the other But then, this void' of the narrative and possible 'absences and margins’ are unavoidable at the moment, and are also always vulnerable to rewriting.

The year 1994 was not an isolated temporal entity, not a detached chunk of time which can claim any position and possession absolutory its own Thus viewed, the year 1994 was not a single.year, but many years that had gone into the making and shaping of it Many incidents taking place in 1994 had their obvious or complex roots either in the near past or In the distant one. hi fact. 1 feel there are no such things as absolute breaks or absolute continuities In history. True. Foucault once spoke of discon llnuities in history which, no doubt, demand and deserve 'x.ur scrutiny and concentra-lion. But. then, discontinuities may bear the marks and traces of something which is more or less continuing. This very dialectic is what one cannot so glibly dispense with, particu larly when one is caught in the flow of time. For example the modern age is not really a break stripped of the present-ness of its past. There is the 'medieval' In the modern’, and

the 'modern' in the niedlexal Ye* when oxfiimticMi wem* to liavr |>roeeM-d wtwn science and let hnoko ami jihlfosophi have made tapld advance*, when the humanity I* sup posed to achieir better Man dards ol dlgnifi then the same world I* also lull of the me dteval darkness exemplified in the rise of huuLuneiitabam and cuamiuuallsni i l^s race and gender discriminations, van ous forms at <* ial and poliu cal disintegrations and di* taws murders betrayals, threats, deaths damages, whose history is not certainly confined to 1994 but spans a considerable stretch of time tn fact to read 1994 is to read tile year intertempurally as to read a text Is to read it inter tejiliedly

Indeed, ou&ight response to time had been understandably one of the Immediate thematK concerns in the liter ature ol 1994 It was In this year that a remarkable volume of writings had lieen directed against cortununaiism and fun damentalisni mH only in India and Pakistan but also in Africa. Latin America. Europe and the US. For example writers like Garcia Marquez. Umberto Eco. Wole Soyinka. Ahmed Said Adonis. Toni Morrison Edward Said, and also Derrida the deconstructionist, .expllc illy raised their voices against the Inhuman poltlco cultural and physical onslaught* of fun damentalisni and communal Ism Experiences ol the con fllct between the darkne**' within civilisation and Its gilt tering surface constituted dominant themes in fiction written in various |>arts of the world.

It is (o lie noted also that the year 1994 marked the height of fundamentalist and communallst onslaughts and assaults ranging from the physical to the psychological, mindlessly perpetrated and unleashed on progressive writ ers all over the world For ex ample, the simply atrocious October Incidents In Algeria readily come to mind — writ ejs Journalists artists were humiliated and jihysicaily as saulted In the streets And of course. Naguib Mahfouz, the noble prize winning Egyptian writer, was stallbed to near death. There hail been many such Incidents in 1994: but. they were not dramatically new as they occurred in 1994. but. then, it was in this year that the fundamentalist assaults on progressive writers assumed a particular level of intensity contributing to a profound literary consciousness of the Issue. Apart from the vic Ums themselves as well as creative writers characteristically sensitively responding to ex periences direct and immedi ate. those lileraty theorists and philosophers who had mostly been Involved in inor dinate abstractions and then rizlng also tellingly exhibited their concerns with the Issues of fundamentalism and com-munalism Derrida, in the West, was one of the cases In point Marxist theorists like Etiene Ballbar of France.

Gro**berg of the US Stuart Hall ol .i.imaka/HrttsUn. Frane? Moretti of Italy, and also fend-nists like Catherine Mar kinon of Ihe UH Gayatri C'hakravorti Spivak of India/US. among many others raised voices and made protests against funda mrnlahMn and > ommunaiiMn

It also dr serves mention that while right-wing writers attacked the issues of funda mentallsm and < onuntinallsm from immediate concerns, the left ones, apart from such eon cern*. went on to read and treat fundamentalism and sotiununaliorn as cornpies his I or leaf issues Invested with iinprna^slK and rieo colonial ista implications The fact that l-inrlaiurntalism is essentially a neo-colonial, urban phe nomenon made possible In a world where capitalism has now filtered into inKrostrur-tures and organisations of daily life was emphasized by writers like Marquez. and also by a host of Cuban writers Most of the cultural critics, writing particularly in the ex colonial countries analysed such Issues as fundamentalism and com tuuiiallHtii as politico cultural interchanges with Imperial

i*m. neo-cofonialisni and cap! tahsm The study of Aijaz Aiunad who la one of the finest cultural criths writing in the English language today was a strong example of fundamen tahwn arid < ommunalism stud Ie* undertaken in the postr ofonial world It is to be noted also that a host of dissident' and controverMal writers — as they have been called — formed tn 1994 ah international union with a Iman Rushdie es its

air per son and Derrida.

Soyinka, etc. aa M* aecuUet-conimitiee members Thus the year 1994 tan be seen as the year of writers resistance and opposition to communahsm and fundamentalism

Given the space, scale and scope of what has come to be known .* cultural critklsm today one can also look back al 1994 as the year rd cultural c riihistn* wtiose intensity and Influence far out stripped ihow <4 creative willing True nov eflsts and playwrights and po ns h*d been active thruugjioiH the year but then looking

iMck one can hardly find In 1994 a great powerful novel, comparable say to Marquez's One Hundred Years of Sohtudt Marquez himself was involved in writing stories, as had been the case with other Latin American writers. New' writ ers in Latin America and In the United Stales as well as In Africa and India had. tn 1994 exhibited quite a discernible tendency to become postmodernists But. then, post modernism did not seem lo have opened up potential spares in creative writing as much as the postmodernism drives were somewhat effec thr in philosophy, anthropo! <>gy historiography art and ar chitec-ture film and cinema and of course. In literary criticism Experiments In poetry, of course were undertaken now and then One can readily mention African. Indian. Spanish Frvneh and German poetry Fhiltippe Jacotle. the French poet was somewhat active in breaking away with the rMr-r tradition of rrananllc spirit uahsm Pere Glmferrer who writes both In Spanish and Catalan was also active In writing experimental poetry more than ever tielorr But experiments In Ilir poetry of the US and Great Britain seem to haw reached a creative dead encl of sorts

Now io come back to lhr area of cultural cruieum* Here again imperial centre* like Hie US and Britain were somewhat eclipsed by the

performances one can see In the commonwealth, ex-colonial countries Indeed, most of the cultural criticisms in 1994 came either from the migrant intellectuals located in the metropolitan centres like the US or from the ex-ccfionial countries. Most of the Issues of Influential journals like Social Text. Textual Practice. Diacritics Social Scientist. etc. remained replete throughout the year with cultural criticisms that focus on areas of human experiences affected by i he global structures of politics and economy, the dynamics of media and props ganda overt and covert changes in society and cultural practice*, and so on The posicolonial ethos of writing, through suqh cultural criti-< isms also sharpened and in tenslfied Itself Issues such as naiion nationalism empire, colony, postcoloniallty. were amply rethought with the cansequence that a number of theoretical critical reformula Hons paradigms and positfons visibly emerged though a vari rty of dispute* and debates over such Issues are continuing and are also likely to continue In th* future Aijaz Ahmad a cultural crltk- writing In Indu substantially contributed lo such drtMles In 1994 subae quent to hl* In Theory (1W3I. a seminal work in the are* of cultural rritlcism tor which he is br*i known Edward Mid whose formula Hon rd the roncepl at oriental lam had already been fritlcallv impugned and dismantled t»y Aijaz Ahnui>l also remained

quite active 11) the field of cultural criticism His latest book called The Politics of Dispossession — a coflecuon of essays gathered from 25 years of polemic on the Arab world — once again reinforced the povror and influence of what is railed cultural criticism How ever. Saids con trover statist fire may have dimmed a little since he was diagnosed two years ago as having leukemia

One of the most significant events occurring in the field of cultural and literary criticisms Including literary theories in 1994 was their more intimate engagement with Marxism itself The phase of that momentary disillusion which set in soon after the dissolution of the Soviet Union seems lo be over now it is indeed interesting to observe that moot of the emerging and estabhshed the ories in the West, including various versions of post struc 'urabsms post-modernisms and post colonialisms, more or less, tended to turn towards Marxism. recognising its power and potentials and pos siMHtles Even Derrida, in his most recent piece called Spectres rd Marx published in the June July (19941 issue of New Left Reidew which carried the title Deconstructing Capital acknowledged his in tellrctual defx to Marx to the extent of adopting Marx as his own father Yes. Marx is now an adopted father of Derrida who unrquivocaUy pronounce* thu* T1 will always be fault not to read, reread and discuss Marr I here will be no future without this Derrida * affilia non with Marx may be quea i toned on a number of theoret leaf ground* a* had already been done hy Aljsr Ahmad In

hit most rerent piece railed 'Reconciling Mar* and Dec onstruc live Foil tic* but. dien. this dues not rule out the phenomenon of an erer in creasing gravitation towards M■rx and Marxian

The 1994 Nobel Prize in literature as we ail know went to Kenzaburo Oe the 59 year old Japanese novelist who has been profoundly influenced by bis nations humihation during World War II. Oe was cited for a 'poetic force that 'creates an imagined world, where life and myth condense to form a disconcerting picture of the human predica ment today' Best known for his novels — The Silent Cry (1967) and A Personal Matter >1961). Oe himself describes his writing as- a way of exorcising demons' — demons which come out of the poet s subbminal Africa full of darknesses and nightmares And the humiliation, already-referred to. has taken a firm grip on him and has coloured much of his writing. Although Oe stresses that he writes for Japanese writers, his work has been strongly influenced by Western readers including Dante. Rabelais. Balzac. Eliot and Sartre

The event of the Nobel Prize in literature In 1994 in fact shocked writers and readers al) over the world But. then the politics of the Nobel Prize — rather the geo poll tics of it — took its own course finding at last an Asian writer who has visibly moved away from hl* earlier radical Marxist position By Interna • tonal standards, in a world where writers like the Chek Novelist Milan Kundera the Mexican novelist darlos Puentes the German poet novelist Gunter Grass are still alive and active the Japanese novelist Kenzaburo Oe with whatever oeuvre he has hah ^erto produced does mH appear to t«r a major powerful novel 1st with forma and themes that are likely to influence and in spire subsequent writer* el ther In Asia or In the West How king wotiki tlw world Ivar with Nartrean and Elioiesque Audenseque hangovers? Needles* to mention, writer* from various parts of the world are now kK iraaHigly question nig the hegemony of Anglo American and Eurocentric modernism To demolish and dismantle the old. majestic hegemonic centres, and Io dispense with the colonial spell with the West have con stituted the most active verb and verve of the counter hegemonic struggle carried forward by writers, critics an(i liter ary Uieorists in the post* cotonidl World

Now a word about the fu ture which can only realistically be seen in the light of what is being, and has been done now Yes given the enormous space already appropriated by prose and criti cisni — by cultural criticisms and by fiction in particular poets and playwrights all over the world have now greater creative challenges to meet and face