Cultural Materialism in Gita Hariharan’s I Have Become Tide

Abstract

The article, Gita Hariharan’s Discourses in favour of A Positive New Age Culture, is critical analysis using some of the principals of literary criticism of Raymond Williams’ cultural materialism. On a close reading of her texts one finds that the novel brings out the poignant structure of feelings of the repressed communities in the medival past as well as now in the present. The discourse also brings out the thick description of the dominant power, the abuse of state apparatuses. It reveals the resistance expressed by victims of the dominant ideology and conservative social assumptions. First a brief explanation is given to cultural materialism, secondly a statement of the several problems the society faces and the stories in the novel are briefed. Then statements from the text are taken as facts that the novel communicates in favour of a positive new age culture.