Right to Dream! A Postcolonial Reading of Tameez, a Dreamer in Elias’ Khowabnama as a Subaltern Victim of Capitalism

Abstract

The book Khowabmana by Akhtaruzzaman Elias reflects the ‘hegemony’ of the bourgeoisie class: in the beginning of the novel as Jamindars and later on as emerging capitalists. The hegemony puts the planters like Tameez under a ‘false consciousness’ that leads him to extreme misery. Thus, he becomes the victim of capitalism and a voiceless subaltern. This study attempts to identify ‘capitalism’ as the catalyst of class antagonism, side by side, it also discovers ‘capitalism’ as a ‘fake dream’ which makes tenant planters like Tameez a subaltern. This study is guided by a number of theoretical frameworks, for instance, Marxist idea of ‘capitalism’ and ‘class antagonism’ along with Engle’s concept of ‘false consciousness’. Gramcsi’s concept of ‘hegemony’ (1999) is used to identify the concealed politics of bourgeois class to make the working class people submissive and voiceless. The ‘New-Capitalist’ class or the former Jamindars employ ISA, i.e. Ideological State Apparatus, and in some cases RSA, Repressive State Apparatus (introduced) by Louis Althusser (1970), to keep the marginalized people dominated. Thus, the dream that has been laid by ‘capitalism’ makes one, i.e. Tameez, a ‘subaltern’; who does not have a voice to rise against suppression as well as a voice to establish his rights. Tameez’s becoming of a subaltern and a voice less character is the ultimate consequence of ‘capitalism’; this underlying politics of ‘capitalism’ is identified by incorporating Spivak’s idea of “Can the Subaltern Speak?” (1988). Moreover, the working class people are always put under a ‘false consciousness’: capitalism is the force that will change their lot and will bring the light of happiness. However, instead of being the Subject, they -- to be specific the marginalized people like Tameez -- become the ‘subject’ of their subjugation, i.e. capitalism; which makes people like him/them a ‘subaltern’ and a dreamer whose dream(s) never get the touch of reality, although their life past centering their dream(s).