Mukherjee Handout
Author’s Biography: Arun P. Mukherjee is currently a professor of English at York University in Toronto, Canada. She has researched and taught Canadian, Indian and South Asian literatures. She did her graduate work in English at the University of Saugar, India and earned a Ph. D in Canada at the University of Toronto. She has written many books, and she has translated a novel written in Dalit.
Rhetorical Precis: In Arun P. Mukherjee’s chapter, “Ideology in the Classroom—A Case Study in the Teaching of English Literature in Canadian Universities” she talks about how English is taught in Canada and examples of her class. She tells us a story about a barber shop in West Africa that is run by British whites that usually caters to only white customers, but all of the British left that region due to African independence, so the Mr. Archipelago and Doree (the white barbers) had to cater to the Africans. She explains this story, which she used for her class to write an essay about, in order to analyze the vocabulary they used and also the ambiguity of the terms “humanity” and “universal.” Writing to the readers of this book, most likely other professors and students, Mukherjee wanted to explain how her student’s erased the terrible ambiguities out of words and created their own ideologies of what the story meant.
Quotes:
“The short fiction anthology I used for my introductory English 100 class – I deliberately chose a Canadian one – includes a short story by Margaret Laurence entitled ‘The Perfume Sea.’ This story, as I interpret it, underlines the economic and cultural domination of the Third World” (Mukherjee 447).
“While the pre-independence sign has said:
ARCHIPELAGO
English-Style Barber
European Ladies Hairdresser (211)
the new sign says:
ARCHIPELAGO & DOREE
Barbershop
All-Beauty Salon
African Ladies A Specialty (221)” (448).
“These political overtones are reinforced by the overall poverty the story described and the symbolic linking of the white salon
Rhetorical Precis: In Arun P. Mukherjee’s chapter, “Ideology in the Classroom—A Case Study in the Teaching of English Literature in Canadian Universities” she talks about how English is taught in Canada and examples of her class. She tells us a story about a barber shop in West Africa that is run by British whites that usually caters to only white customers, but all of the British left that region due to African independence, so the Mr. Archipelago and Doree (the white barbers) had to cater to the Africans. She explains this story, which she used for her class to write an essay about, in order to analyze the vocabulary they used and also the ambiguity of the terms “humanity” and “universal.” Writing to the readers of this book, most likely other professors and students, Mukherjee wanted to explain how her student’s erased the terrible ambiguities out of words and created their own ideologies of what the story meant.
Quotes:
“The short fiction anthology I used for my introductory English 100 class – I deliberately chose a Canadian one – includes a short story by Margaret Laurence entitled ‘The Perfume Sea.’ This story, as I interpret it, underlines the economic and cultural domination of the Third World” (Mukherjee 447).
“While the pre-independence sign has said:
ARCHIPELAGO
English-Style Barber
European Ladies Hairdresser (211)
the new sign says:
ARCHIPELAGO & DOREE
Barbershop
All-Beauty Salon
African Ladies A Specialty (221)” (448).
“These political overtones are reinforced by the overall poverty the story described and the symbolic linking of the white salon
Cited: Mukherjee, Arun P. "Professor Overview." York University. N.p., 2013. Web. 29 Apr. 2013