All in all, this was an interesting, compelling and powerful work. I do, however, feel that I could have approached this work with a stronger background, allowing them then to understand and catch more of the analogies, political commentaries, and so on. Much of the naming in the book, became slightly confusing to me, and in the end I found myself singly paying attention to Bikhia, and Puran. Each other person unintentionally became a single character who interactions were meant to contrast Puran and Bikhia's action.
There are several quotes I want to note and comment on:
The pterodactyl is not only the ungraspable other but also the ghost of the ancestors that haunts our present and our future. We must learn "love" (a simple name for ethical responsibility-in-singularity), as Puran does in"Pterodactyl," in view of the impossibility of communication. No individual transcendence theology, being just in this world in view of the next,--however the next is underplayed--can bring us to this.
Before this quote, Spivak comments on Liberation Theology's ability to raise and uphold an indigenous, native culture. She elucidates that the pterodactyl is inconcievable for the "modern" indian and a symbol of the ancestor's soul for the indigenous. Puran's position within this spectrum is unique in that he is "modern" through education, culture, yet has grown to appreciate and "love" the indigenous way of life. What is notable about Spivak's comments concerning her expication of Puran's role is the fact that this is a situation that can and may be taken out of Indian culture: placed within any indigenous setting which is relating to and within a post-colonial environment.
the bitter humor with which [Devi] treats the government's family planning posters shows us that the entire initiative is cruelly unmindful of the robbing of the women and men of Pirtha of the dignity of their reproductive responsibility. All collective struggle for the right to sexual preference and pleasure, the right to equitable work outside and in the home, the right to quality in education, must be supplemented by the memory that to be human is to be always and already inserted into a structure of responsibility.
This was a point that I thought was extremely poignant and helpful. It is interesting to note Devi's use of materials (posters, trucks, block offices) to demonstrate cultural and worldview understandings. There was a point in the novella where an exchanged occured between another character and Puran, where the other character noted that sexual pleasure was one of the few remaining pleasures that the people of Pirtha have left. Without jobs, food, boredom sets in and becomes as strangling as hunger.
What follows is not a romanticization of the tribal. Indeed "Pterodactyl" is a critique of any such effort. The following paragraphs outline a dream based on the conviction that large-scale mind change is hardly ever possible on grounds of reason alone. In order to mobilize for nonviolence, for example, one relies, however remotely, on building up a conviction of the "sacredness" of human life. "Sacred" here need not have a religious sanction, but simply a sanction that cannot be contained within the principle of reason alone.
This, I think is an important theme for "Pterodactyl", in its purported relationship between the people of Pirtha and their land. The pterodactyl, for Bikhia, demonstrated the innate connection between the land and the people of Pirtha. A distinct, unique history is found within this land, and to move, to be displaced due to man-made famine and starvation is to distinctly lose a large sense of their identity. The people of Pirtha are instinctually connected to the land.
Puran becomes part of the tribes ongoing historical record. He sees the pterodactyl. If the exchange between the nameless Monster (without history) and Victor Frankenstein is a finally futile refusal of withheld specularity, the situation of the gaze between pterodactyl (before history) and a "national" history that holds tribal and nontribal together, is somewhat different.
This is a convenient quote to lead us into a discussion directly with the text: for the text operates at an multi-analogous level, and much of it has to do with indigenous idenity, post-colonial relations within a post-colonial state; all of these points innately deal with history, and the debate of a single or plural history. For the people of Pirtha, their history is distinctly connected to the land, and their ancestors. Geography, and movement within the land helps create and sustain formative myths, and stories for indigenous cultures in Ecuador (I'm studying this for my distinction religion project, I find it difficult to presume a drastic difference for the indigenous of India as well.) The role of history, and the manner in which the government understands the indigenous history, post-independence India and Pre-independence India all plays a large role within "Pterodactyl".
This last quote by Spivak focuses' on an anaology that I didn't at first glance catch: the pterodactyl's role as the understanding of the indigenous peoples' starvation in Pirtha. For the "modern" Indian does not believe in the scientific possibility of an extinct animal living. Their understanding of the indigenous is similar to this notion of historical reality. Through government sliddings, and corrupt officials, the sufferings of Pirtha never quite reach the classification of famine. And so, in the government's eyes, Pirtha maintains a status of simply poor natives undergoing a "drought". Furthermore, the corruption of the officials cements this notion, because the officials are "allocating" or "spending" government money on these areas.
For the indigenous of Pirtha, the pterodactyl stands as a symbol of the ancestral history, giving them a self-determined legitimacy and right to their land, and the sufferings that are taking place within it and upon it through fertilization (poisioning of the wells) and the green revolution (which only led to a high stratification between the rich and poor within India).
In the end, Devi's work is appropriate in presenting an image/situation of a certain indigenous people within India. As noted above, this is and should not be a romanticized notion of all the indigenous, but instead, the reader might be wise to take a lesson from Puran, in simply "loving" or accepting an indigenous situation as one where the indigenous do have control, and decision. Not ultimately, but to take away any amount of self-determination that they do have would be the subjugate them further.
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