The Mimic and the Uncanny: Reading Waste in English, August

Garbage is pervasive in terms of its material and metaphorical manifestation. It is true that waste denotes all the objects and materials refused or bled of their utility. In a metaphorical sense, however, this also alludes to the empty and hollow feeling that assails human beings deprived or stripped off their humane essence. This paper is an enquiry into the aesthetics of the “wretched of the earth”, and how August as a postcolonial subject, the protagonist of the novel English, August, finds uncanny semblance to the “shit” around him. By referencing works of Freud, Kristeva, and Scanlan among others, I will navigate through the uncanny perspectives that the text opens. By comparing himself, and finding reflections of himself in ragged creatures, in human faeces, Agastya epitomises the wasted condition of a postcolonial subject—English enough to be an “alien”—too Indian to be to a foreigner, too “class apart” to be at home in Madna, but never enough.