Death, History, and the Time Loop: The Subject/Object Relation in Vandana Singh’s “Somadeva: A Sky River Sutra”

Abstract

This article argues that Vandana Singh’s postcolonial short story “Somadeva: A Sky River Sutra” (2010) employs the anachronistic chronotope of the time loop in order to explore nonlinear, heterogenous temporalities and challenge imperialist paradigms of time, history, science, and death. The short story theorizes speculation as a collective endeavor fueled by a dialectic of hope and disappointment, an endeavor that encompasses both literary and academic work. Drawing on postcolonial studies’ questioning of temporality and history, I investigate how “Somadeva: A Sky River Sutra” interrogates the assumptions underlying the subject/object relation. Then I bring Wai Chee Dimock’s concept of “statistical kinship” into dialogue with Singh’s work, exploring how the short story’s reconfiguration of death and failure gestures toward a potent yet controversial ethos of non-hegemonic universality.