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 /VERDETERMINATION AND 4RUTH  “Every political theory absolutely depends on a theory of truth whether it makes it explicit or not.”—Hans Barth In For Marx Althusser borrows a term of Sigmund Freud—“overdetermination ” (used by Freud to denote the multiple causes of the condition of hysteria)—tounderstandtheeffectofdominations,subordinations,inshort of all kinds of contradictions, on social formation. With the help of this term Althusser can define ideology as “the (overdetermined) unity of the real relation and the imaginary relation between them [i.e., human beings and their world] and their real conditions of existence,” suggesting the immense unending complexity of “lived life” whose unity is one of “rupture” (100), always presupposing that there are neither First Principles nor an Absolute. In Plans for Departure (1985) and Mistaken Identity (1988), Sahgal builds her narratives through what may be called a technique of overdetermination, a narrative method that blurs fact and fiction at various levels—of character identity, historical allusions, story-within-story, dreams, and so forth—suggesting not only the determination of all by all, but also the implausibility of things being otherwise, so that determination is, as Althusser notes, not only an effect but also a precondition. This chapter examines the overdetermined representations of the mother and other figure in Plans and Mistaken Identity as instances of ideological subject formation, where the subject is formed in abeyance and in resistance. However, these representations also point to something that the characters cannot entirely grasp and yet are certain of—truth—which makes them unable to disengage from social or political struggle as truth-seekers. In The Moral and Political Thought of Mahatma Gandhi, Raghavan N. Iyer defines truth (satya) in the Gandhian sense as follows: /VERDETERMINATION AND 4RUTH  Whereastruthisuniversifiable,falsehoodcannotsecureuniversalassent. Satya, derived from Sat or the one reality, is the source of eternal and universal values like truth, righteousness and justice—truth in the realm of knowledge, righteousness in the domain of conduct and justice in the sphere of social relations. Truth, in the narrow epistemological sense of common usage, is only a part of the wider meaning of satya. (151) Accordingly, satya is privileged on account of its inherent universality and its ontology. It cannot be limited to the realm of knowledge, although this too is necessary, but it bursts into the realm of conscientious performance, “in the domain of conduct and justice in the sphere of social relations.” This is the Gandhian notion of truth that recognizes relative truths and an Absolute Truth, a notion that Gandhi passed on to an atheist, as follows: “Truth means existence; the existence of that we know and of that we do not know. The sum total of all truth may differ. But all admit and respect truth. That truth I call God” (qtd. in Iyer 156). There is thus, here, an overdetermination of truths, relative and absolute, as perceived by a truth-seeker amidst terrible moral and social struggles. This Iyer summarizes with all its innate contradictions as “a metaphysical view of Absolute Truth, a realistic view of relative truth, a Manichean view of the struggle between truth and falsehood, a liberal optimism and a form of spiritual Whiggery” (162). Iyer admits that it is not always clearwhichtruthGandhimightbereferringtoat anygivenmoment.Butwhat is unmistakable is its insistence, at every level, on political engagement. The truth-seeker is discouraged from “political disengagement” (173). The social and political engagement of the truth-seeker, if revelatory of the uncertainties, confusions, and imperfections of the seeker, also explains within an Althusserian framework the plausibility of resistance and agency. This is because in Althusser’s theory of ideology, agency is located in the gaps of the overdetermined ideologies. The literary representations of Sahgal thus suggest an agent who, in spite of multiple determinations, is free to some extent and can therefore surprise and shock. This agent is a seeker after truth (satyagrahi) and figures forth in the modest person of a female character— the mother—or a dim-witted male character, a non-hero—an other. Moreover, overdetermination as a mixing of fact and fiction is both a narrative technique and a theme in both novels. The apparently straightforward narratives in Plans, it turns out, are really dream sequences, as one discovers in the last chapter. Yet, the dreams are dreamt not in deep sleep but willed, as it were, in half sleep, where memory is susceptible to fantasy. What is even more complex is that the dream that is the narrative also involves flashback, leaps into different past...

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