Write an essay which applies the theories of Post-colonialism and Globalisation within an analysis of the set text The Harvest
The play The Harvest by Manjula Padmanabhan was written in 2003 and can be seen to be dealing with many issues facing the un-developed world such as poverty and disease. One of the most prominent features of the play are its strong links to post-colonialism and globalisation. In her article, Manjula Padmanabhan’s Harvest: Global technoscapes and the international trade in human body organs, Gilbert exclaims that the play focuses on “the global spread of late capitalist technology [and it’s] significant risks…Manjula Padmanabhan’s Harvest, locates these risks as intensely intimate and yet thoroughly social through a chilling drama about transnational flows in two distinct but related areas; biomedical technology and digital technology including virtual reality.” (Gilbert 2006). The play follows a young man, Om who signs up to the organ selling company Interplanta in order to earn money for his poverty stricken family, only to discover that his and his families lives would change forever, being ruled and watched over by who is thought to be an all American blonde called Ginni. The play follows Om and his family and their struggle to keep their identity and sanity through the hands of the Western Interplanta and the Western society who made them. There is much evidence of post-colonialism and globalisation in Padmanabhan’s Harvest, such as dehumanisation and orientalism, however the main focus points of this essay are utopia and dystopia, capitalism and the advances in technology.
It can be seen that a prominent theme in Manjula Padmanabhan’s Harvest is the one of post-colonialism. Western countries have dominated the world since the sixteenth century, at one point Britain owned fifty per cent of the world, however much has changed, and many