'The Event', 'the Archive', and 'Realms That Are Yet to Come' in Paul Scott's The Raj Quartet

الملخص

Two enigmas remain unsolved in the four novels of Paul Scott's the Raj Quartet: the engineer/performer of Daphne's rape which opens the whole tale and the engineer/performer of Merrick's murder which closes it. Both are ritualistic events engineered/performed patiently and carefully almost with the same scenario which gives confidence that the second is a vengeful sequence of the first. If we interrogate the Quartet in the light of postmodern discourses, some bizarre results can be found concerning these two crimes. Dealing with the Quartet as a detective story, reversing the narrative linear structure, and following the discourses of the event, the archive, and realms that are yet to come/the posthuman, reveal the scandalous superiority of the Eastern subject over the Western object which Scott dares not to say or avoids saying directly in the long course of his novels.