Planting the weathervane: Neo-liberalism, international charity, and the premodern in Anuradha Roy’s Sleeping on Jupiter (2015)

ABSTRACT Through Anuradha Roy’s novel Sleeping on Jupiter (2015), this article explores the complex relationship between neo-liberal capitalism and international charity, and how this creates and sustains sites of exploitation and violence in the Global South. It uses Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s concept of the “premodern” to read Roy’s powerful critique of a new-age ashram in India where indigenous patriarchy, sexual exploitation, commodity production, and international charity seamlessly merge together. The article goes on to show how such sites of premodernity, like the ashram in Roy’s novel, cater to the problematic desire of international philanthropists to do good while remaining oblivious to the causes of destitution. The article concludes by focussing on the problems inherent in remembering and narrativizing the premodern. In doing so it exposes the fact that the super-exploitation underlying these sites of premodernity is ultimately the creation of neo-liberal capitalism and international charity coming from the Global North.