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Language Allergy: Seduction and Second Languages in How the García Girls Lost Their Accents

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Juan Pablo Rivera
Westfield State College, USA

Volume 2, Number 1, 2010 I Download PDF Version

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v2n2.03

Abstract

This paper explores the construction of a bilingual, female, heterosexual subjectivity in Dominican-American author Julia Alvarez’s How the García Girls Lost Their Accents. The paper argues that the theoretical excesses in the narrative revolve around a bilingual difference that problematizes heterosexuality’s efforts to become a hegemonic discourse. Keep Reading

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The ‘Blue Flame’: An ‘Elliptical’ Interaction between Kahlil Gibran and Rabindranath Tagore

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Indrani Datta (Chaudhuri)

Vidyasagar University, India

Volume 2, Number 1, 2010 I Download PDF Version
DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v2n2.02

Abstract:

This paper focuses on certain aporias in the life and works of a Lebanese American writer, Kahlil Gibran, that reveal his idiosyncratic interest in and preoccupation with India, neither his native nor his adopted country. It also charts out the ‘elliptical’ connection that this Lebanese immigrant forged with the Indian Nobel laureate, Rabindranath Tagore. A “belated” (Behdad 1) reading of these aspects opens up the possibility of critiquing Gibran’s life and writings through the theoretical framework of Nico Israel’s “outlandish”-ness (ix), a state that exists between, as Israel has stated, “exilic emplacement” and “diasporic self-fashioning” (16-17). This kind of “reading behind” (Behdad 4) rewrites “a kind of philosophical décalage” (2) that ruptures existing West-centric discourses by destabilizing and displacing them through “other locations…other trajectories of subjectivity, and…forms of knowledge” (Behdad 1). My critiquing of Gibran’s life and texts, in this manner, show how his sense of identity, generated out of trans-cultural and transnational spaces, not only engenders a counter discursive practice to the West-centric politics of exclusion but also tries to rescue non-Western writers, and their literatures, from the “anamnesiac order” (Behdad 3) of such politics. Keep Reading

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‘Just as good a place to publish’: Banksy, Graffiti and the Textualisation of the Wall

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Anindya Raychaudhuri

Cardiff University, UK

Volume 2, Number 1, 2010 I Download PDF Version

 DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v2n1.06

Abstract

The article focuses on the work of the (in)famous graffiti artist Banksy, as a way into discussing the wider artistic and textual aspects of graffiti-art. Banksy has famously declared that the wall is ‘just as good a place to publish’ – a statement that certainly invites a study of graffiti-art as a movement to appropriate both the wall and the surrounding cityscape as a space to situate the ‘texts’. A graffiti-artist has to remain, to use Baudelaire’s expression, incognito, and the implications of a necessarily anonymous artist on both the nature and ownership of the ‘text’ created have to be considered when examining graffiti art. The transient and ephemeral nature that Baudelaire attributes to modernity constitutes the very essence of graffiti. Indeed, graffiti-art is doubly ephemeral – because the authorities ‘buff’ (remove) it with depressing regularity, and because its roadside existence means that the viewers themselves are usually in motion relative to the artwork. Graffiti artists like Banksy, therefore exemplify sociological criticism of early cinema (Georg Simmel’s “Metropolis and Mental Life”, for example.) and as such, should be an essential part of ‘urban studies’ of art and aesthetics. Keep Reading

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What is Performance Studies?

Richard Schechner Tisch School of the Arts, New York University  Download PDF Version Because performance studies is so broad-ranging and

Living in the Theme Park: A Textual Tour of Savannah’s Public Squares

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Tom Lavazzi

Kingsborough Community College, New York, USA

Volume 2, Number 1, 2010 I  Download PDF Version

 DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v2n1.03

About the Paper

In drafting this essay, the author has counter-posed two compositional strategies, one based on conventional rhetorical structures, founded in enlightenment concepts of sequential logic, rationality, and isomorphism—i.e., the standard, academically sanctioned thesis essay form, proceeding in an orderly and hierarchical manner from head (main idea) through body (detailed breakdown and investigation of thesis points—equivalent to scientific testing or proof of an initial  hypothesis/proposal, deploying transitions and focal topics to govern and control the content of each subsequent investigative unit (paragraph).  From this perspective, the essay structure is very much the rhetorical double of the city plan it proposes to elucidate.  Working against this more panoptically controlled hierarchical structure, is a postmodern turn toward [Internet] www-based, non-sequential organization.  Hence, certain sections of the essay are potentially arrived at via mock-URLs, suggesting the tentative, self-consciously constructed, unnatural nature of the smoothly flowing logical structure; at any moment, a different link could be selected, interrupting/disrupting/complicating the logical and sequential arrangement.  Also along these alinear lines are bolded fragments of text, suggesting an associational pattern of connectivity among images and ideas destabilizing and rendering motile the more static, rationally secured surface of the final product. Keep Reading

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Subjectivity in Art History and Art Criticism

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Eleni Gemtou,University of Athens, Greece

Volume 2, Number 1, 2010 I Download PDF Version

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v2n1.02

Abstract

Art history and art criticism belong in a wider sense to the humanities, whose aim is the interpretation and comprehension of human actions and intellectual work.  Both fields draw their basic methodological tools from the hermeneutical tradition.  Their central analytic category is comprehension (verstehen) that seeks to ascribe meaning to the spirit of these actions, or to works of art.  The intention of the art historian is to analyse and integrate artistic works in a wider intellectual and social frame, while the aim of the art critic is to examine the values connected with artistic creations.  Their roles are not always distinguishable, as analysis, comprehension, interpretation and evaluation often co-exist in the studies of both fields.  However, the approach of the art historian should have a scientific character, aiming at objectively valid formulations, while the critic should give equal consideration to subjective factors, acknowledging international artistic values, often taking on the additional role of philosopher or theorist of art. In my paper I examine the varying degrees of subjectivity in the approaches of art historians and art critics.  I give emphasis to the methods and language both use, while I approach the categories of artistic values (aesthetic, moral, cognitive) according to their subjective usage, but also to their role in the comprehension and evaluation of art.  My conviction is that art history and art criticism are complementary activities, as the former creates fertile conditions for the latter’s complete and essential evaluations. Keep Reading

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What is Performance Studies?

Richard Schechner Tisch School of the Arts, New York University  Download PDF Version Because performance studies is so broad-ranging and

Book Review: Mani Bhawmik’s Code Name God

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First published in the U.S.A by The Crossroad Publishing Company, 2005,

ISBN-13: 9780824522810

First published in India by Penguin Books India, 2006

ISBN-13: 9780144001033, 978-0144001033

Review by

Biswaranjan Chattapadhyay, Serampore College Keep Reading

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What is Performance Studies?

Richard Schechner Tisch School of the Arts, New York University  Download PDF Version Because performance studies is so broad-ranging and

The Utopian Quest in Bessie Head’s When Rain Clouds Gather and Maru

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Adamu Pangmeshi, University of Maroua

Abstract

Prior to Nelson Mandela’s ascension to power in South Africa, literature of the country had been essentially a protest against the dehumanizing treatment that was meted on the Blacks by the minority Whites who were at the helm of power through the policy of apartheid. This somehow created socio-political upheavals and a pervasive atmosphere. Consequently, some writers while unfolding this social enigma, did so with a vision of proposing an ideal society for humanity. One of them is Bessie Head. This paper seeks to examine Head’s When Rain Clouds Gather and Maru in a bid to demonstrate that her quest for a perfect society has been provoked by her experiences in life and the dystopian South African. Informed by new historicism, it is argued that an ideal or a perfect society is a figment of the imagination. Keep Reading

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What is Performance Studies?

Richard Schechner Tisch School of the Arts, New York University  Download PDF Version Because performance studies is so broad-ranging and

Shashi Tharoor’s Riot: Perspectives on History, Politics and Culture

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Paras Dhir, Lovely Professional University

Abstract

History, politics and culture have always been a dominant preoccupation of the Indian-English novelists. This compulsive obsession was perhaps inevitable since the genre originated and developed from concurrently with the climactic phase of colonial rules, the stirrings of nationalist sentiment and its full flowering in the final stages of the freedom movement. In this paper an attempt is made to examine Shashi Tharoor’s Riot as a multilayered narrative that sheds light on many contemporary issues on history, politics and culture of India. Keep Reading

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