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‘Seeing Double’: Exploring the Flâneur’s Gaze in Amit Chaudhuri’s A New World

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Sovan Chakraborty1 & Nagendra Kumar2

1Research Scholar in English in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences of Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee. Email: sovantamluk08@gmail.com. 2Professor of English in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences of Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee. Email: naguk20@gmail.com

Volume 8, Number 3, 2016 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v8n3.15

Received May 30, 2016; Revised July 15, 2016; Accepted July 30, 2016; Published August 18, 2016

Abstract

The present paper explores the ambivalent existence of a modern urban figure, a flâneur, who is caught between the processes of grand and spectacular modernization and the gradual but uncertain withdrawal of the self from the external ‘reality’ through Amit Chaudhuri’s celebrated fiction A New World. The continuous ‘shocks of the new’ that the urban ‘advancement’ bombards upon the senses of a flâneur, develops a highly personal psychopathology in him/her. Georg Simmel calls this symptom a blasé outlook – a psychic structure characterized by sheer impersonality, which gives birth to an attitude of almost complete indifference towards the socio-political processes outside. The flâneur’s observation of a city remains always informed by a double vision – seeing yet disbelieving. Both the identity and the gaze of a flâneur keep on swinging incessantly between a modernity that creates a desire to become a developed subject and a subjectivity that is dismantled by an array of unfulfilled dreams beyond the scope of any premeditated determinism.

 Keywords: blasé, flâneur, Georg Simmel, semiotic difference, urban modernity, Amit Chaudhuri

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Revising the Colonial Discourse in The Last of The Mohicans

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Saddik M. Gohar

 Chair of the English Literature Department, United Arab Emirates University- P.O.BOX 15551, Alain City- United Arab Emirates, Email: s.gohor@uaeu.ac.ae

Volume 8, Number 3, 2016 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v8n3.16

Received May 25, 2016; Revised August 07, 2016; Accepted August 07, 2016; Published August 18, 2016

Abstract

Within the framework of postcolonial studies of Frantz Fanon, Albert Memmi, Edward Said, the paper critically examines the entanglements of colonial and racial trajectories in The Last of the Mohicans in order to subvert traditional critical assumptions which categorized the novel as an adventure story or Indian Romance or travel narrative affiliated with a multi-ethnic frontier community. Negotiating the dynamics of colonialism, through the economy of its central trope, the Manichean allegory which creates boundaries of inclusion and exclusion, the paper argues that Cooper’s novel, modeled on seventeenth-century captivity narratives, aims to exterminate or marginalize the indigenous American subaltern or associate him/her with a status of cultural decadence and savagery. The paper also illustrates that Cooper’s fiction blends the legacies of the colonized and the colonizer to reconstruct a biased narrative integral to the authorial vision of the confrontations between the native Indian community and the European settlers during the American colonial era. Reluctant to introduce a balanced view of the situation on the western frontier, Cooper emphasizes crucial colonizer / colonized constructs engaging cultural trajectories which lead to conflict rather than dialogue between both sides.

Keywords: Colonialism, captivity narrative, American colonialism, Manichean allegory, colonizer/ colonized.

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Situating Developmental Psychology within ‘Colonial Romanticism’ and ‘Postcolonial Realism’: A Study of Paul Scott’s The Birds of Paradise

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Habib Subhan

VIT University, Vellore, India. Email: habibsubhan@gmail.com.

Volume 8, Number 3, 2016 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v8n3.17

Received May 19, 2016; Revised July 29, 2016; Accepted July 30, 2016; Published August 18, 2016

 Abstract

This paper examines the colonial discourse in Paul Scott’s novel The Birds of Paradise from the perspective of developmental psychology. While doing so, it foregrounds the postcolonial notion of ‘self’ and ‘other’ through the fictional development of protagonist. Side by side, the paper also takes up the shifting position of the princely states during colonial India and the aftermath of decolonization on the rulers of these states. As a method, the development of the protagonist as a person from the childhood to his mature stage will be used to bring out the different facets of British colonialism and its effects on human psychology.

 Keywords: Developmental Psychology, Princely State, Colonial Romanticism, Postcolonial Realism, Colonial Discourse, Paul Scott

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The Iterability of the Woman Condition: a Derridean Reading of Glaspell’s Trifles

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Noorbakhsh Hooti1 & Mohammad-Javad Haj’jari2

 1Associate Professor in Dramatic Literature, Razi University, Iran. E-mail: nhooti@yahoo.com. 2PhD Student, Razi University, Iran. E-mail: aminhajjari@gmail.com

 Volume 8, Number 3, 2016 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v8n3.18

Received April 22, 2016; Revised July 12, 2016; Accepted July 25, 2016; Published August 18, 2016

 Abstract

Derrida defines artifactualities as artificially made norms by institutions and hierarchies which turn into conventions over time in dominating mankind, conventions which must be recognized and dismantled. Every particular event or presence can assume its singularity outside such biased tautology by iterating itself to generate its own specific body of norms in supplementing itself. Accordingly, this study tries to highlight the female logic and the iterability of the woman condition against patriarchal artifactualities in Glaspell’s Trifles (1916). The women of the play illuminate a world invisible to patriarchy, an overlooking gaze blurred by artifactualities. Dismantling the binary opposition of male/female, the play highlights the singularity of females in discussing the truth of its events. Moreover, the women’s aporetic decision in the play not to reveal Minnie’s killing motive is an attempt to defend the female cause and highlight the iterability of the woman condition against patriarchy. Thus, the researchers aim at interpreting Trifles through a Derridean perspective to dig up and open up the stifled woman question against patriarchal artifactualities. Contrasting the collective female knowledge to logocentrism, this study illuminates Glaspell’s attempt at foregrounding the unique sphere of women’s knowledge over patriarchal artifactualities. Glaspell anticipates Derrida’s remarks in turning logocentrism and artifactualities over their heads in favor of the singularity of any phenomena which can iterates itself to proof its unique position outside artifactialities.

Keywords: artifactualities, deconstruction, iterability, Trifles, woman condition

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Speaking Characters in Selected Novels of Bharati Mukherjee

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Dolly Sharma1 & Jaya Dwivedi2

1Assistant Professor, Parthivi College of  Engg. & Mgmt. Bhilai, C.G ,India and Research Scholar in the Department of English at N.I.T Raipur, C.G, India. Email: dollyjayam2016@gmail.com. 2Jaya Dwivedi is Assistant Professor in the Department of English at N.I.T, Raipur, C.G, India. Email: jdwivedi.eng@nitrr.ac.in.

 Volume 8, Number 3, 2016 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v8n3.19

Received April 19, 2016; Revised July 04, 2016; Accepted July 15, 2016; Published August 18, 2016

 Abstract

The Feminist Theory of Situated Knowers justifies the accounts of women by allowing them to depict their plight and contribute to epistemology by speaking from a position which they have experienced. The protagonists in selected novels of Bharti Mukherjee speak for themselves setting a ground to be examined under the example of Situated Knowers Theory in this paper. These protagonists highlight the gendered and ethnically underlined identities of women especially Indian women. The protagonists Tara Banerjee, Jasmine, Dimple and Tara Bhattacharya of   selected novels The Tiger’s Daughter, Jasmine , Wife and Desirable Daughters face  varied situations as women and immigrants to find  a sense of self in  the new world .They  undergo struggle to shed the tangles of the complex expectations and chains of conventions to be themselves. Bharti Mukherjee’s selected   women characters are strong, defy conservative norms, stay true to the spirits of exploration, learn the secret of survival and make a place for them in a world that seems to conspire against them.

 Keywords:  Situated Knowers, epistemology, standpoint theory, gendered identities, Self-exploration

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Towards a Taxonomy of Masculinities: Mapping Hegemonic and Alternative Masculine Practices in Shashi Deshpande’s The Dark Holds No Terror and That Long Silence

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Suraj Gunwant1 & Rashmi Gaur2

1Ph.D. candidate at the department of Humanities & Social Sciences, IIT Roorkee. Email: suraj.15may@gmail.com. 2Professor of English and Cultural Studies at the department of Humanities & Social Sciences, IIT Roorkee. 

  Volume 8, Number 3, 2016 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v8n3.20

Received April 19, 2016; Revised July 04, 2016; Accepted July 15, 2016; Published August 18, 2016

 Abstract

This paper reads two early novels of Shashi Deshpande and maps the ways in which traditional and new alternative masculinities find juxtaposition in the chosen texts. Although Shashi Deshpande is regularly posited as an author of progressive feminist politics, whose fictions present a subjugated femininity under the oppression of a unitary and oppressive masculinity; this reading, however, complicates this position by exploring diverse and contradictory embodiments of manhood in her works. In so doing, this study submits that the presence of supportive or caring masculinities militates against the popular notion of a singular, oppressive and homogenous masculinity and problematizes the notion of pervasive and universal patriarchy. However, these caring or testicular masculinities do not find much textual endorsement. On the contrary, it is the traditional/ patriarchal masculinities that retain their dominance, which allows us to expose the novels’ unconscious support of the status quo.

Keywords: Shashi Deshpande, Masculinities, Gender

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The Polyphonic, Dialogic Feminine, Narrative Voice in Anglophone Arab Women’s Writings

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Dallel SARNOU

 Abdelhamid Ibn Badis University, Mostaganem, Algeria. Email: sar_dalal@yahoo.fr

  Volume 8, Number 3, 2016 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v8n3.21

Received May 16, 2016; Revised July 10, 2016; Accepted July 20, 2016; Published August 18, 2016

Abstract

The present paper aims to distinguish the narrative voice in Anglophone Arab women narratives from other feminine voices by putting spotlight on the state of hybridity, hyphenation and oscillation between home and Diaspora and how Arab women writers living in the diaspora stand in a particular cultural, social, political and linguistic position that enables them to voice distinctively their female compatriots to the Western readership. A fundamental preoccupation, in this article, is to argue that the narrative voice in Anglophone Arab women’s writings is both dialogic and polyphonic following Bakhtin’s theory of Dialogism. The major finding of this paper is that the voice in these narratives is both multiple and complex since the hyphenated identity of Arab women writers living in the Diaspora is also complex and multi-layered.

Keywords: Voice, Dialogism, Polyphony, Diaspora, Hyphenation, Hybridity.

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“Fantastic Bodies and Where to Find Them”: Representational Politics of Queer Bodies in Popular Media

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Adharshila Chatterjee

 Assistant Professor of English at Women’s Christian College, Kolkata. Email: adharshila.chatterjee@gmail.com

 Volume 8, Number 3, 2016 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v8n3.22

Received April 30, 2016; Revised July 21, 2016; Accepted July 30, 2016; Published August 18, 2016

Abstract

As we transition into a cybersocial world of infinite ‘glocal’ intersections, much of our perceptions about beauty and body have come to be regulated by the reductive standards of the popular global media, mediated mostly in the US, that seek to gratify specific heterosexist, hypermasculine/ hyperfeminine notions about body image. To create stringently specified standards for men and women is to automatically confine the body into the duality of the masculine and the feminine, thus repressing the self-expression of alternate sexualities and genders. Situating our discourse within the critical paradigm gender performativity, this paper will navigate the processes involved in the visualization and performance of the queer body in Hollywood and American show business and chart the evolution of LGBTQ representations in media. Amidst the pervasive politico-cultural preoccupation with the body, can gender performance through queer bodies truly reach their full potential and self-expressivity, specifically in societies that impose normative regulations and restrictive labels on standards of beauty? Where, then, is the queer, transgendered body situated within the predominantly masculine culture of visual narcissism and cisgender body hysteria? The de-objectification of traditional body images in media, thus, becomes a vital agenda in queer studies. This paper will further interrogate the possibility of a postgender representational mode that can subvert the traditional binaries of the body and accommodate sexual/gender alterities within, what Habermas calls, the “media-steered subsystems”.

Keywords: Queer stereotypes, Hollywood, Non-binary body, Heteronormativity, Gender performance

Rhetorics of the Visual: Graphic Medicine, Comics and its Affordances

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Sathyaraj Venkatesan1 & Sweetha Saji2

1Assistant Professor of English in the Department of Humanities at the National Institute of Technology, Trichy, India. Email: sathya@nitt.edu. 2Research Scholar at the National Institute of Technology, Trichy, India.Email: sweethasaji@gmail.com

Volume 8, Number 3, 2016 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v8n3.23

Received June 08, 2016; Revised July 18, 2016; Accepted July 28, 2016; Published August 18, 2016

Abstract

Affordances, in the context of comics, connote to the general attributes of the medium such as temporality, spatiality, gestures, tone/handwriting and economy. Although comics evinces a dynamic relationship among these elements, it is possible to delineate functional and rhetorical role of these affordances on a conceptual and technical level. Taking these cues, the paper after briefly reviewing the definition and scope of graphic medicine aims to demonstrate the functional and rhetorical role of the aforementioned affordances in communicating illness and illness related experiences. Among other issues this article also seeks to address the following: how do comics engage in the visual and verbal translation of the experiences of chronic illness? how do affordances of comics facilitate the readers’ haptic experience of an author’s subjective trauma? Despite its juvenile legacy, comics capacitates graphic medicine to represent physical and emotional aspects of narrating subjective illness experiences within the medium. The paper concludes that comics is a uniquely suited communicative medium as it diagrams the interiority of illness experience, and, in the process, evolves itself as a locus of tacit knowledge through its translation and mediation of emotional truths and affective states altered by illness.

Keywords: graphic medicine, comics, affordances, spatio-temporality, gestures, handwriting

Lunar Imagery and Traditional Mythology in I. Kalynets’ Poetry

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Tetiana Oleksandrivna Tsepkalo

Faculty of Philology and Journalism, Kherson State University, Ukraine.  E?mail: tanuysya@ukr.ne.

Volume 8, Number 3, 2016 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v8n3.24

Received May 26, 2016; Revised July 21, 2016; Accepted July 30, 2016; Published August 18, 2016

Abstract

This article analyzes the lunar mythologem’s features in the poetic works of the Ukrainian poet Ihor Kalynets in terms of traditional Slavonic concepts and world mythological traditions. This work also explores the myth poetics of the writer, his ideological continuum and specificity of individual author’s myth creation based on the image of the Moon. This also includes an explanation of the said mythological concept as well as its role in the formative process of the myths. The mythologem of the Moon in Ihor Kalynets’ poetry embodies the author’s philosophical and social views via metamorphic manifestations. The relevance of the topic derives both from the lack of thorough analysis and the necessity for systematic study of the Moon’s mythologem in Ukrainian literature in general and in poetry in particular. Synthesis of pagan and Christian thoughts is inextricably intertwined in the author’s artistic models of the universe and is peculiar to individual aesthetic system, so that understanding and interpretation of the author’s approach to depict the archetypal image of the Moon is one of the major issues of the modern Ukrainian literature.

Keywords: mythologem, the image of moon, worldview, myth poetics, myth creation, mythic mentality.

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