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Indicting Governmental Control, Military-Industrial Complex and Rogue AI: A Political Reading of Three Young-Adult (Science Fiction) Stories

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Sami Ahmad Khan

Jawaharlal Nehru University

Volume 7, Number 3, 2015 I Full Text PDF

Abstract:

This paper delves into the tangible materiality and political relevance of three Young-Adult Science Fiction stories by Indian writers in English. It analyses how these writers approach, interpret and address socio-political maladies afflicting today’s India. Utilising the theoretical framework of Darko Suvin’s novum, this paper scans the primary texts to locate how they formulate and highlight pressing issues of a developing India, and how these contemporary problems are foregrounded using the self-aware deployment mechanism of (YA) Science Fiction. It also identifies how these writers view the operationalisation of upcoming technologies.

Keywords: Indian Science Fiction, Science Fiction in Indian English, YA SF Short-Stories, Novum Keep Reading

Becoming Krshna: Panchali’s Quest in Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s The Palace of Illusions

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Rajni Singh, Indian School of Mines, Dhanbad, India
Soumyajyoti Banerjee, Haldia Institute of Technology, West Bengal, India

Volume 7, Number 3, 2015 I Full Text PDF

Abstract

Women autobiographical narratives draw on the centrality of the female experience in light of the politics of representation. This paper explores that experience in Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s novel. The study however, does not resort to standardised models of interpreting and analysing the female self, namely feminist criticism. It brings in Orientalism as a tool for interrogating that experience, primarily because the theoretical model of Orientalism supports the analysis of how the female self is created by a patriarchal hegemony and maintained through tradition. The study concentrates on the story of P?nc?li, the female protagonist of the Indian epic Mah?bh?rata as it is divulged in the novel. P?nc?li’s vision of herself and the world she inhabits is restricted by an orientalist culture that operates at the level of the nation as well as the domestic. The palaces she inhabits become more than just architectural edifices; they become embodiments of the motifs of a nationalist culture vitiated with orientalist concerns of cognitive dominance. P?nc?li’s efforts to break the shackles of tradition within the home and without it require her to counter such discourse with an entirely new aesthetic of narration and experience, one that is intimately connected to her ‘self.’ Her search for her own identity and space thus, turns out to be the search for her essential nature. Her futile efforts to construct a grandiose palace as a retributive symbol and her inadequacy at understanding the strength of the female self finally lead her to a self-sufficient, self-engaged rhetoric of completion. Hers is the story of a woman rising above the destiny which is set for her; it is the story of becoming K????.

Keywords: Orientalism, Panchali, Krishna, Quest, Identity

Krishna touches my hand…I am buoyant and expansive and uncontainable—but I always was so, only I never knew it! I am beyond name and gender and the imprisoning patterns of ego. And yet, for the first time, I’m truly Panchaali […] Above us our palace waits, the only one I’ve ever needed. Its walls are space, its floor is sky, its center everywhere. (Divakaruni, The Palace of Illusions 360)

When she wanted her tryst with history, P?nc?li, the daughter of King Drupada, born out of a sacrificial Yjña along with her brother Dh??tadyumna, never imagined that she would be the cause of a great Indian civil war, Mah?bh?rata. She was the fruit of vengeance; Drupada’s fury to consume his adversary Dro??c?rya. Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni in The Palace of Illusions concentrates on this story. In the novel P?nc?li, the protagonist, narrates the story of her life, a story of her quest to find out who she is.

Her quest begins, unknowingly, at a very young age, when she muses on her father’s palace: “Through the long lonely years of my childhood, when my father’s palace seemed to tighten its grip around me until I couldn’t breathe, I would go to my nurse and ask for a story” (Divakaruni, The Palace of Illusions 1). The first lines prepare the reader for the centrality of space in P?nc?li’s life as it develops into a search for her own palace, a space she can call her own. It becomes the ruling factor in her life. Of course this search, as we shall witness, is the fundamental search for womanhood, born and bred in hegemonic patriarchy. In P?nc?li’s case, it is also an assessment of the tensions between how women see and are seen, judge and are judged, a search to carve out a space of their own; of their (“emph. Showalter’s”) wilderness (Showalter 345). P?nc?li goes on to comment: “I hated the thick gray slabs of the walls—more suited to a fortress than a king’s residence…I hated the narrow windows, the mean, dimly lit corridors, the uneven floors that were always damp, the massive severe furniture from generations ago that was sized more for giants than men. I hated most of all that the grounds had neither trees nor flowers” (Divakaruni, The Palace of Illusions 6).

This description of Drupada’s palace unfolds key points about patriarchal hegemony in the narrative. Drupada is consumed by his acrid desire for revenge, which consummates in P?nc?li’s birth. She is, thus, from her inception, a child of a nationalist power struggle. Drupada’s palace and all ensuing palaces that P?nc?li inhabits become representations of this struggle. The aesthetics of the palaces become important because “any and all representations, because they are representations, are embedded first in the language and then in the culture, institutions, and political ambience of the representer” (Said 272). We argue, therefore, that the politics of the discourse of women as the Other (physiological, societal, cultural, ontological and intellectual) and consequent representations of that otherness emerge from the micro-level of the domestic and gradually seep into the outside. We also contend that the domestic is the site where the identities of womanhood are constructed, de-constructed and re-constructed regularly. For women like P?nc?li, then, constructing her subjectivity, her identity, happens in the twilight zone: between the accepted discourse and her own sensitivities; between nature and nurture; between the self and its other.

Understanding the female experience, as we intend to do, in that light, becomes increasingly difficult and it is essential that due attention is given to how and why such perspectival categories are formed and maintained. This is where we deviate from traditional feminist critiques by bringing in Orientalism (as theorised by Edward Said) to form the theoretical framework of our study. According to Said, the Orient (thus the Oriental) was formed as a special category because it was defined and delimited by a set of knowledge-systems disseminated through culture. Interestingly, a similar socio-cultural delimitation is traceable for another specific category: woman. In his book Said writes, “So far as the Orient is concerned, standardization and cultural stereotyping have intensified the […] imaginative demonology of “the mysterious Orient” (Said 26). Something similar happens in case of women. Traditionalist, nationalist hegemony, as in the concerned text, solidifies mythical representations about women, which percolate the domestic where they are regularly played out. Said writes, “[…] knowledge—no matter how special—is regulated first by the local concerns of a specialist, later by the general concerns of a social system of authority. The interplay between local and central interests is intricate, but by no means indiscriminate”…Full Text PDF

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Sufiana Mausiqi: Kashmir’s Forgotten Classical Music

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Shabir Ahmad Mir

Lovely Professional University, Jalandhar, India

Volume 7, Number 3, 2015 I Full Text PDF

Abstract

Kashmir is one of the few regions of India which has a distinct regional classical music tradition along with a rich repertoire of folk and modern light music. The classical music of Kashmir is known as Sufiana Mausiqi. It is a type of choral ensemble music which is based on the principal melodic concept of Maqam, plural Maqamat. It is an amalgam of the music of Persia, Central Asia India and was born due to the intercultural synthesis of the music of already mentioned regions during the 15th century. Regrettably this glorious tradition of the past is currently on the brink of extinction. Based on in-depth interviews and discussions with master musicians and other persons associated directly or indirectly with this art form and the review of some original texts related to the subject, this paper examines the current state of Sufiana Mausiqi in Kashmir and its future prospectus.

Keywords: Sufiana Mausiqi, Maqamat, Sufism, Kashmir, Saaz-e-Kashmir

  1. Introduction

Sufiana Mausiqi is the classical choral ensemble music of the Kashmir region of the state of Jammu and Kashmir. It is based on the principal concept of Maqam and is close to the Central Asian Maqam traditions but also influenced by Indian classical music. The word Sufiana has been derived from “Sufism”, meaning “mystical” and Mausiqi is the Urdu word for music. Therefore the phrase Sufiana Mausiqi means ‘mystical music’. Sufiana Mausiqi is so called because of the association of this musical form with the Sufis and the text used in it is mostly that of Sufi poets. “It functions primarily as a religious music being connected with the rituals of Sufis (Muslim mystics) and as elite entertainment music performed in secular context. Although Sufiana has the fragrance of Indo-Central Asian Music traditions, it has its own distinct style, structure and mode of presentation that gives Sufiana its own identity and distinguishes it from Indo-Central Asian music as well as Indian Classical music. It, according to Josef Pacholczyk, is a genre characteristically Kashmiri. This music is taught orally and passed on from one generation to another. At present this musical form is practiced by traditional musicians belonging to the three districts of Kashmir-Srinagar, Budgam and Anantnag. “Sufiana is traditionally performed in the context of a Mehfil which is of two kinds, a religious Sufi meeting in which Sufiana is an integral part of the event and a secular meeting, in which the Sufiana lovers gather expressly to listen to the music”. At present the tradition of performing in Mehfils is a rare case. Nowadays whatever Sufiana Mausiqi we listen, it is through the medium of Radio and sometimes through stage performances. In fact this glorious tradition of the past is presently facing the threat of extinction. A very few families are practicing this profession now. Earlier there were many gharanas (schools) of Sufiana Mausiqi spread across the length and breadth of Kashmir valley. But at present only four gharanas exist. The only surviving Ustads (Master musicians), Mohammad Abdullah Setari, Mohammad Yaqoob Sheikh, and Mohammad Ismail Bhat are finding it difficult to carry forward the tradition. Many Maqams and Talas have been forgotten. Saaz-e-Kashmir, the only bow instrument is on the path of extinction. In the past, a dance form namely Hafiz Nagma was associated with Sufiana Mausiqi in which a female dancer, “Hafiza” would represent the meaning of the song through various hand gestures and movements of the body. This dance form is now out of practice…Full Text PDF

 

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Rhythmic Syllables: Introduction, Analysis and Conceptual Approach in Carnatic Music of South India

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Mannarkoil J Balaji

 Sastra University, Tanjore

Volume 7, Number 3, 2015 I Full Text PDF

Abstract

This article explores the rhythmic alphabet of the Carnatic System along-with its analysis, concepts and its applications. A concept-based application has lesser chances of failures during a performance and offers immense scope for impromptu improvisations which form a major part of South Indian percussion artistry.

Keywords: Carnatic Music, Rhythmic Syllables, South India, Classical Music

Introduction

Carnatic Music is one of the foremost and ancient Musical systems of South India and it falls under the category of Classical Arts. It is unique in its form and content. Melody and Rhythm form the basis of many music systems of the world. As the language of Raga has swaras, the Language of rhythm has varied rhythmic syllables. By permuting these seven swaras innumerable ragas emerge and are still emerging. Likewise with the available rhythmic syllables, innumerable combinations can be formed as the process is continuous and the system is dynamic. In Carnatic Rhythm there are 14 basic syllables and by adding vowels they become 52 syllables (Annexure 1) in total.

The process

The foundation for a rhythmic metre is number of beats which needs to be expressed in rhythmic language which may fill up entire cycle or parts thereof. Hence, In other words, rhythmic syllables encompass mathematical principles.

Music is a creative art form. Creativity is a process by which an artiste is able to bring out such combinations out of the existing concepts and practices that stand out as unique and new. It is a cognitive process that produces new ideas or transforms old ideas into updated concepts. This process does not overlook or replace the existing practices, but enhances them by giving a different and unheard-of dimensions to it. When the creativity is defined, a logical process of sequence is obtained which eases the pedagogical path.

Creative Models

Of the various Creative Models, Wallis’ model gives the following steps which is closer to this author’s rhythm creation model:

  • Preparation
  • Incubation
  • Illumination
  • Verification

With specific reference to Carnatic rhythm the following logic can be applied…Full Text PDF

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Reversing Patriarchy: A literary Examination of Adopted Husbands (Mukoyoshi) in Japan

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Elizabeth Odachi Onogwu
Yokohama National University, Yokohama, Japan

Volume 7, Number 3, 2015 I Full Text PDF

Abstract

Being a patrilineal society, some of the gender codes operating within the Japanese culture possess a set of self-perpetuating scheme that facilitates its hold on patriarchy. One of such schemes is the age-old tradition of adopting a full-grown man (omukosan) into a household with only female offspring as a husband to the eldest daughter in the household. He is expected to contribute towards sustaining the family lineage and consequently prevent the extinction of such a family’s name. The adopted husband then assumes the role of the headship of the house and enjoys all the privileges of a legal son. However, this sexist formulation works paradoxically both to elevate the adopted son to the status of leadership and perniciously portray him as a weakling who is perpetually obligated to his adopted family and thus occasionally treated with disdain. This paper deploys Futabatei Shimei`s novel An Adopted Husband (Sono Omokage) to ascertain the implications of this practice to the discourse of sexual inequality in Japan. It also probes the extent to which this patriarchal custom delivers the woman/bride a soft landing to valorize her status in the society and also circumvent the reach male hegemony.

Keywords: patrilineal, Futabatei Shimei, Sono Omokage, omukosan, Japan Keep Reading

Relations of Power, Knowledge and Language in Haruki Murakami’s The Strange Library

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Mitarik Barma

Jadavpur University in Kolkata, India

Volume 7, Number 3, 2015 I Full Text PDF

Abstract

Michel Foucault in his book Aesthetics, Method, and Epistemology notes with reference to Jorge Luis Borges’ work how language forms an invisible labyrinth of repetition while becoming its own mirror as it places “the infinite outside of itself”. In Haruki Murakami’s The Strange Library we are faced with a narrative that not only draws our attention to the fictionality of the text as a language game but also the variance of interpretive freedom it offers to the reader. Thus it essentially raises the question of authorship as well as the human condition of being always already inside the labyrinth of language, culture and discipline. The aim of this paper is to explore the themes of discipline, imprisonment, and textuality as implicated by the text The Strange Library as well as to discuss the problematics involved with the relationship between the author, the text and the reader with reference to selected writings of Michel Foucault, Roland Barthes and Tzvetan Todorov.

Keywords: Haruki Murakami, Michel Foucault, The Strange Library, Textuality, Discipline.

  1. Disciplinary power and its relation to the body

As Michel Foucault notes in his Discipline and Punish, the basic goal of disciplinary power was to turn the human being into a docile body which at the same time will also act within a system of production. In the text, entitled The Strange Library, authored by Haruki Murakami, what we find is a parallel to Foucauldian idea of disciplinary power and its relationship to body, sexuality and the technologies of the self.

At the very beginning, the speaking subject, a little boy is seen to be visiting a library, where rules and regulations must be followed. The books that he wanted to return to the library, How to Build a Submarine, Memoirs of a Shepherd, shows his interest into technical knowledge, that is to say in specialized discourses, situating the little boy as a scholar in the vast discursive network of knowledge. His youth in contrast to the old man he meets, points to the naivety of the speaking subject, while also establishing the old man as a regulative force, representing the ancient rules of language in which one becomes always already situated. By ‘fixing’ the boy within the regulatory space of the library the old man prepares the boy for imprisonment within the library basement, at the center of the labyrinthine network. As Foucault notes,

“The general form of an apparatus intended to render individuals docile and useful, by means of precise work upon their bodies, indicated the prison institution, before the law ever defined it as the penalty par excellence.” (Foucault, 1995)

From the very beginning the reference to sheep and shepherds and the passive nature of the boy scholar indicates that he is already a docile subject. As Dreyfus and Rabinow notes following Foucault, the development in Western political thought is threefold. Traditionally it was concerned with the just and good life of the individual.

“Political thinking was that art which, in an imperfect world, led men toward the good life, an art which imitated God’s government of nature.” (Dreyfus & Rabinow, 1982)

During the Renaissance however under the influence of Machiavelli,

“Practical, technical knowledge was raised above metaphysical considerations, and strategic considerations became paramount.” (ibid)

The third development in Western Political thought is what Foucault referred as raison d’état where the authors of police and technical manuals formed the policy and regulatory disciplines whose aim is neither the good life nor to aid the prince (state) but

“to increase the scope of power for its own sake by bringing the bodies of the state’s subjects under tighter discipline.”. (Dreyfus & Rabinow, 1982)

In the text we find that the boy scholar is interested lies in the tax-collection system during the Ottoman era. The three books that the old man supplies to the boy on this topic are: a. The Ottoman Tax System, b. The Diary of an Ottoman Tax Collector, and c. Tax Revolts and Their Suppression. Looking at the titles it is not very difficult to link them to the three-fold division in the development of western political thought. The Diary of an Ottoman Tax Collector, which by its title suggests to be the most subjective account among the three can be linked with the Classical Political idea of the West, where the focus was on the subjects of the state. The Ottoman Tax System can be linked to the Renaissance political idea, where the focus of political power shifts from subjects of the state to the state itself and finally Tax Revolts and Their Suppression can be linked to the tactics of raison d’état where regulatory systems works for the suppression of individuals and for the sake of the system of power itself. As Foucault notes in his Stanford lecture,

“…from the idea that the state has its own nature and its own finality, to the idea that man is the true object of the state’s power… a kind of animalization of man through the most sophisticated political techniques results.” (Dreyfus & Rabinow, 1982)

Thus the individual subject is treated as an objective body useful for production for the state only. The scholar boy’s duty is thus to accumulate knowledge, only to satisfy the hunger of the old man. The sheep man on the other hand functions in place of the police. Foucault notes in The Order of Things how the seventeenth and eighteenth century police dealt with subjects not under juridical considerations but as a productive, labor force working for the welfare of the state. In his Stanford lecture he notes,

“…What the police see to is a live, active, productive man. Under Louis XIV one manual says, ‘the true object of police is man’.” (Dreyfus & Rabinow, 1982)

Consequently, the police itself as part of the society and falling under different forms of regulatory principles becomes ‘docile’ to such systems of power. The fact that despite having the power of arms the police or the army does not generally try to overthrow the state pertains to the fact that they themselves are bound by different ideological apparatuses such as the law, the idea of good citizenship, nationalism etc. This is one of the reasons why the sheep man is afraid of the old man and his willow stick…Full Text PDF

The Use of Monoculture and Cross Culturalism in Rachel Carson’s The Silent Spring: A Review

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Shreeja, VIT University, Tamilnadu, India
X. John Paul, VIT University, Tamilnadu, India

Volume 7, Number 3, 2015 I Full Text PDF

Abstract

…Full Text PDF

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Worlding Options: Conflation of Personal and Physical Space in Patrick White’s Novels

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Diganta Bhattacharya

Independent Scholar

Volume 7, Number 3, 2015 I Full Text PDF

Abstract

Great texts that have accrued literary renown over the years and across space, time and genre, are those that are able to project universal sentiments. But simultaneously these texts feature a conscious engagement with the constituent space(s) that are unique to their creation or generation. Every text, then, as it naturally appears, has its singular framework or modality of engagement(s) with space. This article seeks to illustrate how Australian novelist Patrick White’s novels enshrine philosophical, and sometimes metaphysical explorations of the nature of spatiality that the self has to contend with as an unavoidable burden of living itself and clarify the singular, pivotal role that spatiality plays in determining individual responses to specific situations and decision-making processes.

Keywords: Patrick White, spatiality, Australian, The Solid Mandala, Riders in the Chariot, The Eye of the Storm, The Twyborn Affair,  Keep Reading

Appropriating Postmodernism: Narrative Play in Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris

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Rupsha Mukherjee
Presidency University, Kolkata, India

Volume 7, Number 3, 2015 I Full Text PDF

Abstract

The idea that has been explored in the article is what makes a film postmodern and if there is an inevitable gap between form and content, between postmodern techniques and the narrative structure in the same. The article addresses how Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris, which has been touted by certain critics as postmodern, adopts postmodern multiplicity of time and spaces and Allen almost plays with theses ideas but does not entirely succumb to them. Michel Foucault’s idea of heterotopia has been employed in studying the other space depicted in the film . The other space showcases Paris in the 1920s and Allen through his protagonist Gil highlights this as a celebratory digression and a moment’s liberation. The narrative is plugged into modernist attitudes, including a narrative closure, which does not allow it to be regarded as a postmodern film in its entirety.

Keywords : Allen, Midnight in Paris, Space, Nostalgia, Postmodern, Belle Epoque, Golden Age, theoretical, cultural, heterotopia, Gil Keep Reading

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The ‘Woman’ of the Crowd: Exploring Female Flânerie

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Rudrani Gangopadhyay

Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India

Volume 7, Number 3, 2015 I Full Text PDF

Abstract

Modernist literature is rife with figures of the flâneur, strolling down the city. When Edgar Allan Poe wrote ‘The Man of the Crowd’, arguably one of the best depictions of this spectator figure, he names this figure the ‘man’ of the crowd, leaving one to wonder if there ever was a woman of the crowd? Or if at all there could be such a figure – a female flâneur in a man’s world. This paper tries to explore this elusive female counterpart to the man of the crowd by examining their course in literary and artistic works born out of early twentieth century Europe.

Keywords: Gender Studies, Modernism, City, Urban, Flânerie

While cities were by no means a phenomenon of the nineteenth century, the advent of industrialization meant a gradual relocation of more and more people from the rural areas to urban centres. As the cities grew, they became the new focus of civilization, a fact that was reflected in the works of nineteenth century European writers and artists. By the arrival of the twentieth century – and of the modernist movement – cities were the focus of all arts, and indeed life itself. A new form of urban lifestyle came to be, which became the subject of most modernist works.

While some modernists “perceived urban living in terms of decay and degeneration … for others, the city was a source of inspiration and beauty”(Kjattansdottir, 2012). Amidst this culture emerges the figure of the flâneur as a “key figure in understanding the modern, urban living brought about by industrialization in Europe” (Kjattansdottir). While the french noun ‘flâneur’ means ‘stroller’ or ‘saunterer’, Walter Benjamin first turned the scholarly focus onto the flâneur. Describing him as the iconic figure of the modern existence, Benjamin portrayed the flâneur as an urban spectator of the society, but one who is alienized from it. This flâneur as “the quintessential figure of modernity, a figure linked to modernity’s changing modes of observation, subjectivity, spectatorship and literary production and illustrative of urbanization, industrialization and technologization of the modern era” (Coulthard, 1999). Serving as both an emblem for the modernist city as well as the modernist writer, the flâneur moved through the crowd of the city by himself, observing and noting the details of passers by and events around him, but carefully remaining anonymous to the crowd. Baudelaire describes the flâneur in the following words in The Painter of Modern Life:

“The crowd is his element, as the air is that of birds and water of fishes. His passion and his profession are to become one flesh with the crowd. For the perfect flâneur, for the passionate spectator, it is an immense joy to set up house in the heart of the multitude, amid the ebb and flow of movement, in the midst of the fugitive and the infinite. To be away from home and yet to feel oneself everywhere at home; to see the world, to be at the centre of the world, and yet to remain hidden from the world—impartial natures which the tongue can but clumsily define. The spectator is a prince who everywhere rejoices in his incognito.” (Baudelaire, 1995)

The figure suggests the contradictions of life in the modern city, exploring the relationship between people, modernity and the urban environment within and without himself, “caught between the insistent mobility of the present and the visible weight of the past” (Ferguson, 1994).

In many ways, the unknown man from Poe’s famous short story, “The Man of the Crowd”, whom the author pursues as he remains at the centre of the crowd in London, himself unnoticed, moving through the city relentlessly is the archetypal flâneur figure. However, it goes to show much about the contemporary gender roles that he is a ‘Man’ of the crowd. Traditionally, the flâneur is a man. The very fact that he is a man who ambles along the city all day long and manages to sustain himself – perhaps even devote time to the arts that he gathers inspiration for in the streets – would it make safe to identify a flâneur as a gentleman stroller, thus limiting him from the perspectives of both class and gender. Even if there could have flâneur been a certain amount of flexibility in the class situation, the public sphere of the city would always, without any exception, belong to men. Kevin Milburn illustrates this further:

“throughout history, the city in western society has tended to be a gender bound space; women have traditionally had less opportunity to engage in indulgent practices such as … urban strolling, principally due to gendered conventions concerning the expectation of looking after children, as well as safety concerns, concerns often propagated by men” (Mulburn, 2009).

Benjamin himself has been subject to fierce feminist criticism. His flâneur “has been repeatedly accused of being shaped by his masculine subject position” (Ivanchikova, 2006). There are very few women in the world of Benjamin’s flâneur. Leslie Kathleen Hankins accuses Benjamin’s analysis of being limited by his misogyny…Full Text PDF

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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

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