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The Processes of Dehumanization in the Encounter with the Other: An Exploratory Study During the Lynching of African Americans in the United States, 1882 – 1968

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202 views

Giovanni B. Corvino

University of Turin. Email: giovanni.corvino@edu.unito.it

 Volume 13, Number 2, 2021 I Full-Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n2.39

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Abstract:

The dehumanization processes represent a failure in the attribution of thinking skills to other human beings. Based on ethnicity, gender, sexual preference, and nationality, social prejudices are reinforced in basic neurocognitive structures. Still, their manifestation is conveyed by personal goals and normative beliefs, which develop in an environment of a dyadic relationship or intergroup contexts. Therefore, this paper aims to peruse the perspectives for a theory of dehumanization, supporting them with neuroscientific research on the neural basis, and exploring the forms of dehumanization that African Americans suffered when they were victims of lynching in the United States.

Keywords: dehumanization, lynching, cognitive bias

“He made me fall at the feet of a woman”: Masculine Anxieties and Dysfunctional Romance in Tamil Cult Film Subramaniyapuram (2008)

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288 views

Divya A

Assistant Professor in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences in the Indian Institute of Technology Madras. ORCID: 0000-0002-4516-6763. Email: divya@iitm.ac.in

 Volume 13, Number 2, 2021 I Full-Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n2.38

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Abstract

Tamil Cinema is “one of India’s largest, most prolific and increasingly significant cinemas” (Velayutham 2008, pp.1-2). Madurai genre in Tamil films is popularly known as 3M films (Murder, Mayhem and Madurai) (Damodaran Gorringe 2017, p.9). Subramaniyapuram (Sasikumar, 2008) is a Madurai film that attained cult status in both the Indian states of Tamil Nadu and Kerala since its release in 2008. A collection of essays on Subramaniyapuram edited by anthropologist Anand Pandian was published in 2013, a rare honour to be bestowed on a Tamil film in recent times. Significantly, the film’s problematic gender narrative—especially the entangled relation between the romantic plot and the masculine “plots”—is not the central subject of exploration of any of the essays in this edited collection, nor has it been discussed in depth in any critical discourse on the film so far. In this article, using Laura Mulvey’s theoretical lens as a point of departure, I argue that the female identity is crucial to the narrative functioning of the various plots of Subramaniyapuram. The film’s ultimate narrative desires, I illustrate, are in affirmation of masculine supremacy, hegemonic masculinity, and the women as femme fatales.

Keywords: Subramaniyapuram, Madurai, Tamil cinema, Masculinity, Gaze, Mulvey, Sasikumar, Romantic plot.

Chachnama Discourse: The Dichotomy of Islamic Origins in South Asia

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245 views

Priyanka Chaudhary1, Sara Rathore2

1Professor and Head, Department of Languages, Manipal University Jaipur, Rajasthan, India. Email: priyanka.chaudhary@jaipur.manipal.edu

2Department of Languages, Manipal University Jaipur, Rajasthan, India. Email: sara.181102019@muj.manipal.edu

 Volume 13, Number 2, 2021 I Full-Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n2.36A

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Abstract

The common narrative of the arrival of Islam in South Asia is shaping contemporary discourse on religious nationalism in the subcontinent. However, this common narrative tends to marginalise the origins of Shias in the region. The study employs the critical theory of New Historicism to trace the historiography of the text in context to the schism among Muslims and discusses the ways in which it participates with only the Sunni origins in the region which are in stark contrast to the Shia origins. Therefore, the paper introspects upon whether Chachnama exclusively a Sunni perspective of the conquest. The findings indicate the marginalisation of Shias in the collective narrative of Muslim origins in South Asia.

Keywords- Sindh, Alids, Chachnama, Indo-Persian Relation, discourse, Umayyad Caliphate

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Hasya: Towards a Poetics of the Comic

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168 views

Jagannath Basu

Assistant Professor of English, Sitalkuchi College, India.  Orcid: 0000-0003-0306-7238. Email: dyukrish@gmail.com

 Volume 13, Number 2, 2021 I Full-Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n2.37

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Abstract:

Amidst a whole range of criticism and derision that laughter has received down the ages, the question still lingers: why “One daren’t even laugh any more”? The comic, according to Aristotle, is associated with the ridiculous or the ugly. It constitutes a deformity or an error and leans towards something which is mean. The comedy, on the other hand, is a form of low art consisting of what is base or inferior. This view of the comic and comedy has largely been accepted and forwarded by the West. They have looked down upon the comic with a one-dimensional view of derision and condemnation. As Lisa Trahair correctly states, “to comprehend the comic is to risk overlooking the structure of incomprehensibility that is crucial to its operation”. Although often considered as a synonym for humour or laughter, hâsya, on the other hand, is much more than that. Hâsya always enabled us to understand comic’s implications in the object world and vice versa. It is not only enigmatic but also esoteric in nature. Through a select study of VidûSaka (the deformed clown in Sanskrit theatre) and two poems— one a Sanskrit Muktaka and the other a Nind?-stuti, this paper intends to read the potentialities of hâsya as an-other laughter, not just as a mode of gay affirmation or subversion but as a mode of “free play” (ju), within the space that exists between the self and the other(s). This, however, by no means is an attempt to conceive hâsya only as a disruptive event with the intentions of the ‘Empire writing back’, rather a wish to hermeneutically comprehend the harmony of the comic within the dimensions of Indian aesthetics, so that the poetics of laughter can be retrieved and reclaimed.

Keywords: Hâsya, laughter, being, other, comic, poetics, ju

Victimhood, Health Challenges and Violent Restiveness in Blood and Oil: Music, Characterization and Colours as Metaphors

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203 views

Uche-Chinemere Nwaozuzu1, Adebowale O. Adeogun2, Cindy Ezeugwu3, Alphonsus C. Ugwu4 & Emeka Aniago5

1Associate Professor, Theatre & Film Studies, University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Nigeria

2Senior Lecturer, Music, University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Nigeria

3Lecturer, Theatre & Film Studies, University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Nigeria

4Lecturer, Mass Communication, University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Nigeria

5Senior Lecturer, Theatre & Film Studies, University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Nigeria. ORCID iD: 0000-0003-3194-1463. Email: emeka.aniago@unn.edu.ng 

 Volume 13, Number 2, 2021 I Full-Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n2.36

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 Abstract

This study examines the aesthetics, efficacy, and propriety of the embedded metaphors in characterization, music, and colour application as creative vision in projecting victimhood atmosphere around traumatized Niger-Deltans due to many years of deprivation in Blood and Oil. Thus, this study explains how Blood and Oil represents a credible narrative, subsuming polemics of environmental degradation, health misery, massive unemployment, subjugation, and violent restiveness in Niger Delta due to poor political leadership, greed, and corruption. On creative vision, we are discussing how the ingenious application of characterization, music, and colour combined effectively in creating an enduring mood for the scenes in the film as channels of accentuating intended messages. To add relevant scholarly rigor, we applied victimhood theory and interpretive discuss approach to create relevant and lucid insights regarding the inclinations and actions of select characters in the film as well as analysis of relevant secondary texts. In the end, we deduce that the apt portrayal of Niger-Delta oil communities’ extensively degraded and polluted environment validates the reality of anguish and victimhood because of the massively diminished fishing and farming prospects. Lastly, the implication of this scenario is increased unemployment, psychological distress, diseases, and violent restiveness which have reduced enormously the wellbeing of Niger Delta inhabitants.  

Keywords: crude oil, health concerns, Niger-Delta, Nollywood, restiveness, victimhood

Conversations through Web 2.0 tools: Nurturing 21st century Values in the ESL Classroom

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227 views

Kshema Jose

Department for Training and Development, School of English Language Education, The English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad, India. ORCID: 0000-0003-3204-7404. Email: kshema@efluniversity.ac.in

 Volume 13, Number 2, 2021 I Full-Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n2.35

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 Abstract

21st century skills framework proposed by the World Economic Forum (2015) suggests that the development of foundational literacies, competencies and character qualities in students can help them function as responsible and productive global citizens. However, most educational systems focus only on developing foundational literacies like reading and writing, numeracy, scientific literacy, etc. This paper describes an exploratory research conducted to investigate how the 21st century ESL teacher can nurture the development of competencies and character qualities through language development tasks delivered using digital tools. The paper is based on the premise that since character qualities are both social and individualistic in nature, they are ideally delivered through collaborative events and acquired best through self-reflection. Reporting from an ESL teacher’s perspective, the paper elucidates how participating in the communication, collaboration, critical thinking and creativity activities mediated through web 2.0 tools can facilitate the acquisition of character qualities like curiosity, persistence, adaptability, social and cultural awareness, etc.  It was found that certain features of web 2.0 tools like participatory environments, asynchronicity and ease of use for creating content offered students multiple opportunities for meaningful, sustained and reflective conversations. Using observational data, the researcher identifies the acquisition of character qualities and the development of competencies in students through these conversations.

Keywords: Adult learning, Value Education, Collaborative learning, 21st century character qualities, ESL classrooms 

 

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A Stylistic Investigation of the Act of Murder in Doris Lessing’s The Grass is Singing

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Ujjal Jeet

Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar, Punjab. ORCID: 0000-0003-1897-2142. Email: ujjal.eng@gndu.ac.in

 Volume 13, Number 2, 2021 I Full-Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n2.34

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Abstract

This paper is a functional stylistic study of a selected passage from Doris Lessing’s novel The Grass is Singing. In the novel The Grass is Singing, a white woman in Rhodesia is killed by her black servant but surprisingly the murder instead of bringing a stir spreads a silence in the local white community. Further, the text on an intuitive reading seems to absolve the murderer of the crime which forms the research question of the paper. Thus, close and systematic textual analysis of the text representing the murder scene was conducted and it was found that the linguistic choices of the text does create a semantic universe where the murder and the murdered are allegorical figures representing nature and nurture in a mutual conflict. The methodology for linguistic analysis of the selected text is borrowed from Michael Halliday’s theoretical system Systemic Functional Linguistics. The text is analysed by means of transitivity system which provides the investigative tools to study the representational choices of the text.

 Keywords: Functional Stylistics; Systemic Functional Linguistics; Transitivity; Ideational metafunction; Experiential Choices; Lessing Studies

The Uneasy Gaze – Appearing for Interviews to get Married – An Empirical Investigation into the Pre-marital Arranged Marriage Negotiations in Urban Kolkata

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275 views

Sucharita Sen
PhD Scholar, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. Email: sucharitasen13@gmail.com

 Volume 13, Number 2, 2021 I Full-Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n2.33

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 Abstract

Indian society, when viewed from a Foucauldian feminist perspective offers a curious and unique example of societal scrutiny over its members. This overt exercise of power influences individual behaviour, attitudes and has a profound influence on decision making. In this context, this paper argues, within an empirical framework, the limitations of freedom of choice for women in pre-marital arranged marriage negotiations. Women find themselves coercively thrust into uneasy situations of objectification, forced to mould themselves to fit into hegemonic patriarchal parameters. They are lambasted if they fail to fulfil the required expectations. Based on a survey of 250 young brides and prospective brides of upper-caste, middle-class background in urban Kolkata, I argue that the pre-marital negotiations in arranged marriages systematically subjugate the women. Faced with societal and familial pressure, the women often find themselves marginalised and subjugated in the process of arranged marriage.

Keywords: Women, Patriarchy, Arranged Marriages, Objectification.

Performance Space of the Digital Performer/Reader inside Andy Campbell and Judi Alston’s Digital Fiction the Nightingale’s Playground

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224 views

Gitanjali Roy

Assistant Professor, Department of English, Faculty of Liberal Arts, ICFAI University, Tripura. Research Scholar, Dept of English, Tripura University. ORCID: 0000-0003-3672-3481. E-mail: itzgitz@gmail.com/gitanjaliroy@iutriipura.edu.in 

 Volume 13, Number 2, 2021 I Full-Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n2.32

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 Abstract:

A digital performer has to negotiate with different kinds of affordances inside the space of a digital text. The Nightingale’s Playground (2010), a digital fiction authored by Andy Campbell and Judi Alston offers the reader/player with four versions of the text centering on the protagonist Carl Robertson who tries hard to search for his lost school friend Alex Nightingale. The online texts (‘Consensus Trance’, ‘Fieldwork Book’) and the gaming version of the digital fiction (‘Consensus Trance II’) offer the reader different decisional platforms. This makes it a challenging task for the reader to connect the affordances of the digital text. At the same time, the offline pdf version of the digital fiction hints at Carl being affected by a psychological disorder. The paper shall focus on how a digital reader negotiates his/her position inside the digital text by decoding the programmer’s/author’s encoded plot.

Keywords: Digital, Performer, Text, Nightingale’s Playground, Reader, Player.

Who is a Refugee? Understanding the Figure of the Refugee against the Backdrop of the Bengal Partition (1947-1970)

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Sumallya Mukhopadhyay

Doctoral Fellow and Teaching Assistant, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, New Delhi. ORCID ID: 0000-0002-4762-2099. Email: mukhopadhyay.sumallya@gmail.com,

 Volume 13, Number 2, 2021 I Full-Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n2.31

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Abstract

The paper intends to study the figure of the refugee in post-Partition West Bengal by critically examining the oral history narratives of individuals who migrated from East Pakistan in the wake of the 1947 Partition. It underscores the value and relevance of narrativity in the representation of factual history, the motivation and manifestation of which make history subjective, interpretive and contingent on the refugee’s narrative. The narrative act presents the refugees’ transition from, what may be called, figurative to socio-material subjects who interrupt and derange the nationalising exercise of the nation-state. The multivalent understanding of refugees makes the nation-state suffer from an anxiety of incompleteness (Appadurai 2006). The paper extends the idea of incompleteness by showing that however much the nation-state attempts to frame a particular brand of nationalism, variants of ethnocultural nationalism do exist, demonstrating the diverse subjectivities embodied by the refugees/narrators. Such ethnocultural nationalism can be read as alternative forms of self-assertion deeply etched in the social memory of the refugees.

 Keywords: Partition, Bengal, Refugees, Migration, Narratives, Ethnocultural

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