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Parrhesia and Clinical Practice: A Case Study of Dr. Esdaile’s Mesmeric Hospital in Hooghly

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287 views

Punnya Rajendran

Assistant Professor, Department of English Studies, Central University of Tamil Nadu.

Email: punnyarajendran@cutn.ac.in

ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6311-7383.

 Volume 13, Number 2, 2021 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n2.05

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Abstract

This paper seeks to explore the complex negotiation between mesmerism (as unauthorised medical practice) and the State by analyzing the singular example of Dr. James E. Esdaile, a Scottish civil surgeon stationed in Hooghly, Calcutta, in the 1840-50s; one of the few known medical practitioners of mesmerism in colonial India. His diary titled Mesmerism in India, and its Practical Application in Surgery and Medicine contains a record of every patient who walked into Esdaile’s clinic in Hooghly complaining of pain, the subsequent interaction that took place between the doctor and the patient, usually in the form of a simple sequence of questions and answers, and a description of the procedure by which the patient was treated. The documentation of Esdaile’s controversial clinical practice offers several important insights into the practice of parrhesia (a theory of truth-telling proposed by Foucault) in conjunction with the practice of mesmerism as medicine. Within the annals of medical history, clinical egodocuments such as Esdaile’s surgical diary exemplify the emergence of a difficult relationship between the historical subject and the desire to speak the truth. It reveals how a unique moment in colonial medical history becomes emblematic of a negative relationship with the parrhesiastic act.

Keywords: mesmerism, colonial medicine, parrhesia, Esdaile, surgical diary

‘Eye of the Beholder’: Psychiatric Medical Reasoning, Narrative Humility, and Graphic Medicine

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351 views

Sathyaraj Venkatesan1 and Arya Suresh2

 1Associate Professor, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, NIT Trichy, India. Email: sathyaiitk@gmail.com ORCID ID: 0000-0003-2138-1263

 2PhD Scholar, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, NIT Trichy, India. Email: livearyalive@gmail.com ORCID ID: 0000-0002-3411-0094

 Volume 13, Number 2, 2021 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n2.03

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Abstract

Within health humanities, graphic medicine narrates individual stories of patient experience in its interaction with the system of healthcare and its professionals. These autopathographies give a new perspective to the medicalized accounts of diseases and assign subjectivity to the voice which narrates its sufferings. From a medical perspective, clinical reasoning is an important step in the treatment of any disease and a procedure that determines the course of the upcoming treatment. However, in psychiatry, clinical reasoning is a problematic terrain with its lack of external validating criteria and increased reliance on non-somatic symptoms of the disease. In many instances, the authority of biomedical knowledge takes over clinical reasoning and completely denies the individuality of a mental patient and his or her story. This research article attempts to investigate how individual stories and experiences are undermined in psychiatric clinical reasoning discourses and recognizes the importance of empathy and compassion in medical listening through a close reading of select graphic memoirs on bipolar disorder. Citing certain panels from Rachel Lindsay’s Rx (2018) and Ellen Forney’s Marbles: Mania, Depression, Michelangelo and Me (2012), this study analyses the pitfalls of clinical reasoning in psychiatry and the widening gap of doctor-patient communication in such facilities. Interweaving the theory of Sayantani Das Gupta’s Narrative humility with instances taken from the above mentioned texts this article discusses the imperative need to restore empathy in medical listening.

Keywords: Graphic medicine, psychiatry, medical listening, clinical reasoning, psychiatric gaze, narrative humility, empathy

Care-focused Feminism, Care Ethics, and Feminine Artistry in Willa Cather’s The Professor’s House

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319 views

Hyojeong Byun

Associate Professor, College of Creative Future Talent, Daejin University, Pocheon-si, South Korea. ORCID: 0000-0002-4850-0843. Email: byunglish@daejin.ac.kr

 Volume 13, Number 2, 2021 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n2.02

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Abstract

Willa Cather’s The Professor’s House dismantles feminine behaviors, as Cather ascribes new meaning to her marginalized female characters’ independent acts and depicts male characters being saved by women. Cather’s care and care ethics are based on human relations; they highlight empathy, responsibility, acceptance, and emotion-based practice. She accordingly shows sincere care and acts in the spirit of salvation for the characters’ surroundings, culture, and society through marginalized figures such as Augusta, Mother Eve, and Tom. These are examples of alternative caregivers who develop a connection-based relationship through their sincerity and attentiveness and cultural and social care. In their care, we observe a spirit of self-sacrifice and the possibility of a true bond between them and others and their communities. This article conveys Cather’s capacity for serving as a conduit for healing and solidarity and proves her visionary force of care practice.

Keywords: Willa Cather, The Professor’s House, care, care ethics, care practice.

Drawing Monsters with Emil Ferris and Lynda Barry: An Exploration of the Drawing Process as Part of Graphic Medicine

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358 views

Susan M. Squier

Brill Professor Emerita of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and English, the Pennsylvania State University, USA. Einstein Visiting Fellow, Freie Universität Berlin, 2016-2021. Email: susan.squier@gmail.com

 Volume 13, Number 2, 2021 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n2.01

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Abstract

This essay explores the role of drawing as a mode of processing intersectional violence, a strategy that I argue links Emil Ferris’s comic, My Favorite Thing is Monsters (2018) to Lynda Barry’s pedagogical graphic narratives What It Is (2008) and Making Comics (2019). I argue that My Favorite Thing is Monsters embodies an enhanced version of graphic medicine that shifts the scale of analysis from the individual to the collective, revealing the health impact of intersectional oppressions. In its titular preoccupation with monsters, especially the Medusa, and its materialization of the protagonist’s sketch book, I further argue that Ferris’s work of fiction recalls Barry’s exercise of drawing monsters. Continuing its exploration of the healing process of drawing, and drawing monsters, the essay concludes with an experiment in ethnographic criticism, reflecting on my own experience of drawing my way through the global pandemic of Covid-19 during the first six months of 2020.

Keywords: Emil Ferris, Lynda Barry, Graphic Medicine, Intersectionality, anti-Semitism, racism, gendered violence, Sigmund Freud, Hélène Cixous, Medusa, scale, health, drawing, ethnographic criticism.

Rupkatha Impact Talk on Human Survival and Beauty

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Prof. Frederick Turner in Conversation with Prof. Tirtha Prasad Mukhopadhyay

April 30, 8:30–9:30 PM IST
Join Zoom Meeting https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84297592642…
Meeting ID: 842 9759 2642
Passcode: 506195
(Live on Zoom and Facebook)
About
Frederick Turner was Founders Professor of Arts and Humanities at the University of Texas at Dallas. Previous academic positions included the University of California, Santa Barbara (assistant professor 1967-72), Kenyon College (associate professor 1972-85), and the University of Exeter in England (visiting professor 1984-85).
Between 1962 and 1967, Turner attended the University of Oxford, where he obtained the degrees of B.A., M.A., and B.Litt. in English Language and Literature. At Oxford, Turner’s thesis supervisor was Helen Gardner. Turner’s other examiners were Lord David Cecil and John Bayley, the husband of novelist Iris Murdoch.
Turner has published two epic poems which are also science fiction novels in verse. The first is his 1985 poem The New World, which celebrates world culture in the year 2376 A.D.
However, this biographical note is not enough to describe the world of a versatile personality. For more, please visit : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Turner_%28poet%29

The Concept of Neuro- Linguistic Programming in Improving the Receptive Skills in English

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363 views

S.Sunitha1, A .Catherin Jayanthy2, G. Kalaiyarasan3,  N.Annalakshmi4

1Ph.D Scholar(full time),Department of Educaiton, Alagappa University, Karaikudi, India. Email:  yogucharu@gmail.com1

2Assistant Professor,Department of Educaiton, Alagappa University, Karaikudi, India.

3Head of the Department, Department of Educaiton, Alagappa University, Karaikudi, India.

4Ph.D Scholar(full time),Department of Educaiton, Alagappa University, Karaikudi, India.

Volume 13, Number 1, 2021 I Full Text PDF
DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n1.49

The Concept of Neuro- Linguistic Programming in Improving the Receptive Skills in English

Abstract

From the long years ago, education have been trying a proper way to improving the skills of English. Educators tried several methodologies in English to choose the better one. This paper brings out the effect of teaching Receptive skills by implementing NLP (Neuro- Linguistic Programming) in second language as English. Neuro- Linguistic Programming is one of the methods to catch up the English by giving focus on the brain anatomy. Brain anatomy can motive the creativity as well as the skills of using language. It also exist the role of Neuro Linguistic Programming in teaching the Receptive skills of English, which could make the students to improve the Receptive skills such as listening and reading.  The study, in short, affirms that NLP strategies could be quite efficacious in making the students procure the skills that are indispensable in workplaces effortlessly. As it involves teaching a reading comprehension course by NLP concepts and techniques, the approach used in this study is experimental. In addition, the experimental method involves pre-and post-tests conducted before and after the course by the control group (40 students) and the experimental group (40 students). The students of the experimental community are chosen from the secondary school students.  After the NLP experimentation, it was revealed from the study that there was a significant difference in the level of the experimental group in pre and post-test.

Keywords: NLP, Receptive Skills, Concept of NLP in learning receptive skills

“Prompter’s Whisper”: History, Travel and Narrative in Post-Colonial Indian English Travel Writing

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288 views

Komal Yadav

PhD Research Scholar, JNU, ORCID: 0000-0003-4049-8192, Komalydv94@gmail.com

 Volume 13, Number 1, 2021 I Full Text PDF
DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n1.48

“Prompter’s Whisper”: History, Travel and Narrative in Post-Colonial Indian English Travel Writing

Abstract

The theory revolution and the counter-traditional wave in humanities in the 1980s have garnered attention towards new localism by positing alternatives to the great tradition. In this, Travel writing has proved adaptable and responsive to post-colonial and Globalization studies, thereby shaking off its ‘middlebrow’ status. Keeping in mind the relevance of travel writing in Global politics, the paper aims to engage with In an Antique Land: History in the Guise of a Traveller’s Tale (1992) by Amitav Ghosh to delineate the question of History, Travel and Narrative in Indian English Travel Writing. The paper contends that Ghosh uses the Hybrid non-fiction space of the travelogue to write a counter-narrative to the Eurocentric discourse of Travel writing. It seeks to foreground that the reverse Grand tour of Amitav Ghosh problematizes the western hegemonic hold on the field of Ethnography and History. The paper is divided into two parts- the first part will establish In an Antique Land as Resistive subaltern history, followed by the second part, which focuses on Ghosh’s privileging of third world ethnography to write an alternative narrative.

Keywords: Travel, Subaltern History, Ethnography, Narrative.

Modernity and Alienation in Fahd Al-Atiq’s Life on Hold

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286 views

Dr. Ebrahim Mohammed Alwuraafi

Department of English Language and Literature, Faculty of science and Art-Al-Mandaq, Al-Baha University, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Email. ebrahimwarafi@gmail.com, e.mohammed@bu.edu.sa ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5537-7548

 Volume 13, Number 1, 2021 I Full Text PDF
DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n1.47

Modernity and Alienation in Fahd Al-Atiq’s Life on Hold

Abstract

The second half of the twentieth century Saudi Arabia witnessed an extraordinary economic boom that resulted from the oil production. The new wealth changed people’s life and instead of the old and impoverished life, there started a new one of unimaginable riches and wealth. This sudden metamorphosis has had negative psychological impacts such as alienation and estrangement on Saudis who, unexpectedly, found themselves in an entirely new world. Fahd Al-Atiq’s novel Life on Hold depicts this economic transformation and its impact on the life of Saudi people. The aim of this paper is to analyze Al-Atiq’s usage of alienation as a consequence of modernity and consumerism in Saudi Arabia. The paper examines Al-Atiq’s disappointment with modernity as a culture of alienation in its celebration of appearance and superficiality which necessitates the need to look beyond the surface.

 

Keywords: modernity, alienation, Saudi Arabia, Saudi novel

The Image of the Goddess Umay in the Contemporary Fine Art Culture of Kazakhstan

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370 views

Malik F. Mukanov1, Gulfiya T. Meldesh2 & Ayaulym M. Hurbekova1

1Department of Fine Arts, T.K. Zhurgenov Kazakh National Academy of Arts, Almaty, Republic of Kazakhstan

2Department of the Fine Arts and Drawing, Abai Kazakh National Pedagogical University, Almaty, Republic of Kazakhstan. E-mail: mmukanov@tanu.pro

 Volume 13, Number 1, 2021 I Full Text PDF
DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n1.46

The Image of the Goddess Umay in the Contemporary Fine Art Culture of Kazakhstan

Abstract

The article examines the ethnographic and art-history aspects of the reflection of the artistic image of the ancient Turkic goddess Umay in the modern visual culture of Kazakhstan. The image of this goddess is one of the most widespread in the work of modern Kazakhstani artists, who refer to the symbolism of Tengrian culture in their works. Each of the masters, due to their individual worldview and creative style, interprets it in their own way, thereby enriching the modern visual culture of independent Kazakhstan. It is also necessary to mention that the embodiment of symbols and artistic images of the ancient Turkic Tengrian culture by contemporary artists of Kazakhstan in the visual arts reflects the desire to preserve and rethink the national identity in the context of globalisation processes. The study is an attempt at art criticism analysis based on the application of the hermeneutic methodology of numerous author’s interpretations of the artistic image of the goddess in the fine arts of modern Kazakhstan. The study of the problem of finding and embodying artistic images of the Goddess Umay, reflecting the sacred and mythological aspects of the Tengrian worldview, traditional for the nomadic peoples of the Great Steppe, in the visual culture of modern Kazakhstan, has an important theoretical and educational and methodological value. The conclusions of this study can be used and continued not only in the historical and theoretical works of art historians, cultural experts but also in research and educational-methodical works, when creating courses on the history and theory of fine and applied arts, scientific projects of the teaching staff, students, undergraduates and doctoral students, as well as in the artistic practice and creative activity of contemporary artists.

Keywords: Turkology, Tengrianism, Tengrian worldview, author’s painting of Kazakhstan.

Laughing out Loud: The Popular Politics of Schadenfreude in Joker

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239 views

Nishat Atiya Shoilee

Lecturer, Department of English and Humanities, University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh. ORCID: 0000-0002-7170-5513. Email: nishat.atiya@ulab.edu.bd

 Volume 13, Number 1, 2021 I Full Text PDF
DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n1.45

Laughing out Loud: The Popular Politics of Schadenfreude in Joker

Abstract

This research attempts to identify and analyze the relatively less explored aspects of schadenfreude as a primary currency in an American attention economy as depicted in the 2019 movie, Joker. It discusses how the protagonist’s comedic ambition to become a live performer falls short of its aim, as he feels inclined to embrace the negativity bias in his city and its questionable amusement impulses. Maintaining the appealing and appalling forces of liking and disliking; the deservingness of others’ good and bad fortunes; desirability for self-evaluation; rivalry and intergroup factors- the paper pursues schadenfreude as the masses’ new opiate. It analyzes the American renaissance of self-effacement and public humiliation in light of its mass media environment that had been abandoning meaningful stories for ticklish delights since the mid-nineties. Both primary and secondary data are used to reinforce an end result which takes the current glocal reality to be the distinct creation of a bizarre comedic moment that both defies and weaponizes a mediafication of its consumers’ emotional health.

Keywords: Schadenfreude, comedy, laughter, American humor, sociopolitical identity, transgression

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