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The Beast in the Closet: Interrogating the Trauma of Sibling Incest in Emma Donoghue’s Neo-Victorian Novel The Wonder

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606 views

Poulomi Modak

Ph.D Scholar (JRF), Department of English, Cooch Behar Panchanan Barma University, West Bengal.  ORCID id: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1204-7378. Email: poulomimodak1992@gmail.com

Volume 13, Number 4, 2021 I Full-Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n4.31

 Abstract

Emma Donoghue’s neo-Victorian novel The Wonder (2016) is a remarkable exploration of the Victorian era’s indifference towards the issues of woman and child safety against the heinous crimes of sexual abuse. The horror of sibling incest, which eventually develops the sense of guilt within the protagonist and gradually isolates her from the entire extrinsic world, has been taken into consideration for the analysis of the unusual narratives of tremendous shock and trauma that the novel enterprises. The paper examines incest as a trope for inflicting everlasting trauma and seeks to locate if amelioration is at all achievable for the abused ‘body’. The intended study further interrogates the placid indifference of the contemporaneous behavioural patterns of the societal institutional bodies of family, religion, and law, while encountering the forever forbidden taboo of incest.

Keywords: dysfunctional family, fasting body, incest trauma, neo-Victorian fiction, sibling incest.

Postmodern/Post-mortem Human Body-Parts: Grotesque Subjects in The Melancholy of Anatomy

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464 views

Jharna Choudhury

PhD  Scholar, Tezpur University, Assam, India. ORCID ID: 0000-0002-0916-373. Email: jharnachoudhury123@gmail.com

Volume 13, Number 4, 2021 I Full-Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n4.30

Abstract

This paper critiques the literary representation of the human body as a “clean” slate, an organically wholesome subject by delving into the postmodern body-writing of Shelley Jackson’s short story collection The Melancholy of Anatomy (2002). Building upon the idea of “metabody” or grotesque body-part as subjects, the flesh-characters, namely Egg, Sperm, Foetus, Cancer, Nerve, Phlegm, Blood, Milk and Fat, breaks apart from their marginality, and evolves in a rhizomatic structure, pressing their possibilities of manifold existence in a fantastical world. Through the lens of body studies critics (Mikhail Bakhtin and Elisabeth Grosz) and recent postmodern scholarship, the paper studies the performance of flesh-characters, creating a post-mortem pathology in literature. Jackson’s deviant approach re-maps the anatomy of the human body and engages in psychophysiological parodies, thereby disclosing social phobias pertaining to the repulsive sides of the human and feminine body. Metabodies are self-reflexive, postmodern grotesque, with micro-narratives; and their innovative representations give agency and consciousness to the usually discarded body-parts and fluids, thereby making the human body a non-normative and discursive text and context.

Keywords: Postmodern; Shelley Jackson, Grotesque, Metabody, Human Body

Spaces of Care and Graphic Medicine

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537 views

Sathyaraj Venkatesan1 & Livine Ancy A2

1Associate Professor, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, National Institute of Technology, Trichy. Corresponding Author. Email: sathyaiitk@gmail.com

2Research Scholar, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, National Institute of Technology, Trichy. Email: livine2212@gmail.com

Volume 13, Number 4, 2021 I Full-Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n4.29

 Abstract

While there are several studies that focus on care settings in relation to verbal narratives, only a few studies have paid attention to how comics in general, and graphic medicine in particular, engage critical care environments and settings. Drawing strengths from the underground and alternative comics and capitalizing on health humanities, graphic medicine, a recent development in the comics genre, concentrates on the issues related to health, illness, and care. Coined by Ian Williams in 2007, graphic medicine refers to the intersection of comics and concerns of healthcare. Graphic medicine has always engaged informal, formal, and biomedical caregiving settings. Against this backdrop, the present article, drawing on relevant theoretical debates on spatial studies and care, examines Stan Mack’s Janet& Me (2004), Joyce Farmer’s Special Exits (2014), and Sarah Leavitt’s Tangles (2012). In so doing, the article seeks to delineate care facilities (family, hospitals, among others) and their impact on patients.

Keywords: graphic Medicine, informal care, hospital Care, institutional care, spaces of care.

“The cripple walked! The cripple talked!”: Contextualising Sign Language and Audism in Memoirs of Deafness

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410 views

Bonjyotshna Saikia

Research Scholar, Department of English, Tezpur University, Assam, India.

ORCID id: 0000-0001-6253-9333. Email:bonjyotshnasaikia263@gmail.com

Volume 13, Number 4, 2021 I Full-Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n4.28

Abstract

The hegemony of speech has created notions of superiority among the hearing community propagating an audist attitude, which Tom Humphries defines as a form of discrimination towards the deaf in a hearing-dominant society. Deafness as a social phenomenon necessitates a reconsideration of the status of speech and sound. The huge chasm between the hearing and the deaf can be resolved only through the normalisation of every mode of communication. In a close reading of two memoirs of deafness: Henry Kisor’s What’s That Pig Outdoors? (1990) and Madan Vashishta’s Deaf in Delhi (2006), this article examines the similar experiences of the deaf from different linguistic, national and cultural backgrounds. Drawing theoretical insights from Leonard Davis, Neil Stephen Glickman, and Dirksen Bauman, among others, the article argues that these memoirs enable a non-essentialised perception of deafness and question the preconceived stance in relation to language. In so doing, the article also addresses the status of Sign Language as a means of communication in contemporary times.

Keywords: Audism, Deaf memoirs, Derrida, Deaf Identity, Sign Language, Phonocentrism

American Dream Revisited: A Media Discourse Representation in Cognitive-linguistic Perspective

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497 views

Svitlana Lyubymova

National Linguistic University, Kyiv, Ukraine. Email: elurus2006@gmail.com

Volume 13, Number 4, 2021 I Full-Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n4.27

Abstract

Considered in cognitive-linguistic perspective, “American Dream” is a represented in media discourse stereotype that embodies ideal of happiness in a prosperous democratic society. The research   methodology rests   on   the   premise of cognitive-linguistic approach to study of sociocultural stereotypes, which are seen as complex phenomena of social and cultural experience, manifested in behavioural, material, and verbal codes.  Methodological tools of discursive and corpus analysis proved the variability of meaning of the stereotype. In the course of time, it shows semantic changes, conditioned by socio-economic and cultural factors. Empirical study eventuates in distinguishing three periods that correlate with transformation of the stereotype. The period of formation outlines the ideal of freedom and equality. The next period, which started in the 1950s, manifested changes toward obtaining happiness only in virtue of wealth. In recent years, “American Dream” is being associated more with freedom of choice than mere financial success.

 Keywords: stereotyping; American Dream; media discourse; cognitive-linguistic approach; corpus analysis; semantic change

The Impact of COVID Pandemic Consequences on Public Demand for Competence Formation in Humanitarian Education

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390 views

Yuri Vsevolodovich Maslov1, Iryna Sergiivna Pypenko2, Yuriy Borysovych Melnyk3

1 PhD, Associate Professor, Belarusian State Economic University, Belarus; maslove@tut.by; https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5715-6546.

2 PhD, Associate Professor, Simon Kuznets Kharkiv National University of Economics; Scientific Research Institute KRPOCH, Ukraine; iryna.pypenko@hneu.net; https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5083-540X

3 PhD, Associate Professor, Scientific Research Institute KRPOCH; Kharkiv Regional Public Organization “Culture of Health”, Ukraine; y.b.melnyk@gmail.com; https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8527-4638

Volume 13, Number 4, 2021 I Full-Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n4.26

Abstract

The COVID pandemic has affected all human activity, most of all education. Lockdowns obliterated traditional teaching. Student attitudes towards educational format and content have also changed. The aim of this paper is to evaluate the impact of the pandemic consequences on public demand for competence formation in humanitarian education. Gathered through systemic written surveys (Project Tuning methodology) and interviewing the respondents (173 faculty and 322 students), participants to CIES-2020 and PPPMSF-2021 international conferences, the data were systematized, rated and analyzed using the methods of statistical analysis. Consequently, actual public demand for student competences was formulated. Top five choices by the faculty include: 1) ability to adapt to and act in new situation; 2) commitment to safety; 3) ability to search for, process and analyze information; 4) skills in the use of information and communications technologies; 5) ability to evaluate and maintain the quality of work. The student choices differ from faculty prioritizing the abilities: 1) to work autonomously; 2) to design and manage projects; 3) to adapt to and act in new situation; 4) to apply knowledge in practical situations; 5) to work in an international context. The results have shown a statistically significant difference between the public demand prior to the pandemic and after the introduction of social distancing measures. Views of faculty and students on the importance of particular competences have remained divergent, and the specific priorities are changing. One noticeable trend is prioritizing the ability to adapt to new situations by both faculty and students.

Keywords: Humanitarian Education, Faculty and Students, Competences’ Rating, Social Distancing

Spatial Imaginings in the Age of Colonial Cartographic Reason: Maps, Landscapes, Travelogues in Britain and India by Nilanjana Mukherjee

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399 views

London and New York: Routledge, 2021, xiii+300 pp., $160.00 (hardbound), ISBN 9780367749583

Sutapa Dutta

Gargi College, University of Delhi. Email:  sdutta.eng@gmail.com

Volume 13, Number 4, 2021 I Full-Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n4.25

Nilanjana Mukherjee’s book looks at construction of space, leading from imaginative to concrete contours, within the context of the British imperial enterprise in India. Fundamental to her argument is that colonial definitions of sovereignty were defined in terms of control over space and not just over people, and hence it was first necessary to map the space and inscribe symbols into it. In the latter half of the eighteenth century, imperialism and colonization were complex phenomena that involved new and imminent strategies of nation building. No other period of British history, as Linda Colley has noted, has seen such a conscious attempt to construct a national state and national identity (Colley 1992). Although the physical occupation of India by the British East India Company could be said to have begun with the battle of Plassey (1757), nevertheless the process of conquest through mediation of symbolic forms indicate the time and manner in which the ‘conquest’ was conscripted. Full-Text PDF>>

The Nineteenth Century Revis(it)ed: The New Historical Fiction by Ina Bergmann

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344 views

New York: Routledge.  2021. ISBN: 978-0-367-63466-7 (hbk), 978-1-003-12807-6 (ebk)

Prashant Maurya

Senior Research Fellow, Department of Humanities & Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee, India – 247667. Email: prashantlinguistics@gmail.com

Volume 13, Number 4, 2021 I Full-Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n4.24

The nineteenth century is a crucial phase in America’s history. Key features such as geographical expansions, the industrial revolution, development in science and technology, and America’s emergence as a super power, after the American Revolution and the War of 1812, mark the century. The Civil War becomes the most important historical event of this phase that will impact the lives of Americans in the years to come. The century has literary importance also because, during this phase, forerunners of American literature, like, Edgar Allen Poe, James Cooper, Herman Melville, Walt Whitman, etc., come to the scene. Thus, the century as the setting has always been a literary choice for historical novelists.  Full-Text PDF>>

Writing and Space: Writing the City by Stuti Khanna

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521 views

Orient Blackswan. 2020. pp.114, Rs. 750 (Paperback). ISBN: 9789352879229

Urvashi Kaushal

Assistant Professor, SVNIT, Surat, Gujarat. ORCID ID: 0000-0002-6774-6849. Email: k.urvashi@amhd.svnit.ac.in

Volume 13, Number 4, 2021 I Full-Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n4.23

Writing the City, a collection of essays edited by Stuti Khanna is a noteworthy publication as it includes 13 engaging essays by critically acclaimed contemporary mostly Indian writer. The book has an attractive cover with an infographic map of cities — the theme around which Khanna assembles this collection. This book with only 114 pages can be a treasure trove for researchers of the contemporary Indian writing as “it explores the symbiotic relationship between form and content” (Khanna, 2020, p. xi) as each of these 13 writers present in their introspective mood, “the relationship of their writing to place and space” (Khanna, 2020, p.xi) of their upbringing. Hence, the apt title, Writing the City. The book validates Tim Creswell and other Humanist Geographer’s reverberations that: “Place is the raw material for the creative production for identity” (Cresswell, 2004, p.39). Full-Text PDF>>

New Perspectives on Translation: Translating Odisha by Paul St-Pierre

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451 views

Dhauli Books. 2019. Rs. 995.00 (Paperback), ISBN: 978-9389382129

Tyagraj Thakur

Senior Assistant Professor, Silicon Institute of Technology, Sambalpur. Email: tyagraj@silicon.ac.in

Volume 13, Number 4, 2021 I Full-Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n4.22

Translating Odisha (2019) by Prof. Paul St-Pierre fetches a wide range of new perspectives on translation and the act of translating with specific reference to translations from and to Odia. Being a Professor of Linguistics and Translation Studies, and at the same time a prolific translator, St-Pierre produces a rare combination of theory and application. He invokes and applies translation theories even as he theorises the experience of translating. Through three decades of association with Odia literature and its historiography and through translations with collaborators, St-Pierre has become an authority on translation studies in Odisha. His recent book is mostly a compilation of the articles that he has published in different journals of international repute, papers that he has presented in conferences and seminars, and a few short occasional pieces. Full-Text PDF>>

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