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Reading Tradition in Food: An Interdisciplinary Study of Bengali Food Writing

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711 views

Nilanjana Debnath

Assistant Professor of English, Koneru Lakshmaiah Education Foundation.

Email: njd.nilanjana1@gmail.com

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

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n4.11

Abstract

Food Studies has been a prominent part of Interdisciplinary Studies in the West from the 1980s and it is catching up in India as well. A close study of recipes and other forms of food writing can offer insights into the everyday culinary negotiations and the constitution of a cultural ‘tradition’ of taste. These insights of gastropolitics may help us better understand the functioning of subliminal hegemonic technologies and everyday resistance to the same. In our era of postcolonial globalization, where domination and subjugation happen through micro-politics of power, our readings of food writing may open new doors of reading and theorizing heritage and history.

Keywords: Food writing, recipes, cookbooks, Bengal, tradition, everyday, embodiment, taste.

History Contra Collective Memory: Collective Memory’s Finite Province

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471 views

Premjit Singh Laikhuram

Ph.D. candidate, Department of Cultural Studies, Tezpur University.

Email: premjit.laikh@gmail.com, ORCID iD: 0000-0001-9040-9288

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

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n4.10

Abstract

In the humanities and social sciences, with the rise of memory studies, there has been an important theoretical shift in how we engage the past. What used to be studied with the methodically elaborate field of history no longer seems adequate. With memory becoming an ever-present framework with which to look at culture, literature, social phenomena, politics, and the arts, a theoretical conviction has come to prevail that says collective memory is a larger framework within which history and other approaches to the past must be situated. This paper tries to address this theoretical conviction of conflating history with collective memory by arguing that collective memory cannot be a be-all umbrella term encapsulating historical representation or other approaches to the past such as tradition. It does so by uncovering the ground for such a conviction, during which a clearer view of the role of history and the limits of collective memory emerge. The investigation shows that indiscriminate application of the concept of collective memory in every approach dealing with the past makes the concept almost meaningless and betrays its two crucial characters, or limits: that of i) temporal finiteness and ii) fragmentariness. In so doing, it restores the vital role history plays in trying to get at the truth of the past. The article concludes by calling for deeper engagement with foundational conceptual and theoretical issues in collective memory research if it is to establish itself as a longstanding field of inquiry.

Keywords: Theory, cultural memory, interdisciplinarity, historical epistemology, cultural studies

Problematising Tribality: A Critical Engagement with Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar’s The Adivasi Will Not Dance: Stories

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699 views

Francis Ekka1 & Dr. Rosy Chamling2

1Research Scholar, Department of English, Sikkim University.

Email id: fekka.20mpen01@sikkimuniversity.ac.in, ekkafran@gmail.com. ORCID id: 0000-0002-2777-3121.

2Associate Professor, Department of English, Sikkim University.

Email id: rchamling@cus.ac.in. ORCID id: 0000-0002-4936-4767.

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

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n4.09

Abstract

Tribality simply means the characteristic features of various tribal communities and the qualities of being tribal. In the 1940s leading anthropologists like Verrier Elwin and G.S.Ghurye tried to theorize and categorize tribal identities. However, they were often accused of representing either a ‘protective’ or ‘romantic’ notions of tribality. One cannot determine the tribality of a person based on their features, dialects, food habits or geographical location. Tribality is said to bind the pan-Indian Tribal literature which is again problematic considering language which is considered as the useful indicator of any identity. Tribal Literature is a distinct form of writing to represent people, things and ideas in their cultural authenticities. The tribals essentially have an oral culture and thus when a tribal writer like Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar, a Government Doctor by profession, writes in the canonical English language, we will be tempted to probe if he seeks to ‘write in’ or ‘write back’ to the mainstream literary culture; or if his works can fit into the mould of minor literature, thereby making the seemingly personal an intensely political statement. This paper also aims to interrogate issues of tribal identity and their representation through a critical engagement with Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar’s The Adivasi Will Not Dance: Stories (2017).

Keywords: Adivasi, Tribality, Identity, Representation, Minor Literature

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Articulating Difference: Self, Identity and Representation

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Mohan Dharavath

Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Hyderabad. Email: mohan.dharavath@tiss.edu

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

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n4.08

Abstract

The Adivasis are often presented as they exist in a timeless, historical space, untouched and unperturbed by complex changes in society, politics and culture though the reality is the other way round. The self-esteem and the identity of the Adivasis are not just distraught and distorted by the non-Adivasi writers but is a fraught with misconceptions. In such a scenario, the writings of the Adivasi writers on Adivasi become more significant with all due respect since it reflects the insiders’ perspective. The paper therefore examines the voices and concerns of the Adivasi through Adivasi writings and attempts to substantiate assertively on how and why any non-Adivasi writers could not escape from representing the Adivasi without distortion. It further explores that the non-Adivasi writer, an outsider is more than fascinated to write more of the fetish, exotic and criminalization of the Adivasi on one hand and on the other hand stereotyping them rather understanding the Adivasi life. It also focuses on and discusses the broader concerns of the Adivasi life and experience that ensure the subject happens to occur from the locational similarity.

Keywords: Adivasi, Articulation, Identity, Self, Representation

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Translation as Strategic Foreignization: A Study of the Politics of Translation in Mother Forest: An Unfinished Autobiography

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466 views

Dr. Liju Jacob Kuriakose

Assistant Professor, Department of Language and Literature at Alliance University, Bangalore. Email:liju.kuriakose@alliance.edu.in. https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7726-0554

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

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n4.07

Abstract

The study draws upon Lawrence Venuti’s concept of foreignization as a strategic tool employed in the translation of CK Janu’s Mother Forest: An Unfinished Autobiography. The translation works to mould an ethnic autobiography and represent a subaltern subject through explicit signifiers of subalternity, masqueraded as an attempt to “retain the flavour of Janu’s intonation and the sing-song nature of her speech in translation”. As a mode of representation, this study identifies the text as catering to a transnational publishing industry and the global academic marketplace, transforming the cultural value of an ethnic subaltern text into what Graham Huggan describes as “tawdry ethnic goods” in the late capitalist supermarket.

Keywords: Translation, Strategic Foreignization, Autobiography, Ethnic Goods

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Understanding Dalit Literature: A Critical Perspective Towards Dalit Aesthetics

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Priyanka Kumari1 & Dr. Maninder Kapoor2

1Research Scholar, NIT Jamshedpur, Jamshedpur, Jharkhand. Email: priyanka.cuj@gmail.com, https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7464-7080

2HOD NIT Jamshedpur, Jamshedpur, Jharkhand. Email: mkapoor.hum@nitjsr.ac.in, https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5859-3879

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

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n4.06

Abstract

Indian literature has always been governed by classical norms. Literature has been divided into ‘high culture’ and ‘low culture’. The non-Dalit writing revolves around ‘rasa’ and the motive is ‘art for art’s sake’. Dalit aestheticism is ‘art for life’s sake’. When certain forms and styles are applied imitating Sanskrit poetics, Shakespearean language or Aristotle’s ‘Poetics’, literature is considered to be following beauty parameters that are considered to be necessary for artistic pleasure. This kind of claim of holding traditional Indian aesthetics as a law book for all kinds of literature cannot be validated. The assertion of mainstream aesthetics as aesthetics for pan India is bound to exclude the truth of disregarded subjects. There is a need for Dalit literature to follow alternative aesthetics as the writings are the real story of pain and survival. How can pain be read for the purpose of pleasure? In the case of Dalit literature, the artistic yardsticks are not destroyed rather they are rejected. The traditional aesthetics will not be able to do justice with Dalit literature. Sharankumar Limbale writes “To assert that someone’s writing will be called literature only when ‘our’ literary standards can be imposed on is a sign of cultural dictatorship” (Limbale, 2004, p. 107). This paper will be an attempt to discuss the need for alternative aesthetics to understand Dalit literature.

Keywords: Aesthetics, identity, realism, hegemony, culture.

Entangled Histories: Gender and the Community Mobilisations of the Ezhavas in Colonial Kerala

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528 views

Kavyasree R

Doctoral Fellow, Centre for Women’s Studies, University of Hyderabad,

kavyasreeraghunath@gmail.com, ORCID id: 0000-0002-5399-7217

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

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n4.05

Abstract

This paper explores how transnational historical approaches towards gender can provide a fresh perspective to locate women’s histories of colonial India and how such enquiries can widen the scope of exploring the rich archival sources available. By bringing in the recent scholarship in the area of gender and transnatioanal history, this paper would demonstrate the possibilities to unearth complex and entangled histories of women by bringing to the discussion the community consolidation efforts of Ezhavas, an erstwhile untouchable caste in the colonial Kerala, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Focusing on the transnational character of the cultural and ideological transactions that shaped the Ezhava community mobilization in the wake of colonial transformations in the region, the paper would trace the specific ways in which such exchanges shaped the history of gender within the Ezhava movement. In doing so, this paper would point towards the need to go beyond both colonial and nationalist paradigms to unpack the intricate histories of gender, caste and regional social movements during the age of empire.

Keywords: Gender, Social Reform, Caste, Social Movement, Modernity, Transnational History

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Problematising Testimony in Autobiographical Narratives by Dalit Women in the English Translation

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547 views

Pratibha

Ph.D. Research Scholar, Department of English, Jamia Millia Islamia, and Assistant Professor, Sharda University. ORCID id: 0000-0001-5698-6612. Email: pratibhabiswas85@gmail.com, pratibha.biswas@sharda.ac.in.

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

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n4.04

Abstract

Dalit autobiographical narratives are widely and habitually being categorised by critics as testimonios or sociobiographies, with an implication to be understood as representative life-stories. Because of the genre’s perceived emphasis on ‘authenticity’, ‘representation of collective suffering’, and immanent connotations of being a political genre of speech for the marginalised, scholars/critics of Dalit literature have been applying the term testimonio to describe autobiographical narratives, which has inadvertently led to a normativisation of the available modi of ‘truth production’ about Dalit lived experiences.  The objective of this paper is to dispute the adulatory assessment of testimonio as a genre, by highlighting the instances where the relationship between the self and the community in autobiographical narratives by Dalit women appears uneasy, fraught with dissensus and problematic, when examined from a Dalit feminist standpoint. By looking into ways of reading agency in Karukku (2000), Sangati (2005), and Viramma, Life of an Untouchable (1997), beyond the true-false, victim-oppressor and Dalit-Savarna simplistic binaries, this paper enunciates the problematic implications of using the nomenclature testimonio for reading these autobiographical narratives translated in English. Further, it posits arguments for shifting the emphasis on the politics of language and narrative to avert the trappings of the genre.

Keywords: Dalit autobiographical narratives, testimonio, self and the community, Dalit feminism, literature and politics, Dalit literature in translation, translation and agency.

 

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The Nature and Concept of Meta-artistic Objects

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Benjamín Valdivia

Professor, Art, Architecture and Design, University of Guanjuato. E-mail: valdivia@ugto.mx

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

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n4.03

Abstract

This paper introduces two concepts useful for the understanding of current trends in art. One of them is the concept of meta-art, which is proposed here because of the perception that contemporary art goes beyond the traditional borders of art, transforming the aesthetic question (is it beauty?) to a more ontological question (what is it?). Diverse elements are identified at the borders of artistic expression, as the question starts to implicate the changes caused by the notion of the meta-artistic. The second concept deals with the other main category of judgement of art, which was formerly defined by beauty, and yet now gets displaced in the limits of the meta-artistic by another process that we call aesthetic impact. This given pair of theoretical instruments help in a better understanding the astonishing objects developed by the artists of our time.

Keywords: aesthetic impact, beauty, contemporary art, fragmentation, Meta-artistic, end of art.

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Summarizing Epic

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390 views

Frederick Turner

Founders Chair Professor (Former), School of Arts and Humanities, University of Texas at Dallas. Email: frederick.turner@gmail.com

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

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n4.02

Abstract

It is claimed that the literary humanities are profoundly compromised and may even be irrelevant, that the appeal of literature is quixotic and anachronistic at best. I argue that there is life in the old dog yet.  In the genre we set aside and dismissed, i.e., epic, the oldest one of all, may be found the revival of literary studies; and close by is the whole burgeoning, vital, and chaotic world of current popular epic, of big-screen action and fantastic cybernetic games, that sorely needs a rooting and a clarifying guide.

 Keywords: Epic, Gaming, Storyteller, Theory

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