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The Party of Evil Genius in Orwell’s 1984

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545 views

Malek J. Zuraikat1 & Haneen al-Nawasreh2

1Department of English, Yarmouk University. Corresponding author. ORCID: 0000-0003-1948-2671. Email: m.zuraikat@yu.edu.jo

2Independent Researcher, Jordan. Email: 2018300002@ses.yu.edu.jo

 Volume 13, Number 3, 2021 I Full-Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n3.13

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 Abstract

This paper explores the strategies of Evil Genius for manipulating people’s principles, thoughts, orientations, and ideologies in favor of promoting the logic of the party of Evil Genius, as found in Orwell’s 1984 (1949). Relying on Descartes’s definition of Evil Genius, we argue that the party in 1984 deploys the strategies of delusional propaganda, memory resetting, and doublethink to convince people of the significance of Big Brother for their peace and prosperity. The paper examines the party’s approach towards Winston, who has always been suspicious of the party, contending that the party successfully toys with Winston’s mental and emotional perspectives, thus leading him to view his own ego or rationale as his worst enemy. Such a reading is significant due to potential similarities between Winston’s experience of victimization and people’s feeling of being victimized by the party of Evil Genius in the postmodern society.

Keywords: Descartes, Evil Genius, George Orwell, 1984, postmodernism.

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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

State Authority and Lynching in Latin America

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Giovanni B. Corvino
University of Turin. ORCID: 0000-0002-8191-3500. Email: giovanni.corvino@edu.unito.it

 Volume 13, Number 3, 2021 I Full-Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n3.14

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Abstract

Social scientists observed a significant increase in the number of lynchings in contemporary Latin America. The reasons for the rise are wide-ranging and conflicting. However, there are commonalities with the well-known cases of the United States of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in which state legitimacy was the subject of intense debate. Therefore, this essay aims at observing why state intervention was deemed illegitimate in resolving local disputes that led to the vigilantes’ use of this form of extra-legal violence.

Keywords: lynching, summary justice, governance, vigilantes, extra-legal violence

A Study on Gender Differences in Workplace Communication across Organizations

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Dr. Kabita Kumari Dash1, Dr. Susanta Kumar Dash2 and Dr. Swayamprabha Satpathy3

1Assistant Professor, Srusti Academy of Management, Bhubaneswar. Corresponding author. Email: vahi.Kabita@gmail.com

2Professor, Odisha University of Agriculture & Technology, Bhubaneswar

3 Associate Professor, Shiksha “O” Anusandhan University, Bhubaneswar. Email: swayamsatpathy@soa.ac.in

 Volume 13, Number 3, 2021 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n3.15

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ABSTRACT

Communication is an important aspect of human existence. It has a huge impact on the functioning of any organization. Organizations progress if there is close and greater coordination among both genders. The present study was conducted at Bhubaneswar, the capital city of Odisha. Socio-academic data on 120 employees of three different types of organizations, viz. Government, NGO and Corporate, taken at random were included in the present study. This is an empirical study on gender differences and their effect on workplace communication in various organizations. The objectives of this study are to find out the gender differences in communication in different workplaces and analyze the effects of socio-academic factors like age, qualification and experience on gender-related communication. The study findings depict qualification and gender was found to be dependent across the organizations with ?2 estimate of 8.542. More employees were found to be engaged under moderate qualifications from both genders. The age and experience of employees were revealed to be independent of the gender of employees in the present study. The distribution of males recorded significant dependency of age and organization with ?2 value of 20.081 revealing a higher frequency of higher age group employees in government and non-government institutions in comparison to corporate. Both the new entrants and highly experienced females had lower communication abilities than their male counterparts. However, in the middle part of employment, the females showed an edge over males with regard to this variable. Females in the age group of 31 to 40 years recorded significantly better organizational communication than their male counterparts.

Keywords: Gender difference, Workplace, Communication, Organization, Socio-academic data

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Indian English is also Creole: Incorporating Regional Bias in Research Pedagogy

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Tirtha Prasad Mukhopadhyay

Professor, Department of Art and Enterprise, University of Guanajuato, Campus Irapuato-Salamanca, Mexico., Mexico. Email: chiefeditor@rupkatha.com

 Volume 13, Number 3, 2021 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n3.16

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Abstract:

Research pedagogy in India should readjust itself to accommodate claims of regional autonomy in arts and letters. Different ways of reconstructing a pedagogy of research are recommended. Reflexive Humanism ensures adequate assessment and evaluation of cultural, literary, and aesthetic achievements of diverse populations. The Indian English corpus is redefined as a creolized Indian language with lexical and semantic factors borrowed from English. The consciousness of pro-national subjectivism is also considered an essential constituent of Indian English literature. Lines of research are suggested for aspiring scholars in the Indian academy. The author emphasizes a dynamic and sensitive adaptation of research methodology which respects and reintegrates itself with the evolution of globally aware, contemporary society in India.

 Keywords: Anglophone, Creolization, Indian English, Research Pedagogy

 

The Concept of Green School in Bhutan for Holistic Education and Development

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S. Chitra, PhD & Munna Gurung

Assistant Professor & Programme Leader, Yonphula Centenary College, Royal University of Bhutan. Email: schitra.ycc@rub.edu.bt

Teacher, Ministry of Education, Bhutan. Email: 07200012.ycc@rub.edu.bt

  Volume 13, Number 3, 2021 I Full-Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n3.03

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Abstract

Green school as mentioned in Thakur S. Powdyel’s book My Green School: An Outline (2014) was developed to support the initiative ‘Educating for Gross National Happiness’, conceived in 2009 by the Ministry of Education, Bhutan. This is to realize the need for holistic development of individuals and for the fulfilment of the true purpose of education. However, the green school domain requires deeper understanding in correlation with the nine domains of Gross National Happiness philosophy to unsettle the hollowness and reductionism of modern education. Therefore, the paper attempts to explore how the process of holistic learning and wholesome education become the key to understand the principles of life, by analysing the concentric sense of the green school concept constituting eight dimensions represented as ‘Sherig Mandala’. The inherent meanings of the elements of greenery categorized as natural, social, cultural, intellectual, academic, aesthetic, spiritual and moral have been closely examined to revitalize the claims of education.

Keywords:  Green school, Sherig-Mandala, holistic education, Gross National Happiness, life & learning.

Bridging Black Male and Female Standpoints through Autoethnographic Cultural Symbiosis in Gloria Naylor’s The Men of Brewster Place

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385 views

Adishree Vats

PhD Research Scholar, School of Languages and Literature, SMVD University, Kakryal, Jammu, India; Assistant Professor, Department of English Studies, Akal University, Talwandi Sabo, Bathinda, Punjab, India. Email: vatsadishree8@gmail.com

  Volume 13, Number 3, 2021 I Full-Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n3.11

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ABSTRACT:

The present paper argues that Gloria Naylor in The Men of Brewster Place (1998) spectacularly recreates, from a black female’s viewpoint, a solemn literary leeway for African American men’s narratives, and recommends an obligatory shufti to their hidden lives as to how the apparatuses of dominion objectify, suppress and marginalize African American men as well. These men have also been victimized, marginalized and objectified on the basis of their race, class and sexuality by the stereotypical mainstream power structure just like their female counterparts. Furthermore, the paper endeavours to scrutinize how it is unworkable to accomplish a genuine Black Feminist Standpoint without essentially appreciating Black Men’s Standpoint. Black men, who although are suppressors when it comes to their relationship with black females, simultaneously are also being suppressed beneath the tutelage of the mainstream hegemonistic-cum-stereotypical power system. As a sequel to Naylor’s first novel, The Women of Brewster Place (Naylor, 1983), The Men of Brewster Place attempts to autoethnographically lend some voice to her male characters, who complemented her female characters in the first novel.

KEYWORDS: Black Men’s Standpoint, Black Feminist Standpoint, Autoethnography, Exploitation, Racism, Classism, Sexism.

Methodology versus theory: historical approaches and the problematic field of the humanities in postmodernism

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Tetiana Vlasova1, Olha Vlasova2, Larysa Martseniuk3

1Doctor of Philosophic Sciences, Professor, Head of the Philology and Translation Department, Dnipro National University of Railway Transport named after Academician V. Lazaryan, Dnipro, Ukraine. Corresponding author. . ORCID: 0000-0001-5040-5733. E-mail: vasovat2@gmail.com

2Candidate of Philosophic Sciences, Associate Professor at Philosophy and Sociology Department, Dnipro National University of Railway Transport named after academician V. Lazaryan, Dnipro, Ukraine. E-mail: 358358olga@gmail.com. ORCID: 0000-0003-1755-0853

3Doctor of Economic Sciences, Associate Professor, Professor in the Economics and Management Department, Dnipro National University of Railway Transport named after Academician V. Lazaryan, Dnipro, Ukraine. E-mail: rwinform1@ukr.net. ORCID: 0000-0003-4121-8826

  Volume 13, Number 3, 2021 I Full-Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n3.10

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Abstract

Among the diverse methodological approaches that are currently represented in the postmodern studies, the one, which dominates nowadays, is the statement that there cannot be any methodology in postmodernism per se otherwise it would be a “relapse” into constructing one more “universalizing method”. Evidently, this assertion is stipulated by the highly pluralized context of the postmodern “normalization of change”, the transformations of the socio- cultural order in accordance with the postparadigmatic shift of the theory. Postmodern researchers both implicitly and explicitly state that the only way to “manage” the increasing pluralism and diversity is unmasking prior modernist ideas and ideals in the individual and general meanings of the human experience. On the other hand, the postmodern methodological “openness” encourages academic ambivalence, which results in the denial of the universal notions and absolute moral values. With the apparent postmodernist accent on the interdisciplinary approaches, the “scientific conditions” have become even more complicated: nowadays philosophy, history, theology, gender studies, arts are being connected with biology, genetics, cybernetics, economics, etc. As one of the main components of the postmodern intertextual analysis the historical method is vividly represented both in the western feminist theory and in the eastern post-colonial criticism, poetics of fiction and cultural studies. All mentioned above, appearing in the pluralized modes, occasion the turn into considering interdisciplinary techniques more scrupulously. The objective of this research is to reconstruct conceptually the comparative-historical methodology in the theoretical field of the postmodern humanities with the focus on the specific character of the interpretation of history in the cultural texts. The main thesis of the research reflects the reconstruction of the historical methods as an important systematic and meaning-conscious component in postmodern theoretical studies. The research proves that nowadays historical approaches are significant and valid because they locate certain techniques into the contemporary scholarly work in order to properly utilize the sources and pieces of evidence in writing “history”. The value of the comparative-historical method is also based on the fact that it proposes some models and patterns in dealing with the analysis of the particular theory in interdisciplinary studies. The historical narrative with its objective to tell the “truth” cannot be reflected according to some simple schemes, without taking into account the “hardcore” role of the context in the hermeneutic reading of history. Though there is a view that historiography is located “between” modernity and postmodernity, the articulated point of view is that postmodernism, being a theoretical cluster of historical disruption and “brokenness”, in fact, cannot reject the tradition of historicism in the humanitarian studies.

Keywords: postparadigmatic shift, interpretive approaches, interdisciplinary studies, historically-conscious analysis.

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Editorial (Vol 1, No 2)

The second issue of Rupkatha journal is ready for access. The gratitude due to contributors should be acknowledged not just

Animality and Entanglement: The Gothicized “anthropological machine” in Bram Stoker’s short fiction

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Vincent Pacheco

De La Salle University, Manila. vincent.pacheco@dlsu.edu.ph, ORCID id: 0000-0002-1812-5528

  Volume 13, Number 3, 2021 I Full-Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n3.08

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Abstract

This paper closely reads what constitutes the “non-human” vis-à-vis animality in Bram Stoker’s often overlooked short stories, namely The Squaw and The Burial of the Rats. The Squaw is a tale about an American who murders a kitten in cold blood, and in turn, the mother grotesquely avenges her kitten. The anxiety of interspecies relationship is evident in this text, and I argue that this anxiety allows what Giorgio Agamben calls the “anthropological machine” (a system which excludes animals from the zone of livable human life) to operate. The same can be said in The Burial of the Rats where the inability to articulate a boundary between animality and humanity becomes the same thing that pervasively haunts the characters in the story. Here, the vermin and the humans become “relationally entangled” as Donna Haraway puts it and I argue that the notion of entanglement here is precisely what makes the “anthropological machine” gothic in the stories. I also suggest that what makes the representations of animals horrific is the possibility that the caesura between man and animal is non-existent.

Keywords: Animal Studies, Giorgio Agamben, Bram Stoker, Entanglement, Donna Haraway

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Sociology and Animal Studies: Human Responses to Animal Loss in Times of Disaster

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492 views

Joseph Ching Velasco

De La Salle University, Manila. josephchingvelasco@gmail.com, ORCID ID: 0000-0002-7098-8216

  Volume 13, Number 3, 2021 I Full-Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n3.07

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Abstract

A number of attempts have been made to include animals in explorations in the humanities and social sciences. This is a response to the gap where animals are much-neglected entities in the said disciplines. There have been debates pertaining to the inclusion of animals in scholarly discourses in the field of sociology. Notably, human exceptionalism has been one of the key ideological drivers which prevent a more inclusive consideration of animals in the study of our social world. The anthropocentric view of the world and society has put the needs and status of humans above all other animals. This line of thinking has implications on how humanity relates and interacts with animals in a broader context. In times of crisis, humans relegate animals as conveniently expendable or an inconvenient afterthought, which easily leads to instances of animal abandonment and even abuse. However, there has been a collective shift in the way acts of animal abandonment are perceived on social media. This article examined the responses on social media pertaining to animal abandonment during the onslaught of typhoon Vamco in the Philippines in 2020. More specifically, two themes were analyzed: outrage against negligence and compassionate treatment of animals. While this article looks specifically at the abandonment of animals, the project invites further reflection on the notions of environmental ethics and the species boundary.

 Keywords: Animal Loss, Animal Abandonment, Animal Liberation, Typhoon Vamco, PAWS, Sociology of Animals

Of Crows and Humans: The Affective Economy of Mourning and Grieving

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447 views

Alexandra Margarita A. Orbeta

De La Salle University, Manila, alexandra_orbeta@dlsu.edu.ph, ORCID: 0000-0003-4056-898X

 Volume 13, Number 3, 2021 I Full-Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n3.06

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Abstract

This paper aims to examine the representation of animals in Max Porter’s Grief is the Thing with Feathers (2015), a multi-awarded novel about an academic’s struggles on coping with the grief of losing his wife. Previous scholarship on Grief is the Thing with Feathers focuses on an anthropocentric approach to grief and melancholia. However, I argue these emotions can be approached through an examination of the Crow, a fantastical talking bird who makes itself known during the funeral, against the human protagonists of the novel. My approach focuses on how the Crow manages to facilitate what Sara Ahmed calls an “affective economy” which aids the human characters to process their emotions. I critically analyze in this paper how the novel blurs the boundary that separates the human and beasts through its representation of animal emotion. I speculate on how the moments of encounter between the crow and humans emphasize the acts of touching and smelling as a mode to cope with melancholia and grief. Lastly, I look at how its hybridization of prose and poetry performatively imitates affective and emotional responses to personal loss.

Keywords: Grief is the Thing with Feathers, Max Porter, Affective Economy, Sara Ahmed, Animal Studies, Ignês Sodré

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