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Social Memory: From Oblivion or Construction to Cultural Trauma

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Bayan Zh. Smagambet1, Almash A. Tlespayeva1 & Ainur B. Musabayeva1

1Department of Sociology, L.N. Gumilyov Eurasian National University, Nur-Sultan, Republic of Kazakhstan. ORCID: 0000-0001-7194-3952. Email: tlespayeva5271@murdoch.in

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

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n2.48

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Abstract

The formation of social memory is an important component of the state humanitarian strategy. It acquires special significance in the conditions of postmodern transformations of a transitional society, which directly relate to the functioning of the political system. Thus, the process of democratic transition is becoming an undeniable and peremptory reality. The necessity for liberal political and economic reforms is also not much controversial. With this state of affairs, ideological discussions acquire a retrospective direction, their subject is not the search for development models for the future, but the construction of models for assessing the past. The novelty of the study is determined by the need to assess social participation on the part of both individual and public entities. The authors classify not only the population as social entities but also the carriers of the cultural code, who may belong to extraterritorial groups. The article shows that social memory can also be considered as a method of socio-economic development of a territory, and in order to achieve political objectives by individual groups of capital. The practical significance of the study is determined by the possibility of structuring social memory and building on this basis socio-economic strategies for the development of a sustainable society.

Keywords: structure, development, society, political influence, communication.

Agency and Self Expression: Fan Writing as Life Writing

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561 views

Renu Elizabeth Abraham

Assistant Professor of English and Cultural Studies, Christ University, Bengaluru. ORCID: 0000-0003-2043-1919. Email: renu.elizabeth@christuniversity.in

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

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n2.47

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Abstract

Fans, fandoms and fan activities have been part of every culture from time immemorial. Homer’s epics, Plato’s work all could be considered in a broad sense as belonging to the larger domain of fan activity or fan ‘art’ as they are termed in modern-day parlance. This paper examines India Forums a digital fan community based in India for audiences and fans of Indian television soaps/serials and attempts to understand how fanfiction and fan activities within this forum act as means of self-expression and enable its fans to develop a sense of agency that is indigenous to the space in itself. This community is predominantly populated by women or ‘gender anonymous’ and function as a space that allows fans to construct their own voices, identities and thereby agency, which is most often restricted to that space alone. The fans though not subaltern, in the technical sense of the term, as they belong to the urban space, have access to a computer and can read, write and speak English although not fluently, are still urban middle-class women who have been spoken for and never spoken themselves; and India Forums enable these unheard voices to be heard. This reading analyses the dynamics of this agential space, the politics of this agency and argues that all fan writing within this space functions as life writing within a hypertextual metaconversational paradigm which is not necessarily reflective of traditional forms of life writing using notions of revisionist Freudian psychoanalysis and paradigms of life writing.

Keywords: Fanfiction, fandoms, life writing, self-expression, hypertextuality, Hindi TV soaps, psychoanalysis

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Revisiting the “Inhabited Space” of English Country House in Sarah Waters’s The Little Stranger

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Srijani Chowdhury1 & Lata Dubey2

1Research Scholar, Department of English, Banaras Hindu University. ORCID id: 0000-0002-8970-8341. Email id: srijani10@bhu.ac.in, srijani24@gmail.com.

2Professor, Department of English, Banaras Hindu University. ORCID id: 0000-0002-3581-881X. Email id: ldvnsi@gmail.com, latadubey@yahoo.com.

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

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n2.46

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Abstract

The English Country House happens to be one of the most iconic topoi in English literary studies. Since narratologists have long privileged time over space, narrative space remained a relatively unexplored territory until the twentieth century, which intensified the interest in the house as the thematic fulcrum of literary works. British novelist Sarah Waters’s first venture into the realm of the sub-genre of English Country House fiction, The Little Stranger (2009) is a befitting discourse that appropriates the poetics of manorial space. Hundreds Hall, the Warwickshire seat of the Ayreses, encapsulates many roles as the epicentre of the story and as a powerful symbol of the gradual decay of English aristocracy in the post-World War II Britain. The article will try to incorporate Gaston Bachelard’s spatial criticism elaborated in his The Poetics of Space (1958) and the concept of heterotopia by Foucault for the interpretation/ (s) of the narrative. The study seeks to locate Bachelard’s bourgeoisie points of view, which the author subverts by portraying the rise of the proletariat. The focus of the article is to highlight the ingenuity of Waters’s creative process, which resorts to the genre of English Country House fiction to capture the condition of British aristocrats in a time of crises.

Keywords: English Country House fiction, bourgeoisie points of view, rise of the proletariat

Literature in New Media: A Comparative Study of Literary Affordances of Lance Olsen’s “10:01” in Traditional and Digital Medium

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R.Ramya1 and Dr.Rukmini.S2

1PhD Scholar, Department of English, School of Social Sciences and Languages, VIT, Vellore. ORCID id: 0000-0002-7298-5959. Email: ramyarajakannan7@gmail.com

2Senior Assistant Professor, Department of English, School of Social Sciences and Languages, VIT, Vellore. ORCID id: 0000-0001-8414-3145. Email: rukminikrishna123@gmail.com

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

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n2.45

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Abstract

The recent advances of the digital era invoke an array of new media for communication. This impressive feat of technology purveys a wide range of new affordances to communication unviable in print. The new media affordances of the electronic and the digital have impacted the creative literary compositions, providing innovations in contemporary literature. Postmodern literature being the initiation of experimental works has strived to reinvent the affordances of literary fiction. It has now advanced into resorting to digital technological affordances to maximize narrative inventiveness. Lance Olsen’s “10:01”, a postmodern novel adapted as hypertext fiction, is an exemplar of such feat. This research examines the literary affordances of the chosen text in print and its hypertext adaptation within the framework of affordance theories.  The study unveils the inlaid new media aesthetics and viabilities of the digital in relation to the traditional medium of print by focusing on affordances. The paper asserts the significance of theorizing the aesthetics involved in digital textuality by holding print and electronic literature at the intersection. This study aims to establish the shift in literary analysis paradigms of text due to the emergence of New media.

Keywords: Electronic literature, New media, Literary Affordances, Print vs Digital, Hypertext fiction, Postmodern Literature, New media Aesthetics.

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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

Tactics of Survival: Social Media, Alternative Discourses, and the Rise of Trans Narratives

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Khushboo Sharma1 and Arun Dev Pareek2

1Research Scholar, Department of Languages, Manipal University Jaipur, Jaipur-303007, Rajasthan, India.

2Assistant Professor, Department of Languages, Manipal University Jaipur, Jaipur-303007, Rajasthan, India. ORCID: 0000-0001-5427-9906. Email: arundevpareek@gmail.com 

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

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n2.44

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Abstract

In 2018, when Nandini Krishnan decided to write a book on trans men of India titled ‘Invisible Men’, perhaps she expected great accolades. After all, she was raising a topic that was relegated to the periphery of peripheries, an identity that often went astray in translation. But was the intent enough to write something impactful and honest? At the same time in Indian Cinema, Akshay Kumar geared up for a stereotyped role as a trans woman. What’s the connecting dot between these two? They ended up being nothing but highly skewed queer representations by cis-folks. Meanwhile, an alternative movement was brewing on social media as Alok Menon narrated poems of subversion, dressed as a challenge to everything heteronormative. The current paper aims to examine these voices of subversion, of trans narratives, as formed and catalyzed on social media and across various mediums of general discourses. The paper would also explore the rise of trans narratives in literature with special reference to ‘Me Hijra, Me Laxmi’ by Laxminarayan Tripathi and ‘A Life in Trans Activism’ by A. Revathi. Both exploratory and descriptive research methods are used for deriving the theoretical analysis from primary and secondary sources.

Keywords: trans narratives, literature, voices, subversion, challenge

 

Revisioning Subalternity: A critical study of Ramayana through Mandavi and Urmila

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Aditi Tiwari1 & Priyanka Chaudhary2

Research Scholar, Department of Languages, Manipal University Jaipur, Rajasthan, India. Orchid id: 0000-0002-3751-5310. Email: meetadititiwari@gmail.com

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

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

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n2.43

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Abstract:

Ramayana is a narrative knitted through multiple voices but is written around the story of Rama, neglecting the voices of the minor characters. The contemporary South Asian authors breaking the conventional norms of Ramkatha tradition have provided agency to such characters through their contemporary renderings. The study tries to bring forth such hidden nested narratives of the unheard characters of Mandavi and Urmila who are identified either in relation to Sita or their husbands, to re-define the idea subaltern. The paper will analyse the social and political oppression faced by the two female characters because of the existing gender and power hierarchy existing in the text, the unconscious oppression and suffering neglected by the author, reader and the characters of the text as well. The paper will try to analyse the contemporary renderings as an agency and subaltern space for the voice of these subaltern unsung characters of Ramayana, understanding how the concept of unconscious subaltern and normalization of oppression on these character in the epic, demarcating the related myths.

Keywords: Gender-power hierarchy, Myth, Oppression, Ramayana, Subaltern

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Infidelity to True Story and Novel: Locating the Auteur in Rituparno Ghosh’s Dahan

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Akaitab Mukherjee

Assistant Professor, School of Social Sciences and Languages (SSL), Vellore Institute of Technology (VIT), Chennai Campus, Tamil Nadu, India, akaitab.mukherjee@gmail.com, ORCID id-0000-0001-6410-9898

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

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n2.42

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Rituparno Ghosh (1961-2013), a celebrated Bengali film director who started making films in 90s, often borrows plots from literary and other cultural narratives.  The essay aims to explicate Ghosh’s early film Dahan (1997) which is an adaptation of distinguished Bengali novelist Suchitra Bhattacharya’s novel with the same title. Bhattacharya’s novel is influenced by the real incident in which a couple was harassed by four youths at Tollygunge Metro Station in Kolkata on 27th November, 1992. The film also acknowledges that it is indebted to the true story. The essay explicates the adaptation of the two sources by the auteur. It examines the duplication of authorial concerns in this adaptation while following the narratives of two texts. Ghosh remains unfaithful to the literary text and the cultural memory of the true story to establish his authorship. As Ghosh’s films portray the middle-class women in a patriarchal society, following Janet Staiger’s reconsideration of the theory of auteur in the context of queer movement and identity politics in the 1970s, the essay argues that the performance of infidelity to the literary and true story to establish authorship is auteur’s “technique of the self”.

Keywords: Auteur, fidelity, Dahan, Based on true story, Rituparno Ghosh

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Reframing Reproduction in Vernacular Periodicals: A Study of Contraception in Late Colonial Bengal

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Ayana Bhattacharya

M. Phil scholar at the Department of English, Jadavpur University. ORCID id: 0000-0001-7160-6323. Email: b_ayana@yahoo.in, b20.ayana@gmail.com

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

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n2.41

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Abstract

With the emergence of the thriving literary public sphere around the close of the 19th century across colonial India, the issue of birth control was being debated in various magazines by economists, sexologists, doctors and members of women’s organizations. The discussions on reproductive rights of women and dissemination of contraceptive information published in various vernacular periodicals can be situated within a network of other contemporary discourses on “economizing reproduction” that were gaining visibility around this time. The present paper would like to explore the perceptions of women’s reproductive body at the beginning of the 20th century that were being forged through coalescing narratives on bourgeois norms of obscenity (aslilata?), biopolitical concerns of an emerging nation state in the last throes of anti-colonial struggle, and various takes on (heteronormative) interpersonal relationships between future citizens. It is within this specific context that I would like to examine articles on birth control published during the early 1930s in the ‘self-styled’ Bengali women’s magazine Jayasree? launched by revolutionary leader Leela Nag. By situating the opinions voiced by the men and women writing in the pages of this literary periodical vis-à-vis contemporary intellectual trends of birth control movement in India, this paper seeks to study the interactive textual ecosystem within which the writers and readers (the implied future authors) of Jayasree? were functioning.

 Keywords: birth control, reproductive politics, obscenity, bio-power, ‘right’ consciousness.

Review article: The Politics of Gender Hybrid Representation of Delhi

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Shruti Rawal

Department of English, St. Xavier’s College, Jaipur, Rajasthan, India. Email: shrutirawal@stxaviersjaipur.org

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

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n2.40

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The growth of the metropolitan phenomenon has resulted in the emergence of new power centres in all the countries of the world. These cities have geographical, political and economic significance. The narratives of these cities have been captured by the writers for centuries in their fictional and non-fictional work. The research intends to focus on the representation of the city of Delhi in two prominent works: Khushwant Singh’s Delhi: A Novel and Arundhati Roy’s The Ministry of Utmost Happiness. Both the texts are located in the city of Delhi and have a prominent transgender character at its core and the study aims to understand the writer’s intent and manner of drawing similarities between the city and the character. It also proposes to explore this hybridity of gender as a deliberate tool to represent the city of Delhi. The failure of anyone binary to capture the essence of the city and the advantage of the androgynous approach will be discussed in the paper. It will also endeavour to understand how the phenomenon of cities has led to the creation of spaces that promote hybridity.

Keywords: Delhi, transgender, spaces, androgyny

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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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

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