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Psychological Landscapes and Mines of the Mind: Narrative and Discourse of Red Displacement, White Settlements and Black Laws in the works of Leslie Marmon Silko

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359 views

Babita Devi

Ph.D. Scholar, J.C. Bose University of Science & Technology, YMCA, Faridabad, Haryana, E-mail: babitakpunia@gmail.com, Orcid Id: 0000-0002-9699-864X

 Volume 12, Number 5, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n5.rioc1s5n4 

Abstract

This study explores the possibility of foregrounding narratives and discourses from marginalized communities such as that of Native Indians. It attempts to assess the efficacy of articulating subaltern subjectivities as in Leslie Marmon Silko’s works. The article investigates the narrative and informing discourse that propels writing of Native Indian authors who engage with issues like displacement, deviance and behavioural changes in context of the colonial experience. The impact that severed relationships can have on people, the psychological trauma resulting from cultural losses and the intangible changes happening in the recesses of the mind are difficult to quantify, therefore these are conveniently dismissed in mainstream discourses. Yet, the important insights that the subjective perceptions of unquantifiable and intangible losses give is unparalleled and cannot be matched by any scientific claims that may be based on surveys and statistics interpreted within the paradigm of White Man’s discourse. Silko’s narrative offers a bridge to the other side, the possibility to transcend knowledge and information validated by the Whites and glimpse the world so far relegated and marginalized. At the same time, the present study while valuing the quasi- real or semi-fictional qualities of the narrative, the subjective experiences shared and admitting the significance of deep experiences in which the reader is invited to partake of or witness, also undertakes a lexical analysis of Silko’s Ceremony using Voyant Tool to intercept psychological and cultural concerns evoked in the text by studying the frequency of words as they appear in the narrative. The author has often referred to words that have association with land and terrain inhabited by the Natives. This triangulation in research is supposed to be enriching and supportive to the concerns of the authors who many a times use the tools, approach and instruments of West to register their protests emphatically- they use the language of the colonizer, the critical approach of the colonizer and the whole jargon of the colonizer to dismantle the edifice of colonialism. Similarly, this study operates in a way analogous to the text under study by both questioning as well using quantitative research tools to unravel dimensions that may be dear in the given context.

Keywords: Natives, whites, land, culture Silko

Perpetrator Plays the Victim: The Politics of Representation in the Captivity Narratives of the Whites

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345 views

Virender Pal

Assistant Professor, Institute of Integrated &Honors Studies, Kurukshetra University Kurukshetra, Haryana, Email: p2vicky@gmail.com, v_pal@kuk.ac.in, ORCID ID 0000-0003-3569-1289

 Volume 12, Number 5, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n5.rioc1s5n3 

Abstract

This paper draws upon and brings into focus an interesting part of the colonial corpus- the captivity narratives. The discoverers of the New World who then shortly turned invaders had to face resistance from the Natives as they embarked upon their conquest, usurpation and assumption of Property in the virgin lands of the continent lying unexploited till the White man set foot on it. To rightfully and legally take that did not belong to the White intruders they had to be morally, culturally and even ethically superior. This question of ‘Might is Right’ is resolved easy through legal systems and machinery on one hand and narratives and discourse and institutions on the other. The Captive Narratives were put to work operating to dub and dismiss the Native. The captive narratives though taken together as a body worked as a device to denigrate the Natives and typecast them so that their extermination would be found as relieving rather than horrendous; as a step towards safety rather than a brutal incursion, they also offered rare insights when not written as part of a strategy but as biographical accounts of Whites held captive by the Reds. Especially, accounts that do  not fall neatly onto the timeline set by the White diverge from popular, touted, dominant accounts that underscore barbaric customs of the Reds. These rare narratives by White people brought up by Natives cast a different light on the Red culture and offer substantial clues that the Red way of life was preferable.

Keywords: New World, Red Indians, Natives, Captivity Narratives, Land,  Federal Laws, representations, colonization

 

“In the mountains, we are like prisoners”: Kalinggawasan as Indigenous Freedom of the Mamanwa of Basey, Samar

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437 views

Apple Jane Molabola1, Allan Abiera2, & Jan Gresil Kahambing3

1 Professional Education Unit, Leyte Normal University, ORCID: 0000-0002-4568-9038

2 Social Science Unit, Leyte Normal University, ORCID: 0000-0002-8043-8832

3 Social Science Unit, Leyte Normal University, vince_jb7@hotmail.com, ORCID: 0000-0002-4258-0563

 Volume 12, Number 5, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n5.rioc1s4n1 

Abstract

The Lumad struggle in the Philippines, embodied in its various indigenous peoples (IPs), is still situated and differentiated from modern understandings of their plight. Agamben notes that the notion of ‘people’ is always political and is inherent in its underlying poverty, disinheritance, and exclusion. As such, the struggle is a struggle that concerns a progression of freedom from these conditions. Going over such conditions means that one shifts the focus from the socio-political and eventually reveals the ontological facet of such knowledge to reveal the epistemic formation of the truth of their experience. It is then the concern of this paper to expose the concept of freedom as a vital indigenous knowledge from the Mamanwa of Basey, Samar. Using philosophical sagacity as a valid indigenous method, we interview ConchingCabadungga, one of the elders of the tribe, to help us understand how the Mamanwa conceive freedom in the various ways it may be specifically and geographically positioned apart from other indigenous studies. The paper contextualizes the diasporic element and the futuristic component of such freedom within the trajectory of liberation. The Mamanwa subverts the conception of freedom as a form of return to old ways and radically informs of a new way of seeing them as a ‘people.’ It supports recent studies on their literature that recommend the development of their livelihood rather than a formulaic solution of sending them back to where they were. The settlement in Basey changes their identification as a ‘forest people’ into a more radical identity.

Keywords: Mamanwa, Kalinggawasan, Indigenous, Freedom, Basey, Sagacity

Of Fairy Tales: The Reparative Fantasy in Christina Rossetti’s “Goblin Market”

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600 views

Cassie Jun Lin

University of Macau, mb84026@um.edu.mo, ORCID ID: 0000-0001-7749-1491

 Volume 12, Number 5, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n5.rioc1s3n3 

 

Abstract

With the heated debate on the utility of the humanities as a context, this paper reads Rossetti’s “Goblin Market” as an attempt to reconcile the emerging functional attitude towards the humanities and the susceptibility of the humanities to the neo-liberal condition. This paper traces connections between the “reparative” or the “post-critical” turn and fairy tales or fantasies in order to argue that Christina Rossetti’s much debated poem, “Goblin Market,” could be framed in a fantastic framework that substantiates a reparative orientation that is “additive and accretive” (Sedgwick, Touching Feeling 149). A stubborn insistence on the hermeneutics of suspicion has informed much of the readings of the “Goblin Market,” especially the haunted market, as “kinda subversive, kinda hegemonic” (Sedgwick, Queer Performativity 15). I aim to provide a different approach given that recent scholarship on “Goblin Market” ignores the possibility of reparation. In this paper, I attempt to withhold suspicion in order to hone caring eyes to uncritical materials that are often deemed untenable to politicized life. I reparatively read the female participation in the market that resuscitates a full female identity and the “muted” ending that is often subjected to paranoid readings. Locating “Goblin Market” in a fantastic framework, I argue, helps us to see the actual world and it helps us visualize a fantastic world that brings out an ethical efflorescence that entertains human experience in its plenitude. This essay also argues that “Goblin Market,” partakes in “a new wave of innovative fairy tales” (Zipes 98) that gained ascendancy in the latter half of the nineteenth century and this serves as an affective archive to document long marginalized figures and feelings. I also argue that Rosetti’s poem invites thoughts on how aesthetic devices sustain and reproduce selves that ripple off from real-life experiences in a fantastic interruption of spatiality and temporality.

Keywords: reparative and paranoid readings, and fairy tales

“…and beyond/ Frighted the reign of Chaos and old Night”: On the Humanities (in times of) Crisis

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333 views

Jeremy De Chavez

Department of English, University of Macau. ORCID: 0000-0003-0320-372X. Email: jeremydechavez@um.edu.mo

 Volume 12, Number 5, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n5.rioc1s3n1 

Abstract

The history of the present is replete with the language of crisis, which has infiltrated various domains including the political, economic, social, environmental, and moral. Those various proclamations of collapse and disaster intersect somewhat in yet another crisis that we have become all too familiar with: the Humanities crisis. We are regularly reminded, and with intensifying pleas of urgency, that the Humanities are in peril. While various commentators have linked the troubling erosion of the Humanities to the present and impending failures of critical thought, democracy, and civic duty, the Humanities are still widely regarded as unable to measure up to the emerging dominant metrics of value. What then is to be done? How might we come to the defense of the Humanities without merely mouthing banal pieties or capitulating to the paralyzing force of cynical reason? Avoiding both prescriptive polemics and resignation to the corporate university’s remorseless logic of markets, I offer some reflections on what might constitute a valid defense of the Humanities. I suggest a plural form of defense that does not exacerbate what C.P. Snow has called “a gulf of mutual comprehension” between “two cultures” (1963, p. 4).

Keywords: humanities crisis, Nussbaum, liberal arts, two cultures

Re-Presenting Protestors as Thugs: The Politics of Labelling Dissenting Voices

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438 views

Lalitha Joseph

Assistant Professor, St. John’s College Anchal, affiliated to the University of Kerala, email id: lalithajoseph@stjohns.ac.in, ORCID:0000-0002-2937-2233

 Volume 12, Number 5, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n5.rioc1s2n4

 

Abstract

The use of the word “thugs”, has always precipitated the crisis that has existed longue durée in the history of America. The word carries diverse meanings in different spaces, histories, communities, and countries. When used as a stigmatizing label, it can define, classify, restrict and fix boundaries within a society. Through an assessment of political rhetoric, tweets, and media reports, this article evaluates the hegemonic power embedded in the word and its strategic use by the world leaders for nefarious purposes in the post-truth era. It also explores the racial underpinnings of the word and the covert intentions behind its usage. This paper critically interrogates the social circumstances in which the word is used to suppress dissent. The role of post-truth media as the intermediaries and purveyors of the real and the fake is analyzed. Labelling theory is applied to demonstrate how policy makers, mark out a group in order to rationalize the discourse of state violence.  The methods and the outcomes of stigmatizing labelling is illustrated, paying special attention to the role it plays in triggering social unrest. The essay argues that the polemics around the word “thug” enables the administrators to shift focus from the real issues, and thereby deny racial minorities their right to challenge the government policies and actions.

Keywords: Labelling theory, Thug, Dissenting voices, Racialdiscrimination, Post-truth era, Race-coded language.

Salman Rushdie’s Quichotte and the Post-truth Condition

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529 views

Atri Majumder1 & Gyanabati Khuraijam2

1Research Scholar, Department of Management, Humanities and Social Sciences, National Institute of Technology Agartala, E-mail: atri.cal@gmail.com,https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2624-5703

2Assistant Professor, Department of Management, Humanities and Social Sciences, National Institute of Technology Agartala, E-mail: khgyan79@yahoo.com

 Volume 12, Number 5, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n5.rioc1s2n3 

Abstract

The emergence of ‘post-truth’ has dramatically affected the contemporary socio-political discourses. The blurring of the distinctions between fact and fiction has become ostensible owing to the proliferation of social media and the pivotal role played by cyberspaces in creating volatile identities. The erosion of objectivity and the creation of a Baudrillardian ‘hyperreality’ have destabilized the position of truth irrevocably. The meteoric rise of far-right populist governments across the world with their jingoistic, xenophobic and parochial brand of politics, the erasure of subjective autonomy and invasion of privacy have pushed the world to the brink of moral anarchy, devoid of ethical values and veracity. Salman Rushdie’s latest work Quichotte (2019) is a postmodern rendering of Miguel De Cervantes’ picaresque novel Don Quixote. This paper attempts to critically analyse the novel vis-à-vis the ‘post-truth condition’. The evolution of the concept of truth is traced through the ideas of various philosophers such as Michel Foucault, Alain Badiou, Jean Baudrillard and other philosophers in order to ascertain the origin and theoretical implications of ‘post-truth’. Rushdie has foregrounded the contemporary socio-political issues like the impending catastrophic consequences of climate change, the prevalent opioid crisis and the precarious position of immigrants who are often victims of racist violence. He has characteristically employed magic realism and narrative pyrotechnics in the novel. The various intertextual references, allusions to popular culture, and autobiographical traces in Quichotteare also to be explored.

Keywords: post-truth, hyperreality, socio-political issues, magic realism, popular culture, intertextuality

Reading Hypertext as Cyborg: The Case of Patchwork Girl

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481 views

Jaya Sarkar

Ph.D. Scholar, Department of Humanities & Social Sciences, BITS Pilani (Hyderabad Campus). ORCID: 0000-0001-6851-6976. Email: jaya1sarkar@gmail.com

 Volume 12, Number 5, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n5.rioc1s2n2

 Abstract

This essay examines Patchwork Girl by Shelley Jackson to reveal how hypertext functions like the posthuman concept of the cyborg defined by Haraway as “a condensed image of bothimagination and material reality.” For the theoretical framework, I draw on Katherine Hayles and Rosi Braidotti’s theories of Posthumanism and cyborg subjectivity, among other Postmodernist Feminist ideas of the body and visual culture. Using these theories, my essay will answer the central question that underlies how this new revisionist and interactive medium of storytelling parodies the traditional roles of the author and the reader. Interpreting a ‘cyborg’ hypertext requires a “cyborg reader,” not only because the reader shares a posthuman connection with the narrative in terms of involving their gestures through touch and click, but also because the hypertext forces the reader to adopt a gaze that is equally modular and fragmentary. My paper argues that just like the medium of hypertext itself, the author and the reader become a part of the cyborg subjectivity.

Keywords: Posthumanism, Cyborg, Hypertext, Haraway, Patchwork Girl, Frankenstein.

Technification of Knowledge and Knowledge as Technology: the University as the Verse to Come

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304 views

Samrat Sengupta

Assistant Professor and Head, Department of English, Sammilani Mahavidyalaya. Email: samrat19802003@yahoo.co.in

 Volume 12, Number 5, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n5.rioc1s2n1

 Abstract:

In the very act of pronouncing the word Uni-Versity the uni- in university motivates the versity – the becoming of the verse as memory – as the act of foregrounding knowledge and its continuity in time – the ontology as well as epistemology of culture and society. But at the same time the uni- is in conflict with the verse making – the versity. This double gesture produces the space of the university as an impossible, contingent and precarious space of learning. So the outside of the university is connected – hyperlinked to its inside space. If the university is made into a decided space of providing information and skill then it ceases to be a university. The erosion of liberal humanist university gradually being overcome by technological skill based universities announces the end of university. This paper shall talk about the transformative potentialities of the verse – the possibilities of unexpected turn that cannot be overcome by any technification and enframing. I would discuss university as a dialectics of desire for unification on one hand and the dynamic creative potentiality on the other that ceaselessly challenges and overcomes that unitary impulse. The idea of the University here has been discussed through the critical theoretical interventions in Jacques Derrida and Bernard Stiegler.

Keywords: Artifactuality, Stupidity, University, Information-Power, Enframing

The Confluence in the Contemporary Art World of Literature and Postmodern Visual Arts in Jeff Vande Zande’s Landscape with Fragmented Figures

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477 views

Smriti Thakur1 & Dinesh Babu P2

1Ph. D Research Scholar, Department of English, Central University of Punjab, E-mail: mriti.thakur7@gmail.com

2Assistant Professor of English, Centre for Classical and Modern Languages, School of Languages, Literature and Culture, Central University of Punjab, E-mail: dinesh.babu@cup.edu.in

 Volume 12, Number 5, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n5.rioc1s1n4

Abstract

The American poet, novelist and editor, Jeff Vande Zande’s Landscape with Fragmented Figures (2009) is a novel that deals with the contemporary world of art, which brings forth the intricacies of the art forms such as collage, action paintings, and drop cloths that have established a crucial distance between the present and the past world of pre-modern art. As the novel revolves around the world of postmodern visual arts and brings this subject into the literary world, it necessitates an interdisciplinary approach, which not only brings the two different academic disciplines of arts together for a critical appreciation, but also creates a new aesthetic experience in the reader, wherein visual arts is seen through the lens of literature, which helps foreground the hidden patterns and motives behind the art work, and the literary work is appreciated with a greater knowledge and understanding of  the practices in and theories of the modern and postmodern art. By looking at the symbiotic relationship between visual art and literature through the novel, this study makes an attempt to contribute to the aesthetic appreciation of the engaging confluence of postmodern visual arts and literature in the contemporary world of art. By analysing the text, the study explores the phenomena that have reduced the difference between the original and copy in the contemporary art-world wherein the artist’s aesthetic sensibility seems to derive from other sources, and thus brings into critical discourse those factors that have determined the use of parody, pastiche, irony, and collage in contemporary art forms.

Keywords: Modern-art, Postmodern-art, Visual-arts, art-novel, Aesthetic sensibility, Symbiotic relationship, Parody, Pastiche, Irony, Art Culture.

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