Gender Studies - Page 8

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

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653 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.

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

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982 views

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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2.6K views

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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1.3K views

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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Abstract

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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1.9K views

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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Abstract

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 Uneasy Gaze – Appearing for Interviews to get Married – An Empirical Investigation into the Pre-marital Arranged Marriage Negotiations in Urban Kolkata

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Sucharita Sen
PhD Scholar, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. Email: sucharitasen13@gmail.com

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

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n2.33

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 Abstract

Indian society, when viewed from a Foucauldian feminist perspective offers a curious and unique example of societal scrutiny over its members. This overt exercise of power influences individual behaviour, attitudes and has a profound influence on decision making. In this context, this paper argues, within an empirical framework, the limitations of freedom of choice for women in pre-marital arranged marriage negotiations. Women find themselves coercively thrust into uneasy situations of objectification, forced to mould themselves to fit into hegemonic patriarchal parameters. They are lambasted if they fail to fulfil the required expectations. Based on a survey of 250 young brides and prospective brides of upper-caste, middle-class background in urban Kolkata, I argue that the pre-marital negotiations in arranged marriages systematically subjugate the women. Faced with societal and familial pressure, the women often find themselves marginalised and subjugated in the process of arranged marriage.

Keywords: Women, Patriarchy, Arranged Marriages, Objectification.

Gender Subversion in Iris Murdoch’s The Unicorn

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1.1K views

Soheila Farhani Nejad

English Department, Islamic Azad University, Branch of Abadan, Iran.

Email: soheila.farhani@gmail.com. ORCID:  0000-0001-8168-0703

 Volume 13, Number 1, 2021 I Full Text PDF
DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n1.42

Gender Subversion in Iris Murdoch’s The Unicorn

Abstract

This study examines the various representations of female identity in Murdoch’s The Unicorn. The analysis of the novel revolves around the character of Hannah who is the center of everyone’s obsessive gaze. She is described both as an angel and a monster, a victim and a victimizer. Her victimization is aggravated by her passive submission to the will of her victimizers. This simultaneous presence of contradictory features in one character problematizes the notion of perceiving female identity in terms of binaries. As a typical Gothic heroine, Hannah is trapped within cultural assumptions about women. She passively and yet subversively plays the roles projected on her by the contradictory desires of other characters. It will be argued that the obsessive pursuit of perfection in a female figure as well as the disruption of the boundaries of victim and victimizer in this novel serve to problematize the cultural tendency to understand individuals in terms of stereotypes. Therefore, this study aims to illustrate how Murdoch has used an enigmatic female character to challenge the readers’ disposition to perceive characters in terms of gender stereotypes.

Keywords: Gothic, Gender stereotypes, Binaries, Victimization.

Carmen and Salome: the theme of “femme fatale” in the ballets of Mukaram Avakhri

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942 views

Dilara Shomayeva

Kazakh National Academy of Choreography, 9 Uly dala avenue, Nur-Sultan, 010000, Kazakhstan. Email: dilara.shomayeva@gmail.com

 Volume 13, Number 1, 2021 I Full Text PDF
DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n1.41

Carmen and Salome: the theme of “femme fatale” in the ballets of Mukaram Avakhri

Abstract

The article deals with the image of the so-called femme fatale in Kazakh choreographic art in the case study of two ballets by Mukaram Avakhri: “Carmen” and “Salome”. The author analyzes the artist’s interpretation of the images of the two title characters as canonical cultural texts in the discourse on the history of female representation. At present, the choreographic theory is at the junction of feminist thought and choreographic interdisciplinary practice that strives to view the dancing female body through alternative means of cognition. The stereotype of femininity in dominant conceptions of the Western culture can be deconstructed through the new experience of female authors that influences the performer and the viewer in a new way. The directing and plastique-based approaches that help the young female Kazakh choreographer to achieve this are of interest to the authors.

Keywords: art history, ballet, female image, female choreographer, canon.

The Weird ‘Others’: An ‘Alternative’ Understanding of the Witches of Macbeth from Feminist Perspective

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1.7K views

Reema Chakrabarti1, PhD & Shah Al Mamun Sarkar2, PhD

1Assistant Professor of English, Techno Main Salt Lake, Kolkata-700091, India, chakrabarti.reema2012@gmail.com, https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2136-7349

2Assistant Professor of English, ICFAI University Tripura, Kamalghat, West Tripura-799210, India, shahalmamunsarkar@gmail.com, https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9019-6577

­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­ Volume 13, Number 1, 2021 I Full Text PDF
DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n1.39

The Weird ‘Others’: An ‘Alternative’ Understanding of the Witches of Macbeth from Feminist Perspective

Abstract

This paper attempts to re-interpret the witches of Macbeth from a Feminist perspective. Both critics as well as the ordinary readers mostly receive them in a negative light. Doing so, they overlook the fact that women like these witches are relegated to the margins and share a history of being discriminated and vulnerable to attacks. Within the text, they are humiliated as the ‘weird others’ and compared to ‘bubbles’ on earth. To this date, people have the tendency to marginalize and discriminate women who posit their individuality in their socially reclusive lifestyle. While analyzing their character from a Feminist perspective, the paper will explore their trauma and identify their mischief as a source of rebellion. By making such an alternative reading of the text, the work aims to create a ‘shock-effect’ among people who continue to discriminate such marginalized women.

Keywords: Women, Witches, Macbeth, Feminism, Identity.

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