Global Anxiety

Twinning the Pandemic and the Anthropocene: Crises, Challenge and Conciliation in the Anxious Witnessing of Nonhuman Agency

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437 views

Kaustabh Kashyap
PhD Scholar, Cotton University, Assam.ORCID: 0000-0001-8302-2296. Email: eng2091006_kaustabh@cottonuniversity.ac.in

Rupkatha Journal, Vol. 14, Issue 4, December, 2022. https://doi.org/10.21659/rupkatha.v14n4.31
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Abstract

This paper seeks to situate the anxieties engendered by the COVID-19 pandemic within the framework of the Anthropocene to analyse the multi-faceted ramifications of human and nonhuman interaction. By connecting this ongoing global crisis of human health with the politics of climate change, it attempts to read the forgotten agency of the nonhuman microbe in the light of the rude disruption of the traditional understandings of biopolitics (where bare life has taken centre stage) and the difficulties it has brought in bridging the rift between abstract and concrete information, leading to the scapegoating of victims. It ends with the suggestion of preparation for greener futures by imagining human health within planetary health instead of an anxious wait for a return to pre-pandemic times.

Keywords: pandemic, Anthropocene, biopolitics, nonhuman, health.

Afghan Women and the Taliban: Tracing Questions of Legal Rights, Insecurity and Uncertainty in Select Texts vis-à-vis the Current Crisis

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484 views

Anupama B.N.1 & Payel Dutta Chowdhury2
1Associate Professor, Department of Liberal Arts, Humanities & Social Sciences, Manipal Academy of Higher Education, Manipal, India.ORCID: 0000-0003-3540-6396, Email: anupama.bn@manipal.edu
2Professor & Director, School of Arts, Humanities & Social Sciences, REVA University, Bengaluru, India.ORCID: 0000-0002-2999-0533, Email: payeldutta.c@gmail.com

Rupkatha Journal, Vol. 14, Issue 4, December, 2022. https://doi.org/10.21659/rupkatha.v14n4.26
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Abstract:

The status of Afghan women has been a subject of academic interest primarily because of the strict patriarchal hegemony that they have been subjected to. Afghanistan has seen enormous changes in the last four decades due to multiple invasions, wars, and terrorism. 15th August 2021 marks a significant transition in the Afghan socio-political scenario with the Afghan government collapsing as Taliban took over Kabul. The Taliban’s initial public statements after seizing power included assurances on allowing women their rights within the framework of Shari’a Law. Against this backdrop, this paper examines the actual status of Afghan women’s legal rights and security concerns at present after the completion of one year of the Taliban take-over. The study delves into an exploration of the changing dynamics of women’s status in real-life vis-à-vis such portrayals in select literary texts by Khaled Hosseini and Atiq Rahimi to understand how their narrative spaces mirror the socio-political conflicts in Afghanistan. Drawing upon Gender Studies and discourses concerning masculinity and femininity, particularly studies conducted on women and violence, and the UN Women’s reports on gender alert published in December 2021 and August 2022, this paper aims to explore the fictional space in relation to the real-life scenario in Afghanistan.

Keywords: Afghan women, Taliban, Legal Rights, Security, UN Women’s reports

The English Language Limits Me! Connecting Third Space to Curriculum Transformation in a South African University, Expanding Epistemological Landscapes?

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413 views

Mzukisi Howard Kepe
University of Fort Hare, South Africa. Email: mkepe@ufh.ac.za

Rupkatha Journal, Vol. 14, Issue 4, December, 2022. https://doi.org/10.21659/rupkatha.v14n4.19
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Abstract

Many studies were conducted on conventional colonial heritage; however, less attention examines the developing concept of curriculum decolonisation in South African universities. This paper advocates for a hybrid literacy between traditional conceptions of academic literacy and instruction for students’ sociohistorical lives, affluent and less affluent. I discuss and illustrate the hegemony of English in high-learning institutions and the post-apartheid mainstream education system. Alongside my previous work in the language field, I interrogate the impasse of language policy in high education and South African schools. This paper is an ethnographic study congruent with the interpretivism paradigm, employing the semi-structured interview for data collection. The third space supports it as a theoretical framework. It affords the provision and guidance for classroom instruction and autonomous learning modes balance, where developing new knowledge is heightened, allowing students’ voices. It is a response to the 2015-2016 student protests on South African university campuses, where several were perplexed on how to respond to the demands of the students to end violent protests against western disciplinary norms that devalue non-centre practices and themes. Biliteracy and translingualism are empathised as the concepts against ownership of language and culture, and its territorialisation, challenging the traditional contrast of ‘native’ and ‘non-native’ speakers and its connection to a particular nation-state.

Keywords: Biliteracy, Curriculum, Decolonisation, Essentialist view, Hybrid Literacies, Language Policy in Higher Education- South Africa, Third Space, Translingualism

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Assimilation of the Anglo-Saxon System of Education in the Conflicted Ambazonia: Delinking from Colonial Language Ideologies

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John Wankah Foncha1 & Jane-Francis Afungmeyu Abongdia2
1,2 The Cape Peninsula University of Technology. Email: fonchaj@cput.ac.za/ Jane-francisa@cput.ac.za

Rupkatha Journal, Vol. 14, Issue 4, December, 2022. https://doi.org/10.21659/rupkatha.v14n4.18 
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Abstract

Education is a mind builder and should be taken as a matter of importance in any nation. Following this, the curriculum designer is responsible for building learners’ minds. Seen through this lens, this theoretical article intends to project the importance of community schools in conflict-stricken Ambazonia against the backdrop of the French curriculum. Education guidelines are addressed with reference to language planning, policy, and implementation. Additionally, the paper seeks to explain the current situation in Ambazonia and make arguments regarding the community schools’ guidelines that aspire for multilingualism, where indigenous languages are taken seriously in teaching and learning. Another point discussed is the transitional authority (Ambazonia Transitional Authority), which was put in place to deal with implementing education guidelines and administrative issues. The paper concludes with the argument that what we think must be transformed into what we do and be shown by what we have done.

Keywords: Colonial Language Ideologies, multilingual, Ambazonia Transitional Authority, education

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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

Crises and Community Construction in the Post-Epidemic Era: Posthumanist Survival in Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam Trilogy

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414 views

Lingfei Li
Ph.D. candidate of English and Comparative Literature, English Department, Beihang University, Beijing, China. ORCID: 0000-0002-0684-949X. Email: lingfeili@buaa.edu.cn

Rupkatha Journal, Vol. 14, Issue 4, December, 2022. https://doi.org/10.21659/rupkatha.v14n4.16 
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Abstract

Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam Trilogy centers around a global pandemic that almost wipes out all human beings. In such a post-catastrophic world, the survivors have to defeat fierce criminals who escaped from the Painball arena and construct a new community with nonhuman beings. This article puts forward a posthumanist interpretation of survival in three novels and redefines the position of humans in the world through the decline of anthropocentrism and the rise of nonhuman agents. The pandemic’s danger, as well as the severity of the environment, bring about insecurity and anxiety for human beings. Therefore, to confront the severe social crises and anxiety caused by the current global pandemic, Margaret Atwood provides us with a paradigm that human beings ought to abandon the conquest of nature, insert themselves into a larger framework of cross-species identification, and construct a new community that characterizes a harmonious, tranquil and respectful coexistence of multitudinous species. Our comprehension of Atwood’s opposition to anthropocentrism will be strengthened by an examination of survival from the perspective of posthumanism, which will also arouse widespread worries about ecological consciousness in this post-epidemic era.

Keywords: Posthumanism, Margaret Atwood, MaddAddam Trilogy, Crisis, Community Construction

 

Memory, Trauma and Affect: The Implicated Subject in Anuk Arudpragasam’s A Passage North

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Atri Majumder1 & Gyanabati Khuraijam2
1Research Scholar, Dept. of Management, Humanities and Social Sciences, National Institute of Technology Agartala, India, E-mail: atri.cal@gmail.com, https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2624-5703
2Assistant Professor, Dept. of Management, Humanities and Social Sciences, National Institute of Technology Agartala, India, E-mail: khgyan79@yahoo.com, https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2312-6787

Rupkatha Journal, Vol. 14, Issue 4, December, 2022. https://doi.org/10.21659/rupkatha.v14n4.14 
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Abstract

In A Passage North, Anuk Arudpragasam invades the consciousness of the protagonist to reveal the subliminal enmeshed spaces of the personal and the political. The distance between the traumatic events of the Sri Lankan civil war and the alienated individual who has apparently remained aloof, is obliterated through the refracted memories that have embedded the subject in the matrix of his country’s political history. The individual memory thus coalesces into the fabric of collective memory as the narrative unfolds. The concatenation of the traumatic realities and the sequestered psyche, untethers the individual from its ensconced private sphere and situates it within the macrocosmic and pervasive sociopolitical structure. The transmutation of subjectivity is attuned to the affective sites of collective trauma. The dichotomy of proximity and distance elucidated by the apprehensive reflections of the survivor is symptomatic of the subterranean intensities that elude corporeal presence and agency. The memories of the individual become resonant with the affective (un)lived experiences of traumatic violence, that deconstruct the tension of presence/absence, and consequently reconfigure the preconceived notions of subjectivity. The theoretical framework of this paper would foreground Michael Rothberg’s conceptualization of the implicated subject, to limn the trajectory of identities who are indirectly implicated in traumatic legacies. This paper argues that the trauma of the genocidal war and its aftermath is transcribed into affective memories, that bear the potential to reconstitute identity by recognizing and transcending the state of implication.

Keywords: memory, affect, trauma, implicated subject, identity, Sri Lankan civil war

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Formation of Emotional Security of Students during the Period of Training in Conditions of Military Conflict

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422 views

Oleksii Petrovich Orlov
PhD, Assistant of World literature Department, V. G. Korolenko Poltava National University, Ukraine. ORCID: 0000-0002-2338-118X. Email: olexsiyorlov@gmail.com

Rupkatha Journal, Vol. 14, Issue 4, December, 2022. https://doi.org/10.21659/rupkatha.v14n4.10 
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Abstract

Ukrainian teachers and students are now in an extreme situation of military conflict when the territory of the country is under constant air fire, and the line of hostilities stretches for 1500 kilometres. The purpose of the article is to analyze the extreme learning conditions of Ukrainian students and develop a strategy for optimal emotional relaxation by selecting fiction for reading and deepening artistic perception. Respondents’ data (120 students and 53 pupils) were collected, systematized, evaluated, and analyzed using systematic written surveys (Project Tuning methodology) and statistical analysis methods. Testing corresponded to three stages of conflict development: conflict deployment, escalation, and post-conflict phase. Pedagogical activity mirrors this parable but in the opposite direction. Fiction thematically and genre-wise at each stage plays the role of a protective shield, which draws the line between students’ own emotions and the feelings of literary heroes. Perception of artistic texts was aimed at 1) identifying visual, auditory, and tactile associations; 2) olfactory sensations; 3) the ability to build associative chains; 4) imagining literary heroes; 5) emotionally immersing yourself in the world of fiction. Comparison of one’s own emotional perceptions with those that caused anti-utopian works and fantasy literature prove the effectiveness of the chosen pedagogical hypothesis.

Keywords: extreme pedagogy, conflictology, an emotional parable of perception, artistic perception of literature, association.

The Phenomenon of Social Invisibility of Certain Ukrainian Citizens Categories during Crisis Periods

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400 views

Oksana Zhuravska1 & Olena Rosinska2
1Assoc. Prof., Faculty of Journalism, Borys Grinchenko Kyiv University, Ukraine.
ORCID: 0000-0002-4623-8933. Email: o.zhuravska@kubg.edu.ua
2Assoc. Prof., Faculty of Journalism, Borys Grinchenko Kyiv University, Ukraine.
ORCID: 0000-0003-4460-0668. Email: o.rosinska@kubg.edu.ua

Rupkatha Journal, Vol. 14, Issue 4, December, 2022. https://doi.org/10.21659/rupkatha.v14n4.09 
Abstract Full-Text PDF Issue Access

Abstract

Social invisibility is a complicated psychological and social phenomenon reflected by particular strategies of the society’s attitude to individual groups, their marginalization or “invisibility”, which is especially noticeable in the periods of crises. Ukraine has experienced revolutions, a partial territorial occupation, a pandemic and a large-scale invasion since 2013. The crises of these years influenced society’s life, its readiness or unreadiness to tolerate particular social issues. The analysis of the tendency in covering the issues concerning the LGBT community in the Ukrainian online media of Ukrayinska Pravda (UP), Gazeta.ua (G), Obozrevatel.com (Ob) during 2010 – the first part of 2022 based on statistical and content-analysis of publications gives a chance to prove that.

The research findings demonstrated that, in general, publication activities of the media do not demonstrate tendencies to increased amount of media content devoted to the problems of the LGBT community. The thematic range of publications is also relatively limited, its core is the issues of the Equality March organization and holding, social reaction to this event, world’s news and activity of local politicians.

The serious analytical publications concerning the problems of the LGBT-community are at the periphery of the themes. Stories of the LGBT-community representatives, including media persons who demonstrate positive examples of social adaptation, an issue of gender-based tolerance in the society, etc., remain beyond the attention of the editorial staff, observation of human rights, issues of the queer culture. The reasons for such a situation can relate to the editorial staff’s policy and influence on formation of the narrative in the country concerning the rights of the LGBT-community representatives.

The research of other top-rated media publications is also prospective not only with regard to quantity and themes, but also quality; in particular, compliance with journalist standards and ethical norms by the authors. That will allow reception of a more complete picture concerning the representativeness of the LGBT community’s problems in the country’s media environment and the specification of the indicators influencing their formation, as well as understanding mechanisms of social invisibility in media.

Keywords: LGBT, gender, media studies, social invisibility.

The Artistic Narrative in Times of War: NENKA project of Ukrainian Visual Artists

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Natalia Gurieva1 & Victor Manuel Reyes Espino2
1Department of Art and Enterprise, University of Guanajuato, Mexico. ORCID: 0000-0002-1366-1292. Email: n.gurieva@ugto.mx
2Department of Art and Enterprise, University of Guanajuato, Mexico. ORCID: 0000-0001-9309-6387. Email: vm.reyes@ugto.mx

Rupkatha Journal, Vol. 14, Issue 4, December, 2022. https://doi.org/10.21659/rupkatha.v14n4.08 
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Abstract

Art is deeply linked and contributes to the fundamental axes of culture, that is, norms and standards of behavior, national traditions, principles of life and value systems. During periods of social crisis, art is one of the most vulnerable components, but at the same time a powerful catalyst for creative processes, as well as an expressive vehicle for a critical view of the current situation. Particularly in times of war, artistic expression is presented with a powerful life-giving potential and allows to accurately express the enormous emotional tension of people, whose lives have been disrupted by death, pain, and destruction. This is the case of Ukrainian artists who, through visual exploration, build a complex narrative that seeks to interpret and express the pain and hope of what happened in their native country and which, since 2014, has been experiencing the ravages of war.

Keywords: Ukraine, Artist community, Contemporary image, Art to highlight Ukraine War.

We Are Cancelled: Exploring Victims’ Experiences of Cancel Culture on Social Media in the Philippines

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2.5K views

Joseph Leonard A. Jusay1, Jeremiah Armelin S. Lababit2, Lemuel Oliver M. Moralina3 & Jeffrey Rosario Ancheta4
1Polytechnic University of the Philippines, Manila, Philippines. ORCID: 0000-0001-5770-0129. Email: josephleonard.jusay@yahoo.com
2Polytechnic University of the Philippines, Manila, Philippines. ORCID: 0000-0001-8225-866X. Email: jeremiahlababit0000@gmail.com
3Polytechnic University of the Philippines, Manila, Philippines. ORCID: 0000-0001-7065-5772. Email: rhyleemoralina26@gmail.com
4Polytechnic University of the Philippines, Manila, Philippines. ORCID: 0000-0001-5831-8204. Email: jrancheta@pup.edu.ph

Rupkatha Journal, Vol. 14, Issue 4, December, 2022. https://doi.org/10.21659/rupkatha.v14n4.04 
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Abstract

The continuous advancement of modern technology enables its users to engage in various interactions in the online public sphere, including conversations about multiple ideas and perspectives. It has now played a significant role in our modern society, paving the door for several participatory cultures and social movements such as the so-called cancel culture. Even if this movement aims to call out individuals or businesses, it has undoubtedly encouraged mob mentality and damaged civil dialogue, ultimately driving them out of the community. Thus, this study looked at the diverse experiences of victims of cancel culture and how it influenced their social and personal lives. It reveals that the victims suffered a backlash, public humiliation, and cyberbullying that harmed their mental health. This study has established that cancel culture is an example of online abuse and has become more commonplace in the online public realm, rendering social media sites less of a safe haven.

Keywords: Cancel culture, social media, mental health, cyberbullying, public humiliation

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