Postcolonial - Page 9

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

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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

Review Article: The Crises of Civilization: Exploring Global and Planetary Histories (2018) by Dipesh Chakrabarty

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Publisher: Oxford University Press (2018). Language: English

ISBN-13 (print edition): 978-0-19-948673-1. ISBN-10 (print edition): 0-19-948673-5

Reviewed by

Shikha Vats

Doctoral Fellow and Teaching Assistant, Department of Humanities & Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology – Delhi. Email: shikhavats.iitd@gmail.com

 Volume 12, Number 4, July-September, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n4.25

W. E. B. Du Bois (1903) had famously said that the problem of the twentieth century “is the problem of the color-line” (p. 13). Dipesh Chakrabarty declares, in this new volume, that the question of the twenty-first century will be that of climate crisis. The major events of the twentieth century, including the processes of imperialism, colonization, and globalization led to widespread migration of people all across the globe framing new intersubjective equations such as oppressor-oppressed, privileged-marginalized, mostly along what Du Bois called ‘the color-line’. The major fallout of this colonial and capitalist project in the last century has been global warming which is set to affect the entire planet and hence needs to be at the forefront of all policy decisions in the twenty-first century. In order to grapple with this new age of the Anthropocene, whereby human beings have become a geophysical force capable of altering the course of the planet, Chakrabarty urges a rethinking and reformulation of the discipline of history…Full Text PDF

Review Article: English Studies in India: Contemporary and Evolving Paradigms (2019)

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Edited by Banibrata Mahanta and Rajesh Babu Sharma

Publisher: Springer (Singapore, 2019). ISBN 978-981-13-1524—4

Reviewed by

Himadri Lahiri

Professor, Department of English, Netaji Subhas Open University, West Bengal, India. Email: hlahiri@gmail.com

 Volume 12, Number 4, July-September, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n4.22

In the context of the changing times and gradual evolution of what we know now as ‘New Humanities’, it is time for us to re-evaluate the role of English studies. As the hangover of colonial ideological control and the reigns of ‘universal truths’ waned and as new generations of students, teachers and academic administrators took control of the discipline, English studies began to face new ideological and pedagogical challenges. Moreover, the perception that the study of Humanities does not have much utilitarian values and hence government funds should be diverted to the study of science and technology has put English studies in a precarious condition. At a time when the academic fraternity is wrestling with discursive questions on textual-methodological orientations, pedagogical experimentations and innovative teaching-learning designs in order to sail through the adversity, the publication of the book under review is a welcome event…Full Text PDF>>

Review Article: Homelandings: Postcolonial Diasporas and Transatlantic Belongings (2016) by Rahul Gairola

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Kanta Kochhar-Lindgren, Ph.D.

Director, Folded Paper Dance and Theatre Limited (Hong Kong, India, Seattle). Independent Researcher, Fulbright-Nehru Scholar, 2017-2018. Email: kanta.kochhar123@gmail.com

 Volume 12, Number 4, July-September, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n4.21

We all discover over and over again the kind of strange and violent stranglehold history has over us. We deploy histories to explain our pasts, identify the present, and orient us to the future. As Rahul K. Gairola shows in Homelandings: Postcolonial Diasporas and Transatlantic Belongings, the multiple currents of history have dictated our methods for establishing our home-sites: who belongs and who does not belong in any given place. Our “at-home” practices, one dimension of “the double-bind of history as home…” (2016, xvi), have a deep and lasting impact on how we move about and participate in the world-at-large. Homelandings provides a timely intervention into the theoretical discourse on the “home-site” as the outcome of a “home-economics” that continually reenacts the persistent racism, classicism, sexism, and queerphobia of a neoliberal bio-political governmentality of the Anglosphere (Bennet’s term, cited in Gairola, 18). The project offers “homelandings,” Gairola’s neologism, as the process of resistance to and reappropriation of “home-sites”: “producing new homes in which alternative modes of community and belonging flourish and reproduce” (17). Homelandings—with “landings” as the demarcator of that which is in motion, always about to happen—then act as a series of transversal disruptors of the neoliberal sphere. In this way, these resistances provide a conceptual and practical apparatus for the emergence of domestic orientations, relations, and spaces, even if these are often provisional…

Review Article: We Mark Your Memory: Writings from the Descendants of Indenture (2018)

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Edited by David Dabydeen, Maria del Pilar Kaladeen and Tina K. Ramnarine

Reviewed by

Arnab Kumar Sinha

Assistant Professor, Department of English and Culture Studies, University of Burdwan, West Bengal, India. Email: arnab.ks@gmail.com

 Volume 12, Number 4, July-September, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n4.19

Writing the history of indentured diaspora primarily depends on the available archives that contain the official and personal documents related to this history. While the State archives contain scanty materials for research in this area, considerable efforts have been made by the descendants of the indentured labourers to retrieve personal narratives of their ancestors. Retrieving these personal narratives, have indeed, played a major role in creating small family archives, which have inspired the present generation of authors/researchers to document the history of indentured diaspora. Indeed, this history is the outcome of intensive research on the genealogies of the descendants of indentured labourers. Stories narrated by the indentured labourers, old photographs, diary writings, travel documents and such other records are significant archival materials based on which the present generation of authors/researchers trace their family’s past as well as that of the community. These family archives provide considerable resource for research on history of indentured diaspora. It is in the context of this background that the anthology, We Mark Your Memory: Writings from the Descendants of Indenture (2018) edited by David Dabydeen, Maria del Pilar Kaladeen and Tina K. Ramnarine may be considered as a worthy contribution to the history of indenture diaspora. This anthology, which the editors of the book claim to be a “commemorative volume” (Dabydeen, Kaladeen, & Ramnarine, 2018, p. xii), is an attempt to collate the creative/critical pieces written by the descendants of indentured labourers (coolies). Production of such an anthology to mark the centenary year of the abolition of indentureship (1917) is a praiseworthy initiative. The publication of this book is the outcome of a collaborative venture between the School of Advanced Studies, University of London and the association of Commonwealth Writers, which inevitably foregrounds the active global network of almost thirty writers from various regions of the world working seriously on this project of retrieving the lost indentured narratives. The editors of the book acknowledge the genuine contribution of the association of Commonwealth Writers, which is “the cultural initiative of the Commonwealth Foundation” and this association, the editors claim, “inspires and connects writers and storytellers across the world, bringing personal stories to a global audience” (Dabydeen et al., 2018, p. vii). The pronoun ‘we’ of the title of this book represents the storytellers of the present generation, while the determiner ‘your’, mentioned in the title, refers to the coolies, the ancestors of these storytellers. The book therefore is indicative of academic activism that seeks to highlight the significance of reading, researching and discussing these personal narratives in the context of indenture diaspora…Full Text PDF>>

Manifestations of Place in Al-Raneen Short Story Collection by Amin Oudah: an Analytical Study

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Mohammad Issa Alhourani1, Suad Al-Waely2 & Tar Abdallahi3

1, 2, 3 College of Education, Humanities, and Social Sciences, Al Ain University

Emails: mohammad.al-hourani@aau.ac.ae, suad.alwaely@aau.ac.ae, tar.abdallahi@aau.ac.ae

 Volume 12, Number 4, July-September, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n4.17

 Abstract

This research paper aims at examining the experience of Amin Oudah in his second short story collection, Al-Raneen. In addition to introducing the writer and highlighting his literary contributions, the paper introduces the reader to the short story collection entitled Al-Raneen. It briefly introduces each story and provides a quick comment on it, with the aim of coming up with a overall perception of all the stories in the collection. In addition, we dedicate a section of the paper to the study of Hamdan’s Shoes, one of the short stories in the collection. This case study provides insights into this particular story and highlights the most significant features that all the stories have in common.

Key words: Al-Raneen, Ringing, Amin Oudah, short story, place

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Cross-Cultural Encounters, Self-Estrangement and Mutual Understanding in Tayeb Salih’s Season of Migration to the North

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Mohammad Jamshed

Assistant Professor, English, College of Business Administration, Prince Sattam bin Abdulaziz University, Al-Kharj, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Email: jamshed.psau.edu.sa@gmail.com

 Volume 12, Number 4, July-September, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n4.16

Abstract

Cross-cultural encounters and confrontations constitute major areas of postcolonial studies. These depictions are built upon a few stereotypes, colonial constructs and ‘exotic’ images of people. Even in this globalized world of today, these problematic and false assumptions continue directing our ways of thinking and understanding.  We are deeply either ill-informed or misinformed about people who are like us with an insignificant difference in culture and language. As a result, the increasing cultural divide, tensions, conflicts, and misconceptions plague collective human existence. The postcolonial writings, travel literature and feminist studies, characterized by the ideas of ‘self’ and ‘other’, serve as the theoretical framework for this study. These theories have strong parallels as they seek to empower the oppressed and reinstate the marginalized to the position of equality and dignity. The paper attempts to examine in brief how African and Arab writers of the twentieth century, spurred to write back to their demonization in western literary texts, instead chose to promote cultural understanding and present their story from their cultural perspectives. With the help of textual analysis and Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks, the paper shows how this colonial trauma distorts perspectives and engenders a sense of self-estrangement and rootlessness which adversely affects the personal lives of people. The paper seeks to use this study to dismantle the stereotypes, reveal similar urges and passions to move away from a troubling past towards a future of mutual respect and cultural understanding. Thus, free from all these mistaken notions misdirecting our ways of dialogues and communications, we, as a global community, will get rid of the ills plaguing our existence across cultures and regions.

Keywords: colonialism; stereotypes; estrangement; cross cultural encounters; understanding; distortions

Indian Art and European Science: Patnakalam and Colonial Botanical Drawings

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Saumya Garima Jaipuriar

Assistant Professor, Department of English, Kirorimal College, University of Delhi.

ORCID: 0000-0002-4336-6278Email: sgjaipuriar@gmail.com,

 Volume 12, Number 4, July-September, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n4.14

 Abstract

This paper seeks to explore how scientific documentation fuelled by Enlightenment and indigenous art intermingled to create Patnakalam in nineteenth century India. Patnakalam, a school of painting that flourished in Patna, Bihar in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, came into existence with the complex interactions between an indigenous artistic tradition and a western visual sensibility mediated by the requirements of science. Botanists of the East India Company employed native artists to make illustrations of local plant species in an attempt to scientifically catalogue all of the natural resources of the region. This inevitably contributed to the formation of a style of painting which went on to have an enduring legacy far beyond their taxonomical albums.

Keywords: Company Painting, Patnakalam, Modern Indian Art, Indian Art History, British Colonial History, Age of Enlightenment

‘Providential’ Campaigns: Intertwining Thuggee and the Sepoy Mutiny in Colonial Fictions

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Ayusman Chakraborty

Assistant Professor of English (W.B.E.S), Taki Government College, New Town. Rajarhat, Kolkata. ORCID: 0000-0003-0641-0652. Email: hinduayusman@gmail.com

 Volume 12, Number 4, July-September, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n4.12

Abstract:

This article examines how some colonial fictions intertwine historically unconnected Thuggee and the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857 to make sense of Indian resistance to British rule. This was done by only a few writers. The article tries to find out what led these colonial writers to link the two unconnected events. To do this, representations of Thuggee and the Mutiny in the works of Captain Meadows Taylor, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and Emilio Salgari are scrutinized. The article also considers other relevant works, like those by Sir George MacMunn, Hermann Goedsche, Jules Verne and Francisco Luis Gomes. It tries to ascertain whether a writer’s nationality affected his conceptualization of the relationship between Thuggee and the Mutiny in any significant way. In doing so, it seeks to highlight how representations of Indian insurgency in colonial writings varied in accordance with the writer’s nationality and outlook vis-à-vis British colonialism in India.

Keywords: Thuggee, Sepoy Mutiny, Insurgency, Colonial Fiction, Meadows Taylor, Doyle, Salgari.


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Journeying through the Indian Railways in Around India in 80 Trains (2012) by Monisha Rajesh and Chai, Chai: Travels in Places Where You Stop But Get Never Off (2009) by Bishwanath Ghosh

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Siddharth Dubey

Ph.D Research Scholar, CHRIST (Deemed to be University), Delhi NCR. ORCID id: 0000-0002-9438-787X. Email id: siddharthd888@gmail.com.

 Volume 12, Number 3, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n3.38

Abstract

An Indian train is a space that exemplifies a true sense of transient cultural pattern as it travels through different states of India constantly assimilating people of diverse cultures. In this liminal space, a passenger travels from known to unknown in terms of geography, culture, language, cuisine, sartorial configuration and psychological makeup. Indian Railways offers an insightful analysis of cohabitation – the conflict and the coexistence of people amidst cultural differences.An Indian train is an exemplar of an accurate secular structure, blurring the lines of discrepancies based on religion, caste, gender, sex and sexuality. Prejudices that are evident in spaces relatively marked by certain spatial permanence dilute in a train. A provisional spatial arrangement of a train therefore questions the idea of tolerance and intolerance compared to that of permanent arrangement. As the Indian train incorporates people of all ages and territories, the train is a specimen of the concept of Bakhtinian polyphony, wherein the dialogues occurring between passengers represent varied consciousness. Thus, a train travelogue encompasses unmerged voices, each carrying a unique conscious design. The people travelling in an Indian train are separated on one single ground: economy. Therefore, economic factor becomes an overarching pattern of base to assign a certain culture in a superstructure to each class and each offers a unique perspective to the travelogue. This paper will analyze the trope of the train in two Indian travelogues based on culture, Marxist economic structure, Bakhtinian concept of polyphony, secularism and the idea of tolerance.

Keywords: Indian trains, travelogue, liminality, polyphony, secularism

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