Anupama A. P1 & Vinod Balakrishnan2
1Research Scholar, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences. National Institute of Technology,Tiruchirappalli. Tamil Nadu. India. E-mail: anupriya2621@gmail.com
2Professor, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences. National Institute of Technology, Tiruchirappalli. Tamil Nadu. India. E-mail: winokrish@yahoo.co.uk
Volume 12, Number 3, 2020 I Full Text PDF
DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n3.40
Abstract
There are two spaces in Anil Radhakrishnan’s travel narrative, North 24 Kaatham (2013), the topographical space outside and the psychological space inside. The film is read as a dialectical tension that plays out in the character of Harikrishnan who suffers from an obsessive compulsive disorder. The fateful journey of Harikrishnan on a day of harthal (general strike) is, to all appearance, topographical though it is, in equal measure, a psychological one. The paper, through a formalist analysis of the film, draws a correspondence between the two journeys of Harikrishnan in the company of fellow passengers: Gopalan and Narayani (Nani), in order to demonstrate Hari’s transformation from a self-absorbed individual towards a sociable human being. The argument is structured by combining Walter Benjamin’s idea of “aura” and Gaston Bachelard’s dialectics of space to explain the protagonist’s psycho-spatial transformation.
Keywords: travel, outside/inside, topographical space, formalist analysis, spectator experience
Ananya Dutta Gupta has been teaching at the Department of English & Other Modern European Languages, Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan, for over sixteen years now. In 1999, she was awarded a Felix Scholarship to pursue an M.Phil. in English Literature, 1500-1660 at the University of Oxford. She was awarded the degree of M.Phil., in part, for a dissertation on the philosophy of war and peace in Renaissance European and English Writings. In January 2014, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, awarded her a Ph.D. degree for her dissertation on Renaissance English representations of the city under siege. Her revised Orient Blackswan Annotated edition of Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene, Book I (2012) is currently in worldwide circulation and she has several other scholarly articles published in national and international journals to her credit. She was Charles Wallace India Trust Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Research in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, Cambridge, in 2015. She has also published book reviews and translations of essays, poetry and short stories. Her creative non-fiction and travel writing may be found online at Cafe Dissensus, Muse India, Pratilipi, Caesurae and Coldnoon Travel Poetics. She sings, writes poetry and does digital painting in her leisure. Contact: ananya_duttagupta@yahoo.co.uk
Special Collection: Creativity in the Time of the Pandemic 2020>>
Pandora Pandemica
Published on April 14, 2020. © Author.
Dilyara Safargaliyevna Sharipova1, Ainur Berikovna Kenjakulova2, Svetlana Zhumasultanovna Kobzhanova3, Kaldykul Serikbaevna Orazkulova4 & Leila Abdyganievna Kenzhebayeva
1, 2Institute of Literature and Art named after M. Auezov of the Science Committee of the Ministry of Education and Science of Kazakhstan, Almaty, Kazakhstan. Email: dilyarazam@mail.ru
3A. Kasteyev State Museum of Arts of the Republic of Kazakhstan, Almaty, Kazakhstan
4Kazakh National Academy of Arts named after T.K. Zhurgenov, Almaty, Kazakhstan
5Kazakh National Academy of Arts named after T.K. Zhurgenov, Almaty, Kazakhstan
Volume 12, Number 1, January-March, 2020 I Full Text PDF
DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n1.16
Abstract
Reflecting on the past is the foundation for national unity. In this context, it appears relevant to conduct research into fine art as storage of memory and a resource for the reconstruction of lasting images of the past. This article looks at the issue of cultural memory in Kazakhstan through the study of works of figurative art devoted to the history of the famine of the beginning of the 1930s. The authors examine how this topic was reflected in Soviet art, as well as at the current stage of cultural development. The forms of representation of cultural trauma as a metaphor and an affective experience are also explored in the article. Nowadays, monuments of grief perform socio-cultural functions that are inextricably connected with the development of national identity.
Keywords: monument, sculpture, famine, communicative memory, cultural memory, commemoration, nomadism, identity.
Sugeetha K1 & Harini Jayaraman2
1PhD Research Scholar, Department of English and Humanities, Amrita School of Engineering, Coimbatore, Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham,India. ORCID id: 0000-0002-2668-7440. Email id: k_sugeetha@cb.amrita.edu
2Professor, Department of English and Humanities, Amrita School of Engineering, Coimbatore, Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, India. ORCID id: 0000-0002-9747-2850. Email id: j_harini@cb.amrita.edu
Volume 10, Number 2, 2018 I Full Text PDF
DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v10n2.07
Received November 27, 2017; Revised April 02, 2018; Accepted April 15, 2018; Published May 06, 2018.
Abstract
The protagonists in the fictional world of Ayn Rand seem to possess the recipe to happiness that matches Hungarian psychologist Csikszentmihalyi’s conditions for a “flow experience”. This study examines the conditions that lead to the state of “flow” in Ayn Rand’s fiction The Fountainhead, with the aim of discovering the criteria that contribute to the leading of a happy life. Although a few critics have discussed the pursuit of happiness in Rand’s novels, the objective of this research is to make a difference by attempting to use Csikszentmihalyi’s psychological theory to understand Rand’s characterization and ascertain the factors that play a major role in the making of a psychologically healthy individual, who as a consequence is frequently in a state of “flow”.
Keywords: flow, happiness, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, The Fountainhead, novelist-philosopher.
- Number 1: In Progress, Special Issue
Hardcover: 134 pages
| Publisher: Authorspress; 1st Edition 2017; Language: English; ISBN- 978-93-5207-447-1; Price: Rs. 600/-
Reviewed by Dr. Sandip Kumar Mishra orcid.org/0000-0003-0513-0907. Email: amardisha123@gmail.com |
Volume 9, Number 4, 2017 I Full Text PDF
DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v9n4.r03
Anand Neelakanthan, the writer of Bahubaali, released the book Literature and World Cinema, edited by Itishri Sarangi in the Kalinga Literary Festival, 2017 at Mayfair Convention. The book is an anthology of critical articles written by different contributors on popular literature translated into films. According to the editor, the new book is an attempt to rediscover global cinema based on the literary pieces which later turned to movies. In the preface, Dr. Sarangi writes, “World cinema is no more Hollywood centric. Rather it has moved beyond its geographical area. Bollywood and Hindi film industry are loved by the audience worldwide. The book speaks about the role of Literature and its contribution to cinema, a popular culture” (Sarangi, 2017). The cinematic representations of the popular novels revive the works and get critically acclaimed by the people who watch them. The movies are easier understood by the audience than the novels and stories. The scriptwriters get attracted to the popular literary pieces for the theme of the movies and the directors are prone to literary texts if they find any cinematic potentiality in literature. It is their professionalism too, which makes famous literary text become successful movies. The book is an attempt to rediscover some eternal texts translated into films.
The present book taken for review has ten distinctive chapters. In the Chapter “Meeting Jim: A Film in the Making” Dr. Chittaranjan Mishra portrays the journey of a man transcending boundaries to unite people and create bonds. The film is about Jim, who for more than four decades has been hosting dinners at his Parisian articles providing opportunities for people from various countries and walks of life to connect with each other. The paper traces Jim’s cultural connections with people and speculates the dimensions of their representations on the basis of the ideas the filmmakers are trying at.
Dr. Gourhari Behera and Mr. Chayan Dutta in the article “Of Children, Witches and the Problematic of Succession: Justine Kurzel’s Macbeth” discuss the legacy of demystifying the works of the literary giant, William Shakespeare. Kruzel’s cinematic adaptation makes the play more relevant to its contemporary audience in the sense that it tries to answer many of the perplexing questions that have hounded Shakespeare’s readers and audience since centuries.
Chapter III is written by Dr. Sonal Srivastava entitled “Aesthetics & Semiotics of Film Language”. It discusses cinema as a powerful medium of expression to a silent audience. The chapter focuses on the fact that films form a connection between the verbal language and the real world, encouraging an establishment of connections. But a film, unlike language, can act without any convention by falling back easily to the real world with the help of natural signs and with all its arbitrariness.
The article in chapter IV is written by Mr. Akaitab Mukherjee named “Rituparno Ghosh’s Antarmahal: Auteurist Adaptation and Authorial Suicide”. It lucidly presents the film adaptation of Tarashankar Bandyopadhyay’s short story Protima (1937). Rituparno Ghosh’s film adaptation Antarmahal (Views of an Inner Chamber, 2005) is based on a popular play by Bandyopadhyay, an eminent Bengali novelist and short story writer. The short story deals with the landlord family where the bohemian landlord tortures on his wife and the issue of domestic violence has been expanded in Ghosh’s film. Ghosh’s appreciation distances itself from Bandyopadhyay’s text and tries to imagine the world of women in landlord family in late 19th century. The article explicates that Antarmahal seems like, to use Deborah Cartmell and Imelda Whelehan’s term, “authorial suicide” of Bandyopadhyay.
The article “Literature Adapted into Film: An Ecocritical Analysis of Chander Pahar (The Mountain of the Moon)” by S. Mishra, offers an ecocritical approach to the film adaptation of Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay’s novel. Bibhutibhushan’s forte is his portrayal of the man in the midst of nature. The article seeks to delve deep into Chander Pahar to find out Ecocritical implications in the film based on the original adventure novel by the great nature novelist.
In the Chapter VI, “Movies: An Effective Tool to Interpret Soft Skills” Mitashree Tripathy and the editor herself link usability of soft skills in the film medium” and interprets how movies contribute significantly in perceiving soft skills. The sole purpose of good movies is not only to entertain but also to teach and educate. The study shows how soft skills through movies enable students, employees in multifarious sectors and even the non-professionals to acknowledge the diverse aspects of soft skills and their weight to reintegrate successful business ventures and interpersonal relationships.
Chapter VII is a study by Ms. Reethi P entitled “Trapping the Marginalised: Reading the movie Ottal”. It discusses cinema as the most popular genre to communicate ideas and feelings in the most proficient manner. The paper discusses the movie Ottal keeping side by side the Russian short story Vanka by Anton Chekov. The objective of the paper is to connect and read the movie Ottal as a narrative of the subaltern in a natural background- where nature itself is marginalized. Ottal, the trap narrates the story of human beings trapped in the complex web of life. The marginalized gets trapped in the web and becomes nameless.
Chapter VIII “Absurdist Flow in Cinema and Art” written by Ms. Bhagyalaxmi Das and the editor Dr. Sarangi discusses the depiction of the ‘absurd’ in world cinema taking into focus, Extremely Loud and Incredibly, one of the finest examples of Absurdist cinema. The war left devastating consequences and propounded the vision that life is meaningless and every human action is absurd worthless. Giant, Albert Camus, the French philosopher coined the term ‘Absurd’ and formulated a new school of thought known as ‘Absurdism’. Artists portrayed this meaninglessness through abstract representations in their works. Cinema is the most popular and powerful medium to present the ‘Absurd’ in its myriad shades as expressed in the paper.
In the Chapter IX “Adaptation: Healthy Process for Intellectual Growth of Film Industry” Ms. Surabhi Yadav talks about adaptations in Bollywood films. While the practice of adaptation is termed as cheating, Yadav’s paper peels out the accusations and outlines the positivity in being inspired by great works. Adaptation is often confused with stealing but according to her, there is nothing wrong in getting inspired by someone’s work and then producing something new with the local flavour that is an original piece of one’s own creativity.
The final chapter “A journey from Eerie to Effervescent” by Ms. Minushree Patnaik in collaboration with the editor Dr. Sarangi, gives essence to the film adaptation of the literary works of black women writers and showcases films as a powerful medium of demonstrating such atrocities. The writers of this chapter have explored the movies like Beloved, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Color Purple to give essence to the literary works of black women writers and voice to the voiceless Afro-Americans.
To conclude, the book is an excellent collection of literature as translated into world cinema. It is not fixed to a concrete boundary of a particular area. It explores the movies without frontiers and tries to analyze culture, people, and way of life and opens a pathway to understanding globalization. The new book offers an extensive appreciation of the literary classics to shape the concept of film studies from the critical approach. The articles in the book give focus to the parallel cinema, the absurdist flow in film, the subaltern, the ecocritical approach, the soft skills, the black literature etc. The readers will get varied flavour of literary taste within the short compass of a single book.
References:
Authorspress. (n.d.). Retrieved December 10, 2017, from http://www.authorspressbooks.com/author_detail.php?a_id=730
I., Sarangi (Ed.). (n.d.). Literature and World Cinema. Retrieved December 10, 2017, from https://www.researchgate.net/project/Literature-and-World-Cinema
Literature and Cinema. (n.d.). Retrieved December 10, 2017, from https://books.google.co.in/books/about/Literature_and_Cinema.html?id=rmi3AQAACAAJ&redir_esc=y
Sarangi, I. (Ed.). (2017). Literature and World Cinema. New Delhi: Authors Press.
Dr. Sandip Kumar Mishra is an Assistant Teacher of a Govt. Aided High School in West Bengal. His doctoral thesis explores the ecocritical praxis of Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay’s select novels. He has already presented papers in two National and two International Conferences held in Vidyasagar University, St. Paul’s Cathedral Mission College, Maharshi Markandeswar University, and Berhampur University respectively. His articles have been published in books and international journals listed by UGC.
Call for Papers for the Special Issue on “Frankenstein 200”
Papers should be between ideally 3000-5000 words.
Book reviews should be between 1000-1200 words for single and/or double book reviews. Review articles should be above 2000 words with proper citations.
Style Sheet: APA
Submission: Follow the link to read the Submission Guidelines and submit at our new submission portal at http://rupkatha.com/review/index.php/rjis/about/submissions
Submission Deadline: January 30
Publication: March, 2018.
Reynaldo Thompson
School of Digital Arts, Universidad de Guanajuato, Mexico. Email: thompson@ugto.mx
Volume 2, Number 3, 2010 I PDF Version
DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v2n3.01
On the occasion of the bicentennial anniversary of Independence in different countries of Latin America and the centennial of the Mexican Revolution in 2010, we are bringing out this issue with a view to celebrating and exploring the past and the present. The rich culture, geography and national resources in Latin America, united by the Iberian languages that function like irrigating blood keep the organs alive and moving. The anniversary may not happen during the best years of those nations; however it is a good time for reflection, criticism and balance of what those new republics have achieved and what it continues to be: the ghost in the everyday life of its inhabitants. No doubt some countries have grown faster, economically, culturally or demographically speaking; though corruption, poverty, insecurity and improvisation are among the problems that are still affecting what was called, the New World after two hundred years of self-governance. In this issue writers from various parts of the planet have critically focused on the history and culture of Latin America.
Reviewed by Enrico Beltramini
Lecturer, Department of Religious Studies, Santa Clara University, United States.
Email: ebeltramini@scu.edu
Email: ebeltramini@scu.edu
Jeffrey J. Kripal, Esalen. America and the Religion of No Religion (Chicago and London: Chicago University Press, 2008), 575 Pages, $20.00.
Whitley Strieber and Jeffrey J. Kripal, Super Natural: A New Vision of the Unexplained (New York: Tarcher, Penguin, 2016), 384 Pages, $28.00.
With Esalen: America and the Religion of No Religion Jeffrey Kripal (J. Newton Rayzor professor of religion at Rice University) has crafted an intellectually engaging story of the most famous institute of alternative culture in the world. Surrounded by an air of mystery and an aura of mysticism, Esalen Center has too often been branded a New Age phenomenon. The fruit of Kripal’s passionate yet accurate work on Esalen’s amazing history is his ability to overcome such a limited understanding and to propose a legitimate alternative summary. Esalen, according to Kripal, is not only a scenic place in California’s Big Sur region, but an exciting intellectual adventure that apparently bends toward the emerging movement of human potential, a bridge between East and West. It is also the birthplace of a completely new understanding of Christianity and its limits, the Utopian merger of science and mysticism, and the all-encompassing gateway to the unconventional alternative spirituality. More importantly, Esalen is an audacious and visionary attempt to transcend the traditional boundaries between and within religions and finally achieve the “Religion of No Religion,” a post denominational harbor where the exhausted souls of the post-modern West can finally rest.
Kripal has written an intellectually engaging and intriguing narrative about the famous institute of alternative culture. After introducing the book in Chapter One and describing the first steps of the enterprise (in Chapters Two and Three), Kripal’s book moves in Chapter Four to the core of the story: the legendary encounter between Esalen and the American counterculture, then on to the less well known involvement of Esalen in the Cold War (see Chapter Five). Finally, the book provides reminders of Esalen’s most recent achievements: articulating the religion of no religion (Chapter Six) and the very latest developments (Chapter Seven).
While the chapter on the history of Esalen in the Sixties is brilliantly written, the chapter fails to add any new insight to an already well documented era, it is definitively revelatory the chapter on Esalen’s engagement in the Cold War (1970-85). The entire cosmology of Esalen is at work: spirits and aliens, science and religion, human potential and supernatural, Asian meditation and Western consciousness. It is Kripal’s main point that Esalen played an important role in the Cold War, and that the role ultimately demonstrated the very spirit of Esalen. From the Esalen perspective, the Cold War was like the Dark Ages, an era of undisciplined rationality and controlled intuition. Kripal’s narrative changes from the solar, amicable, delicate hippie tone and atmosphere of the counterculture to the obscurity and villainy of the gothic romance. Spies and scientists, mystics and gurus are the unexpected soldiers of a war with no limits or boundaries: the sky, the natural, the artificial, the supernatural, the human, the self, the universe. Any metaphysical territory, psychic weapon, scientific theory, and spiritual insights are ethically justified in order to achieve the final victory against the Soviet Union. It is difficult to escape the irony: Esalen moved from a frontal confrontation against the American spiritual-industrial complex in the Sixties to an unmistakable alliance, a decade later, with the very same complex in order to win the Cold War.
The religious history scholar will delight in this short history of an educational and experiential institute with all the ingredients of a cosmic saga. However, while the story is engaging and entertaining, topics are not investigated in depth. Kripal makes this point: “the history of Esalen can be read as an American moment in a much broader Tantric transmission from Asia to the West,” yet it is difficult to find in the book a systematic and satisfying exploration of this point.[1] Instead, Kripal adopts a very specific narrative, that is, a mixture of personal account and classic historiography where the first-person narrative frequently blurs the boundaries between subject and object, intentionally playing on the confusion between author, the narrated, and a “narrating I” belonging to no one. It is a masterful and epic style that makes Kripal’s work simply unforgettable.
With Super Natural: A New Vision of the Unexplained Jeffrey Kripal brings the religion of no religion outside Esalen, framing the inexplicable as the new normal. To put it differently, those “impossible” things that traditionally belong to the reign of religion, from extra-dimensional beings to bilocation to bumps in the night, do not belong to religion at all: rather, they are a part of our reality of life. In other words, we look at reality in the wrong way. Our materialistic view allocates the physical to nature and the rest to the supernatural. Again, it is our materialist view that creates the illusion of a dualistic epistemology. When we recognize that reality not materialistic or spiritual, but rather materialistic and spiritual, a consciousness reality in which the thing and the thought stand together, we become immunized from skepticism. In this regard, Kripal provides an outstanding outline of materialists’ tactics for dismissing paranormal claims. I will quote this passage at length (emphasis Kripal’s):
At the end of the day, though, most of these objections boil down to a simple (and simplistic) attempt to control what is on the table so that the only permissible evidence left there is evidence that supports the materialist assumptions.[2]
In his attempt to change the filters through which we view reality, Kripal offers a cohesive reframing of the “pantheon of the unknown” through the lens of the natural world. He in turn reshapes our view of the “natural world” from the perspective of the unknown. He delivers a message that is at once simple and unsettling: the supernatural belongs to the order of nature. Of course, this statement aims to alter both sides of the equation. No longer does the supernatural belong to a separate sphere of reality, but the opposite is true: the unknown and the mythical, the mystical and paranormal, belong to this world—they are real. The supernatural is real. However, no longer nature is the inert substance that the scientific mindset dares to explore. This natural world is immeasurably weirder, more wonderful, and probably more populated than we have so far imagined with our current scientific categories. In this regard, Kripal suggests “to embrace science in a new way,” for a new ontological vision requires a better epistemology.[3]
For this book, Kripal teamed up with Whitley Strieber, one of the best-known UFOs contactees and best-selling author of Communion, a 1987 book that brought the subject of alien contact to the center of public attention. Kripal and Strieber write in alternating chapters, nine chapters each, each in the first-person singular. Strieber describes some of his experiences in one chapter, and in the next Kripal provides a scholarly addendum, that is, Kripal intellectualizes the unknown phenomena.
The eighteen chapters are held together as a cohesive statement by the two authors working in tandem, intertwining their unique perspectives, experiences, and educational backgrounds. What bring together the UFO contactee and the religion historian is the assumption that, in the end, UFO phenomena and mysticism are the same thing. Kripal synthesizes the point, claiming that the UFO phenomenon has something to do with the soma pneumatikon (spiritual body) mentioned by Paul the apostle (1 Corinthians 15:45-49). The general point is that those things which are traditionally located within the reign of alien literature, from the sinister encounters with nonhuman entities to medically mystifying, non-removable ear implants, would be better located in the reign of the spiritual experience.
This book is a thought-provoking reconceptualization of traditional notions of nature and the supernatural events.
[1] Jeffrey J. Kripal, Esalen. America and the Religion of No Religion (Chicago and London: Chicago University Press, 2008), p. 18.
[2] Whitley Strieber and Jeffrey J. Kripal, Super Natural: A New Vision of the Unexplained (New York: Tarcher, Penguin, 2016), p. 15.
[3] Strieber and Kripal, Super Natural: A New Vision of the Unexplained, p. 1.