Vol 1 No 2

Editorial (Vol 1, No 2)

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The second issue of Rupkatha journal is ready for access. The gratitude due to contributors should be acknowledged not just as a matter of courtesy but because they have introduced interdisciplinary methods of study, making parts of this issue a good reflector of the transformation of disciplines. At least a couple of essays investigates the relationship between nature and the impulse of literature. The other essays raise issues of history and individualism in literature.

Indeed interdisciplinary studies is the need of the hour. The fundamental idea for interdisciplinarity derives from an evolutionary necessity; namely the need to confront and interpret complex systems. To put it simply this means that [a] the entities that we investigate within the environment of contemporary science are perceived to be more like organic or interrelated complexes. The entity that is studied [say like one from logistics, or psychiatry, or dietary cuisine, for examples] can no longer be analyzed in terms of an object of ‘biology’ or ‘chemistry’, but as a contending hierarchy of components which could be studied under the rubric of multiple or variable branches of knowledge. Thus for example a health insurance program involves a consideration of [economics] distribution of wealth, pharmacology, social behaviour, statistics, and probability. Any policy decision on implementation of a viable health care system will have to factor in knowledge from multiple disciplines. Human knowledge can no longer be classified in accordance with the academic compartmentalisations of even classical 19th century science.

Furthermore, processes of nature would have to be deciphered as a combinatorial operation of both scientific and emergent characteristic s. This is especially true of aesthetic reflexes which are a vital part of human behaviour. Singing, Darwin said, is an example of antiphonal harmony that originated in mating calls. A piece of communication—be it a dance performance or a visually textured painting—offers an entire range of acculturation.

Again the beauty of a piece –and frankly speaking – its complexity lies almost beyond the human capacity of reconstructive integration; any piece of art remains unique and unreduplicated in this sense.

The Humanities may be the only discipline outside the new ‘sciences’ that affords an opportunity for studying the most subtle or occluded forces that shape and retain stable forms of communal beliefs and rituals. The combined and orchestrated multi-functionalism of nature gives rise to such moments as those of memory, excitability, preference, suppression, and harmonization. The neuro- aesthetics of cultural expression are still unknown to us. First, there is hardly any consensus on the exact nature of human consciousness, let alone the entire range of deviant functions or multi-tasking that the brain is capable of. As far as aesthetics is concerned, we have to re-define the propensity for parallel perceptions, or what Aristotle unerringly called mimicry, which might help in explaining the capacity and /or competence in designing and short-routing experiences of ‘metaphor’ and allegorical images, or things like suggestivity and excitability [of emotions].

I am inclined to believe that the first steps in this direction could be taken through a fuller knowledge of pharmacological sciences and clinical anatomy, reflexology or discharge behaviour, learning, and sensitization through acts of communalisation.

Another interesting project that has to be undertaken is a study related to the conditions of experience we associate with such states as those of ‘god’ or ‘immortality’.

But there may be something irreducible in the components of experience, and therefore of knowledge itself which derives from the former. Either this, or the other position has to accepted. According to the anthropic principle there is no vantage point and that we are by nature not equipped to know, or gather total knowledge – however small or exclusive the domain may be. Perhaps the latter position is more modest and appropriate here. Unknowability is no safe haven—but a form of recognizing the complexity and paradigmatic failure of intuition.

Chief Editor

Tirtha Prasad Mukhopadhyay


Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities, Volume I, Number 2, Autumn 2009, PDF URL of the editorial: www.rupkatha.com/0102editorial.pdf, © www.rupkatha.com

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Amit Shankar Saha is a PhD researcher in English Literature at Calcutta University. He has previously published at Muse India, Humanicus, Cerebration, Families and various other journals.
E-mail: saha.amitshankar@gmail.com

 Anita Singh is Professor, Department of English, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, India. She received her doctorate in English on the doomed heroes in Arthur Miller’s plays from Banaras Hindu University in 1988. Vastly experienced as a teacher with 23 years of experience her areas of interests are American drama, Indian English fiction, Indian feminist theatre and feminist theories. She is widely published both as a critical and creative writer with a number of articles, translations, book reviews, and short stories in various journals, anthologies, and magazines. Her published works include: Arthur Miller: A Study of the Doomed Heroes in his Plays (1993), Indian English Novel in the Nineties and After: A Study of the Text and its Context (2004), And the Story Begins: My Ten Short Stories, (2007). She has actively participated and presented papers in many national and international seminar and conferences. Prof. Singh’s short story ‘The Wait’ won the ‘Special Commendation Award’ in ‘Muse India Fiction Contest’ for the year 2008.
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E-mail:  falam123@bangla.net, falam1951@yahoo.com

 Indranil Acharya is Senior Lecturer in the Department of English, Vidyasagar University. He obtained his Ph.D. on the poetry of W.B. Yeats and T.S. Eliot in 2004. He completed one UGC Research Project on Contemporary Australian Aboriginal Fiction in 2008. Prof. Acharya is at present the Deputy Coordinator of DRS-SAP project in the Department of English on the recuperation, documentation and translation of Oral and Folk literary materials of the South Bengal districts. He has widely published in diverse areas like Modern British Poetry, Translation Studies, Indian English Literature and Subaltern Literature. He is currently on the editorial board of the Journal of the department of English, Vidyasagar University.
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 Jonathan Highfield is Professor and Head of the Department of English at Rhode Island School of Design, USA. He did PhD on “Imagined Topographies of Liberation.” with a focus in 20th century multi-ethnic literatures, postcolonial literatures and the narratives of topography from the University of Iowa in 1995. He teaches a variety of courses on literature and culture in formerly colonized regions. He received Fulbright Award in 2001-2002 for his research on the effects of ecotourism on village economies in Ghana, where he taught at the University of Cape Coast. In 2009, he travelled to India to teach a short course titled “Narrative Flows: Waters of Faith, Identity, and Sustenance in Bengal”. He has been widely published in journals like The Jonestown Report, Kunapipi, The International Journal of Environmental, Cultural, Economic and Social Sustainability, and Antipodes. He co-edited with Kwadwo Opoku-Agyemang and Dora Edu Buandoh The State of the Art(s): African Studies and American Studies in Comparative Perspective.
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 Sajalkumar Bhattacharya is Selection Grade Lecturer in Ramakrishna Mission Residential College, Narendrapur (an autonomous college with a Postgraduate Department in English), Kolkata, West Bengal, India.  As a guest faculty, he teaches the Postgraduate students in MUC Women’s College (University of Burdwan), Bardhaman, West Bengal. His areas of interest include 19th century British Fiction, Post-Independence Indian Fiction in English and Bhasa Literature. He did his M.Phil on Thomas Hardy’s Fiction. He is pursuing PhD in the University of Burdwan, and he has been awarded a fellowship by the UGC for the research. He has published quite a few articles in reputed journals. In April 2004, he presented a paper ‘The Inspired Guru, the Mesmerised Leader and the Problems in Perception on Teaching Literature in Indian Classrooms’ in the 19th Oxford Conference on the Teaching of Literature, at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, UK.
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E-mail: somdevbanik12@yahoo.co.in

Soumitra Mandal is a young artist who loves  painting landscapes and drawing illustrations. He is studying English literature in the Vidyasagar University.  He has participated and won prizes in many cultural competitions.

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