Vol 13 No 3 2021

Transnational Spaces in Amitav Ghosh’s The Circle of Reason

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Ajay K. Chaubey

Assistant Professor (English) & Head, Dept. of Humanities and Social Sciences, National Institute of Technology, Uttarakhand, India. ORCID ID 0000-0002-6413-798. Email: kcajay79@gmail.com.

Volume 13, Number 3, 2021 I Full-Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n3.43

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Abstract

This essay maps the unmapped nuances of transnational/cultural spaces in Amitav Ghosh’s debut novel, The Circle of Reason (1986; 2008) which underscores the inter-territorial itinerary of Alu, the protagonist, who after being accused of being a terrorist, runs from Lalpukur, near Calcutta (now Kolkata) to Goa to Al-Ghazira, a fictional gulf-state and finally to Algeria. The novel, Bildungsroman in nature and thematic treatment, poignantly deals with James Clifford’s idea of ‘assimilation’ (of) / ‘travelling’ cultures, geo-political boundaries and hybridization of language. The rationale of the paper is to deconstruct the binaries—tradition and modernity; oriental and occidental cultures; and emigration and immigration, which are, to me, the themes of the narrative of the novel. Ghosh has dexterously intertwined the cultural matrix of different spaces in the novel to show how in this age of mobility, open economy and transnational migration, transcultural awareness is all to value.  This essay also traces the trajectory of mobility in the age of fluidity and underpins patterns of movement which affect cultural orientations, sensibilities, and, consequentially, creative expressions.

Keywords: Spatial shifting, Homi K Bhabha, James Clifford, and multiple identities.

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Semiotic Analysis of Petroglyph «Ancient Turks and the Mother Goddess Umay/Umai»

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Tatiev E.E.1, Yesim G.2, Sarkulova M.S.3, Mukataeva A. A.4 & Tatieva M. E.5

1Doctoral student at the Eurasian National University named after L. N. Gumilyov, St. Satpayev 2, Nur-Sultan, 010008, Republic of Kazakhstan E-mail: ertisuly82@mail.ru https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6368-1251

2Doctor of Philosophy, Professor of the Eurasian National University named after L. N. Gumilyov, St. Satpayev 2, Nur-Sultan, 010008, Republic of Kazakhstan Email: garifollaesim@mail.ru https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4001-9235

3Candidate of Philosophical Sciences, Associate Professor of the Eurasian National University. L. N. Gumilyov, St. Satpayev 2, Nur-Sultan, 010008, Republic of Kazakhstan Email: manifa.s@mail.ru https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5992-2814

4Candidate of Philosophical Sciences, Associate Professor of the “Shakarim Semey University”, St. Glinka, 20 “a”, Semey, 071412, Republic of Kazakhstan Email: aizat720804@mail.ru https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9046-9256

5Master of the “ShakarimSemey University”, st. Glinka, 20 “a”, Semey, 071412, Republic of Kazakhstan Email: tatieva_me@mail.ru https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2365-8123

Volume 13, Number 3, 2021 I Full-Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n3.42

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The study of historical artifacts from a scientific point of view is acknowledged in the literature. A clear understanding of our historical roots is connected with the study of cultural heritage from empirical and especially quantitative bases of research already done by scholars like Rudenko (1927) and Gavrilova (1965). Yet, another important method of studying historical material objects is semiotic analysis, which allow studying prehistorical visual culture artifacts as a system of signs, which may be deciphered, and related to deducible meaning and sense in the context of ethnographic, cultural and specifically semiotic references which bear on location, identification and understanding of such material. Our research in this article is dedicated to a study of certain visual material artifacts from the geographical region of the Eastern Altai. In particular, we study petroglyphs on a boulder that was discovered during the excavations of the Kudyrge burial ground near the Chulyshman River, which according to some sources belong to the Turkic culture of the early period, and have recently begun to arouse the interest of scientists. Various empirical methods have been used to explore the stone monument (statue) called “Kudyrginsky plot”. Some of the techniques as those of pioneering research scholars like Rudenko and Gavrilova, include archaeological, historical, historical-chronological, historical-comparativemethods, as well as approaches including analysis and synthesis of the obtained data. In turn we supplement the existing methodological approaches with a semiotic-ethnographic analysis of the information available on the “Kudyrginsky plot”. We argue that semiotic analysis of ancient artifacts, following methods established by Reday (2019) and Martel (2020), can offer adequate information for the understanding of a rich historical heritage sight like the Kudyrginskyplot.

Keywords: Altai, Central Asia, Petroglyph, Semiotics, Tengri, Visual Artifact Augmentation

By Me Shall He Be Nursed! Queer Identity and Representation in The Mahabharata

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Seema Sinha1 & Kumar Sankar Bhattacharya2

1Ph. D from BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus, Rajasthan. Email: p2015101@pilani.bits-pilani.ac.in

2Associate Professor in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus, Rajasthan. Email: kumar.bhattacharya@pilani.bits-pilani.ac.in

Volume 13, Number 3, 2021 I Full-Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n3.36

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The Mahabharata is a treasure-trove of the cultural memories of the Hindus. The grand Epic has entertained and edified our society through its numerous identity-relevant narratives since time immemorial. The longevity of The Mahabharata lies in its capacity to adapt, adopt and re-fashion the account, which grants endless opportunities of initiating open-ended debate. The grand Epic has shaped our values and shared a template by which a life guided by Dharma is to be lived. The dialogic text continues to contribute to the resolution of our emotional angst and existential dilemmas. Much ahead of its times, the Epic revels in the liminality that is apparent in the narratives of the gender-queer people who are an integral part of its culture-scape. This paper seeks to study two liminal figures in the Epic narrative – Shikhandi, the trans-gender Prince of Panchala, and Yuvanashwa, the pregnant King, who swayed between gendered identities and challenged the hegemonic heteronormative sexual framework, thereby opening avenues of conversation related to marginalization, resistance and empowerment. The paper also examines the queer cases of King Sudyumna and King Bhangashwan, who questioned the symbolic binaries of gender and delineated a horizon of possibilities. The aim here is to measure the resistance of the genderqueer against the prescriptive order of subjectivities and assess the impact and the outcome. Drawing from the deconstructivist and the queer theories, the study foregrounds the trauma and the resistance of the marginal. These narratives establish The Mahabharata as one of the earliest texts to have a meaningful discourse in the queer-space.

 Keywords: Genderqueer, cultural memories, liminal, hegemonic, heteronormative, trauma, resistance

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Atypical Athletic Corporeality and Clinical Embodied Deviance: A Case Study of Dutee Chand

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Isha Malhotra1& Raj Thakur2

1Assistant Professor and Head in the School of Languages and Literature, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at Shri Mata Vaishno Devi University, UT of J&K, India. Email: isha.malhotra@smvdu.ac.in

2Assistant Professor in the Department of English at Central University of Jammu, UT of J&K, India. Email: raj.eng@cujammu.ac.in

 Volume 13, Number 3, 2021 I Full-Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n3.41

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The paper outlines the politics of gendered athleticism appropriated and instrumentalised through the medico-juridical apparatus of the sports governing bodies.  The biomedical discourse governing the atypical athletic body and the embodied nature of its pathologised deviancy is drawn through the critical reflection of athletic regulatory bodies’ testing regimes and policies. It is through the detailed analysis of the Indian sprinter Dutee Chand’s case that one of many confounding disqualification charges and trials of hyperandrogenism against athletes with differences of sex development (DSD’s) is foregrounded. Drawing on the critical scholarship of gender theorists and activists, the legitimacy of the stipulated biological mechanism of testosterone as a regulatory performance index in female elite sport is contested and problematized. Pertinent here is Dutee Chand’s narrative of trial and triumph that destabilises the reductive embodiments of sex institutionalised in and beyond the sporting track.  Significantly, the paper also delineates the premises of the constitutive exclusionary and arbitrary regulatory regimes propounded by the athletic governing bodies like the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) and the International Olympic Committee (IOC). These concerns border on the geopolitics of race and nation framing the normative, prescriptive and reserved rights of femininity, able-bodiedness and heteronormativity in international women’s elite sport.

Keywords: DSDs, sport, gender, medicine, sex testing, regulation, heteronormativity

Gay Subculture and the Cities in India: A Critical Reading of Select Works of R Raj Rao

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Sriya Das

PhD Scholar, Humanities and Social Sciences Department, IIT Kharagpur, West Bengal, India, sriya1312@kgpian.iitkgp.ac.in, https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9530-7296

 Volume 13, Number 3, 2021 I Full-Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n3.40

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In delineating the painful experiences of LGBTQ individuals after the introduction of Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code R Raj Rao’s works look into the struggle of these people to survive the onslaught of normative sexual discourses. Given the fact that Queer sexuality has been continuously questioned, suspected and tormented prior to its legitimate recognition in 2018, Rao draws attention to the nuances of gay urban life in India. The paper critically analyses the representation of gay subculture in the cities of India as reflected in select works of Rao. It demystifies how gay people share the urban space, manage to make room for their pleasure in the cities, and pose a threat to the dominant understanding of sexuality. The ultimate objective of this paper is to understand the role of the city in the (un)making of a subcultural identity. Textual analysis, with reference to certain theoretical frameworks, would be used as a qualitative research method.

 Keywords: Sexuality, subculture, city, normativity, resistance

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Gender Subtexts in Collusive Linkages between Bhadralok Ethos and Colonial Law in Select Daroga Daptor Narratives

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Tapti Roy

PhD Research Scholar, Department of English, Jamia Millia Islamia. ORCID Id: 0000-0001-9354-1882. Email: subterraneanhominin@gmail.com

 Volume 13, Number 3, 2021 I Full-Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n3.39

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Crime writings can be said to have originated in Bengal in the last decades of the 19th century with the emergence of narratives of seemingly true criminal investigations compiled by real-life darogas like Girish Chandra Bose, Priyanath Mukhopadhyay, and Bakaullah. These non-canonical accounts though rendered in simplistic narrative techniques to report cases that may appear inconsequential to present-day readership not only set the field for more complex fictional works of criminal investigation but also laid the foundations of a new genre of vernacular popular fiction favoured till date. It can be mentioned here that the criminal investigation accounts of Priyanath Mukhopadhyay were serialised as Daroga Daptor for a significant span of a decade which owing to its elements of thrill, mystery, and instruction were immensely coveted by the readers. The significance of the Daroga Daptor narratives for the purpose of the paper however lies in its reflections of the contemporary socio-legal setup comprised of responses towards sexual mores, socio-ethical strictures, and gender positions. In this context, the objective of the paper is to analyse select narratives of Daroga Daptor with females as victims or accused, namely the novel Adarini and the short story “Promoda”. Initiating the process with an overview of the office of the daroga emphasising on the popular associations of daroga with sloth and corruption, the paper will note the manner in which Daroga Daptor marked a paradigm shift in the popular imagination with regards to the intellectual abilities and sensibilities of daroga. Proceeding with the analysis of the aforesaid narratives, the paper by emphasising the 19th-century gender roles with respect to hypermasculine bhadralok norms and tenets of colonial law will situate the women characters as existing in an ambiguous position within the colluding grounds of the two apparently opposite masculine factions. The paper thus will establish the 19th-century native female body as a passive pliable vessel for various ideological experimentations reading them as perpetually incarcerated within the dynamic limits of an efficient, promptly adaptive, and multifariously hegemonic masculine order.

Keywords: 19th century Bengal, Gender relations, Daroga Daptor, Crime Writing, Bhadralok, Priyanath Mukhopadhyay

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Relocating Colonial Women in Resistance: An Interpretation of Rabindranath Tagore’s Nastanirh and Chaturanga

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T. K. Krishnapriya1, Dr Padma Rani2, Dr Bashabi Fraser3

1Junior Research Fellow (UGC), Manipal Institute of Communication, Manipal Academy of Higher Education, Manipal, India; Email: krishnapriya.t1@learner.manipal.edu; ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5795-1275

2Director & Professor, Manipal Institute of Communication, Manipal Academy of Higher Education, Manipal, India; Email: padma.rani@manipal.edu

3Professor Emerita of English and Creative Writing, Director, Scottish Centre of Tagore Studies (ScoTs), School of Arts & Creative Industries, Edinburgh Napier University, Edinburgh; Email: bashabifraserwriter@gmail.com

 Volume 13, Number 3, 2021 I Full-Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n3.38

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Abstract

The Colonial Bengal of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries was a place of contradictions. For instance, despite certain evident advancements in the resolution of the women’s question, some of the emancipatory attempts of the period marked a rather dubious account of women’s liberation as patriarchal underpinnings hegemonized the efforts.  Amid this complex backdrop, the colonial women’s position is further jeopardized by the western feminist scholarship that contrives colonial third world women as perennial victims and beneficiaries of emancipatory actions from the West. The paper attempts to relocate the colonial women and their resistance by negotiating the fissures in their construction. This study, informed by bell hooks’ (1990) postulations on margin and resistance, simultaneously seeks to form a bridge between the experiences of marginalized women beyond borders. Rabindranath Tagore’s Nastanirh (1901) and Chaturanga (1916) are chosen for close textual reading to examine the experiences of colonial women.  The author’s women protagonists often embody the social dilemma of the period. Tagore’s Damini and Charu exist in the margin of resistance whilst Nanibala occupies the margin of deprivation.  Significantly, Charu and Damini traverse the precarious “profound edges” of the margin to imagine a “new world” free of subjugation. Thus, the resistance offered by these women subverts the predominant conceptions of victimhood of colonial women, and it enables them to be posited as active agents.

Keywords: Tagore, hooks, Colonial Bengal, Resistance, Agency

 

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Bimala in Ghare-Baire: Tagore’s New Woman Relocating the “World in Her Home”

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Ayanita Banerjee (Ph.D)

Professor-English, University of Engineering and Management, New-Town, Kolkata. West Bengal. Email: abayanita8@gmail.com

 Volume 13, Number 3, 2021 I Full-Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n3.37

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 Abstract

The character of Bimala in Tagore’s Ghare- Baire or The Home and the World as a symbol of struggle for the liberation of Bengali woman as well as Bengal remains at the centre of scholarly discussion since the publication (1916), translation (1919) and the film adaptation (1984) of the novel. Bimala, the main protagonist of the novel is presented as a native Indian woman who gets western education and lives a modern lifestyle due to her marriage. She has conflicting attitudes, feelings and thoughts which recur randomly in the narrative. The paper focusses on the character of Bimala and interrogates the location of her agency with respect to the rising Swadeshi movement and the political excesses on one hand and her relationship with Nikhil and Sandip on the other. On a further note, reflecting on the political and epic underpinnings of Bimala (caught between the gradual and the radical approach to Swadeshi), the paper intends to stretch beyond her “situation” (the apex of the triangular relationship) and explore her self-realization at the end of the novel. Bimala, the woman set between the option of choices between the ‘motherland’ and the ‘two-men’ gradually transgress from the shackles of her naïve identity to become the beset New Woman. To explore Tagore’s rewritten epic of a woman (epitomized in real life as the New Woman), we need to discuss how the writer helped shaping the image of the New Woman through his conscious evoking of Bimala in the role of Sita, Nikhil in the role of Rama and Sandip in the role of Ravana. In response to the popular inscriptions of Bharatmata, Tagore allegorises the iconographic representation of Bimala resembling the “divine feminine strength (Shakti)for creation and (Kali) for the cause of destruction.” (Pandit 1995,217-19).

 Keywords: Zenana, Epic battle, (Re)location, Bharatmata, New-Woman.

Who Remembers those “Undocumented Minors”? Locating the Genealogy of the Oppressed in Valeria Luiselli’s Tell Me How It Ends

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Indrajit Mukherjee

Assistant Professor, Dept. of English, Nistarini Women’s College, Research Scholar, Vidyasagar University. Email ID: perfectindrajit.mukherjee@gmail.com

 Volume 13, Number 3, 2021 I Full-Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n3.35

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We can always look upon the intersection of history and events as an exciting façade, full of deceptions, half-baked truths, and awkward reconciliations in the framework of cultural studies. The Mexican author Valeria Luiselli’s Tell Me How It Ends (2017) attempts to trace the evolution of a set of social, political, and cultural circumstances that are pregnant with significance in the traumatic past of millions of Latin-American children refugees in the United States. First, the article will unpack how Luiselli’s impalpable domain tries to connect the unresolved experiences of the violent wounds of those children’s deportation and dislocation from Guatemala, Honduras, and Mexico with their unfortunate encounters in the foreign land. Second, it will attempt to dismantle, disrupt, and deconstruct the construction of America as a heteroglossic space around the challenges of those displaced children by displaying some questions addressed to them at the immigrant court. Finally, the proposed paper will critically scrutinise how this non-fictional work follows the creeping imperialist approaches of the United States through the hazes of childhood recollections, making a heartfelt appeal to everyone to halt discrimination, racial hatred, and poisonous ignorance. Applying Agamben’s idea of the homo sacer, such a study will bring to the fore the dialectics of postcoloniality in the United States, where undocumented children’s claims to identity formation and self-determination processes would be at odds with the more comprehensive national identity in contemporary times.

Keywords: History, Refugees, Heteroglossic, Imperialist, Homo Sacer, Identity.

Refugees from South Asian Islamic States at the footsteps of Global North: Reading Moshin Hamid’s Exit West as an Anticipation of Postnational Future

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Minakshi Paul

Assistant Professor of English, Kandra Radhakanta Kundu Mahavidyalaya. Email: mp951204@gmail.com

 Volume 13, Number 3, 2021 I Full-Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n3.34

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 One of the essential aspects which have been perpetually constituting and reconstituting the tumultuous geopolitical space of South Asia is its interface with the Global North. An inherent element of this interface materializes in terms of the rapidly escalating proportion of the displaced population from the Islamic South Asian and Central Asian countries afflicted with intense political tensions seeking shelter in the Global North regenerating the ground for the imperialist exclusionary politics in a newer manifestation. Considering the tensional position of the Islamic communities in global politics, British-Pakistani writer Moshin Hamid’s novel Exit West (2017) provides a platform for exploring the plight of the refugees from Islamic states of South Asia in the fortress regime of Global North who are denied being assimilated either in their home state in Global South or in the host countries of the Global North thus problematizing their political status. Corroborating Giorgio Agamben’s dismissal of national borders, Hamid deploys the trope of magical doors in his novel that instantaneously delivers the protagonists to different nations rendering the geopolitical borders meaningless. As the concerned conference aspires to obviate the thick smog of western critical theories which fail to address the local issues and local cultural experience, the present paper in this context examines the novel as an aesthetic and poetical account of the hostility and resentment of the indigenous population and assimilated citizenry towards the refugees, the primal loss of their psychic experience of ‘home’ challenging the ‘ethnonationalism’ and the right-wing populism of the western nations invoking the readers to acknowledge the truth of ‘Postnationalism’. This paper thus attempts to diagnose the methods of negotiating the tensional correspondence between Global North and Global South on account of these refugees with contested political and social identities imploring the readers to reexamine the gaps in the complacent, coherent identity of South Asia as a geopolitical unit.

Keywords: South Asia, Refugee, Postnationalism, citizenship, Global North

 

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