Vol 13 No 3 2021 - Page 2

The Duality of Arab Israeli Identity and the Politics of Survival in Sayed Kashua’s Let it Be Morning

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Neha Soman1, V. Suganya2 & Dr. B. Padmanabhan3

1ICSSR Doctoral Fellow, Department of English, Bharathiar University, neha.efl@buc.edu.in,  https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3900-3607O

2Research Scholar (PhD), Department of English, Bharathiar University, suganya.efl@buc.edu.in, https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0989-2653

3Assistant Professor, Department of English, Bharathiar University, padmanabhan@buc.edu.in, https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7395-126X

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

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n3.33

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This essay closely reads the Arab Israeli author Sayed Kashua’s Let It Be Morning to construe the complex survival trajectories of the Arab minority in Israel’s plural society. Kashua discusses the relentless struggles of Arab Israelis, caught in-between their social identification with Israeli citizenship and Palestinian nationalism. The novel captures the subjective and collective consequences of Israel’s ethnic democracy on the Arab community and demonstrates the social patterns in which Arab Israelis perceive, experience, and respond to systematic social segregation. This essay, through its interpretation of Arab Israeli experiences, manifested in the novel explores the conflict of contested minority identities through the Saidian discourse of orientalism and Anderson’s imagined communities. The nature of intra-communal rivalry among the minority groups for survival is also of interest to this study as the narrative locates the behavioural changes observed within the Arab community due to the negative environmental circumstances. The study also posits the sociological aspects of reinforcement theories to construe human behaviour in politically challenging environments.

Keywords: Israel, Arabs, Communal living, Reinforcement, Survival, Behaviour, Coexistence

Indigenous “People” in the context of the Right to Self Determination: A Critical Appraisal

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Mitul Dutta1 & Navin Sinha2
1Asst. Professor, School of Law, KIIT University, KIIT University, Bhubaneshwar, Orisha. ORCID id- https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6800-8469. Email: mituldutta@kls.ac.in.

2Asst. Professor, School of Business and Law, Navrachna University, Navrachna University, Vadodara, Gujarat. ORCID id- https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3086-3504. Email: navins@nuv.ac.in.

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

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n3.32

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Under the international human rights regime, the right to self-determination is a right guaranteed to the groups of “people”. This right is one of the most controversial issues of international law as it comes into conflict with the principle of sovereignty and territorial integrity of the states. There are various uncertainties associated with this right regarding the scope of the right and mode of implementation etc. The present article seeks to make an in-depth analysis of the claimants of the right and the uncertainties associated with the meaning of the term “people” in the context of the right to self-determination. The article encompasses, among other things, the right of indigenous people under various international instruments and how they interrelate to the right of self-determination.

Keywords: Right to self-determination, people, indigenous people.

 

Abstract Knowledge, Embodied Experience: Towards a Literary Fieldwork in the Humanities

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Nobonita Rakshit1 & Rashmi Gaur2

1Doctoral Student, Department of Humanities & Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee, Roorkee, India. nrakshit@hs.iitr.ac.in, https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8584-862X

2Professor, Department of Humanities & Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee, Roorkee, India, rashmi.gaur@hs.iitr.ac.in

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

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n3.31

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The paper attempts to read the representation and (re)creation of Sundarbans into the narrative structure of the three works of Amitav Ghosh- The Hungry Tide (2004), Gun Island (2019), and Jungle Nama: A Story of the Sundarban (2021) through the idea of ‘literary fieldwork’ that the paper develops by putting these literary narratives in conversation with the fieldwork narratives. Drawing from Puri and Castillo’s (2016) concept of “humanities fieldwork” and Ghosh’s (2016) idea of sensuous recognition and identifying the literary texts as primary data for fieldwork, the paper brings home a new reading practice which here qualifies not only the role of Ghosh, the literary ethnographer but also the natives of Sundarbans who narrate their own testimonies of the place and their politics of survival. Their embodied experiences of Sundarbans are embedded with the author’s literary experiments in the texts to advance the place of fieldwork in literary studies and redefine the ideas of fieldwork in the humanities in general. In other words, the paper dwells upon the author’s creative response in portraying the difference between the abstract knowledge of the Sundarbans and the embodied experience of the place that offers literary fieldwork within which it accommodates the points of view of the author, the natives, and the readers and thus, changes the conventional practices of perceiving fieldwork in humanities.

Keywords: Sundarbans, literary fieldwork, humanities fieldwork, sensuous recognition, literary ethnography.

 

 

Resistances to Autobiography: The Indian Experiment with life-writing

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Sanghamitra Sadhu

PhD, Assistant Professor, Department of English, Cotton University, Guwahati, Assam & Former Fellow at Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla. Email: sadhusanghamitra@gmail.com

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

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n3.30

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The article underlines that the epistemology of the self and the practice of life-writing in India marks a departure from the Western conventions and modes of expression. Although there are resistances to autobiography from the Western theoretical standpoint, the genre meets with a twofold resistance in postcolonial milieu in its negotiation with the Indian metaphysics of self. Autobiography in decolonising India negotiates complex pathways between an ardent adherence to Indian epistemology and a potent resistance to the Western modes of writing the self. In a framework to understand the phenomenon of resistance implicit in autobiography in general and the internal resistances to autobiography manifest in the genre during decolonisation in particular, the article argues that such resistances within the genre have redefined the very idea of the self in writing, generated a nuanced notion of the self in narration, as well as challenged the process of writing the self in decolonisation.

Keywords: autobiography, postcolonial life-writing, hybridity, decentering, decolonisation, India

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Reconceptualization of National Spaces: A Close Reading of Bharati Mukherjee’s selected novels with Gloria Anzaldúa´s Nueva Conciencia Mestiza

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Shilpi Gupta

University of Granada, Spain, shilpigupta.jnu@gmail.com, shilpigupta@correo.ugr.es. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6786-6656

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

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n3.29

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In 1997, Bharati Mukherjee, a renowned diaspora woman writer, stated in an interview, “I am an American, not an Asian American.” Since then, she has been virulently attacked for defining herself as an American by the writers of her original homeland and her diaspora compatriots. However, with this statement, Mukherjee challenged the diaspora writing and took a solid move to redefine the diaspora through her life and novels. Her novels also considered her autobiographical notes, demonstrate a new diaspora identity that is fluid and transforming. Her latest diaspora writing has challenged the quintessential diaspora identity, gender structure, definition of home, and host land. The paper will do a close reading of her four novels, The Tiger’s Daughters (1971), wife (1975), Jasmine (1989), and Desirable Daughters (2002), to see the transition from being a Bengali Indian expatriate in Canada, Asian American to American Immigrant. In the paper, her four novels are divided into two phases- expatriate and immigrant, which show different writing styles, different psychology behind the narration, and transition in her definition of the nation. This discussion will employ the theory of Nueva Conciencia Mestiza given by Gloria Anzaldúa to comprehend the reconceptualization of national spaces from the perspective of diaspora women.

Keywords: Bharati Mukherjee, Diaspora woman, Nation, Nueva Conciencia Mestiza

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Carnivalesque, Liminality and Social Drama: Characterising the Anti-Structural Potential of Theyyam

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Raisun Mathew1 & Dr Digvijay Pandya2

1Doctoral Research Scholar, Department of English, Lovely Professional University, Punjab, India, Email: raisunmathew@gmail.com, orcid.org/0000-0003-3427-0941

2Associate Professor and Research Supervisor, Department of English, Lovely Professional University, Punjab, India, Email: digvijay.24354@lpu.co.in, orcid.org/0000-0002-5985-9579

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

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n3.28

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The cultural and ritual performance of Theyyam in Northern Kerala, considered as a reflection of the war cry against the caste system and oppression, conducts subversion of the social hierarchy. The chosen deity by the performer for a transitory symbolisation expresses the collective outrage of the oppressed and exploited people. This research paper enquires about the anti-structural characteristics exhibited by the performance of Theyyam. In the context of Richard Schechner’s performance theory, it attempts to trace the characterisation of Mikhail Bakhtin’s carnivalesque, Victor Turner’s liminality and social drama in the transitional performance of Theyyam that mostly relies on interim separation and reintegration. The expression of antipathy to the hierarchy in Bakhtinian carnival, the anti-structural emphasis in Turnarian liminality, and the deconstructive-reconstructive stages in social drama elucidate the symbolic delineation of the performance of Theyyam. The analytical findings of the paper derived from the discussion of the three concepts reveal that the performance of Theyyam is rooted in its anti-structural characteristics. The performer is subject to continuous alteration in the identity that intermediates the idiosyncrasy between the deity and the human being. It symbolises the temporal transition from the oppressed to the equivalent status of the dominator that occurs as part of counter-culture, through status reversal and inversion.

Keywords: carnivalesque, liminality, performance studies, social drama, Theyyam.

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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

Cosplay Phenomenon: Archaic Forms and Updated Meanings

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Tatiana V. Pushkareva1 & Darya V. Agaltsova2

1Candidate of Philosophy, Associate Professor of the Department of Design and Architecture Synergy University, Moscow, Russia. ORCID: 0000-0002-9139-6121. E-mail: ap-bib@yandex.ru

2Candidate of Pedagogy, Associate Professor of English Language Training and Professional Communication Department, Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation, Moscow, Russia. ORCID: 0000-0001-8892-2437. E-mail: darya_agaltsova@mail.ru

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

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n3.26

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Cosplay is considered as a modern mass practice of copying and public demonstration of the costume, image and behavior of famous heroes in the mass culture: heroes of movies, cartoons, comics, video games within the framework of festivals, processions, activities of clubs of the corresponding subject. The empirical material for the study was observations, publications in specialized mass media, recordings of Russian and foreign electronic broadcasts of cosplay events, interviews with Russian cosplayers. The article provides a cultural and historical analysis of cosplay, on the basis of which it is concluded that the archaic cultural forms of totemic primitive holidays, medieval carnival, and the first forms of theater are reproduced in cosplay. Traditional cultural forms in cosplay are endowed with new cultural meanings, among which are the game principal development in culture, the implementation of special mechanisms of young people socialization through individual and collective forms of identification and imitation of famous characters, creative development of screen culture characters. In cosplay, there is a partial revitalization of archaic cultural forms, such as zoo-mystery, carnival, the first forms of theater. The conclusion is made about the role of cosplay in the development of the visual language of modernity, «de-virtualization» of the mass culture images and the development of the «instinct of theatricality» in a modern person. Cosplay in Russia demonstrates a wider thematic repertoire than cosplay in the USA and Japan: it includes not only images of American films, video games, comics, Japanese manga and anime, but also images of Soviet animation, which paradoxically are capable of direct competition with modern products of mass culture and art.

 Keywords: archaic, cultural forms, cultural meanings, theater, youth, game industry, subculture, mass culture, cosplay, middle culture.

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Postcolonial Aesthetics and Sensuous Geographies in Aruni Kashyap’s The House with a Thousand Stories

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Ivy Roy Sarkar1 & Rashmi Gaur2

1Doctoral Student, Dept. of Humanities & Social Science, Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee, India. First Author & Corresponding Author. Email: Ivy.vns.2013@gmail.com, isarkar@hs.iitr.ac.in. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6558-3743

2Professor, Dept. of Humanities & Social Science, Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee, India. Email: rgaurfhs@iitr.ac.in

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

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n3.25

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The place is fundamental to our existence; it conforms to the phenomenology of being in the world as we always occupy a place “if not with our minds, then always with our bodies”, to quote Moslund. The role of the senses in knowing the geographies of our existence, form a kind of structuring of space and defining of place. To understand the construction of sensorial-socio-cultural space of Assam at the time of extrajudicial killings that produces a ‘sense of fear’ jeopardizing the everyday negotiations of people inhabit the exceptional zones, this paper takes into account Aruni Kashyap’s debut novel The House with Thousand Stories (2013) that set in Hatimura village of Mayong area and deals with alternate retellings of micro-historical account of Assamese people. The paper dwells upon the artist’s creative response to the Agambenian ‘bare life’ that he associates with ‘bare’ or ‘pure senses’ to cultivate the idea of sensuousness of geography produced through the life stories of people and the interactions between human and non-human beings. Like Manipuri mother’s Naked March in front of Kangla Fort and Irom Sharmila’s sixteen years-long hunger strike that can be looked at as the metaphor for staging the ‘bare life’ against the body polity of the state, the sensual dimension of the geographic experience of Pablo, the narrator of the novel, in the village helps to understand the spaces of difference in the time of conflict.

Key Words: Peripheral Aesthetics, Sensuous Geography, Secret Killings, Embodied Experience, Assamese Literature in English

The Metamorphosis of a Female Subject into a Gendered subject: A Study of Easterine Iralu’s A Terrible Matriarchy

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Bompi Riba1 and Karngam Nyori2
1Assistant Professor, Department of English, Rajiv Gandhi University, Arunachal Pradesh, Pin-791112, ORCID id: 0000-0002-0341-2348. E-mail:  bompi.riba@rgu.ac.in

2Ph.D Research Scholar, Department of English, Rajiv Gandhi University, Arunachal Pradesh, Pin-791112, ORCID id: 000-0002-3477-141.  Email: nkarngam@yahoo.com

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

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n3.24

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It is a universally practised phenomenon across society to conveniently create a dichotomy that is based on the physiological difference between a male and a female. This difference is further defined by the dichotomy of gendered roles and labour that are imposed on them. The hegemony of the gendered ideology makes it all so natural to assign gendered role to a baby the moment it is born. Its body serves as a continuing signifier for the gendered structure of a patriarchal society. Since these gendered ideologies are disseminated through established institutions such as education, religion and law; their manifestations can be found in culture, religion, clothes, discourse, movies, and even in gestures that this polarity between a man and a woman is accepted as natural. There still is no general consent among the cultural anthropologists that an unambiguous matriarchal society existed. Classical scholars like Johann Jakob Bachofen tried to argue that matriarchal society existed on the basis of unreliable historical sources such as Iliad and Odyssey (Bamberger, p.263). Easterine Iralu’s A Terrible Matriarchy intrigues the reader with this highly deceptive title that ironically bares the patriarchy of contemporary Naga society. However, if these reasons are taken into account that Feminism is all about equality and that matriarchy is the flip side of patriarchy with all its horrors; then she is not far from the truth in prefixing “terrible” to “matriarchy”. This article is an attempt to familiarize the milieu of a quintessential Naga girl and her resistance to the anxious process of self-denial imposed upon her by her grandmother who embodies the concept of ‘terrible matriarchy’. The article also concentrates on the typical mechanism of gender construction and how such mechanisms are responsible for metamorphosing a female subject into a gendered subject.

Key words: Angami-Naga society, female subject, gendered subject, matriarchy, patriarchy

Inscribing the Migratory History of Tea Plantation Labours of Assam: A Journey from Ignorance to Experience

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Pradip Barman

PhD, Deptt. of History, Rangapara College, Rangapara, Sonitpur, Assam. ORCID Id: 0000-0002-5125-918. Email: adipta2013@gmail.com

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

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n3.23

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The tea garden labours of Assam have an absorbing history of their own. They were imported to Assam from various parts of Bengal, United Province, Central Province, Madras, etc. At the time when they were facing economic hardships in their day-to-day life, the agents of the tea planters of Assam visited those areas and tempted them with plenty of facilities and economic incentives. Believing the false promises of these dishonest agents, these innocent people decided to follow them to get relief from economic deprivation and reached Assam. Thus, the process of importation of labour into Assam started and gradually their number was increasing year by year. But as soon as they left their native place, they met with adversity and it was increasing day by day. On their way to Assam also, many of them died of various diseases and eventually when they arrived in Assam, they were subjected to inhumane conditions. No one was known to them and unhealthy food and unhygienic habitation added further misery. On many occasions, they were even physically assaulted which increased their mental instability. Despite this, they gradually adopted themselves in Assam and started to treat Assam as their land. Now, the tea garden labour community of Assam is a part and parcel of Assamese society and in politics also they have been performing a major role.

 Keywords: Migration, Labour, Tea, Importation, Misery

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