Vol 8 No 3 - Page 2

The Convulsive Beauty of Cosmic Being: Where Science, Spirituality, and Poetry Collide

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Michael Wayne Friedman

MFA in Creative Writing from Queens University of Charlotte. ORCID: Orchid.org/0000-0001-9759-4498. Email: michaelwaynefriedman@gmail.com

Volume 8, Number 3, 2016 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v8n3.10

Received May 22, 2016; Revised July 10, 2016; Accepted July 10, 2016; Published August 18, 2016

Abstract

Gerard Manley Hopkins saw intense spiritual connections with nature and was able to integrate these connections into his work. Modernist poets were fascinated by, and often times appalled by, quantum theories about the building blocks of the universe. Their main goal was to create poetry that was grounded, present, and unadulterated by imprecise romantic notions. In distilling language down to its smallest units of meaning, either particulate images or wave?like structures devoid of subjects and objects, Modernists discovered that the objective correlative could only be achieved with a mixture of both forms (Albright, 1997). Contemporary poet Andrew Joron shares the multidimensional view of the Modernists and the intense spiritual connections of Hopkins, and describes such transitional awakenings as a “convulsive beauty of cosmic being” (Joron, 2008). This article explores the ways poets have used science and nature to infuse energy into their work.

Keywords: poetry, quantum physics, quantum poetics, science, spirituality

Prospects of Further Evolution of Culturology

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Anna Iosifovna S?herbakova1, Larisa Sergeevna Zorilova2, Natalia Ivanovna Anufrieva3, Alexander Vladlenovich Kamenets4 & Elizaveta Olegovna Zinchenko5

1Professor, Dean of the Faculty of Arts and socio-cultural activities, Head of the Department of Sociology and Philosophy of Culture Russian State Social University, Moscow, Russia. 2Professor, by Dean of Faculty of Musical Arts has, Moscow State Institute, of Culture. Email: zorilova@mail.ru. 3,4,5Russian state social university, Moscow, Russia

Volume 8, Number 3, 2016 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v8n3.11

Received May 22, 2016; Revised July 10, 2016; Accepted July 10, 2016; Published August 18, 2016

Abstract

The article deals with the definition of subject matter and scientific status of culturology. It provides comparative analysis of cultural studies at home and abroad and traces back scientific evolution of culturology as well as of sociocultural anthropology which is a more broadly used notion in foreign studies. Highlighting the main modern doctrines and historical theoretic foundations of culture studies the paper focuses on contribution of Leslie White who articulated key research problems of culturology. His innovative conception of cultural science and its further evolution was later embraced by Russian school of culturology. Recognizing high potential of Russian national culture as substance for further cultural studies the article outlines potential ways of formation of culturology in Russia and tries to find its place in the global context while maintaining traditions of studying culture as a social phenomenon. Cultural values, its spiritual and moral foundations which appear to be ignored by related social sciences are put forward as one of the main research subjects. Analysis of differences in Russian and Western approaches to substance and essence of cultural studies stresses the need to specify scientific perception of culturology by modern scholars.

Key words: culture, science, spirituality, sociocultural anthropology, subject, subject matter, society, positivism, values, mentality, methodology.

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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

Freud’s Imaginative Work: Moses and Monotheism and the Non-European Other

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Jeremy De Chavez

Associate Professor, Vice Chair, Department of Literature, College of Liberal Arts, De La Salle University, Manila, Philippines. ORCID: Orchid.org/0000-0003-0320-372X. Email: jeremy.dechavez@dlsu.edu.ph

 Volume 8, Number 3, 2016 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v8n3.12

Received April 13, 2016; Revised July 01, 2016; Accepted July 07, 2016; Published August 18, 2016

Abstract

This essay tracks and maps out the ideas that informed the writing of Sigmund Freud’s final opus, the highly speculative and putatively historical text Moses and Monotheism. Contrary to interpretations of Moses and Monotheism as a work that critiques Jewishness as it outlines Freud’s theories on culture and religion, this essay suggests that Freud, in fact, attempts to defend Judaism by isolating what he believes is its quality that attracts hate—its monotheism—and by then ascribing that quality to the non-European other. In Freud’s work the non-European other is an exploitable resource that Freud uses to support and corroborate his theories with little concern at arriving at a genuine understanding of those cultures. Freud’s imaginative reconfiguration of the non-European other for his own purposes, what this essay refers to as his imaginative work, animates much of his writings on culture and as this essay suggests, results from Freud’s uneasy understanding of his own Jewish origins.

Keywords: Freud, Moses and Monotheism, Said, Totem and Taboo

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The Double Position of Waiting for Godot

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Ali Taghizadeh1 & Gholamhossein Mahmoud Soltani2

 1Assistant Professor at the English Department of Razi University of Kermanshah, Iran.ORCID: Orchid.org/0000-0003-3820-1468. Email: altaghee@zedat.fu-berlin.de. 2PhD Candidate in English, Razi University,Iran. Email: gm.sultani@gmail.com

Volume 8, Number 3, 2016 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v8n3.13

Received March 27, 2016; Revised July 24, 2016; Accepted July 07, 2016; Published August 18, 2016

 Abstract

No way can one exaggerate the unique position possessed by Samuel Beckett and his seminal play Waiting for Godot on the stage and in the dramaturgy alike. Undoubtedly, nestled in the core of this work lies some working which has bestowed it with such roaring success. Beckett’s play is an embodiment of the idea that binary oppositions are not more than conventions which therefore can be subverted to allow a wide gamut of unprivileged voices to find a leeway. Waiting for Godot is full of ambiguities and binary oppositions, just to name the extreme one, the concept of “waiting” and the implicit binary of “substance/form.  Therefore, it can be read as a dramatization of how it neatly pits such hierarchies against the deconstructionist suspicion of the accepted binary items present in the Western philosophical tradition. Considering how much affinity Derrida himself has seen with Beckett, Waiting for Godot is a ground conducive to the concepts of deconstruction to be practiced.

 Key Words: Deconstruction, Duality Ambiguity, Substance, Form, Incubation

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An Investigation of Inaction in Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot: A Literary Darwinian Perspective

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Bahareh Merhabi1 & Amrollah Abjadian2

1PhD Candidate in English Literature, Shiraz University, Iran.Email: Baharmehrabi22@gmail.com.2Amrollah Abjadian is Professor, English Literature Shiraz University, Shiraz, Iran.

 Volume 8, Number 3, 2016 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v8n3.14

Received May 25, 2016; Revised July 21, 2016; Accepted July 30, 2016; Published August 18, 2016

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to develop a literary Darwinian reading of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. The attributes of human nature defined by Joseph Carroll are discussed with regard to characters’ inaction. Waiting for Godot stages the unstable and uncertain status of modern man, suffering lack of communication. Constructive elements of human nature such as the acts towards survival, romance and nurture are discussed in order to delineate the inactive pattern of characters’ behaviors in Waiting for Godot. It becomes clear that lack of action in Vladimir and Estragon pinpoints the fall and paralysis of human nature as defined by the literary Darwinists. This article demonstrates that, as a result of uncertainty, anxiety and other disastrous consequences of the Second World War, the attributes of human nature, along with the agency as the power for committed action, as defined by the Literary Darwinists, are forgotten, paralyzed or ignored. Man is staged as a creature incapable of agency that is reduced to inaction because of the post-war catastrophic situation.

 

Keywords: Waiting for Godot, Literary Darwinism, Joseph Carroll, Human Nature, Inaction.

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‘Seeing Double’: Exploring the Flâneur’s Gaze in Amit Chaudhuri’s A New World

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Sovan Chakraborty1 & Nagendra Kumar2

1Research Scholar in English in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences of Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee. Email: sovantamluk08@gmail.com. 2Professor of English in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences of Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee. Email: naguk20@gmail.com

Volume 8, Number 3, 2016 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v8n3.15

Received May 30, 2016; Revised July 15, 2016; Accepted July 30, 2016; Published August 18, 2016

Abstract

The present paper explores the ambivalent existence of a modern urban figure, a flâneur, who is caught between the processes of grand and spectacular modernization and the gradual but uncertain withdrawal of the self from the external ‘reality’ through Amit Chaudhuri’s celebrated fiction A New World. The continuous ‘shocks of the new’ that the urban ‘advancement’ bombards upon the senses of a flâneur, develops a highly personal psychopathology in him/her. Georg Simmel calls this symptom a blasé outlook – a psychic structure characterized by sheer impersonality, which gives birth to an attitude of almost complete indifference towards the socio-political processes outside. The flâneur’s observation of a city remains always informed by a double vision – seeing yet disbelieving. Both the identity and the gaze of a flâneur keep on swinging incessantly between a modernity that creates a desire to become a developed subject and a subjectivity that is dismantled by an array of unfulfilled dreams beyond the scope of any premeditated determinism.

 Keywords: blasé, flâneur, Georg Simmel, semiotic difference, urban modernity, Amit Chaudhuri

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Revising the Colonial Discourse in The Last of The Mohicans

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Saddik M. Gohar

 Chair of the English Literature Department, United Arab Emirates University- P.O.BOX 15551, Alain City- United Arab Emirates, Email: s.gohor@uaeu.ac.ae

Volume 8, Number 3, 2016 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v8n3.16

Received May 25, 2016; Revised August 07, 2016; Accepted August 07, 2016; Published August 18, 2016

Abstract

Within the framework of postcolonial studies of Frantz Fanon, Albert Memmi, Edward Said, the paper critically examines the entanglements of colonial and racial trajectories in The Last of the Mohicans in order to subvert traditional critical assumptions which categorized the novel as an adventure story or Indian Romance or travel narrative affiliated with a multi-ethnic frontier community. Negotiating the dynamics of colonialism, through the economy of its central trope, the Manichean allegory which creates boundaries of inclusion and exclusion, the paper argues that Cooper’s novel, modeled on seventeenth-century captivity narratives, aims to exterminate or marginalize the indigenous American subaltern or associate him/her with a status of cultural decadence and savagery. The paper also illustrates that Cooper’s fiction blends the legacies of the colonized and the colonizer to reconstruct a biased narrative integral to the authorial vision of the confrontations between the native Indian community and the European settlers during the American colonial era. Reluctant to introduce a balanced view of the situation on the western frontier, Cooper emphasizes crucial colonizer / colonized constructs engaging cultural trajectories which lead to conflict rather than dialogue between both sides.

Keywords: Colonialism, captivity narrative, American colonialism, Manichean allegory, colonizer/ colonized.

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Situating Developmental Psychology within ‘Colonial Romanticism’ and ‘Postcolonial Realism’: A Study of Paul Scott’s The Birds of Paradise

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Habib Subhan

VIT University, Vellore, India. Email: habibsubhan@gmail.com.

Volume 8, Number 3, 2016 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v8n3.17

Received May 19, 2016; Revised July 29, 2016; Accepted July 30, 2016; Published August 18, 2016

 Abstract

This paper examines the colonial discourse in Paul Scott’s novel The Birds of Paradise from the perspective of developmental psychology. While doing so, it foregrounds the postcolonial notion of ‘self’ and ‘other’ through the fictional development of protagonist. Side by side, the paper also takes up the shifting position of the princely states during colonial India and the aftermath of decolonization on the rulers of these states. As a method, the development of the protagonist as a person from the childhood to his mature stage will be used to bring out the different facets of British colonialism and its effects on human psychology.

 Keywords: Developmental Psychology, Princely State, Colonial Romanticism, Postcolonial Realism, Colonial Discourse, Paul Scott

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The Iterability of the Woman Condition: a Derridean Reading of Glaspell’s Trifles

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Noorbakhsh Hooti1 & Mohammad-Javad Haj’jari2

 1Associate Professor in Dramatic Literature, Razi University, Iran. E-mail: nhooti@yahoo.com. 2PhD Student, Razi University, Iran. E-mail: aminhajjari@gmail.com

 Volume 8, Number 3, 2016 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v8n3.18

Received April 22, 2016; Revised July 12, 2016; Accepted July 25, 2016; Published August 18, 2016

 Abstract

Derrida defines artifactualities as artificially made norms by institutions and hierarchies which turn into conventions over time in dominating mankind, conventions which must be recognized and dismantled. Every particular event or presence can assume its singularity outside such biased tautology by iterating itself to generate its own specific body of norms in supplementing itself. Accordingly, this study tries to highlight the female logic and the iterability of the woman condition against patriarchal artifactualities in Glaspell’s Trifles (1916). The women of the play illuminate a world invisible to patriarchy, an overlooking gaze blurred by artifactualities. Dismantling the binary opposition of male/female, the play highlights the singularity of females in discussing the truth of its events. Moreover, the women’s aporetic decision in the play not to reveal Minnie’s killing motive is an attempt to defend the female cause and highlight the iterability of the woman condition against patriarchy. Thus, the researchers aim at interpreting Trifles through a Derridean perspective to dig up and open up the stifled woman question against patriarchal artifactualities. Contrasting the collective female knowledge to logocentrism, this study illuminates Glaspell’s attempt at foregrounding the unique sphere of women’s knowledge over patriarchal artifactualities. Glaspell anticipates Derrida’s remarks in turning logocentrism and artifactualities over their heads in favor of the singularity of any phenomena which can iterates itself to proof its unique position outside artifactialities.

Keywords: artifactualities, deconstruction, iterability, Trifles, woman condition

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Speaking Characters in Selected Novels of Bharati Mukherjee

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Dolly Sharma1 & Jaya Dwivedi2

1Assistant Professor, Parthivi College of  Engg. & Mgmt. Bhilai, C.G ,India and Research Scholar in the Department of English at N.I.T Raipur, C.G, India. Email: dollyjayam2016@gmail.com. 2Jaya Dwivedi is Assistant Professor in the Department of English at N.I.T, Raipur, C.G, India. Email: jdwivedi.eng@nitrr.ac.in.

 Volume 8, Number 3, 2016 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v8n3.19

Received April 19, 2016; Revised July 04, 2016; Accepted July 15, 2016; Published August 18, 2016

 Abstract

The Feminist Theory of Situated Knowers justifies the accounts of women by allowing them to depict their plight and contribute to epistemology by speaking from a position which they have experienced. The protagonists in selected novels of Bharti Mukherjee speak for themselves setting a ground to be examined under the example of Situated Knowers Theory in this paper. These protagonists highlight the gendered and ethnically underlined identities of women especially Indian women. The protagonists Tara Banerjee, Jasmine, Dimple and Tara Bhattacharya of   selected novels The Tiger’s Daughter, Jasmine , Wife and Desirable Daughters face  varied situations as women and immigrants to find  a sense of self in  the new world .They  undergo struggle to shed the tangles of the complex expectations and chains of conventions to be themselves. Bharti Mukherjee’s selected   women characters are strong, defy conservative norms, stay true to the spirits of exploration, learn the secret of survival and make a place for them in a world that seems to conspire against them.

 Keywords:  Situated Knowers, epistemology, standpoint theory, gendered identities, Self-exploration

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