Volume 13 Number 1 2021 - Page 4

On the Question of What Translation Translates: Translation in Light of Skepticism

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270 views

Alpaslan Acar

Ankara University, School of Foreign Languages, Ankara, Turkey

ORCID id: 0000-0002-3676-8922. Email: alpacar1972@gmail.com

 Volume 13, Number 1, 2021 I Full Text PDF
DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n1.18

  On the Question of What Translation Translates: Translation in Light of Skepticism

Abstract

The present study aimed at sparking a discussion as to translation evaluation which is traditionally based on determinism. Translators usually translate what the author has written or what the author has said, based on the ostensible referential correspondence between words and meanings exerted by internal and external authorities without questioning these ostensible authorities- whether these authorities are in the forms of bilingual dictionaries or the translators’ knowledge and experience. However, translation process, unlike language, can be based on indeterminacy which is a part of epistemological scepticism.  This study, drawing on Quine’ notion that reference between two languages is inscrutable and by extension translation between texts is in principle indeterminate, aims at showing that what we call translation is, in fact, a product of the translator, not the original author. As corpora of the study, To Be or Not To Be Soliloquy by Shakespeare, A short poem by the Turkish poet Naz?m Hikmet, a perfume advertisement and some excerpts from the book Heart of Darkness and their translations were analysed quantitatively and qualitatively. The results have shown that every translation is one of the infinite possible meanings of the original text.

Keywords: Epistemological Skepticism, Epistemological Skepticism and translation, Indeterminacy in translation evaluation

Mapuche cosmovision and territorial rights: An interdisciplinary approach to understand the conflict of Wallmapu, Chile

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493 views

Ranjeeva Ranjan1, *, Alexis Castillo2 & Karla Morales3

1, * Asssitant Professor, Faculty of Educational Science, Universidad Católica del Maule, Talca, Chile. Email: ranjan@ucm.cl

2Researcher, Centro de investigación y estudios avanzados del Maule, Universidad Católica del Maule, Talca, Chile.

3Asssitant Professor, Centro de investigación y estudios avanzados del Maule, Universidad Católica del Maule, Talca, Chile.

 Volume 13, Number 1, 2021 I Full Text PDF
DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n1.17

Mapuche cosmovision and territorial rights: An interdisciplinary approach to understand the conflict of Wallmapu, Chile

Abstract

The indigenous population of Latin America has been suffering from a sense of alienation since the arrival of Columbus in 1492 who referred to this land as “Nuevo Mundo”. There is a long history of environmental exploitation in Chile which has severely strained the relationship amongst the Mapuche community, the State and private entities (hydroelectric and timber industry). Although this conflict seems to be economic-productive associated with land, wherein land attains a “tangible material good”, in the Mapuche cosmovision, land (Mapu means land in Mapudungun, the language of Mapuche) acquires a connotation of “intangible material and immaterial good”. There is a profound imperceptible connection between nature and Mapuche and their traditions and culture are strongly rooted in the land. The industrial expansion has promoted a series of negative externalities like habitat fragmentation, loss of native forest, biodiversity reduction, water availability, etc. These affect the “idiosyncrasy” of this community (Mapuche-Nature relationship) and loss of their land could represent an identity loss. The Chilean indigenous policy appears to be inadequate and fail to recognize the socio-cultural and territorial rights for all indigenous peoples, including Mapuche, given the multidimensionality of the land under the indigenous cosmovision. The socio-political measures imposed by the Chilean government until now to make their life “modern” boomeranged alienating them further from society. This paper proposes to look at the territorial rights of the Mapuche with an interdisciplinary approach and focuses on developing the conceptual framework of Mapuche cosmovision of land and territory. The study follows a brief analysis of the historical context of the territorial conflict between the Chilean State and the Mapuche people and how the implementation of national and international normative framework on indigenous rights has not been effective in resolving this territorial conflict. The study tries to synthesize and talks about integrating the Mapuche land cosmovision in the socio-political discourse and be considered while formulating any land policy involving Mapuche and other indigenous peoples inhabiting in Chile in future. The discussions and analysis have been carried out through a comprehensive literature review and integrate an interdisciplinary approach to look at this issue, both from the philosophical perspective and from the socio-political policy framework of government.

Keywords: Mapuche, Wallmapu, Territory, Social alienation, intangible material, Chile

Post-Enlightenment Exploration and the Aesthetic of Information: Curious with a Purpose

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236 views

Diganta Bhattacharya

Assistant Professor, Department of English, Sundarvan Mahavidyalaya, West Bengal & Research Scholar, Presidency University. Email: diganta.bhat@gmail.com

 Volume 13, Number 1, 2021 I Full Text PDF
DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n1.16

  Post-Enlightenment Exploration and the Aesthetic of Information: Curious with a Purpose

Abstract:

Exploration accounts written during the post-Enlightenment era of European expansion relied upon the agency of a romanticized narrator who could inspire a dedicated readership since he strategically projected the ‘performance’ of exploration as necessarily hazardous and hence, awe-inspiring. The concomitant element of romance was further emphasized in such texts since the precarious and vulnerable position of the explorer-narrator functioned as a much-needed foil to the sort of objectivist-detached discourse of functional intelligence that exploration narratives were increasingly expected to generate. The elaborate, methodical, organized and professional performance of overseas exploration needs to be understood as a targeted activity that utilized specific narratorial devices with an aim to make use of the widespread curiosity about the New World.  This essay seeks to address the post-Enlightenment emergence of an ‘aesthetic of information’ along with its discursive trappings and epistemological frameworks which were ‘realized’ within a subculture of geographical exploration. ‘Knowledge’ aspired to be defined by empirical rigour, but the process of accessing and documenting it could scarcely avoid subjective variables.

Keywords: Enlightenment, Exploration, Knowledge, Information, Romantic, Aesthetic, Science, Functional, Empirical, Baconian, Curiosity

Formation of Space, Experience and Thought: A Critical Study of Ambedkar’s Biopic Bhim Garjana

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539 views

Sudhir Mehra

Assistant Professor, Department of English & Cultural Studies. E-mail: ssudhir.m@pu.ac.in

 Volume 13, Number 1, 2021 I Full Text PDF
DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n1.15
Formation of Space, Experience and Thought: A Critical Study of Ambedkar’s Biopic Bhim Garjana

Abstract

In his 1936 essay “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”, Walter Benjamin establishes that it is the ‘aestheticization of politics’ or ‘politicization of art’ which streamlines the cultural discourse of a nation at a given moment. The present paper attempts to critically analyze the ‘politics of visuality’ vis-à-vis ‘visuality of politics’ as an elemental framework in the making of Indian national discourse. To understand or rationalize this elemental framework, the paper postulates its hypothesis, that the politicization of art is a valid inquiry into how a certain ideological discourse is pre-selected and pre-programmed with a certain grid of features and structures of perception.  It is this ideological discourse that needs to be exposed through a visual text namely, Vijay Pawar’s Bhim Garjana. This visual text broadly represents what Kancha Illaiah terms the Ambedkarite phase of Dalit history spanning over two decades – 1936-1956[i]. Bhim Garjana is an aesthetic artifact directed by a Dalit himself – an ‘insider’s’[ii] document on Ambedkar’s life and philosophy. There have so far been three films on Ambedkar including Bhim Garjana, one directed by Jabbar Patel titled Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar (2000) and second by Anand Patwardha titled Jai Bhim Comrade (2011). All the visual texts though do not follow the definition of biopic strictly, but more or less, the paper places them in the category of biopics. Each text focuses on the life and struggle, both in historical and ideological terms, of Ambedkar.

Keywords: Ambedkar, Bhim Garjana, Dalit, Jai Bhim Comrade.

[i] Kancha Illaiah’s “Towards the Dalitization of Nation” in Wages of Freedom: Fifty Years of the Nation-State edited by Partha Chatterjee.1998.

[ii] Limbale, Sharan Kumar. Towards an Aesthetics of Dalit literature: History, Controversies and Considerations. Trans. and Ed. By Alok Mukherjee. New Delhi: Orient Black Swan, 2010.

Train as a Semantic Space in Russian Culture of the 19th-20th Centuries

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250 views

Diana V. Mosova, Natalia P. Dmitrenko, Olga N. Kolchina, Svetlana N. Averkina & Anzhelika G. Kalinina

Department of Russian Philology, Foreign Literature and Intercultural Communication, Linguistics University of Nizhny Novgorod, Nizhny Novgorod, Russian Federation. E-mail: s.averkina6033@uohk.com.cn

 Volume 13, Number 1, 2021 I Full Text PDF
DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n1.14
Train as a Semantic Space in Russian Culture of the 19th-20th Centuries

Abstract

The railway station is the most important chronotope of the 20th century. In times of industrialisation, economic development, military confrontation between major powers, the images of a steam locomotive, locomotive, and train met in a large body of literary and journalistic texts. The study of the railway discourse is based on complex historical and semiotic meanings, which allow concluding about the properties of the Russian cultural world, studying it from a new perspective. In the process of the research, the methods of the theoretical level were used: the study and generalisation of scientific works, analysis and synthesis, induction and deduction. The authors conducted a logical analysis of the collected material, developed new categories of the image of a train as a “fiery demon”, “a locomotive of progress”, “house on wheels”. Semantic models of perception of the train as a cultural space were interpreted. A discursive analysis of ideas that influenced the semantic part of the concept of “railroad” in Russian culture was conducted. It was concluded that the image of a train in literary creation has a dual character. Already at the stage of the construction of the railway, an infernal model of its interpretation as a “serpent train/dragon” was formed, capable of destroying all living things and taking them to the kingdom of death. At the same time, there are examples of a different type of interpretation of the image of a train. Some researchers insist on its connection with the archetype of “mother”, the idea of movement in a circle, return. In the post-Soviet space, the image of a train has not lost its significance. It is still assimilated by mass culture, it enters into everyday life, without losing its ambivalent character.

Keywords: cultural and semiotic space, mythopoetics, archetype, semantic model

Tales of the Horrors of War: Analysing Select Indian Fictions on World War I

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267 views

Md Shahnawaz

Independent Scholar. Email: mdshahnawaz.ms69@gmail.com

 Volume 13, Number 1, 2021 I Full Text PDF
DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n1.13

  Tales of the Horrors of War: Analysing Select Indian Fictions on World War I

Abstract

Conscription of Indian men from different states and ethnicities were recruited to fight in the First World War for the British in foreign lands, while Indian resources kept the Allies going. The discursive reduction of it quantified India to merely numbers, of soldiers given, soldiers lost, tons of food sent, and money spent. The Indian Movement for Independence as an act of political negotiation with the British masters had warranted the cultural amnesia of the Indian intellectual class about the War’s impact to focus on the more vital demand, and how easily were all the unwanted marks of the War hidden and left behind. Thus, my paper will examine the representation of War in India and identify the ways in which Indian involvements in the War remain unacknowledged in the contemporary period through select works of fiction and non-fiction by Indian authors. Therefore, it is a pressing concern that much of the information about the World War I from an Indian perspective is lost, or is on the verge of being lost forever, because of the general apathy towards the preservation of such materials. This engagement with the First World War is not acknowledged the way it should be, since most of these works are not even categorized or identified as ‘war literature’ even if their sole concern remained precisely that. It is also important in this regard to understand the inclusion of the World War I in the silences and the omissions. Therefore, I will analyse select literary texts by Indian authors to evaluate the intersections of fiction and history alongside the enunciation of the unknown/forgotten voices of the marginalized people in the World War I.

Keywords: World War I, Indian literature, history, cultural consciousness, nationalism.

Thuggee in England: Tracing the Origin and Development of Fantasies of Thug-Invasion and Reverse Colonization in late nineteenth century British Fiction

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428 views

Ayusman Chakraborty, PhD

Assistant Professor of English (W.B.E.S.). Taki Government College, hinduayusman@gmail.com, ORCID: 0000-0003-0641-0652

 Volume 13, Number 1, 2021 I Full Text PDF
DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n1.12

Thuggee in England: Tracing the Origin and Development of Fantasies of Thug-Invasion and Reverse Colonization in late nineteenth century British Fiction

Abstract                                                                                                                                       

A lot has been written on Thuggee and nineteenth century British operations against it. Instead of delving directly into either of these two well investigated areas of research, this paper seeks to chart how several nineteenth century British writings exhibit a curious fear of Thug infiltration. Keeping in their minds some actual instances, early British colonial officials worried about the Thugs joining government services under them to survive and sabotage the anti-Thuggee campaign. This paper argues that this apprehension gradually developed into the fantasy of being reverse colonized by the Thugs. Late Victorian writers of fiction fantasized the Thugs invading England, or, what must have been more unnerving to them, converting the Britons themselves to Thugs. Using unpublished official records and literary works as sources, this paper tries to map how colonial anxiety of ‘Thug infiltration’ originated and later grew into the fantasy of reverse colonization by the Thugs. It also tries to link this to specific historical developments in that period.

Keywords: Thuggee, Thug infiltration, Thug immigration, invasion, Reverse colonization, British female Thugs.

Reminiscence on #EndSARS Protests of 2020 in Nigeria

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276 views

Florence O. Orabueze1, Victor O. Ukaogo2, Ifeyinwa David-Ojukwu3, Godstime Irene Eze4, Chiamaka I. Orabueze5

1PhD, Department of English & Literary Studies, University of Nigeria

2PhD, Department of History and International Studies, University of  Nigeria. ORCID: 0000-0002-3282-4288. Contact: victor.ukaogo@unn.edu.ng

3Use of English and Communication Unit, University of Nigeria

4Institute of African Studies, University of Nigeria

5Commercial and Cooperative Law, University of Nigeria

 Volume 13, Number 1, 2021 I Full Text PDF
DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n1.11
Reminiscence on #EndSARS Protests of 2020 in Nigeria

Abstract

Every misfortune of the black man, particularly in Africa, has been blamed on the Europeans because of Trans Atlantic Slave Trade and colonization of different parts of Africa. However, the present study on the #EndSARS protests that rocked Nigeria between October and November 2020 has proven that Africans, particularly Nigerians, should bear the burden of their problems and not point accusing fingers on foreigners. The study uses historical theoretical framework and qualitative and quantitative research methodologies to find out that the protest has an affinity, albeit in a milder degree, to the various agitations, including Boko Haram that have levied wars on the country. The corruption-riddled Nigeria and the re-enslavement and re-colonization of the citizens by the leaders have fired resistance in the youths of the country and it concludes that the only way the protest and agitations would stop is when the fundamental causes are addressed.

Keywords: #EndSARS, protests, enslavement, colonization

The Artistic Status of Bio-art

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359 views

Eleni Gemtou

National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece.  

ORCID: 0000-0002-8543-3555. Email: egemtos@phs.uoa.gr.

 Volume 13, Number 1, 2021 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n1.02
The Artistic Status of Bio-art

Abstract

This paper aims to define Bio-art by strengthening its artistic status through two distinct approaches. The first is based on the acceptance that the concept of Bio-art includes both the term “art” and the term “bio” that could stand for Biology, Biotechnology, and Bioethics. It is argued that despite its direct connection to scientific research, Bio-art is only partly linked to the methods of the pure science of Biology, while it stands closer to the technoscience of Biotechnology. However, while bio-artists often use scientific methods and techniques, they eventually focus on bioethical questions. To amplify the artistic status of bio-artworks, we claim that they are kinds of visual “enthymemes”, a term used by Aristotle to define incomplete rhetoric syllogisms linking all recipients to common questions. Our second approach is developed around Levinson’s intentional-historical theory, showing that Bio-art belongs to the evolutionary narrative of art and artistic intentions. We allege interconnections of distinct features of bio-artworks with artworks of different eras that in the context of a retrospective view are to be understood as having paved the way for the emergence of Bio-art.

Key words: Bio-art, Biotechnology, Bioethics, Metaphor-Enthymeme, Levinson’s intentional-historical theory

A Nation within a Nation: English Education as a Tool of Divide and Rule Policy in Colonial India

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448 views

Thakurdas Jana1 & Sandip Sarkar2

1State Aided College Teacher, Post-Graduate Department of English, Bhatter College, Dantan, West Bengal, India. E-mail: thakurdas0901@gmail.com

2Assistant Professor, Department of Humanities and Social Science, NIT, Raipur, India. E-mail: sandipsarkar7@gmail.com

 Volume 13, Number 1, 2021 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n1.01

Abstract

Famous Irish political scientist and historian, Benedict Anderson, in his book, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism has described nations as imagined communities. Stephen May, the British novelist, playwright, and TV writer, has viewed that language is used as a political tool to strengthen the imagined community of a nation-state. Eventually, many countries have been named after the language predominantly used in a particular country. But during the colonial expansion that the linguistic identity of a colonised nation like India and its people has been transformed in different ways. With the English Education Act, 1835 Lord Bentinck defeated the Orientalists and promoted English education in India. Consequently, different missionaries like Joshua Marshman, William Carey, William Ward, and Alexander Duff, who principally used English education to preach Christianity among the Indians, and British officials like Charles Grant, Lord Macaulay, William Hazlitt, and also some higher-class Indians like Raja Rammohan Roy, Keshab Chandra Sen, Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay supported the Anglicist view and tried to spread the English education in India. Different English schools like Dharmatala Academy were built and in the curriculum of different universities, the writings of different English authors like Francis Bacon, William Shakespeare, John Milton, Joseph Addison, Alexander Pope were included. Many higher-class Indians became more interested in English study losing their interest in vernacular education. Vijay Agnew in her autobiography, Where I Come From, and Madhu Kishor in her article “The Dominance of Angreziyat in Our Education” have accused English education of making them unaware and ignorant of the Indian culture and writings. In this way, the higher-class English educated Indians have created one English nation within the Hindustan. Even the translation of different Indian classical texts into English like Sir William Jone’s translation of Abhjnanasakuntalam in 1789 and Sir Charles Wilkins’ translation of Bhagabadgita in 1784 has also paved the way for forming a different identity. In this context, the present paper aims to show how the different tools for spreading the English language divided the nation into two, supporting the divide and rule policy of the British, which is still effective in the so-called united, equal, and democratic India.

Keywords: nation, division, colonialism, English education, India.

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