ThAct :Derrida and Deconstruction

 This activity is a part of my academic writing...

 ⚫What do you understand by deconstruction?

Deconstruction involves the close reading of texts in order to demonstrate that any given text has irreconcilably contradictory meanings, rather than being a unified, logical whole.Deconstruction was both created and has been profoundly influenced by the French philosopher Jacques Derrida.

⚫How to deconstruct a text?

👉Oppose Prevailing Wisdom

The first thing you’ll have to do is question the common meaning or prevailing theories of the text you're deconstructing. When deconstructing, you need to start from a place of critical opposition. The only assumption you can make is that the meaning of the text is unstable and what others have told you about it is based on their own assumptions. In other words, you need to be skeptical from the onset. If you’re deconstructing Shakespeare’s Sonnet No. 18, which famously begins, “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day,” you can’t assume the poet is talking about a woman or that a woman is inherently an apt object for summery figurative language. 

👉Expose Cultural Bias

Practitioners of the deconstructive method refer to cultural biases in texts in a number of lofty ways, calling them "binaries" and "hierarchical oppositions." To understand these interchangeable terms, remember that certain words and the concepts they represent are often privileged, or emphasized more, than their oppposite words and concepts -- rich over poor, male over female, enlightened over ignorant. 

👉Analyze Sentence Structure

One way to investigate underlying meaning of a text is to analyze sentence structure, specifically the arrangement of subject and object. Ask yourself if a person or thing represented as an object in the text makes it subordinate to the subject in some way. For instance, if a novel's male protagonist is always the initiator of action rather than the recipient -- “He took her to the store; he bought her earrings; he found some food she would like” -- the recurrent sentence structure may reinforce the protagonist’s power over the dependent character. Look for these patterns and determine if the points of view of other characters are limited to favor cultural bias.

👉Play With Possible Meanings

After you’ve analyzed the text for biases, see if your discoveries support a new interpretation. While many associate deconstruction with destruction of meaning, the opposite is true. 

⚫What is deconstruction example?

Deconstruction is defined as a way of analyzing literature that assumes that text cannot have a fixed meaning. An example of deconstruction is reading a novel twice, 20 years apart, and seeing how it has a different meaning each time.A philosophical theory of textual criticism; a form of critical analysis.Its examples follows the steps like...

1) on the fact that deconstruction sees all writing as a complex historical, cultural process rooted in the relations of texts to each other and in the institutions and conventions of writing, and

 2) on the sophistication and intensity of its sense that human knowledge is not as controllable or as convincing as Western thought would have it and that language operates in subtle and often contradictory ways, so that certainty will always elude us.

Thank you...

ThAct : Future of postcolonial studies : Globalisation and Environmentalism

This activity is a part of my academic writing.

 1. Summeries of both the articles.

What is meant by postcolonialism?

Postcolonialism, the historical period or state of affairs representing the aftermath of Western colonialism; the term can also be used to describe the concurrent project to reclaim and rethink the history and agency of people subordinated under various forms of imperialism.

⚫Globalisation :

There is a complex relationship between globalization and postcolonialism. It argues that the contemporary processes of globalization are often described in ahistorical terms, whereas much of recent literature on postcolonialism is reduced largely to apolitical analyses of literary texts, disconnected from issues of current and shifting configurations of power. 

"Globalisation is just another name of submission and domination"

The author argues for the need to understand global processes in education historically and suggests that intellectual postcolonial resources of postcolonialism can be most helpful, but only if postcolonialism is viewed as a political intervention.

"Nicanoe Apaza, an unemployed miner said, watching Indian womens carried banners denouncing the Internationsl Monetary Fund and demanding the president's resignation, we have had to live with that here for 500 years and now we want to be our own masters"

Globalization from a postcolonial perspective’ explores the impact of globalization and multi- and transnational companies in the world economy. Few people outside the world of business and economics regard globalization as a particularly positive phenomenon; odium is frequently heaped on the institutions that facilitate it.

Example :

However, at least some of the poverty, or at least suffering, of the people of the non-western world is also the direct result of actions by their own governments. Poverty and starvation are often not the mark of an absolute lack of resources, but arise from a failure to distribute them equitably.

⚫Environmentalism :

Environmental Postcolonialism is an investigation of the environmental repercussions of colonial destruction. This volume addresses the complex interplay between postcolonialism and environmental discourse through literature produced in the ex-colonies. This literature is read from the standpoint of ex-colonies within their human and non-human context. The primary objective of this volume is to scrutinize environmental concerns in the light of postcolonial theory, and so it examines works of art from the twin perspective of eco-criticism and postcolonialism which illuminates and underscores how colonizers destroyed and interfered with both nature and culture. Through discussing the intersecting layers of ecocriticism and postcolonial criticism, the volume gestures to new directions and generates a hopeful vision of a decolonized world.

"Capitalism’s central dynamic, the constant search for markets,resources and labour, thus involves the ongoing need to draw in whatever still remains open of the non-capitalist environment."

Environmental Postcolonialism is a must read for those interested to know more about the intersection and intermeshing of ecocriticism and postcolonial studies. Drawing on a wide range of insights from across the world, the book delves into how colonialism devastated nature and environment as much as it destroyed the human component of former colonies. 

"Climate change, refracted through global capital, will no doubt accentuate the logic of inequality that runs through the rule of capital;some people will no doubt gain temporarily at the expense of others. But the whole crisis cannot be reduced to a story of capitalism. Unlike in the crises of capitalism, there are no lifeboats here for the rich and the privileged (witness the drought in Australia or recent fires in the wealthy neighborhoods of California)."

- Chakrabarty

This is a much-needed critical intervention that investigates the epistemes of colonial legacy that became synonymous with the destruction of the world around us. A thought-provoking collection!

Thank you...

Midnight's children : Film Adaptation

 This blog is a part of my academic writing...

1.) The narrative techniques.

It is remarkable that what many consider as Salman Rushdie’s landmark work in fiction, Midnight’s Children, was first adapted to film only in 2012, 31 years after its publication. It was also the first of his works to be filmed. This is noteworthy given the novel’s cinematic self-awareness and the writer’s overt interest in acting and cinema, which he has reiterated over the years. Cinema, as a subject matter and a distinctive artistic language, resurfaces time and again in the pages of Rushdie’s essays, short stories, novels, and other writings. As many critics have pointed out, the writer’s emotional connection to cinema has translated into cinema itself being put to work as a mediating device in his oeuvre, with his characters often making sense of themselves and the world and coming to terms with their own place in it  through cinema. In this article, we examine the three existing adaptations of Midnight’s Children, with particular emphasis on the 2012 film, in view of their discursively constructed audiences. We consider these adaptations from the point of view of the audience, and how they engage with the spectator/reader. Our analysis is supplemented by Rushdie’s essays on the acts of adaptation and translation from one artistic medium to another. Our purpose is not to measure the failure or success of Rushdie’s and Mehta’s adaptation we argue instead that the film adaptation is a protracted creative project that has taken into consideration, more than previous adaptations of the novel, not only new forms of representation and new ways of reading, but also new ways of engaging its constructed audiences.

2.) Characters.

Perhaps most remarkable are the telepathic powers linking him with India's 1,000 other “midnight's children,” all born in that initial hour and endowed with magical gifts. It is notable for the large number of characters, many are introduced and then reoccur much later in the narrative. Some change their names and some are referred to by nicknames.

The story is expressed through a wide range of fictional characters and is set in context by actual historical events. None of the fictional characters are based on real people, but historical events and real personages are mentioned and occasionally given a voice. This list contains only principal named characters, and may be incomplete.

O. Saleem sinai

O. Padma

O. Shiva

O. Adam Aziz

O. Mumtaz Aziz

O. Ahmed Sanai

O. Jimila sanai

O. Mary peneria

O. Indira Gandhi

• Saleem Sinai is the protagonist and narrator; a telepathwith an enormous and constantly dripping nose, who is born at the exact moment that India becomes independent and who is of complex and confusing parentage. He is referred to variously as The Nose, Snotnose, and Snifferreferring to his nose; Stainface, Mapfaceand Piece of the Moon referring to his birthmarked face; Baldy referring to the bald patch on his head where the hair was pulled out by a violent school teacher; and the buddha during the time he loses his memory. He later develops a hyper-sensitive sense of smell. He is deaf in one ear from a blow received from his father, and has lost the tip of one finger in a bullying incident at school.
• Padma Mangroli is Saleem's lover and, eventually, his fiancée. Padma plays the role of the listener in the storytelling structure of the novel. She is described as plump, muscular and hairy.

3. ) Symbols

There are very interesting symbol is given in entire novel is considered as allegory of India. So some children are born at midnight and than India is also born at midnight. Saleem Senai who is protagonist and who is born at midnight with whom India’s story also described. Ups and down everything happening we see how India is narrated. Allegory of India is connected with some character so. What we see is history narrated in fictional way. History is narrated is fictionalized or Nation is narrated in fictional way  with imagine world. Whatever happened in novel has actually happened in  India but, it is interpreted in a different way. The events are happened, it’s real events happened in India. Salman Rushdie’s Way of looking , it may be not fair and He says that when we read meta narrative of past we also have to believe.

4.) Texture of the film.

Midnight's Children" is a richly textured story about India's post-colonial era as seen through the lives of two characters who compete in a struggle to some kind of normalcy. The mammoth influence of India's colonial past and how the characters deal with it looking to the future is presented through magical realism. This technique is decidedly spiritual and creates a space where the characters can image what can be and what they are to do.

At the press day for the film, Mehta ("Water") explained many aspects of her filmmaking and the role color plays in defining emotions in the story. Red symbolizes blood and emotion; blue is the color of midnight; and green stands for fertility and hope.

"The color palate of the film is important," she said, "because color seeps into all of life, everything."

The thing that attracted Mehta to the film, she explained, is that it is about "the journey of a person trying to find a home and an identity," noting that she made the journey from India to Canada. In today's world, she said, "we are always redefining ourselves, where we are from, who our families are, and this is a universal theme."

Its about the story being again about two male characters representing human experience, and Mehta came back with, "But if you look, this is a film about women more than men. Saleem, in particular, is defined by all the females who surround him."

At the end, 

‘The happy child of the glorious hour’ the news paper is evidence but does it true??? Is central question

 (child = India) what Is Nation?

Nation is not boundary, which kills thousands innocent  life.

Thank you...

Mind mapping : what is literature

🚫 What is literature?

Literature broadly is any collection of written work, but it is also used more narrowly for writings specifically considered to be an art form, especially prose fiction, drama, and poetry In recent centuries, the definition has expanded to include oral literature, much of which has been transcribed. Literature is a method of recording, preserving, and transmitting knowledge and entertainment, and can also have a social, psychological, spiritual, or political role.

🛇 Text i like the most.

Here is a list of  novels that, for various reasons, I have likef the most.

• The Great Gatsby. F.
• One Hundred Years of Solitude. 
• A Passage to India. 
• Invisible Man. 
• Don Quixote. 
• Beloved.

🚫 Three reasons for my likeness.

1. Reading great literature exercises the imagination. We enjoy stories; it is a pleasure to meet characters and to live in their world.

2. To experience their joys and sorrows. In a practical sense.

3. An active imagination helps us perceive truth, make value judgments, and deal with the complexities of life in creative ways.

Thank you...

Postcolonial studies & Bollywood

 Hello readers...

This activity is a part of my academic writing.Here I had explained the postcolonial features in the 2 iconic movies,

1.Lagan.

2.Rang De Basanati.

The postcolonial studies denotes a loosely defined inter-disciplinary field of perspectives, theories and methods that deal with the non-material dimensions of colonial rule and, at the same time, postulates the deconstruction of colonial discourses and thought patterns that continue to exert an influence up into the present. One of the reasons for the importance of this current for European history is that its adherents define colonialism as a cluster of reciprocal relationships that has shaped not only the colonised regions, but also the European metropole. In addition, the nuanced methodological and theoretical apparatus developed by "postcolonial studies" to describe and analyse asymmetrical power constellations and hierarchical modes of representation in colonial contexts can also be transferred to primarily internal European questions .

Postcolonial Literature Characteristics

• Appropriation of Colonial Languages. Postcolonialwriters have this thing they like to do. 
• Metanarrative. Colonizers liked to tell a certain story. 
• Colonialism. 
• Colonial Discourse. 
• Rewriting History. 
• Decolonization Struggles. 
• Nationhood and Nationalism. 
• Valorization of Cultural Identity.

1. Lagan

Lagaan is a blockbuster Bollywood film directed by Ashutosh Gavarikar. This movie is about a struggle faced by the people of Champaneer village during colonial rule. There can be various postcolonial aspects, few of them are:

In in this film the colonizers are portrayed as the centre or the super power and the colonized portrayed as the other. It gives the colonized the perception that they are inferior to the colonizer. England was one of the super powers during colonization in India, and this is very evident in the film. For instance in the movie the antagonist, Captain Russell, is the decision maker and the villagers have no other choice but to follow them. There is a cultural transition that cuts through Gili-danda to cricket.

Hybridity here is portrayed here when Elizabeth the sister of the antagonist teaches the Indians how to play the colonizers sport (cricket) and she intern learns the local language to talk to the localities nonetheless there are instances where in she tries on the Indian attire. This is the exchange of culture that takes place. The villagers find a way to turn the most British of customs into an Indian creation and this further introduces the concepts of  mimicry where in the villagers try to create the sports gear just like the Britishers, they try to learn the rules of the game and follow it. There are lingering effects that offer both the chance to beat the colonizers at his own game and the chance to join the colonizers game, playing by his rules. Likewise fervent, frantically almost religious attachment to the game is given by colonialism.

Reverse colonialism, the rejection of white feminity is highly apprehensive here. The religious story is added perhaps as an attempt to make sense of relationships that’s about colonialism without use of colonialism. In other words it’s trying to disguise the facts that is about race and colonialism by using religion as an alternate framework. Elizabeth represents the goodness of colonialism and Russell on the other hand represents the evilness of colonialism. The winning of the match at the end, constructs an overall view of decolonization.

2.Rang De Basanti

The intersecting of time, history, narrative and subjectivity unfolds an intermeshed trajectory of notions about history's role in shaping views about nationalism and identity in Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra's popular film, Rang De Basanti (2006). This article addresses a confluence of the pedagogic and the performative modes of history in relation to nationalism and modernity in the film. History, taught via return, is experienced as otherness and eventually performed via a remediation of this otherness, thereby making it relevant to contemporary times. Offering diverse theoretical arguments about history and its narration, I also propose that history, although laden with mimetic impulses and desires for the male characters, excludes the women from mimetic agency. A Levinasian reading of the film's conclusion ultimately resolves the confines of historical determinism and reveals an aesthetic of mimeticism premised on ethical desire for transformative imperative that effectively displays history's otherness as well as its subjective performance.

Notes

 1. I borrow the idea of the pedagogic mode and the performative mode from Homi Bhabha's essay, ‘Dissemination, Time, Narrative and the Margins of the Modern Nation.’

 2. Her project does not get approved by the producers who believe that ‘Gandhi sells.’ Refusing to forego it, Sue decides to continue with this project on her own as she decides to go to India and make the film.

 3. When Sukhi is shot, DJ is genuinely surprised that they are being attacked with bullets. Earlier as they hug each other, they sincerely believe that they will only go to jail after having their voice heard by the nation. This plan echoes Bhagat Singh's plan when he discusses with Azad how they should cause an explosion in the parliament and have their voices against British imperialism heard; Bhagat Singh believed that they could have a huge impact with this strategy. Karan Singhania and DJ, likewise, believed that they would be able to bring the real story of the cause of Ajay's death.

 4. Bolter and Grusin's theoretical explanation of the distinction between immediacy and hypermediacy, although pertaining to new digital media, is meaningful in understanding the film-within-the film strategy in Rang De Basanti.

 5. In ‘The Storyteller,’ Benjamin articulates how the ‘Counsel woven into the fabric of real life is wisdom’ .

 6. A scene when she looks at the poster-chart with pictures of the revolutionaries (characters) and the pinned-up pictures of DJ and his friends (actors) suggests an iconographic superimposition of personalities and experiences. The roles of Bhagat Singh ascribed to Karan Singhania, Chandreshekhar Azad to DJ, Rajguru to Sukhi, Ramprasad Bismal to Laxman Pandey, and Ashfaqullah Khan to Aslam are designated by Sue based on her grandfather's views about the historical heroes and her emotional interactions with the modern day actors.

Thank you...

Shashi Tharoor and The Dark Era of Ingolrious Empire

This activity is a part of our academic writing.

 ⚫ Write on key arguments in shashi Tharoor's book "An Era of Darkness ".

 

Shashi Tharoor's , An Era of Darkness, is one breathless read. In it, he aggregates all the arguments required to establish that British colonial rule was an  awful experience for Indians and he does so with a consummate debater’s skill. His book is, in fact, an expanded take on British exploitation of India that famously carried the day for Tharoor in an Oxford debate not too long ago.

According to Tharoor, there was nothing redeeming in British rule of our country. What India had to endure under them was outrageous humiliation on a humongous scale and sustained violence of a kind it had never experienced before. In short, British rule was, according to Tharoor, an era of darkness for India, throughout which it suffered several manmade famines, wars, racism, maladministration, deportation of its people to distant lands and economic exploitation on an unprecedented scale. An indignant Tharoor even demands a token restitution and public apology from the British for all the harm they had caused India. This is something, as his debate established, wildly popular in India.impunity. Tharoor is right, of course. There are few Indians who would not have heard of the treachery that enabled Clive to triumph at Plassey or of the incredible amounts of ill-begotten wealth the East India Company officials hauled back with them to England. “One official,” Cyril Radcliff informs us, “was said to have pocketed 1,200,000 sterling in bribes from the Nawab of Carnatic: another pocketed 200,000 pounds.” Given the opportunities he had to enrich himself in India, Clive was “amazed at his own moderation”.

There was scant appreciation, Tharoor tells us, of India’s contributions in men, material and money, to the wars that the British fought within India and overseas, especially the two World Wars. The well-known historian and Nehru’s biographer, Judith Brown, acknowledges that “British taxpayers contributed not a penny to the Raj”. Even Niall Ferguson, not one of Tharoor’s favourites, accepts that Indians paid for the “privilege of being ruled by the British”.

That British rule in India was bad in parts has never been denied by anyone, least of all by the British. Their archives are full of accounts of British depredations, covering the entire period of their rule in India. Several of their historians have brought out the suffering the British inflicted on India and Indians throughout their rule of our country. What Tharoor, however, seeks to establish through his book, is that British rule was unremittingly rotten and indefensible by the standards of its time and ours. Tharoor admirably fills the gap by holding a mirror to the British, and the West, that they have a case to answer. And answer they must, as old imperialisms, with renewed vigour and with the same specious ‘civilising’ arguments, have never really ceased devastating the world, from faraway places like now well-forgotten Grenada and present-day West Asia and the Middle East.

⚫ Write critique on both the films with reference to postcolonial insights.

1.The Black Prince :

With the context of post colonial indight ,Maharaja Duleep Singh was a very complex and troubled man. In today's world, he would have a flock of psychiatrists and psychologists trying to help him overcome his troubles, and understand him. Maharaja Duleep Singh's battles were not fought on the battlefield. He didn't win any duels with the sword like his father, and the mighty warrior Hari Singh Nalwa, who helped shape the Sikh Kingdom of Punjab. His fight was more in terms of an internal battle to overcome his own demons and the manipulated reasoning imposed upon him by the British. He had to find himself first and reconnect to who he really was.Then [he could] raise his voice to denounce the English authority over him and demand freedom not only for the people of Punjab, but the entire sub-continent of India. He fought a lonely war amidst an atmosphere full of spies, traitors and manipulators. This was a story that needed to be told.

2.Victoria and Abdul :

Abdul Karim was 24 years old when he was dispatched from Agra to serve 68-year-old Queen Victoria as an attendant. The tall and handsome Indian Muslim didn't speak a word of English, nor the Empress of India any Urdu. What followed was a relationship of such intimacy and tenderness that the British establishment tried their hardest to destroy all evidence of it. In Victoria and Abdul: The True Story of the Queen's Closest Confidant historian Shrabani Basu unearths a story that shows a new side to Victoria and places a young Indian at the heart of the Empire as her greatest influence.

⚫ Summarise Ngugi Wa Thiongo's views in 'Introduction: Towards the Universal Language of Struggle' - from 'Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature'.  

Language and culture inDecolonising the Mind, Ngũgĩ sees language, rather than history orculture, as the enabling condition of human consciousness: "The choice of language and the use of language is central to a people's definition of themselves inrelation to the entire universe.Decolonising the Mind is a meld of autobiography, post-colonial theory, pedagogy, African history, and literary criticism. Ngũgĩ dedicated Decolonising the Mind "to all those who write in African languages, and to all those who over the years have maintained the dignity of the literature, culture, philosophy, and other treasures carried by African languages."

Thank you...

SR.Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

This activity is a part of our academic writing.

 1. Did the first talk help you in understanding of postcolonialism?

By understanding the nature of the question we should know about the postcolonialism. It is the historical period or state of affairs representing the aftermath of Westerncolonialism; the term can also be used to describe the concurrent project to reclaim and rethink the history and agency of people subordinated under various forms of imperialism.

Our lives, our cultures, are composed of many overlapping stories. Novelist Chimamanda Adichie tells the story of how she found her authentic cultural voice  and warns that if we hear only a single story about another person or country, we risk a critical misunderstanding.

2. Did the arguments in the talks are convincing ?

We Should All Be Feminists is a book-length essay by the Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. First published in 2014 by Fourth Estate, it talks about the definition of feminism for the 21st century. 

Yes,it convincing because it shows the So long  inequality and male supremacy persist, women and girls need feminism. Men and boys need it too because equality is better for everyone. Even though we're well into the 21st century, women are still under-represented in leadership positions and men are under-represented in caring roles.It also gives some postivive effects like Gender equitable societies which are healthier for everyone. As feminism challenges restrictive gender norms, improvements in women's access to health care, reproductive rights, and protection from violence have positive effects on everyone's life expectancy and well-being, especially children.

3. What did you like about the third talk? 

The wonderfully restrained sense of deep disappointment underlying Chimamanda's narrative reminded me of how similar the histories of many African countries are, how passionately people believed in ideas that would disappoint them, in people that would betray them, in futures that would elude them. 

4. Are these talks bringing any significant change in your way of looking literature and life?

OVERARCHING concepts which relates to our lives. Although every book is special in its own unique way, each of Adichie's novels circulate around two common themes: the concept that love isuniversal and humane there must be flaws , and that every perspective isdifferent therefore every perspective deserves a listen .Instead of sticking to just one or two perspectives, Adichie goes above and beyond by using  distinct characters' perspectives while keeping to a third person omnipotent narrator. In addition, certain plot devices are revealed in the very end, building lots of tension throughout the novel.

Thank you...