In 1794 Coleridge and Southey made a plan to set up a utopian community on the banks of the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania; the proposed society was christened Pantisocracy. The project, however, did not materialize. The differences between Coleridge and Southey regarding the place of servants in Pantisocracy and an uncertainty over the role of women in the community have often been cited as the key issues that led to the failure of the project. However, a close attention to Coleridge and Southey’s writings on Pantisocracy reveals that a third reason for the abandonment was the anxiety of the two poets over the non-human animals and native humans of America. Considering critical theory’s interest in posthuman issues, the present paper revolves around the question of the non-human animals in Pantisocracy. It contends that the non-human animals are central to an understanding of the utopian scheme and aims to discuss the role of non-human animals in the construction of racial other and in the formation of colonial discourse. Further, it proffers the argument that the human-non-human entanglement that is witnessed in issues regarding Pantisocracy underscores the fact that human agency is an assemblage of the human and the nonhuman actors.
{"title":"The Beasts and the Beastly: Colonial Discourse and the (Non-)human Animals of Pantisocracy","authors":"M. Islam","doi":"10.22492/ijah.9.1.10","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22492/ijah.9.1.10","url":null,"abstract":"In 1794 Coleridge and Southey made a plan to set up a utopian community on the banks of the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania; the proposed society was christened Pantisocracy. The project, however, did not materialize. The differences between Coleridge and Southey regarding the place of servants in Pantisocracy and an uncertainty over the role of women in the community have often been cited as the key issues that led to the failure of the project. However, a close attention to Coleridge and Southey’s writings on Pantisocracy reveals that a third reason for the abandonment was the anxiety of the two poets over the non-human animals and native humans of America. Considering critical theory’s interest in posthuman issues, the present paper revolves around the question of the non-human animals in Pantisocracy. It contends that the non-human animals are central to an understanding of the utopian scheme and aims to discuss the role of non-human animals in the construction of racial other and in the formation of colonial discourse. Further, it proffers the argument that the human-non-human entanglement that is witnessed in issues regarding Pantisocracy underscores the fact that human agency is an assemblage of the human and the nonhuman actors.","PeriodicalId":270323,"journal":{"name":"IAFOR Journal of Arts & Humanities","volume":"11 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-07-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125142670","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In gender studies, the distinction between biological sex and the social aspect of gender is of pivotal concern, and it needs to be examined not only from a feminist perspective but from masculinity studies as well. Undoubtedly, men have fared better within the patriarchal structure “in terms of the access to and the wielding of power, than have women” (Buchbinder, p. 68), but it is crucial to understand the implications of gender-based expectations on men to possess those privileges. The invisibility concerning masculinity as a gendered category has made it appear natural and coherent. In the context of masculinity as a gendered category, this paper will analyze the configuration of hegemonic masculinity or a raganimo in Nuruddin Farah’s (b. 1945) Maps. The study will reveal how the dominant masculinity insinuated by culture as natural is, in reality, a make-believe formulated by various discourses. The paper foregrounds that the shaping of masculinity in socially prescribed norms in Maps is a discursive practice instrumentalized by patriarchal Somali society to generate, circulate and exert power. The aim of this paper is not to promote the positioning of men as agents of power, but to understand the working of gender and the underpinning of power in masculinity.
在性别研究中，生理性别和社会性别之间的区别是一个关键问题，不仅需要从女性主义的角度来研究，也需要从男性研究的角度来研究。毫无疑问，在父权结构中，男性“在获得和行使权力方面比女性表现得更好”(Buchbinder，第68页)，但理解基于性别的对男性拥有这些特权的期望的含义是至关重要的。男性气概作为一种性别类别的不可见性使其显得自然而连贯。本文将在男性气概作为性别范畴的背景下，分析努鲁丁·法拉(Nuruddin Farah, b. 1945)《地图》中霸权男性气概或raganimo的配置。这项研究将揭示，文化所暗示的自然的占主导地位的男子气概，实际上是由各种话语形成的假象。本文强调，在《地图》的社会规定规范中，男性气质的塑造是一种话语实践，是父权索马里社会用来产生、流通和行使权力的工具。本文的目的不是促进男性作为权力代理人的定位，而是为了理解性别的运作和男性气概中权力的基础。
{"title":"Becoming a Man: Construction of the Somali Raganimo in Maps","authors":"Sehnaz Rofique Saikia","doi":"10.22492/ijah.9.1.02","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22492/ijah.9.1.02","url":null,"abstract":"In gender studies, the distinction between biological sex and the social aspect of gender is of pivotal concern, and it needs to be examined not only from a feminist perspective but from masculinity studies as well. Undoubtedly, men have fared better within the patriarchal structure “in terms of the access to and the wielding of power, than have women” (Buchbinder, p. 68), but it is crucial to understand the implications of gender-based expectations on men to possess those privileges. The invisibility concerning masculinity as a gendered category has made it appear natural and coherent. In the context of masculinity as a gendered category, this paper will analyze the configuration of hegemonic masculinity or a raganimo in Nuruddin Farah’s (b. 1945) Maps. The study will reveal how the dominant masculinity insinuated by culture as natural is, in reality, a make-believe formulated by various discourses. The paper foregrounds that the shaping of masculinity in socially prescribed norms in Maps is a discursive practice instrumentalized by patriarchal Somali society to generate, circulate and exert power. The aim of this paper is not to promote the positioning of men as agents of power, but to understand the working of gender and the underpinning of power in masculinity.","PeriodicalId":270323,"journal":{"name":"IAFOR Journal of Arts & Humanities","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-07-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129251499","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The phrase “femme fatale” is a well-known figure in the literary and cultural representations of women. Associated with evil temptation, the femme fatale is an iconic figure that has been appropriated into folklore, literature, and mythology. In the twentieth century, the figure finds space in literary and cinematic endeavours, particularly in crime fiction and noir thrillers. The progenitors of the hard-boiled genre of detective fiction popularised the figure of a sexually seductive and promiscuous woman who betrays men for material gain. Walter Mosley, an African American detective fiction writer, adapted the hard-boiled formula popularised by Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, but altered it to address socio-political issues concerning the condition of African Americans in the post-World War II era. Mosley followed Chandler’s lead in weaving a quest narrative around femme fatale Daphne Monet in his first novel, Devil in a Blue Dress (1990). The purpose of this paper is to look at Mosley’s treatment of the femme fatale figure in this novel. The methodology employed is a close analysis of the text, as well as an analysis of the figure of the femme fatale in its function as catalyst for men’s behaviour. The purpose of this study is to examine how the femme fatale was created, specifically what elements contributed to Daphne Monet’s transformation into a femme fatale.
{"title":"Dangerous Femininity: Looking into the Portrayal of Daphne Monet as a Femme Fatale in Walter Mosley’s Devil in a Blue Dress","authors":"Prerana Chakravarty","doi":"10.22492/ijah.9.1.05","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22492/ijah.9.1.05","url":null,"abstract":"The phrase “femme fatale” is a well-known figure in the literary and cultural representations of women. Associated with evil temptation, the femme fatale is an iconic figure that has been appropriated into folklore, literature, and mythology. In the twentieth century, the figure finds space in literary and cinematic endeavours, particularly in crime fiction and noir thrillers. The progenitors of the hard-boiled genre of detective fiction popularised the figure of a sexually seductive and promiscuous woman who betrays men for material gain. Walter Mosley, an African American detective fiction writer, adapted the hard-boiled formula popularised by Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, but altered it to address socio-political issues concerning the condition of African Americans in the post-World War II era. Mosley followed Chandler’s lead in weaving a quest narrative around femme fatale Daphne Monet in his first novel, Devil in a Blue Dress (1990). The purpose of this paper is to look at Mosley’s treatment of the femme fatale figure in this novel. The methodology employed is a close analysis of the text, as well as an analysis of the figure of the femme fatale in its function as catalyst for men’s behaviour. The purpose of this study is to examine how the femme fatale was created, specifically what elements contributed to Daphne Monet’s transformation into a femme fatale.","PeriodicalId":270323,"journal":{"name":"IAFOR Journal of Arts & Humanities","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-07-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126208017","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
J. M. Coetzee’s 1986 novel Foe tells the story of Susan Barton, who has boarded a ship bound for Lisbon in her search for her kidnapped daughter. After a mutiny on the ship she is set adrift, washing ashore on the island inhabited by “Cruso” and Friday and intruding into their ongoing adventure. Her account is then inserted into the original Robinson Crusoe story line, which is redrawn following Susan Barton’s perspective. The original text’s recontextualization illustrates the effort by Coetzee to render the story in categories that are relevant to a contemporary cultural context. Like Robinson Crusoe, it is a frame story, developed while Barton is in England attempting to convince writer Daniel Foe to help transform her tale into popular fiction. Friday is a character whose marginality – as it first appears in Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe – is carried forward in J. M. Coetzee’s Foe, as this new version of Friday is that of a more disempowered and dysfunctional subject, one doubly mutilated – orally and sexually. This paper aims to study Friday’s subversive subalternity in Coetzee’s work by using postcolonial methodology with a view to uncover his unique, rebellious behaviour and his capacity to define his own modes of freedom.
{"title":"Can the “Mutelated” Subaltern be Free? Reading Friday’s Subversion in J. M. Coetzee’s Foe","authors":"Hemangi Hemangi, Tanya D’souza","doi":"10.22492/ijah.9.1.06","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22492/ijah.9.1.06","url":null,"abstract":"J. M. Coetzee’s 1986 novel Foe tells the story of Susan Barton, who has boarded a ship bound for Lisbon in her search for her kidnapped daughter. After a mutiny on the ship she is set adrift, washing ashore on the island inhabited by “Cruso” and Friday and intruding into their ongoing adventure. Her account is then inserted into the original Robinson Crusoe story line, which is redrawn following Susan Barton’s perspective. The original text’s recontextualization illustrates the effort by Coetzee to render the story in categories that are relevant to a contemporary cultural context. Like Robinson Crusoe, it is a frame story, developed while Barton is in England attempting to convince writer Daniel Foe to help transform her tale into popular fiction. Friday is a character whose marginality – as it first appears in Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe – is carried forward in J. M. Coetzee’s Foe, as this new version of Friday is that of a more disempowered and dysfunctional subject, one doubly mutilated – orally and sexually. This paper aims to study Friday’s subversive subalternity in Coetzee’s work by using postcolonial methodology with a view to uncover his unique, rebellious behaviour and his capacity to define his own modes of freedom.","PeriodicalId":270323,"journal":{"name":"IAFOR Journal of Arts & Humanities","volume":"41 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-07-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125664372","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Unique among other rhetorical devices, wit can appear complex and banal simultaneously. The clever language can express thought equal to the weight of lengthy discourse in a few words, often with amusing effect. However, despite the complexity of the device, wit only offers a momentary chuckle or clarification of events, easily forgotten in a larger context. This dichotomy of wit operates the plot and theme in many literary texts. Intelligent protagonists employ the device to remedy their problems, believing that the complexity of the response ensures its effectiveness. However, because wit consists of only words, the device falls short of enacting change that action or direct discourse could more appropriately handle. This paper examines the role of wit in Hamlet and Catch-22 to determine how characters rely on wit to affront their problems but succeed only in amplifying them.
{"title":"The Incompetent Antagonism of Wit: A Study of Hamlet and Catch-22","authors":"P. A. Shifana","doi":"10.22492/ijah.9.1.08","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22492/ijah.9.1.08","url":null,"abstract":"Unique among other rhetorical devices, wit can appear complex and banal simultaneously. The clever language can express thought equal to the weight of lengthy discourse in a few words, often with amusing effect. However, despite the complexity of the device, wit only offers a momentary chuckle or clarification of events, easily forgotten in a larger context. This dichotomy of wit operates the plot and theme in many literary texts. Intelligent protagonists employ the device to remedy their problems, believing that the complexity of the response ensures its effectiveness. However, because wit consists of only words, the device falls short of enacting change that action or direct discourse could more appropriately handle. This paper examines the role of wit in Hamlet and Catch-22 to determine how characters rely on wit to affront their problems but succeed only in amplifying them.","PeriodicalId":270323,"journal":{"name":"IAFOR Journal of Arts & Humanities","volume":"40 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-07-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128771596","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The current COVID-19 pandemic has underscored the need to “think outside the box”. As societies across the planet gradually become more interconnected, the dominance of outmoded social practices surrounding human interaction, work, leisure and space is being challenged on a daily basis. Mediatic productions such as film have always presented opportunities for expanding the reach of particular messages and disseminating topical views and perspectives. In honour of Federico Fellini (1920-1993) on the 100th anniversary of his birth, this paper undertakes a comprehensive comparison between the bold and absurdist cinema of the Post-Neorealist filmmaker and today’s also strange and perplexing social environment. Contextualising his cinema within an auteurist framework, we highlight how ground-breaking Fellini was in embracing the unconventional; by doing so he provided a practical guide for navigating contemporary reality. With productions that seduce and impress viewers worldwide, Fellini defied established cinematographic practices, as exemplified by his experimentation with overlapping narrative styles. His films bestir a new way of thinking by generating an anomalous world, one where events take place beyond the scope of what the viewer anticipates as “natural”. But the appraisal of what is “natural” is contingent upon the viewer’s belief structure: by presenting a world where events happen outside the realm of practical expectations, Fellini’s timeless cinema questions outdated belief systems and sets the guidelines for how to navigate the unanticipated complexities of the contemporary world. Reality and fiction merge into one.
{"title":"Fellini in Memoriam – The Absurdist Elements of Fellini’s Cinema as a Reflection of our Disrupted COVID-19 Reality","authors":"Jytte Holmqvist","doi":"10.22492/ijah.9.1.11","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22492/ijah.9.1.11","url":null,"abstract":"The current COVID-19 pandemic has underscored the need to “think outside the box”. As societies across the planet gradually become more interconnected, the dominance of outmoded social practices surrounding human interaction, work, leisure and space is being challenged on a daily basis. Mediatic productions such as film have always presented opportunities for expanding the reach of particular messages and disseminating topical views and perspectives. In honour of Federico Fellini (1920-1993) on the 100th anniversary of his birth, this paper undertakes a comprehensive comparison between the bold and absurdist cinema of the Post-Neorealist filmmaker and today’s also strange and perplexing social environment. Contextualising his cinema within an auteurist framework, we highlight how ground-breaking Fellini was in embracing the unconventional; by doing so he provided a practical guide for navigating contemporary reality. With productions that seduce and impress viewers worldwide, Fellini defied established cinematographic practices, as exemplified by his experimentation with overlapping narrative styles. His films bestir a new way of thinking by generating an anomalous world, one where events take place beyond the scope of what the viewer anticipates as “natural”. But the appraisal of what is “natural” is contingent upon the viewer’s belief structure: by presenting a world where events happen outside the realm of practical expectations, Fellini’s timeless cinema questions outdated belief systems and sets the guidelines for how to navigate the unanticipated complexities of the contemporary world. Reality and fiction merge into one.","PeriodicalId":270323,"journal":{"name":"IAFOR Journal of Arts & Humanities","volume":"31 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-07-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126061944","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In a famous passage in “The Death of the Author,” Roland Barthes describes the writing process as embodying the disintegration of the author’s personal identity: “Writing is that neutral, composite, oblique space where our subject slips away, the negative where all identity is lost, starting with the very identity of the body writing” (142). This postmodern position is deeply rooted in classical Greek thought, in particular Plato’s harsh critique of poetic inspiration, conceived as “holy madness.” Is this equation valid, however? Does writing necessarily serve as the ultimate act of self-negation? This essay seeks to elucidate Jorge Luis Borges’ and Fernando Pessoa’s alternative views of authorial subjectivity. Borges and Pessoa – arguably two of the greatest writers of the twentieth century – conceive the interplay between writing and self-identity in rather complex fashion. Pessoa’s term “heteronym” relates to the way in which an author’s subjectivity abruptly gives way to an idiosyncratic identity who composes the poem. This recalls the Kabbalistic idea of God’s contraction (tzimzum), the creator preserving his or her passive self-identity while giving birth to other beings from his or her inner void. Discussing Shakespeare and Whitman, Borges proposes that the act of writing is a form of self-creation in which the writer begets a unique narrative identity out of himself or herself that, transfigured, is simultaneously both the same and the other.
在《作者之死》(The Death of The Author)的一段著名段落中，罗兰·巴特(Roland Barthes)将写作过程描述为体现作者个人身份的解体:“写作是一个中性的、复合的、倾斜的空间，我们的主体在这里溜走了，消极的地方，所有的身份都消失了，从身体写作的身份开始”(142)。这种后现代立场深深植根于古典希腊思想，尤其是柏拉图对“神圣的疯狂”的诗歌灵感的严厉批评。然而，这个方程有效吗?写作一定是自我否定的终极行为吗?本文试图阐明博尔赫斯和佩索阿对作者主体性的不同看法。博尔赫斯和佩索阿——可以说是二十世纪最伟大的两位作家——以相当复杂的方式构想了写作与自我认同之间的相互作用。佩索阿的术语“异名”与作者的主体性突然让位给创作这首诗的特殊身份的方式有关。这让人想起卡巴拉关于上帝收缩(tzimzum)的思想，造物主在从他或她的内在虚空中生出其他生命的同时，保留了他或她的被动自我身份。在讨论莎士比亚和惠特曼时，博尔赫斯提出，写作行为是一种自我创造的形式，在这种形式中，作家从自己身上获得了一种独特的叙事身份，这种身份被变形了，同时是相同的和他者的。
{"title":"Literary Writing and Personal Identity in Borges and Pessoa","authors":"Shlomy Mualem","doi":"10.22492/ijah.9.1.07","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22492/ijah.9.1.07","url":null,"abstract":"In a famous passage in “The Death of the Author,” Roland Barthes describes the writing process as embodying the disintegration of the author’s personal identity: “Writing is that neutral, composite, oblique space where our subject slips away, the negative where all identity is lost, starting with the very identity of the body writing” (142). This postmodern position is deeply rooted in classical Greek thought, in particular Plato’s harsh critique of poetic inspiration, conceived as “holy madness.” Is this equation valid, however? Does writing necessarily serve as the ultimate act of self-negation? This essay seeks to elucidate Jorge Luis Borges’ and Fernando Pessoa’s alternative views of authorial subjectivity. Borges and Pessoa – arguably two of the greatest writers of the twentieth century – conceive the interplay between writing and self-identity in rather complex fashion. Pessoa’s term “heteronym” relates to the way in which an author’s subjectivity abruptly gives way to an idiosyncratic identity who composes the poem. This recalls the Kabbalistic idea of God’s contraction (tzimzum), the creator preserving his or her passive self-identity while giving birth to other beings from his or her inner void. Discussing Shakespeare and Whitman, Borges proposes that the act of writing is a form of self-creation in which the writer begets a unique narrative identity out of himself or herself that, transfigured, is simultaneously both the same and the other.","PeriodicalId":270323,"journal":{"name":"IAFOR Journal of Arts & Humanities","volume":"534 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-07-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114986362","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Witch-hunting, an age-old practice in India, survives in a myriad of avatars in rural and urban areas. These avatars of witch-hunting have often been trapped in the binary of Indian modernity and Indian traditions, with the latter often embracing unchallenged superstitious beliefs. Herein we study the way the binary is handled in two recent telefilms, namely Bulbbul and Roohi, as they aim to revolutionise the portrayal of witches in Hindi cinema. The paper looks at how the films in question subvert the genesis of witches and witch-hunts, and how in the process of undermining superstitious belief, they situate witches as embodiment of an emancipatory discourse that resists the silencing of women, a practise still serves the patriarchal standards of a heteronormative, bourgeois society. In so doing, our reading of the films engages with questions such as: How have witches been defined in Indian culture? How are these witches being imagined in the films in question? What implications do these redefinitions have in terms of the feminist movement in India, or in terms of the larger portrayal of Indian women in Hindi cinema?
{"title":"Reimagining Witches in Contemporary Hindi Cinema: A Study of “Bulbbul” and “Roohi”","authors":"Riya Mukherjee, Suraj Gunwant","doi":"10.22492/ijah.9.1.03","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22492/ijah.9.1.03","url":null,"abstract":"Witch-hunting, an age-old practice in India, survives in a myriad of avatars in rural and urban areas. These avatars of witch-hunting have often been trapped in the binary of Indian modernity and Indian traditions, with the latter often embracing unchallenged superstitious beliefs. Herein we study the way the binary is handled in two recent telefilms, namely Bulbbul and Roohi, as they aim to revolutionise the portrayal of witches in Hindi cinema. The paper looks at how the films in question subvert the genesis of witches and witch-hunts, and how in the process of undermining superstitious belief, they situate witches as embodiment of an emancipatory discourse that resists the silencing of women, a practise still serves the patriarchal standards of a heteronormative, bourgeois society. In so doing, our reading of the films engages with questions such as: How have witches been defined in Indian culture? How are these witches being imagined in the films in question? What implications do these redefinitions have in terms of the feminist movement in India, or in terms of the larger portrayal of Indian women in Hindi cinema?","PeriodicalId":270323,"journal":{"name":"IAFOR Journal of Arts & Humanities","volume":"2 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-07-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134015887","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The present study analyses the gendered impact of the ongoing conflict between Israel and Palestine. If conflict has a certain bearing on men, so on women. It offers an insight into the experiences of women during the conflict and beyond, the loss of dignity and independence and how they grapple with all these issues. The study explores the ways Palestinian women are shaped by perpetual patriarchy and political power struggles. It tries to capture their struggle with identity and exile and how they anchor the Palestinian narrative by highlighting the changing roles of women and their engagement in community activism.
{"title":"Gender Roles and Perceptions: The Refugee Experience and Political Agency in Susan Abulhawa’s The Blue Between Sky and Water and Against the Loveless World","authors":"Farhan Ahmad","doi":"10.22492/ijah.9.1.04","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22492/ijah.9.1.04","url":null,"abstract":"The present study analyses the gendered impact of the ongoing conflict between Israel and Palestine. If conflict has a certain bearing on men, so on women. It offers an insight into the experiences of women during the conflict and beyond, the loss of dignity and independence and how they grapple with all these issues. The study explores the ways Palestinian women are shaped by perpetual patriarchy and political power struggles. It tries to capture their struggle with identity and exile and how they anchor the Palestinian narrative by highlighting the changing roles of women and their engagement in community activism.","PeriodicalId":270323,"journal":{"name":"IAFOR Journal of Arts & Humanities","volume":"16 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-07-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134132528","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York on 11th September, 2001, left behind 2977 dead, an altered Manhattan skyline and a changed world order marked by a formidable upsurge of global discourses pertaining to terrorism, multiculturalism, xenophobia, collective memory, and so forth. Indeed, 9/11 inhabits a discursive field of narratives/counter-narratives defying closure. Taking into cognizance this inevitability of myriad discourses, the present paper engages with the politics of the emergence of the discursively constructed Islamic Other in the post-9/11 national imaginary. Using the Foucauldian ideas of Power/Knowledge and “regime of Truth” along with Said’s major premises as are found in the works Orientalism and Covering Islam, the paper attempts to debunk the idea that “innocent”, neutral and objective representations in the media have been the norm. It argues that the fanatical, regressive and jehad-driven stereotype of the Islamic Other that gained visibility/ circulation/ legitimisation in the post-9/11 American socio-political culturescape had a Stateist genesis rooted in the reductive, ahistorical, Manichean binary of “us versus them” which essentially constituted the official discourse. It traces the trajectory of the Arab-American experience from initial erasure/ invisibility to hyper-visibility in the post-9/11 years, a time marked by deep fractures in the civil society where xenophobia, racial profiling and jingoistic patriotism became normalised. One way of generating resistance to such workings of power is by launching a counternarrative through the literary text. Consequently, the paper ends with a detailed engagement with two novels, one by Mohsin Hamid and another by Laila Halaby, that resist the official stereotypes/discourses while foregrounding the various registers of Othering in the post-9/11 years.
{"title":"The Islamic Other in Post-9/11 America: Reading Resistance in Hamid and Halaby","authors":"Pathik Roy","doi":"10.22492/ijah.9.1.09","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22492/ijah.9.1.09","url":null,"abstract":"The terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York on 11th September, 2001, left behind 2977 dead, an altered Manhattan skyline and a changed world order marked by a formidable upsurge of global discourses pertaining to terrorism, multiculturalism, xenophobia, collective memory, and so forth. Indeed, 9/11 inhabits a discursive field of narratives/counter-narratives defying closure. Taking into cognizance this inevitability of myriad discourses, the present paper engages with the politics of the emergence of the discursively constructed Islamic Other in the post-9/11 national imaginary. Using the Foucauldian ideas of Power/Knowledge and “regime of Truth” along with Said’s major premises as are found in the works Orientalism and Covering Islam, the paper attempts to debunk the idea that “innocent”, neutral and objective representations in the media have been the norm. It argues that the fanatical, regressive and jehad-driven stereotype of the Islamic Other that gained visibility/ circulation/ legitimisation in the post-9/11 American socio-political culturescape had a Stateist genesis rooted in the reductive, ahistorical, Manichean binary of “us versus them” which essentially constituted the official discourse. It traces the trajectory of the Arab-American experience from initial erasure/ invisibility to hyper-visibility in the post-9/11 years, a time marked by deep fractures in the civil society where xenophobia, racial profiling and jingoistic patriotism became normalised. One way of generating resistance to such workings of power is by launching a counternarrative through the literary text. Consequently, the paper ends with a detailed engagement with two novels, one by Mohsin Hamid and another by Laila Halaby, that resist the official stereotypes/discourses while foregrounding the various registers of Othering in the post-9/11 years.","PeriodicalId":270323,"journal":{"name":"IAFOR Journal of Arts & Humanities","volume":"7 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-07-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116837830","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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