Sanglap: Journal of Literary and Cultural Inquiry
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The Non-human, Haunting and the question of ‘Excess’ in Elizabeth Bowen’s ‘The Demon Lover’
Get PDFEngaging with the new materialist views on death and life beyond anthropocentric views of self, this paper examines the ambiguities of conceptualizing the boundaries and relations between the human and the non-human. The non-human agency, by going beyond the limited cultural notions of subjectivity and ‘self,’ shows the possibility of an ‘other’ that though is entangled with the human self also offers an agentic capacity of its own. Therefore, by focusing on Rosi Braidotti’s views on new ways of conceptualizing death, of the necessity of accepting death as the pre-condition of our existence and part of the cycles of ‘becoming,’ the intra-actions between the human and the non-human, the self and the other, animate and the inanimate, the paper analyses how such an approach further opens up greater collaborative possibilities of thinking ‘life’. Exploring the entangled conceptual relations of human and non-human within a literary narrative and the ambiguities it poses concerning determining their boundaries, this paper will investigate the idea of haunting, the usage of memory and history, and the interconnectedness between the self and the other in Elizabeth Bowen’s well-known short story, ‘The Demon Lover’. In doing so, the paper shows how Bowen’s use of literary language itself generates the new materialistic concerns of the mesh of human-nonhuman entanglements. A close new materialist reading of the text, along with a thorough examination of the usage of excess, therefore illuminates not only newer ways of reading Bowen but also for examining the entanglements of human self and non-human other. 
Bodies in Transition: : Exploring Queer Sexualities in Indian Cinema
Get PDFThe paper closely studies the representations of queer bodies and sexualities in four Indian films of the last decade: Arekti Premer Golpo, Chitrangada: The Crowning Wish, Nagarkirtan and Super Deluxe. Through the comparative study, the paper will try to explore if, and how, the representations of non-normative sexualities have changed in alternative and in regional cinema, despite the lack/misrepresentation of these individuals in mainstream Hindi cinema. In the process, the questions of the performativity of gender, self and identity, desire and resistance of the queer subject and queer bodies will be addressed against the backdrop of queer theory and queer politics in global as well as in local contexts.
 
The Runaway Sign:: Semiotic Adaptation in Literary Analysis
Get PDFThis article derives a notion of adaptation as a semiotic process from the work of Jesper Hoffmeyer and the Copenhagen-Tartu school of biosemiotics, suggesting it as way of considering fictional writing on genetics and evolution both empirically and analogically. Along these lines, I read changes in significations of reproduction and inheritance in Doris Lessing’s The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four and Five (1980)
Possible and Possibilities:: The Aesthetics of Speculation in Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go
Get PDFKazuo Ishiguro\u27s Never Let Me Go can easily be categorised as speculative fiction, both within the framework of Atwood\u27s controversial definition, and under the looser rubric which encompasses many genres that stretch and exceed the limits of \u27reality\u27. In this article, I explore how speculation lies at the heart of this novel, not merely because of the hypothetical world in which the narrative unfolds, or the curiosity and ethical confusion that the novel provokes, but also because speculation seeps into the very texture of the novel as the characters—a community of individual clones—constantly reflect on their own fate. This paper seeks to comment on how an aesthetic of speculation is at work throughout the novel, and how this derives from, but is not entirely determined by the diverse genres (such as science fiction, life writing, teen romance) that the novel draws upon. In my analysis, I wish to look at specific elements like the community\u27s initially opaque, personalised vocabulary; and the performative aspect of their lives, which I relate to their speculative condition. I will also discuss other works by Ishiguro, and a few texts built around the theme of cloning, in order to tease out the elusive status of Ishiguro\u27s novel when set against his oeuvre and comparable speculative fiction/SF
“Not in Our Good”: Nationalist and other Concerns in the Censorship Debates in Early Indian Cinema.
Get PDFThe present article traces the historical and cultural roots of the censorship practices in cinema in late-colonial India. The emergence of censorship in India, it suggests, carries a larger concern of the hierarchized nationalist public sphere which sought to establish its effective social control over the newly emerged medium of popular mobilization. Interestingly, the British film industry could enjoy only a limited entry into the film industry in India, and the colonial authority too showed their apparent reluctance towards carrying out necessary reforms in securing the prospects of the nascent sector. This specific feature eventually necessitated a coalition between the dominant social institutions and the colonial authority in carrying out the cultural policing of cinema. The development was further valorized by the emerging sector of literary intelligentsia whose rejection of all forms of films other than literary cinema instigated the middle class professional to enter into the production vis-à-vis the discursive domain of cinema in India. The article summarizes this historical process to locate the coordinates of the social control which, in the virtual absence of a regimented censored regime, produced the normative rules for cultural policing in order to overpower the constitutional exercise of censorship in India
Becoming Béla Tarr’s Bêtes, or How to Stop Being Afraid of Ceasing to Be a Human Being
Get PDFAgainst our common rush to understand the world in our own, human terms, Béla Tarr’s films give us the opportunity to come in touch with our own stupidity, and through it, with our madness and the becomings it opens up. This essay looks at the current state of the world (disdainful gesture, disgustedly) and with Terrian eyes, tries to question our speeds, and to see the bottomless abyss that Nietzsche, Deleuze, and others proposed to us as our only living escap
Transcendence through Illumination: Marginalized Identity Re-valued as Art and Literature
Get PDFI provide a critical analysis of the female identity of E. Luminata, written by Chilean writer, Diamela Eltit. This essay will examine how E. Luminata fits into the world of autobiographical feminism, with ties to multiculturalism, and world literature. Her series of artistic scenes in the town square allow her to challenge standardized notions of beauty’s ephemerality and permanence. Within the text, E. Luminata uses her art to protest Pinochet’s military government during the 1980’s. E. Luminata actively uses art, aesthetics, and her sexualized identity to create an argument against the “grotesque” nature of the military regime. As such, her artistic protests, read within a piece of translated literature, help readers to define the nature of the aesthetic experience of womanhood and contemplate personal agency, desire, and cultural possessiveness. Her identity is manifested through the contradictory binary of the natural and the artificial, since she presents herself as a spectacle, for others to perceive. By doing so, she deconstructs her own objectification within the novel
Lacanian Psychoanalysis and the Logic of the Cut
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Psychoanalysis is a practice of speech between at least two people (which does not mean two subjects as two people can embody more than two subjectivities). The cut is an important driving force of this speech practice
Gaia Theory and the Anthropocene: : Radical Contingency in the Posthuman Future
Get PDFGood readings of the Gaia hypothesis of James Lovelock understand the theory as positing multiple, interlocking Earth systems, characterized by rapidly-changing feedback loops, in a way that is harmonious both with Darwinian evolution and contemporary climate science. The dawning of the geologic epoch of the Anthropocene offers little comfort for those who would like to preserve a providential role for human beings in the unfolding of planetary systems. The climate crisis and its attendant catastrophes demonstrate that human beings cannot control themselves, much less the Earth systems on which they depend. The Gaia hypothesis, properly understood, provides an insight into the shock of radical contingency, the realization that the Earth and life can go along perfectly well without human beings. The Gaia hypothesis provides a good framework for seeing the place of humanity at the dawn of the Anthropocene, a decentering of the human even as humanity alters every Earth system and biome
“The Hidden Valleys of My Home”:: Home, Identity, and Environmental Justice in the Select Works of Mamang Dai
Get PDFConcepts of Environmental Justice have impacted on our understanding of the relationship between social aspects and the representation of nature. The environment, for centuries, has been seen as a trophy, to be possessed and controlled. The Anthropocene has ruptured this sense of oneness with nature. Going beyond the borders of language and authorial representation, nature has eluded the racks of human knowledge. We have come to understand that nature is also a part of our social interaction and politico-human relationships. The concept of identity associated with nature depends on the medium of representation. I want to show, in the light of environmental justice, that nature is a challenge, which is both cultural and representational. The question of identity creeps out of the unlikeliest places and challenges the norms of social and cultural representation. I will argue that the interdisciplinary approach of environmental justice can offer a better understanding of our relationship with nature. Simple modes of storytelling can use the medium of language to challenge and seek social justice through voices of the repressed. Environmental Justice is about this need for voicing the unheard stories and the unusual lives of those considered aloof from modern civilization. Mamang Dai is a perfect example of an author who understands the crisis of identity in association with the environment