Sanglap: Journal of Literary and Cultural Inquiry
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The Freudian Cut
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The article discusses the concept of irreversibility in psychoanalysis. By examining some of the key stages in the development of the Freudian enterprise, it argues that there is a single question that psychoanalysis has been dealing with from the very beginning and that enables us to articulate the real core of its history. The question that progressively produced the disposition of psychoanalysis, i.e. the irreversible trajectory on which it has been situated ever since is the following: Is it possible to intervene into the irreversible
The Cut and Misunderstanding
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This article attempts to approach the question of the cut in analytic practice and in directing interviews with parents of autistic children admitted to the institution. The clinic of autism can be envisaged in its relations with language to develop a crucial aspect of the symbolic register: the notion of misunderstanding. This notion was introduced by Jacques Lacan early in his teaching and can be traced to his initial work on structural linguistics till his final pronouncements in the 70’s on topology and the nodal clinic. In his very last seminar of 1980, entitled Dissolution!, Lacan associates the notion of misunderstanding with that of trauma that leads on to this idea that one is already traumatized by misunderstanding that exists between parents. We hope that these formulations will provide us with elements to better conceptualize direction and organization of interviews with parents of autistic subjects admitted to Institutions
Why all the Fuss about Purity?:: Un/Touch-ability and the Paradox of Hygienic Bodies
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Focusing on the question of untouchability and how a discourse of hygiene comes to justify it in the recent times, the paper attempts a brief genealogy tracing the linking of caste and the concept of hygiene. Trying to open up the entanglements that enable such linking, the paper goes deeper into the issues of sedimentation and embodiement that enable such continuity of caste discrimination. With such an approach the paper presents caste as a ghost and thus engages further on the contingencies haunting any attempt to theorize a ghost. It is herein that the paper calls for the urgency to engage more critically with the idea-matter embrace (instead of seeing them as detached) that constitute the elementary aspects of practicing caste: touch, purity and body
The Postcolonial Galaxy or a Galactic Postcoloniality: : New Dynamics of Power in Isaac Asimov’s The Naked Sun
Get PDFThe Foucauldian notion of the “productive” component of power manifested in the semblance of autonomy in “transparent” subjects unsettles Francis Fukuyama’s aspirations about information technology that breaks the “monopoly over information.” Knowledge of the colonial subject in the Foucauldian paradigm and its indispensable role in the manifestation of colonial power have been the mainstay of postcolonial phenomenological reflections of the Self/Other. The Foucauldian notion of the subject’s delusional agency in liberal discourses, however, witnesses a further modification in fiction speculating on Artificial Intelligence. This results in the rupture of complacency about authoritarian control, since Artificial Intelligence, as an offshoot of the revolution so dear to Fukuyma, produces the case for a new kind of subject in speculative fiction like Asimov’s The Naked Sun. What emerges subsequently is the example of an intelligent subject capable not simply of producing knowledge but also withholding it— a simulated intelligence that is human-but-not-quite. This gives rise to an anxiety of control experienced by the human subject like the detective Baley in Asimov’s text who wishes to make the robot-assistant, Daneel, serve his purpose only. Such an anxiety experienced in the face of the rupture of projection of the purpose of robotics research mimics postcolonial anxieties in the event of rupture of colonial projections on the Other. This paper seeks to explore postcolonialism as a condition not only reflective of the past but also an expedient tool to measure anxieties, fantasies, and their subsequent sublimation in speculative fiction on the future of robotics and Artificial Intelligence, as in Asimov’s text
Introduction: : A Writing Pedagogy of Failure
Get PDFThe Introduction begins with the consensus that writing pedagogy in India is grappling with its own identity within university ecosystems. It is currently at a stage in Indian higher education that is marked by failures and relentless trials. The Introduction argues that this failure could be productive of forging new pathways best suited for the multilingual nature of the Indian classroom. It emphasizes on writing as a process and not just as a product, and how such process-oriented approach towards writing can make use of lived or peripheral languages in the process of producing the final product in Standard English prose. It pays close attention to some of recent proposals of the National Education Policy 2020 in this regard. The Introduction is also consistent with the existing literature on writing pedagogy based on care. However, it is cautious in treading this path of care as it notes that care must move beyond the discourse of ‘sickness’ and ‘remedy’ for those who lack proficiency in English. Instead, it proposes that these centres could emerge as an emancipatory antidote to a collective sickness of putting pen to paper: a struggle shared by all, regardless of socio-economic statuses. In the final section, the Introduction proposes a pedagogy that can be built through a commitment to affirmative action policies in private universities. Through references to Ambedkar’s statements during the debates on linguistic states and Hany Babu M.T. \u27s proposal on bilingual education, it contends that English could be an equidistant language from all the other languages in the classroom and live a life of objective reasoning in that space. It also contends that we must imagine the multidisciplinary writing centre as a space that is equidistant from specific disciplinary regimes of writing and knowledge production to make the project of the writing centre truly emancipatory
From Academic Literacy to Critical Literacy: : Re-imagining English Language Pedagogy in Indian Higher Education
Get PDFThis paper will argue that the dominant imagining of ‘academic literacy’ as an organising framework for English language learning within both public and private universities in India cannot adequately engage with the imperative of social and political empowerment for disadvantaged students. Instead, I will propose that the critical literacy orientation, by foregrounding the question of power in language learning as well as emphasising the role of language in re-imagining both interpersonal and institutional practices, can offer a powerful alternative to the existing models of pedagogic and writing support across public/private university settings. The paper will conclude by providing a few conceptual and practical pointers for how existing literacy programs may work towards developing such an orientation
Translating Contexts, Transforming Cultures: : A Bengali Adaptation of Mahesh Elkunchwar’s Vāḍā Cirebandī
Get PDFThe concept of translation is usually limited within the frontiers of languages, often conceived as words and phrases. It restricts the diverse possibilities of going beyond textual translation to analyze contextual translation, or “transcontextualization”. This argument attempts to realize a (normally) unrealizable perspective on translation through Sohag Sen’s Bengali adaptation of Mahesh Elkunchwar’s play Vāḍā Cirebandī (The Old-Stone Mansion, 1985), an adaptation which encompasses both the text and its context(s). The criticism of colonial legacies in postcolonial India, as unraveled through the rural-urban divide in this play, does not portray identical obstacles and grievances in Elkunchwar’s Maharashtra and Sohag Sen’s Bengal. Keeping different contexts in mind, this paper will elaborate the manifold ways in which transcreation/transcontextualization exposes the problem of generalized textual representations. It will also reflect upon the diverse ways through which transcontextualization incorporates geographical and ontological variants within specific spatio-temporal zones. 
Cold Fire
Get PDFI’ll come and give you a brochure and other literatures too. But if you watch this videocassette for ten minutes, things will become absolutely clear to you. I really like this model of the Akai VCR you have here
Performing the ‘Maternal’ Body: : Unearthing Desire and Sexuality in the Folksongs of the New Mother
Get PDFoai:ojs2.sanglap-journal.in:article/1This paper looks at women’s folk singing tradition of Haryana to unearth the images of the new mother, as constructed in the folksongs called Jachcha, sung in the context of childbirth. The attempt is to foreground the embodied voices of women as they emerge in the context of motherhood, in order to recognise and augment the voices as much as the silences, that abundantly “speak” and subvert the dominant patriarchal notions of the docile, chaste body of the mother that are constructed to manage the potentially threatening aspect of the fertile female body. As we hear women’s voices and self-imaging, we find neither the tender, nurturing “motherly” body nor the modesty, embarrassment or voicelessness so often identified as appropriate female behaviour. What remains at the centre of these female genres is the potency and the legitimacy of female desires along with placing a strong positive value on their fulfilment. A reading of women’s cultural forms reveals these to be discourses that carry a very different understanding of “maternal” body and sexuality, disrupting the prevailing dominant polarised conceptualisations of the female body wherein the maternal body is often desexualised, assuming an incongruity between active sexuality and motherhood in a good wife. My contention is that such resignifications and alternative self-figurations of the maternal body by women serve to challenge dominant ontological claims, thereby revealing ontology to be a contested field as well as enhancing the field of possibilities for (re)imagining the “maternal” body
Viral Entanglements: : Pandemic, Planetarity and New Materialist Response
Get PDFThis paper seeks to investigate the current pandemic from a New Materialist perspective. New materialist philosophy through its radical understanding of agency and subjectivity provides the tools to grapple with the viral entity without placing it within the anthropocentric frame. At the same time, New Materialism can help understand the thick mesh of intra-action between the human and the non-human. The paper will study how the human body and the viral entity each and how such a relationship calls for an ethics of responsibility. Through a close reading of New Materialist philosophers like Jane Bennett, Karen Barad, Rosi Bradoti and through the employment of their ideas such as intra-action, agential realism and operator, the paper attempts to reach at an understanding of the pandemic which is accommodative by nature. The paper also provides a planetary understanding of health and illness and argues for a "more than human" approach to health care and medical knowledge. The paper derives perspectives from Spinoza’s philosophy to understand the cellular interactions between the human cell and the viral entity