Sanglap: Journal of Literary and Cultural Inquiry
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Terror, Hospitality and the Gift of Death in Morrison’sBeloved
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The “us versus them” narrative still pre-dominates the analysis of terrorism in the West, which invariably associates “them” with terrorism. Toni Morrison’s hauntingly memorable novel – Beloved – provides a radically different and historically grounded view of terror and terrorism in the West. The novel not only releases us from the “us versus them” paradigm by demonstrating America’s intimacy with terror, it also enables us to examine terror and terrorism from the perspective of a gendered and ethnic subject who subverts the easy categorization of “us” and “them” or civilized and terrorist. Following Jacques Derrida’s contemplations on death and terror, I contend that Morrison’s novel foregrounds autoimmunity, the gift of death and hospitality as key components in the experience of terror for a subject of colonialism and slavery
Hollywood’s Terror Industry:: Idealized beauty and The Bluest Eye
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Toni Morrison’s novel The Bluest Eye (1970) examines the effects of 1940s American white cultural hegemony on her black characters: Claudia, Pauline, and Pecola. The dominant influence of white society, specifically white ideals of beauty, are perpetuated through film and exemplified by such actresses as Shirley Temple and Greta Garbo. The terrifying nature of the Hollywood ideal is borne from its influence and ubiquity and is highlighted by Pecola’s deranged pursuit of this impossible standard of beauty. Ultimately by attempting to realize this paradigm, blacks are disenfranchised while the ideal is recharged with the power of those who continue to pursue it
Censorship and Literature:
Full text linkThe Oxford English Dictionary defines censorship as “the suppression or prohibition of any parts of books, films, news, etc. that are considered obscene, politically unacceptable, or a threat to security.”1 There is at least a two-fold meaning in this definition: first, certain factors give rise to censorship including obscenity, security, etc.
The Anthropocene Memorial: : Recording Climate Change on The Banks of the Potomac River in Washington D.C
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At the intersection of environmental humanities and memory studies, this article addresses the memorial response to the Anthropocene in an attempt to understand how climate change is and could be displayed and remembered in a public space. Through an examination of Climate Chronograph, a climate change memorial project, the article contextualises commemorative practices within interconnecting social, cultural and environmental realms. Climate Chronograph is a memorial project designed by architects Erik Jensen and Rebecca Sunter. On the banks of the Potomac river in Washington D.C, a sloped park of cherry trees will gradually be submerged in the rising river creating a visual record of climate change. The memorial allows its visitors to imagine a future past of the Anthropocene, an anticipated decaying and drowned future memory. This article explores the specificity of memorial sites in the Anthropocene, how they underline the transcultural dimension of climate change and the meaning-making dimension of memory
Tracing the Chequered History of the Academic Writing Course in the University of Calicut
Full text linkThis paper deals with the chequered history of academic writing in one of the state public universities in Kerala, India, the University of Calicut. Academic writing was introduced in 2009 and was taught till 2014. It was removed for a short duration of three years before being reintroduced in 2017.The paper argues that there are political, administrative and educational reasons for the uneven history of the course. While the political and administrative reasons stifled the course, the educational reasons drained its core principles. Since academic writing was introduced along with the semester system, the history of the course is examined alongside the semester system. The paper elaborates on the limitations of introducing a course that demands flexibility within a rigid educational system. It is proposed that discipline specific research writing courses must be introduced in core subjects and integrated with generalist academic writing courses for achieving the learning objectives envisaged in it
The Vagabond”s War Cry:: The Other in Nabarun”s Narrative
Full text linkThe objective of this article is to discuss, in brief, how Nabarun Bhattacharya deals with the question of the “other.” Bhattacharya treats the ‘other’ not as a convenient literary device, but as an ever explosive, ever truant fantastic object that jumps at the face of the ‘I’ (the author and the reader) and says “NO”.
Bhattacharya, spanning roughly four decades, presents not only the human subaltern as a belligerent agent of chaos, but also depicts cats, dogs and lunatic footpath dwellers in a similar role. Paranormal humanoids with wings come out of his pages to shock and destroy the audience’s perception regarding what the life-world should be like. He speaks in a language that might be forever out of my comprehensibility. This essay is on the culminating phase of Bhattacharya’s prose writing career, and I wish to explain how such a culmination becomes apparent in the handling of theme, style and ideology; 1999 onwards to be more precise.
The author presents the “other” as the ultimate voice of dissent and a thorough reading of his oeuvre shall make clear that he slowly removed himself from the linear assumption that once the marginalized assumes the power, all shall be equal forever. In this article, I have attempted to demonstrate how Bhattacharya does not thrust any emancipatory role on the “other” but lets them speak freely while being on the margin, posing maybe a greater challenge and a more intense threat to normative powers—thematically and linguistically
Tasting Tandoori Chicken in English: From ‘Translation Impossible’ to ‘Translation Is-possible’
Full text linkTranslation of literature is one of the most challenging tasks as one renders a text, located amidst a dense cultural milieu, into a foreign avatar, while making it appear as the most natural thing ever! The success of a translation lies in the felicity of expression even as it conceals the passionate struggle to find le mot juste. Through a reading of some difficult nuances in Hindi and Punjabi literature, I share my torment at how to convey the exuberance and larger-than-life Punjabi character in the self-deprecatory reticence of the English. With examples from not just translations of Hindi and Punjabi texts into English but texts written originally in English by writers of Punjabi sensibility, the presentation seeks to demonstrate how such knots and gnarls are negotiated during the process of translation and what translation strategies a translator may incorporate to evoke the local ecosystem
Toy
Full text linkMithil and Mimi never left Toy alone at home. Not for a long time at least. There wasn’t even a plan as such but Mithil called Mimi from the office to tell her that Mahendra was screening Tarkovsky’s ‘Nostalgia’ at his place on VCR. They asked Amitadi to look after Toy
Literary Debate on the American Civil War:: Goldwin Smith and the Problems of Equality in Global Mercantilism (of Cotton)
Full text linkThe article takes up the diplomatic texts of Goldwin Smith such as economic treatises and epistles and demonstrates the irony within the imperial discourse where the liberal democratic strain reveals a curious counterpoint in its insistence on global imperial mercantilism. It underscores the ironic contrast between Smith’s anti-slavery position in America and his preaching of colonial cultivation in India, resulting in the cotton famine of 1877-78
“…like an egg without salt”:: On Joyce’s Scandal Works
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Joyce’s “scandalmunkering” began in his college days with the stall on the publication of his incendiary pamphlets and the president of the Literary and Historical Society of University College Dublin refusing to allow “Drama and Life” (1900) to be read before the Society. Although he faced similar situations with Dubliners (1914) the climax of the Joycean battle with censors was surely the long and much cited legal battle ‘“The United States of America v. One Book Called “Ulysses”’ (1933). However, Finnegans Wake (1939) though no less “scandalous” never faced governmental censorship. This paper attempts to understand how Joyce managed to continue his “scandal work” (as Margot Backus terms it) across his oeuvre while at the same time developing a modern “poetic method” (in Benjamin’s sense of the term) which aimed at recycling cultural waste utilizing the Postal system and even protectionist copyright policies. The paper thus hypothesizes how Joyce’s scandal work also similarly presupposes its own ideal reader, who could either be a “genetic” reader, forced to read backwards or as Lacan suggests, as Joyce himself privy to his own jouissance slipping from letter to litter. Both readers in this view are forced to confront the “scandalous” –– understood in its etymological implications