Smart Moves Journal IJELLH (International Journal of English language, literature in humanities)
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Representation of Kashmiri Women in Naseem Shifaee’s Selected Poems
Get PDFThe paper undertakes examination of selected poems of Naseem Shifaee’s translated in English by Neerja Mattoo by focusing on female identity . Literature looks at humanity with a questioning as well as affirmative gaze, disapproving and approving at the same time, reaffirming stereotypes as well as breaking them. Throughout ages narratives in Kashmir have revealed the inbuilt discrimination and biases against women. Cultural space for women is highly restricted in Kashmir. In spite of their marginalized position Kashmiri women made themselves heard ,undeterred by established womanly restraints interrogated the patriarchal practices and refused to live in a culture of silence . Naseem Shifaee is a powerful women voice acclaimed internationally with the publication of her first poetry collection Darichi Matsrith (windows thrown open) highlighted the existing reality of women in contemporary Kashmir. The paper will explore the incongruity between the societal image of female poetic persona and her own instincts about her true nature .It will be argued how poetic persona is trapped in male allotted and confined space, persuaded to look at herself continually in terms of social conventions according to which women are denigrated by patriarchal supremacy .The bewildered state of mind leads her to undertake the obsessive search for her authentic self identity. She questions what if roles were reversed? In other two poems Naseem questions patriarchal traditions Naseem Shifaee assume the role of the medium in establishing female non being into self-realized person.
 
An Echo of a Modernist Voice in Reference to Kafka’s The Metamorphosis: Change as Constant and Humanity as Memory
Get PDFThis paper intends to place Kafka as a modernist by identifying certain aspects in The Metamorphosis. Kafka as a voice of modernism came into prominence mostly with his posthumous publications where he made a metaphorical representation of the deep seated realities of time. The Metamorphosis is about a commercial traveller, fatigued by the tiresome journey, who turns into monstrous vermin and the respite comes to his family and himself once he is eliminated. Kafka as usually does not clearly come up with the details of the gigantic insect that Gregor has turned into, rather he keeps it for the readers to find out by talking to each other, against each other and to themselves. Gregor is monstrous in appearance as he is perceived by others and himself but within, he is a victim who has been crushed under the monstrous wheels of capitalist world. It is only after becoming a gigantic insect, Gregor reveals everything about himself and his surrounding either in form of reminiscence or with his observation. One may find some sort of umbilical cord existing between Kafka and Gregor as Kafka himself was a poor creature whose back leg is stuck in the Judaism while his front leg, in vain, quested for a new ground, but that idea cannot be the only guiding beacon in comprehending Kafka and his works. Writing in the first half of twentieth-century in the rapidly changing world, the story The Metamorphosis carries in itself all that makes it worth considering among all other Kafka’s work
When the Real Ceases to Exist: Reading the Realm of the Hyperreal in Unni R.’s “Ozhivudivasathe Kali”
Get PDFIn the postmodern condition a sign does not indicate an underlying reality but other signs and thus the whole system becomes ‘simulation’. Jean Baudrillard the French sociologist, cultural critic and postmodern theorist, in his 1981 work Simulacra and Simulations discusses about what is usually known as ‘the loss of the real’. In the contemporary world the distinction between reality and illusion, surface and depth are completely lost. The media mediated world of reality that we perceive today is all a hyperreality. We confront illusions all around us and without which we feel unable to live. What we take in for granted is something that is created for the purpose of to be perceived. All these made up realities become texts as well. In an age of mass production, mass consumption and mass communication the terms ‘hyperreality’ and ‘simulation’ signify the virtual or unreal nature of the present day culture. Baudrillard’s philosophy centers on these concepts. It is a basic part of human existence to simulate, to imagine scenarios and possible outcomes
Blurred Borders between Fact and Fantasy: A Critique of Hannah Arendt’s “Defactualization” in a Subtly Self-aggrandizing and Overtly Deceiving “Post-Truth Era”
Get PDFThe term “post –truth”, that is believed to have made its maiden appearance in a 1992 essay, pertaining to the Iran-Contra Scandal and Persian Gulf War, garnered widespread popularity, in the form of "post-truth politics" recently on account of the 2016 U.S. presidential election and the U.K. Brexit referendum. In fact, it was a political culture in which public opinions and media narratives have become almost entirely disconnected from the substance and policy of legislation. Interestingly such a relatively recent concept that has been vaulted up in an age of Twitter threads and viral news has its roots in post-modernity, relativism, even in the philosophical notions of Nietzsche, Weber, Leo Strauss, Foucault and Derrida, who were inevitably sceptical of the division between facts and values
Spaces, Semantics, and ‘Aesthetic Faculty’: Perspectives on Their Operative Plane of Concurrence, Constitution and Becoming
Get PDFThis paper aims to look at one of the fundamental factors of human beings—the appreciation of things. Calling it ‘the aesthetic faculty’ this paper tries to see how it is inevitable to the way human beings as a species function. This paper aims to propose this idea of an ‘aesthetic faculty’ as a potential basis for our community life in its diverse operations in terms of cultural spaces and their semantics. Viewing the socio-systemic life from the point of view from the aesthetic faculty reveals how appreciation and evaluation are inevitable to human life and how an ideological ground cannot actually affect life without addressing this basic human faculty. This paper tries to take the term ‘aesthetic’ vis-a-vis ‘appreciation’ to a different semantic world altogether so that it is no longer a matter of artistic engagements alone, but something more fundamental and formative than that
Convergence of Biology and Gender Identity: A Study of Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eyes
Get PDFThe concept of gender and the related practices are born at the intersection of biology and politics. Biological markers; physical, physiological and psychological are politicized for hierarchical positioning of man and woman. The nexus between biology and politics has also generated the notion of ‘immutability’ of woman’s ‘gendered self’. Women too, having interiorized the inferiority of the self unquestioningly and have shown little inclination to redefine her-‘self’ after having accepted the nature’s role in her physical and physiological formation. The inability for better ‘self’ definition is also due to the failure to distinguish the exact point of confluence between biology and politics in the socially ascribed gender identities. Caught in the imbroglio woman has suffered crippled social and psychological consequences and the same is well substantiated in the novel The Bluest Eye by African American writer Toni Morrison. The women characters in the novel are paradigms of real life situations. While some do acutely suffer from social and psychological deprivation having interiorized the inferiority of their biological markers, others handle affirmatively the socially ascribed deprivations of their physical self by understanding the nexus between biology and cultural politics. The novel successfully explores the fact that distinct anatomical difference between man and woman or the biological identities of humans should not be the cause or source of discriminatory practices. Or in other words the novel denies the inferiority of woman as something hermetically sealed and that social factors; advantages of birth (like race and social class), socio-cultural pressures, cultivation of mental culture and many more are of great consequence for both the formation of ‘positive self- identity’ by woman and for challenging of gender significations
Optimistic Changes in the Characters of Shashi Deshpande’s in A Matter of Time
Get PDFShashi Deshpande focuses the need of human beings of present generation to be optimistic in the fast moving planetary as human life across the world is turning bleak time and again. In modern society, people fail to train their minds to be positive, they intentionally or unintentionally give space for emotions and thoughts to torture their thoughts perhaps and that leads to mental illness and carries malicious reflection in individuals, families and societies. Shashi Deshpande does a complete analysis on the rational thinking process of human beings to create happiness and to experience the power of one’s creation in this cosmic. Through her characters, Shashi Deshpande makes the readers understand that to enhance and empower their role in life, they must learn to unlearn negative thoughts and fill their minds with positive thoughts
Reinvigorating Exploration Nature: An of Ecopoetics in Pearl S. Buck’s The Good Earth
Get PDFThe Good Earth (1931) by the American author, Pearl S. Buck (1892-1973) is recognised for its predominant theme of the nourishing power of the land. Buck’s novel situates this universal theme within the context of traditional Chinese culture. Wang Lung, a farmer, has an intimate relationship with the earth because he produces his harvest through his own labour. Buck suggests that Wang Lung’s reverence for nature is responsible for his inner goodness, as well as for his increasing material success, and that the decadent, wasteful ways of the wealthy are due to their estrangement from the land. Buck also suggests throughout the book that while human success is transitory, the earth endures forever. These ideas about the earth give the novel its title.
The novel is recognised for its glorification of land and soil as the foundation of life. Throughout the novel, a connection to the land is associated with moral piety, good sense, respect for nature, and a strong work ethic, while alienation from the land is associated with decadence and corruption. This paper is an attempt to offer viable alternatives to reconstitute ecocritical ideas in The Good Earth and to evaluate them in terms of their coherence and usefulness as responses to the worsening environmental crisis
The Theme of Love Against the Background of War in Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms
Get PDFHemingway’s A Farewell to Arms has autobiographical elements that reveal the author’s life story. Lt. Frederic Henry, the narrator, tells the story of his love affair with Catherine Barkley, a nurse in the hospital. Being an eye witness and served as a soldier during World War I, Hemingway seems to favour humanity, love and peace in the novel. He considers the war as futile and venomous for mankind. Hemingway himself passed through upheavals of life but there was a little hope to get love in life. Love brings liveliness to man’s life. Plato considered love as the solution to all the problems. This paper is a sincere effort to evaluate Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms as a tale of love against the background of the war
Typical Indian Parents’ Mentality Portrayed in the Drama “Do the Needful” by Mahesh Dattani
Get PDFMahesh Dattani is a well-known playwright and a film director of India, whose themes mainly revolve around modern-day Indian issues. Although the main theme of the drama “Do the Needful” is not about the mindsets of the Indian parents, the researcher has found it interesting that the dialogues between parents of the Lata and Alpesh sound very much like the typical parents of many households. The qualities that the parents look for in a Son-in-law of a Daughter-in-law, the discussion between the mother and father weighing the pros and cons of the match, forcing the wedding on their children, talking high of the properties of the in-laws, all these factors are the stories of many households in India. This research paper is an attempt to bring out some of the typical characteristics of the mindset of the Indian parents with reference to the play. In the first part of the paper, the researcher introduces Mahesh Dattani as a playwright and introduces the general traits of the Indian parents. The researcher justifies that it is not to generalize but to reflect the attitude of the majority of Indian parents. In the second part of the play and the theme are explained. In the next part of the paper, various lines from the play that represent the theme are taken and explained amalgamated with the quotes of other researchers to justify the theme of the research paper. The last part of the research paper concludes with the critical appreciation of the play