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Causeway to the Cosways: Establishing Connection between Forms of Identity and Consequent Reconstruction of Destiny through Subversion of the Bildungsroman in Wide Sargasso Sea
Full text linkJean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea has usually been regarded as a postcolonial offset to its 19th century ‘Grand Narrative’ – Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre. Both the texts have been by and large examined by critics as texts employing the format of the Bildungsroman, also popularly known as the ‘coming-of-age’ novel. Rhys’ work, through the account of Antoinette Cosway’s life, subverts this typically linear, male-centric genre, to formulate what we may phrase as the Anti- or Reverse- Bildungsroman. In conjunction with the previous perspective, this paper shall explore how Wide Sargasso Sea overturns even the Reverse-Bildungsroman at the end of the novel to set up the groundwork for yet another sub-genre, the Kunstlerroman, or the novel that documents the formation of an artist, and the simultaneous subversion of the associated tenet of the ‘double’ in Victorian Sensation formula, when Antoinette paradoxically gains a form of identity, an autonomy over her own life, and appropriates active agency, much like an artist, through madness, and ultimately, death.
DOI: 10.5958/2347-6869.2018.00005.5
 
Resurrecting the Africa: Voices of Rebel
Full text linkThe given poem serves multitude of purposes while delineating a sea change in the outlook of the people of Africa which took place during pre and postcolonial times. It manifests the barbarious, ruthless and aggressively hostile treatment meted out to the natives by the colonizers, with not an iota of mercy in their eyes apart from defaming and eroding the culture and mores of the colonised. Behaving as a mirror, the poem reflects how wrong, unjustified and undesirable they were who failed to understand the pagan nature and simple living of the African tribes. Eventually, the Africans did manage to get the ‘Uhuru’ or Freedom from the Whites by retaliating through Mau-Mau rebellion and thus they celebrate their independence through the crescendo of the very peculiar trumpet, drum and dance.
DOI: 10.5958/2347-6869.2018.00006.7
 
Critical Reflections on the Fall Narrative of Communism
Full text linkThe paper critically addresses the fall narrative of the narrative of the failure of the communist experiment. By doing so it makes a conviction that the great fall may have had laid down communism’s burial but had not closed the spirit of revolution and emancipation. More than being loathsome to the violence the fall narrative hangs on to liberal-capitalist-democracy’s hatred for equality and justice. The paper commits to the claim that if the idea of “return to socialism” makes no sense, equally is senseless the triumphalism debate of liberal-capitalism. Saying so the commitment is for “return to the human self” whose even distant possibility lies in socialism only.
DOI: 10.5958/2347-6869.2018.00010.
?????????? (epilelesthai) and ???? (lethe): On Plato’s philosophy of forgetting
No full textScholars H. N. Fowler, R. Waterfield, J. McDowell, D. Davidson and J. M. Cooper translate both ?????????? (epilelesthai) and ???? (lethe) into “forgetting”. Yet it is problematic, as they designate two different meanings of forgetting Only J. C. B. Gosling, in his translation of Philebus, translates ????into “oblivion” and ?????????? into forgetting respectively. However, he does not explain why the difference matters. This paper aims at explaining the ambiguous meaning of forgetting in Meno, Phaedo, Theaetetus and Philebus. The one hand, ?????????? (epilelesthai) means the loss of memory in our ordinary life. On the other hand, ???? (lethe) means the loss of memory before-life or before we are born. I conclude by drawing attention to Paul Ricoeur’s critical examination of Plato’s philosophy of forgetting that he fails to provide an effective resolution to the ordinary forgetting as an attack on the reliability of memory.
DOI: 10.5958/2347-6869.2017.00021.
The Concept of Radif and Three Paradigms of Persian Music in Contemporary Iran
Full text linkFrom 30 years ago onwards, Persian music, under the influence of Western philosophy, has been Westernised in the sense that some elements of Western philosophy have strongly impacted Persian music. In this paper, I intend to propose a critical leap in Persian music which leads to the creation of three different paradigms in Persian music. Philosophically, Persian music can be seen from three perspectives: Transcendental, Secular and Nominalistic. The Transcendental view considers Persian music as something that is related to what comes from high up, i.e. God. In this paradigm, the concept of Radif is a very important element which has a high place in the history of Persian music. Contrarily, the Secular view focuses on the mundane feature of Persian music in the sense that musicians care to produce melodies by humans and for humans. If Transcendentalists consider music as “less is more,” Secularists treat it as “less is bore.” However, the Nominalistic view tries to leave the two previous paradigms behind by not considering any essence for music, and thus focuses on the contextual feature of music. I conclude by saying that we are now dealing with different “Persian musics” rather than “a Persian music”.
DOI: 10.5958/2347-6869.2017.00019.
Power, Privilege or Right: A Radical-Feminist Evaluation of Attar of Roses and other stories of Pakistan
Full text linkThe present research paper is an evaluation of power, privilege or right enjoyed by the men in Pakistani Patriarchal society in Attar of Roses and Other Stories of Pakistan, a collection by Tahira Naqvi. Naqvi is an emerging female Pakistani writer in English, who has used her fiction to radicalize the marginalized position of Pakistani women. The objective of this paper is to pinpoint the social and political position of patriarchal society through which woman subjugation by men becomes a power, a privilege or a right to be exercised. Radical Feminism will serve as a theoretical and conceptual framework for the apt exploration of the problematic. Naqvi has a well-organized stance to present in her stories and there is a true depiction of woman subjugation, patriarchal oppression and sense of insecurity in housewives and working ladies as well. However, Naqvi has delineated her female characters rebellious of set norms and traditions which show seeds of radicalism in our society. The tentative conclusion of this research will hint at the changing social position of men and women in our society.
DOI: 10.5958/2347-6869.2018.00008.
Colonialism, Power and Resistance in Zadie Smith’s White Teeth
Full text linkThis essay attempts to analyze the colonial histories depicted in Zadie Smith\u27s White Teeth by considering them alongside Michel Foucault\u27s lectures on biopolitics. It also aims to contextualize some of the historical threads in the text in order to highlight some of the ways that power and resistance are performed in the fictional narrative. This will uncover important themes in White Teeth that help to identify how apparatuses of power and resistance function in the narrative, linking colonial history with contemporary multiculturalism.
DOI: 10.5958/2347-6869.2018.00003.1
 
Multiculturalism: A Critical Study of Chinua Achebe\u27s Selected Novels
No full textReclaiming for one’s root doesn’t state that one has no root. As long as one has roots intact, one survives; and if one is uprooted or one’s roots are undiscovered, one dies. But they try their best to grow new roots amidst adverse circumstances to face reality. Cut off from cultural roots, they adopt a quest for self. In the contemporary literary criticism, roots and multiculturalism are the topics, dealt in by many novelists of repute in postcolonial literature. It can be observed that nowadays people are not only conscious of their own culture and tradition but claim superiority of their own over other’s culture. The present paper thus aims to present the cultural ambivalence that Chinua Achebe recorded in his novels Things Fall Apart and No Longer At Ease. When the Europeans came to colonize Africa, they bring with them their own culture. Achebe, in these two novels portrays the plight of the Nigerian people they face due to the mixing of the two different cultures. He draws both the pre colonial and colonial period with their both negative and positive sides. His No Longer at Ease is on corruption, which Achebe believes is brought by the Europeans to Africa. And his Things Fall Apart criticizes Joseph Conrad\u27s Heart of Darkness where Conrad documented that civilization of Africa took place during the time of colonial period. Achebe’s protagonists were able to retain a sense of their pre-colonial glory, history considerably, however affected the culture and heritage in the ancient aroma. But in Africa, the ‘falcon could not hear the falconer and the center could not hold’ and eventually things did fall apart. Hence, the paper is also an attempt to examine the misrecognition of the Nigerian Culture by the dominating Europeans.
DOI: 10.5958/2347-6869.2018.00004.3
 
Displaced Identities of Transnational Migrants in Salman Rushdie’sThe Ground beneath Her Feet: A Cross-cultural Perspective
Full text linkThe postcolonial era has manifested its specialty in the evolution of postmodern discourses which have cross-cultural effects on the contemporary society. The new era of globalization has churned the nuances of transnational migration which is essentially a postcolonial factor. Migration of indigenous populations to various countries around the globe induces a new set of social expectation, cultural values and beliefs. This new cultural environment postulates a craving for the past life which is effectively dealt with in Salman Rushdie’s works of art. The prospects of religious conversion and its counter effects are also elaborated by Rushdie in his novel, The Ground Beneath Her Feet. This paper highlights Rushdie’s successful attempt in blurring the frontiers of the East and the West. Migrancy and cultural displacements form the strength of Rushdie’s novels and he highlights his displaced migrants as decentered beings, unable to free themselves from the cultural pull.
DOI: 10.5958/2347-6869.2018.00002.X
 
E-Governance in the Age of Globalization: Challenges Ahead for India
Full text linkThe study deals with the revolution of information technology in the functioning of government services in the country. Thinking about globalization, we visualize the application of technology and more specifically Information and Communication Technology (ICT) to reduce the differences in different corners of the economy and make the differentiated world into a truly integrated global village. Utilization of technology in government services has gathered endurance called as electronic governance. The old notion of administration seems to become obsolete as the government at central, state and at local levels are facing challenges posed by increased demand for better quality of governance. Electronic-governance has already been acknowledged as indispensable strength to a revolutionary development in standard, coherence, and efficacy of government. With the massive growth in population, low rate of literacy, cultural differences and above all, profound destitution has created difficulties in running the administration by the government of India. So, nothing was left but a centralized strategy driven by ICT as it seems to bring more transparency and increased accountability. Undoubtedly, in the present scenario, the progress of any government relies on the application of electronic governance. In fact, the success of a government can be judged by the reach of electronic governance to its population. Based on secondary data this study enquires into the challenges raised in front of the Government of India (GOI) to implement this system usefully, restrain challenges to implement it successfully, find out the potential opportunities available and examine the challenges encountered by it.
DOI: 10.5958/2347-6869.2017.00025.