English Literature

In today's secular scientific age, religion and belief in the existence of God are increasingly seen as irrational by those who recognize that rationality is normative. In several quarters it has become a truism that science has disproved the existence of entities and powers we call (misleadingly) the supernatural. The religious person is perceived as someone who is motivated only by dogmatic and blind faith. This chapter questions such common perceptions and attempts to show that they are the products of unexamined metaphysical assumptions rather than reasoned thought. It undertakes a critical examination of the relationship between rationality and religion.

The field of interpretations of quantum mechanics emerged in an attempt to solve the measurement problem. This turned on the perception that Niels Bohr avoided addressing the measurement problem by taking an instrumentalist view of quantum mechanics. I argue that this perception is mistaken and Bohr's interpretation of quantum mechanics is realist. Moreover, Bohr's interpretation, which is different from textbook quantum mechanics, (which is due more to Von Neumann and Paul Dirac), succeeds in solving the measurement problem. While the claim that Bohr 'dissolves' the measurement problem within the limits of the epistemological framework he assumes, has been made by a few authors, rarely has the case been made that Bohr's project unambiguously and completely overcomes the measurement problem. I make the strong case that Bohr eliminated the measurement problem altogether. For this, I put forward two new postulates through which to make sense of Bohr's interpretation. The article thus seeks to single out Bohr's interpretation from the various views that together go under the umbrella of orthodox quantum mechanics, and which have been traditionally considered susceptible to the measurement problem. It shows that Bohr's interpretation should be classified along with those like hidden variable theories, collapse models, modal interpretations etc., which offer a solution to the measurement problem and are committed to a realist ontology.

harata, Indian theatrologist, who wrote the foundational text on performance, Nātyashāstra (500 CE), identifies hāsya, (the comic), as emerging from srngāra (love) in a low-mimetic mode.1 He identifies deformed body as one of the vibhāvas (the cause) of hāsya. Bakhtin, too locates the source of transgression and renewal in the grotesque body. The significant question is of the necessity of returning to a text from 14th century. It is an endeavour to re-trace the tradition; re-turning to a tradition of transgressive laughter.2 Prahasana, a genre from Sanskrit tradition3 which can be translated as farce, is such a genre with transgressive potential; it transgresses the prevalent hierarchical structures through presenting the image of the laughing body. This kind of gesture is akin to the dynamics of postcolonial aesthetics: transgressing and thereby transfiguring. The aim is to locate the transgressive zone that transforms and transfigures various strictures in and through the physiol...

This article examines the relationship between consumption and femininity in Hindi cinema. The eye is the orifice through which images are consumed; the alienated consumer of images is both man as a bearer of manhood and woman as a receptacle of notions of gender conceived in the cauldron of a social order which produces images as a subconscious language that suggests at the point that it compels; the question of gender is thus intertwined with sexuality, the body with notions of purity and pollution, the "truth" mingled with illusion, and masculinity with "right" or "righteousness." Hindi cinema is a suggestive-compulsive discourse that defines social reality as it describes the seemingly obvious; my argument is that an analysis of this discourse is meaningless unless we see that the patriarchal order cannot exist in the absence of the politics of "consumption" with the "consumed" — both as image and reality — trapped in a homoerotic order that does not give women a chance to make choices in relation to their bodies.

This article is not primarily a semantic analysis of violence and even less a contextual view that argues the possibility of meaning relative to actors in a situation where violence occurs. That violence is meaningful to its “perpetrators” if not to its “victims” is not enough reason to believe that it can always be explained. Explanations of violence that resort to the question of meaningfulness are deeply problematic and at times outrageously biased because those acts that do not fall within the scope of what is deemed meaningful end up becoming meaningless.

That there is no fixed point but point(s) of origin is the point of origin of this essay that begins with a play on the word gram. It could be the Derridean gramme or Chomskyean grammar. It could also be “language-game” meant to bring Wittgenstein into the conversation. I used Alfred Hitchcock’s statement on psychoanalysis taken from the 1945 classic “Spellbound” as a point of “origin” for the discussion on grammar. The statement concentrates on the “origins” of the problems of the mind that psychoanalysis hopes to cure. In using Hitchcock, more of artist of language than a language-theorist, I problematize the idea of origin itself; whether it ought to come from a serious-minded philosopher like Freud - the so-called “right” source or a secondary source such as Hitchcock playing with the Freudean idea of psychoanalysis through his narrative. The origin of discussion thus turns out to be a false start. It serves a purpose in showing the apparent nature of the text that psychoanalysis is a construction like any other discourse that dominated Western philosophy from Plato to the present. Yet origin must exist in the literal sense of the term. Freud did o er psychoanalysis as a form of therapy to open the text to meaning - in this case, the text is the human mind itself. In the process, psychoanalysis itself is a multifaceted text that becomes a stage for the entrance of the gram. The idea is to show philosophy as a narrative; the narrative dimension of philosophy and philosophy itself as a form of narration. From a Derridean perspective, the point of origin is a null, which opens the text to diverse readings. It is both the anarchy of the text as well as silence at the heart of language.

That a commercially successful literary work might not be one that “discloses the world” is an idea not easy to sell in the age of mechanical reproduction, where the writer has lost his or her aura and writing is more about getting published rather than conforming to a model of greatness.

"Who is the author? Is it God, the state, human nature, the artist or simply a discourse that philosophers have indulged in the fallacious presumption that there is essence or being beyond the flux of things? Or is God just the possibility of understanding, wherein the reader is able to enter into a dialogue with the author/other? I‟ve not tried to conclude the argument in any significant sense because the question regarding the supposed identity of the author precludes any attempt to close the discussion. That‟s a Wittgensteinean stance: you present an argument in order to move the debate to the unexplored aspects of the question rather than resolve the question once and for all. This stance has a Dostoyeskyean dimension to it: belief exists at the end of skepticism. To both, Wittgenstein and Dostoyevsky, understanding is a consequence to the experience of doubt. The rejection of essence complements the essentiality inherent in faith. This is neither a Chomskyean viewpoint wherein the linguist knows for certain through scientific reasoning that language is an aspect of human nature nor is it the Derridean point that deconstructs the question in order to dismantle any essential
attempt to understand the other."

The article deals with how victims respond to the situation of victimization by “speaking” or the politics of articulation. It touches on the role of the social order in the creation of torture as a means to achieve control and the role of victims who inadvertently become accomplices to victimization in a system “that makes men torture and imprison innocent people.” The paper also examines the nuances of the word “speaking” and its deeper connotations in terms of resistance to an unjust order. Victims are as complex as the phenomena of victimization. Therefore an interdisciplinary perspective is essential to understand what the speaking of the victim means; that is the perspective I used to make my point about the victim who in the process of speaking ceases to be a victim.

In this essay I wish to "introduce" Derrida by giving a preface to his philosophy. But Derrida's entire contention rests on the premise that philosophy can only be prefaced since it lacks an original face or meaning. Since his own work is a preface to philosophy, the preface that I intend to give is twice-removed from the original preface that Derrida offers readers. Briefly this is Derrida's tryst with the copula: the copula or the connector, something that is not taken seriously but is in fact the basis of construction of meaning. What is the copula? Historically, it is a philosophical expression of various marginal groups that were not taken into consideration. In the context of Spivak's preface to Derrida's Of Grammatology, my preface is one level further removed from reality. What is philosophy "ultimately" except a tryst with the preface (that connects the reader with the author) or the copula! Can we take hard-line positions both at the methodological level and in how we interpret data -this is the Derridean paradox, that we can't take such positions without being aware that they're positions. The copula in its shifting state as floating signifier plays the role of a Zen master constantly teasing meaning trapped in cages of words that we attribute to situations. The discourses of humanities and social sciences are replete with examples of over-meanings by which I mean that research scholars tend to take positions that are absolute and use those positions to interpret reality. Things mean more than what they actually could be because we impose our positions on them without claiming that they're positions. To be aware of the class, race, gender and other biases inherent in our positions liberates the text from the clutches of totality and opens to meaning the doors of infinity.

Saint Francis can be viewed as a postmodern contemporary to countless movements and radicals in the 21 st century. His personhood has all the elements of a flamboyant melodrama except for the fact that there is a historical being, the truth of whose life is stranger than a work of fiction could possibly be. In recognizing the reality of the person, history has absolved the saint from being a lyrical episode in a cosmic narrative for us to acknowledge his humanity, the very history that Francis the performer is determined to subvert at all costs. Adrian House, in his biography, writes of Francis:

The corporatization of the publishing world has lead to a change in the canon formation from the traditional author-based kind to one that manufactures taste to suit a consumerist audience. Poetry as an art form that counters the violence of bureaucratic governments and MNCs has suffered a serious decline for no reason except that it has the potential for social transformation. The general decline of the humanities and social sciences, with the exception of economics - which has a strong institutional bias -, reflects the overall control mechanisms at play in the production of certain knowledges termed as useful while excluding others. This is the context where one needs to place the avant-garde poet. The avant-garde poet is as much a fiction writer as she could be a pamphleteer, a graffiti activist, a drug-induced mystic or simply anyone overwhelmed by a sense of nothingness. My paper recognizes in avant-garde poetry the defiant and consciously stylized nature of writing as opposed to the inspired and dreamy kind of creativity, while it shows how such a stylization can lend itself to conformism of another kind. The avant-garde poet walks the thin line that separates political conformism from creative rebellion. To challenge conventional forms of writing is not merely to reject mainstream notions of the fall of the poem as opposed to the rise of a fiction-based readership, but to work proactively to dismantle institutionalized forms of discrimination and serve as a voice to the marginalized that Fanon metaphorically refers to as “the wretched of the earth.” My paper examines what it means to be an avant-garde poet in the global context.

The institutionalizing of cynicism is about consciously cultivated apolitical attitudes that reject anything outside the purview of self-interest. The “personal” plays a larger role than is usually attributed to in the case of corruption. The widely prevalent notion of a “corrupt system” takes away individual responsibility; even when there is an overemphasis on individual actions, the guiding motive is located outside the individual in the abstract sphere of the institution. In the process it never becomes an “individual” issue. A sense of personhood is lost in the corruption debates conducted in and outside the media. The point at which one is non-ideological is where one refuses the determining influence of external actors and situations leading to one’s personhood. The politics of opportunism has little to do with what people espouse on public platforms or what they actually think they believe. Opportunism prevents the corrupt from moving beyond the realm of attitudes into the zone of ideology. Choices are not about ideologies but about needs— imaginary as well as real. Ideologies standardize corruption in a problematic fashion and exclude the fact that human suffering is the other face of rampant corruption. The analysis of corruption from a non-ideological angle involving the role of the person has the advantage of viewing the practice of corruption from the perspective of actors—the institutionalizing of cynicism is the refusal to take responsibility; more than acting in “bad faith” it’s about serving one’s own interest because of the striking inability to envision an alternative to existing power relations; it is also about what the social order through its paradigm of wish-fulfillment is willing to permit as a “normal” violation of moral consensus.

In the liberal manifesto that asks every other question except the one related to property relations or the power that comes with the “ownership” of one’s own body, all existing inequalities continue to remain as they are, as parasitical as ever in preying on individual hopes and collective destines built on those hopes. Criticism that politely avoids the question of where one stands in a given social and political order is the essence of the liberal manifesto. “I” cannot imagine such a manifesto because I live within it at any point in time. It manifests in the choices I make through the work I do, the clothes I wear, the food I eat, the air I breathe and the thoughts I think and assume to be my own.