Thinking Activity

Thinking Activity:  My Daughter Joined A Cult: 

Hello friends, 

I am Nidhi Dave, a student of the Department of English Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University. This blog is a response to my thinking Activity given by professor Yesha Ma'am. Here I discuss the Documentary My Daughter Joined a cult.

🌟My Daughter Joined a cult:

My Daughter Joined a Cult', a docu-series about self-proclaimed godman, Swami Nithyananda.

In 2019, Netflix released a documentary feature, Bikram: Yogi, Guru & Predator, detailing the many sexual misconduct allegations against popular yoga guru Bikram Choudhury. A year later came Bad Boy Billionaires, which singled out the shady dealings of Vijay Mallya, Nirav Modi and Subrata Roy. A damning portrait emerges of another absconder, Nithyananda, in the three-part documentary series My Daughter Joined a Cult, which streams on discovery+. Using news footage, a lot of it from local media in Karnataka, talking heads of ex-devotees and journalists, and video bytes of the godman’s sermons, the show tracks the quick rise and subsequent fall of Swami Nithyananda. 

🌟Title:

My Daughter Joined The Cult’

The title is certainly eye-catching, but closer inspection reveals it's a nod to the kind of obfuscating rhetoric that has allowed the self-professed godman to escape punishment. The documentary starts in 2019 as Janardan Sharma and his wife arrive at Nithyananda's ashram after their two daughters were taken from Bengaluru without their knowledge.

"Please ask them. Ask them where my daughters are!" The mother screamed at the assembled journalists, who had only recently begun piecing together the ashram's evil schemes.

It was the father who took his two daughters to meet the guru in 2014, completely unaware of Nithyananda's intentions. Till today it is a mystery for this family as they are still in search of their daughters that went missing in 2019. Nithyananda was accused of rape and fled the country in 2019 fearing arrest for a rape case. 

🌟The process of Brainwashing – (Indian followers – White followers):

“The moment you sit in front of me, enlightenment starts,” says Nithyananda to his audience. It is one of the many declarations the godman makes, which leave us questioning what made people fall for him. His legion of followers includes influential and wealthy people, who are unnamed, and like many Indian spiritual gurus he has his share of foreign devotees. There are accounts from followers-turned- whistleblowers. The most insightful voice here belongs to an anonymous woman whose experience suggests that Nithyananda knew how to target the vulnerable and make people commit to him so much that they’d be ready to sever ties with their families. 

Nithyananda’s controversial life—the foremost being the “sex tape” which rubbishes his claims of being a celibate; accusation of rape from erstwhile follower Aarthi Rao, and the sudden death of a young woman at his ashram in Bidadi near Bengaluru. These hardly deter his followers, who instead launch a malicious campaign against his detractors.This process is responsible for brainwashing all the followers.

🌟Concept of ‘Bhakta’ – (Blind followers):

While talking about the Bhakta and followers of saints, it is obvious that it is connected

 with religion and its sentiments. Nithyananda dismisses the notion of ‘karma’ as being legitimate: “Karma means that the effect of our actions will come back to us in the future, is a myth. There is no CCTV recording going on in the cosmos… where your actions will be bringing suffering to you in the future. God is not playing the game of judgment.” In the series, we also learn that a summons from the court does not reach the godman, because his security team quite literally does not allow it to pass. When a TV journalist attempts to be a medium for the summons by carrying it with him at a press conference held at the ashram, he is chased out before he can even finish reading it.

This absurdity reaches a crescendo when we learn about how the godman allegedly absconded, leaving the police, the courts and international agencies clueless about his location and methods. Saraiya points to the slow-moving nature of State institutions and processes — for example, the sheer amount of time it took for the rape trial to commence — to explain how the godman may have escaped the authorities. After all, for any godman to succeed in India, they need to make friends in powerful places; it goes without saying that this friendship is reciprocated in turbulent times.

The very nature of the truth is twisted in the ashram: residents and followers receive a limited amount of information from the outside world. They’re repeatedly told that any allegation against their guru is an attack upon their faith, and a conspiracy against their movement. It’s as though they’re living an entirely different, manufactured version of reality. “Lies told many times over can begin to sound like the truth,” Saraiya explains. Assurances don’t have to be issued to them, because a majority of them perceive accusers as being liars and betrayers.

The unwavering support and devotion that Nithyananda enjoyed would not exist if it weren’t for a carefully constructed self-mythology. 

🌟What role of the English language in this? 

As Nityananda lived in the era of the digitalized world, he knows very well how to use, rather than misuse the technology. He gave certain tasks to his white followers who were masters in technology and he command them to make videos about him, how and where the upcoming event is organized and they were supposed to cheer up him. Nithyananda’s two-faced ways are revealed best by Sarah Landry aka Sudevi, his social media manager, and Jordan Lozada through their recollection of goings-on in the ashram, which include verbal abuse and beating of disciples as well as demands to ramp up the videos propagating his teachings and increase the enrolments for his inner awakening programme. Landry and Lozada do as the boss orders with a video segment called “Keeping up with the Kailashians”, in which they dress up in saffron robes and chronicle their lives in the ashram. That reason Nityananda was most famous in social media and English language was very high way use by This documentry.

🌟Why do people believe him even after the CD incident?

After the victim, Aarthi Rao herself said to the people what Nityananda did with her, people still did not believe that he was a fraud. Probably the lack of awareness that what is right or what is wrong and the lacking knowledge about education also.

Nithyananda is not the only one missing. The series begins with footage of Janardhan Sharma and his wife searching for their two daughters, who they believe are held against their will by the swami at his ashram in Ahmedabad. "I am very happy here. I am not kidnapped,” says Nanditha in a video call with the media, rejecting her parents’ claims. Sharma’s two daughters are yet to be found. While most of his former followers are busy critiquing him, Jansi Rani is one of the few to call out her own follies. Rani’s 24-year-old daughter died of a heart attack in the ashram under mysterious circumstances. “He told us the sun rose because he appeared,” she says. “All of us were crazy.” Many continue to be under his sway watching his videos and supporting him as he hides in Kailaasa, a place few can pinpoint on a map and where the self-proclaimed ‘Paramashivam’ continues to preach.

🌟Connection with The Wretched of the Earth:

Fanon wrote The Wretched of the Earth in the face of the horror of the Algerian civil war and in the broader context of anti-colonial liberation struggles in Asia, Africa, and the Americas. Such experiences had showed that violence is necessary both to impose domination and to break free from it. It comes as no surprise, then, that Fanon puts his faith in revolutionary violence. In dissent from some recent interpretations, this article argues that Fanon considered physical violence a useful tool both to free people from the constraints of colonialism and to build a society free from oppression. The conditions in the ashram mirror the laws and policies in 20th-century dystopian novels — from long hours of work and forced sleep deprivation, to more insidious aspects, such as encouraging devotees to be suspicious of each other and forcing children to hit their peers. Family members were separated and made to do tasks in different departments, prompting them to feel dissociated from each other — to the point where they may not feel the need for family anymore. The constant cycle of sleep deprivation — about four hours of rest to be precise — has been cited by more than one ex-devotee as impairing their judgment and ability to function. 

The unwavering support and devotion that Nithyananda enjoyed would not exist if it weren’t for a carefully constructed self-mythology. The godman at the centre of My Daughter Joined a Cult not only commodified faith but also himself. One of the many manifestations of this is his devotees taking selfies with standees of his image. Saraiya remembers another story concerning a devotee who claimed they were healed of an acute health issue because of the godman’s mere touch. The docu-series paints a picture of how Nithyananda changed his appearance over the years; as his hair grew out, he also increasingly presented himself as a pathway to enlightenment, and Shiva himself.

Thank you 

Thinking Activity

Thinking Activity: Selected Poems

Hello friends,

 I am Nidhi Dave Student of the Department of English Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University. This blog is a response to my thinking Activity given by professor Yesha Ma'am. Here I discuss the poem An Introduction by Kamala Das.

Ma'am gave us the task, that we were supposed to Pick any one line/word/phrase/thought/idea from that - Write your version of it in form of poetry, excerpt, paragraph (prose), story, or any literary piece then write a blog upon that. Here I pick one word from this poem. 

An introduction by Kamala Das:

Kamala Das’ poem “An Introduction” was first published almost more than half a century ago in 1965 in one of her notable books of poetry, Summer in Calcutta. Being one of her earliest works, it strongly addressed some of Das’ most prominent ideas in the rawest form possible. This purely confessional poem clearly portrays her cry to achieve a sense of freedom in life. The voice that narrates the poem is clear, direct, sharp, and unhesitant. In spite of being highly personal and revolving around the poet’s own experiences, this poem makes an attempt to cover almost all social, political, cultural, as well as, emotional grounds.

Indian poet Kamala Das:

Kamala Das (1934–2009) was a famous Indian poet and novelist who wrote in both English and Malayalam, her mother tongue. While writing in Malayalam, she used the pen name Madhavikutty. She was born in Thrissur, Kerala into a fairly privileged family. Her mother, Nalapat Balamani Amma was a well-known Malayali poet who had published around 20 collections of poems; and her father V.M. Nair was a senior executive in an automobile company and editor of the journal Mathrubhumi.

Kamala Das has written three collections of poems in English; Summer in Calcutta (1965), The Descendants (1967), and The Old Playhouse and Other Poems (1973). In addition, she has written collections of short stories, two novels, and numerous essays as a syndicated columnist. Overall, she has published 25 books and collections of poetry.

However, it is her autobiography My Story (1976) that remains her most well-known work. Kamala Das was honoured with the Kendra Sahitya Akademi Award (English) in 1984 and nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature the same year. On 1 February, 2018, Google honored her with a doodle.

Her explosive autobiography, My Story, written in Malayalam (her native tongue), gained her both fame and notoriety. Later, it was translated into English.

My word: 

"Love" by An Introduction by Kamala Das: 

Love is the most important thing in life and here Kamala Das uses this one word. And she discussed his love story in this poem.

Alienation is used to describe a state of detachment, seclusion, abandonment, or even withdrawal. It can be simply referred to as the condition where an individual is “alienated” from either themselves, the society they live in, or the idea of life itself. While reading Das, it is impossible to miss this crucial theme that informed most of her adult life. Since her poetry is widely a reflection of her personal life, the portrayal of this sense of alienation particularly arises from her own experiences with men, her marriage, and the male dominant society in general.

Time and again Das had been the subject of rejection and deprived of love and affection. She, in her quest for true love, had been abandoned by not just her husband but any and “every man” she developed a relationship with. Not only that, due to her radical ideas, rebellious nature, and unconventional perspective, Das had been neglected even by society, which is precisely male-centric and orthodox. 

Thank you 

Thinking Activity: Marxism, Ecocriticism, Feminism and Queer Theory

Hello friends

I am Nidhi Dave Student of Department of English Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University. This blog is response of my thinking Activity given by professor Dr. Dilip Barad sir. Here i discuss about this all theory.

Feminism:

Feminist criticism is concerned with "the ways in which literature (and other cultural productions) reinforce or undermine the economic, political, social, and psychological oppression of women" (Tyson 83). This school of theory looks at how aspects of our culture are inherently patriarchal (male dominated) and aims to expose misogyny in writing about women, which can take explicit and implicit forms. This misogyny, Tyson reminds us, can extend into diverse areas of our culture: "Perhaps the most chilling example...is found in the world of modern medicine, where drugs prescribed for both sexes often have been tested on male subjects only" .

As a distinctive and concerted approach to literature, feminist criticism was not inaugurated until late in the 1960s. Behind it, however, lie two centuries of struggle for the recognition of women’s cultural roles and achievements, and for women’s social and political rights, marked by such books as Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), John Stuart Mill’s The Subjection of Women (1869), and the American Margaret Fuller’s Woman in the Nineteenth Century (1845). 

Key Concerns of Feminism:

1.The basic view is that Western civilization is pervasively patriarchal

2.It is widely held that while one’s sex as a man or woman is determined by anatomy, the prevailing concepts of gender

3. The further claim is that this patriarchal (or “masculinist,” or “androcentric”) ideology pervades those writings which have been traditionally considered great literature

4.gynocriticism—that is, a criticism which concerns itself with developing a specifically female framework for dealing with works written by women, in all aspects of their production, motivation, analysis, and interpretation, and in all literary forms, including journals and letters.

5.One concern of gynocritics is to identify distinctively feminine subject matters in literature written by women—the world of domesticity, for example, or the special experiences of gestation, giving birth, and nurturing, or mother-daughter and woman-woman relations—in which personal and affectional issues, and not external activism, are the primary interest. 

6.Another concern is to uncover in literary history a female tradition, incorporated in subcommunities of women writers who were aware of, emulated, and found support in earlier women writers, and who in turn provide models and emotional support to their own readers and successors. 

7.A third undertaking is to show that there is a distinctive feminine mode of experience, or “subjectivity,” in thinking, feeling, valuing, and perceiving oneself and the outer world. Related to this is the attempt (thus far, without much agreement about details) to specify the traits of a “woman’s language,” or distinctively feminine style of speech and writing, in sentence structure, types of relations between the elements of a discourse, and characteristic figures of speech and imagery. 

What feminist critics do ?

1. Rethink the canon, aiming at the rediscovery of texts written by women. 

2. Revalue women's experience. 

3. Examine representations of women in literature by men and women. 

4. Challenge representations of women as 'Other', as 'lack', as part of 'nature'. 

5. Examine power relations which are obtained in texts and in life, with a view to breaking them down, seeing reading as a political act, and showing the extent of patriarchy. 

6. Recognise the role of language in making what is social and constructed seem transparent and 'natural'. 

7. Raise the question of whether men and women are 'essentially' different because of biology, or are socially constructed as different. 

8. Explore the question of whether there is a female language, an ecriture feminine, and whether this is also available to men. 

9. 'Re-read' psychoanalysis to further explore the issue of female and male identity. 

10. Question the popular notion of the death of the author, asking whether there are only 'subject positions ... constructed in discourse', or whether, on the contrary, the experience (e.g. of a black or lesbian writer) is central. 

11. Make clear the ideological base of supposedly 'neutral' or 'mainstream' literary interpretations. 

Examples: 

The Color Purple:

Alice Walker’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel materialized on screen in 1985 and became an iconic feminist film that withstands the tests of time. Whoopi Goldberg plays Celie, a Black southern women who has suffered (and survived) years of abuse and finds strength within herself and female friends.

Thappad:

A very interesting movie. The protagonist is Amrita, by profession she was also a housewife by choice. Her husband totally depends on her. Amrita worked like anything for her, She might have thought that her husband respected and cared for her. After months she was slapped by Vikram in front of so many guest and relatives. This one slap broke Amrita. She realizes her own identity. She said, `` Ek Thappad bas itni si baat ? no, women are not about to bear such things. Amrita decided to give divorce to her husband. She started a new life. Women are not suppressed by men. 

It's a very fascinating movie. Generally people might think that women are only for pleasure. If she goes against you, you can beat her, because her slave. So this movie is the best example of that kind of mentality. 

So, this one Thappad changed the whole image of Amrita’s life. That thappad was not on her cheeks but that slap was on her existence, her identity, her own thoughts.

Queer Theory:

Queer theory’s origin is hard to clearly define, since it came from multiple critical and cultural contexts, including feminism, post-structuralist theory, radical movements of people of color, the gay and lesbian movements, AIDS activism, many sexual subcultural practices such as sadomasochism, and postcolonialism.

The term “queer theory” itself came from Teresa de Lauretis’ 1991 work in the feminist cultural studies journal differences titled “Queer Theory: Lesbian and Gay Sexualities.” She explains her term to signify that there are at least three interrelated projects at play within this theory: refusing heterosexuality as the benchmark for sexual formations, a challenge to the belief that lesbian and gay studies is one single entity, and a strong focus on the multiple ways that race shapes sexual bias. De Lauretis proposes that queer theory could represent all of these critiques together and make it possible to rethink everything about sexuality.

Some of the important writers and writtings about queer studies:

1.See Teresa de Lauretis, Queer Theory: Lesbian and Gay Sexualities, 1991

2.Annamarie Jagose, Queer Theory: An Introduction, 1996. 

3. Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity 

What lesbian/gay critics do? 

1. Identify and establish a canon of 'classic' lesbian/gay writers whose work constitutes a distinct tradition. These are, in the main, twentieth-century writers, such as (for lesbian writers in Britain) Virginia Woolf, Vita Sackville-West, Dorothy Richardson, Rosamund Lehmann, and Radclyffe Hall. 

2. Identify lesbian/gay episodes in mainstream work and discuss them as such (for example, the relationship between Jane and Helen in Jane Eyre), rather than reading same-sex pairings in non-specific ways, for instance, as symbolising two aspects of the same character (Zimmerman). 

3. Set up an extended, metaphorical sense of 'lesbian/gay' so that it connotes a moment of crossing a boundary, or blurring a set of categories. All such 'liminal' moments mirror the moment of selfidentification as lesbian or gay, which is necessarily an act of conscious resistance to established norms and boundaries. 

4. Expose the 'homophobia' of mainstream literature and criticism, as seen in ignoring or denigrating the homosexual aspects of the work of major canonical figures, for example, by omitting overtly homosexual love lyrics from selections or discussions of the poetry of W. H. Auden (Mark Lilly). 

5. Foreground homosexual aspects of mainstream literature which have previously been glossed over, for example the strongly homo-erotic tenderness seen in a good deal of First World War poetry. 

6. Foreground literary genres, previously neglected, which significantly influenced ideals of masculinity or femininity, such as the nineteenth-century adventure stories with a British 'Empire' setting (for example those by Rudyard Kipling and Rider Haggard) discussed by Joseph Bristow in Empire Boys (Routledge, 1991). 

Example of Queer Theory: 

1, Judith Butler's Gender Trouble:

The theorist most commonly identified with studying the prevailing understandings of gender and sex is Judith Butler, who draws much from Foucault’s ideas but with a focus on gender. She argues in her book Gender Trouble that gender, like sexuality, is not an essential truth obtained from one’s body but something that is acted out and portrayed as “reality”. She argues that the strict belief that the there is a “truth” of sex makes heterosexuality as the only proper outcome because of the coherent binary created of “feminine” and “masculine” and thus creating the only logical outcome of either being a “male” or “female.” Butler makes the case that genderperformativity could be a strategy of resistance with examples such as drag, cross-dressing, and the sexual nonrealistic depiction of butch and femme identities that poke fun at the laid out gender norms in society. In her later book, Undoing Gender, Butler makes it clear that performativity is not the same as performance. She explains that gender performativity is a repeated process that ultimately creates the subject as a subject. Butler’s work brings to light the creation of gender contesting the rigidity of the hierarchical binaries that exist and is what makes her work invaluable in queer theory.

2, Eve Kosofsky Sedwick

Rubin laying the groundwork to start discussion about making a distinction between gender and sexuality led the way for Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s pioneering book Epistemology of the Closet. In this book, she argues that the homo-hetero difference in the modern sexual definition is vitally disjointed for two reasons: that homosexuality is thought to be part of a minority group, and how homosexuality is gendered to be either masculine or feminine. She points out that the definitions of sexuality depend a lot on the gender of the romantic partner one makes, making the assumption that the gender one has and the gender of the person one is attracted to make up the most important element of sexuality. Sedgwick’s examples of sexual variations that cannot be put into the discrete locations created by the binary set between heterosexuality and homosexuality give room to further analyze the way sex-gender identities are shaped and thought about.

Future of Queer Theory:

As a whole, queer theorists disagree about many things, but the one thing they do not disagree on is that if queer theory is to be understood as a way to test the established and stable categories of identity, then it should not be defined too early (or at all) because of the possibility of it becoming too limited. 

Thinking Activity

Thinking Activity: Marxism, Ecocriticism, Feminism and Queer Theory.

Hello friends

I am Nidhi Dave Student of Department of English Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University. This blog is response of my thinking Activity given by professor Dr. Dilip Barad sir. Here i discuss about this all theory.

  Marxism: 

The definition of Marxism is the theory of Karl Marx which says that society's classes are the cause of struggle and that society should have no classes.

Marxism is derived from the great philosopher Karl Marx. Marxist criticism, in its diverse forms, grounds its theory and practice on the economic and cultural theory of Karl Marx (1818–83) and his fellow-thinker Friedrich Engels (1820–95), and especially on the following claims: 

1. In the Marxist literary analysis, the evolving history of humankind, of its social groupings and interrelations, of its institutions, and of its ways of thinking are largely determined by the changing mode of its “material production”— that is, of its overall economic organization for producing and distributing material goods. 

2. Changes in the fundamental mode of material production effect changes in the class structure of a society, establishing in each era dominant and subordinate classes that engage in a struggle for economic, political, and social advantage. 

3. Human consciousness is constituted by an ideology—that is, the beliefs, values, and ways of thinking and feeling through which human beings perceive, and by recourse to which they explain, what they take to be reality. An ideology is, in complex ways, the product of the position and interests of a particular class. In any historical era, the dominant ideology embodies, and serves to legitimize and perpetuate, the interests of the dominant economic and social class. 

Here some key points :

- Marxism is a social, political, and economic theory originated by Karl Marx, which focuses on the struggle between capitalists and the working class.

- Marx wrote that the power relationships between capitalists and workers were inherently exploitative and would inevitably create class conflict.

- He believed that this conflict would ultimately lead to a revolution in which the working class would overthrow the capitalist class and seize control of the economy.

What Marxist critics do:

1. They make a division between the 'overt' (manifest or surface) and 'covert' (latent or hidden) content of a literary work (much as psychoanalytic critics do) and then relate the covert subject matter of the literary work to basic Marxist themes, such as class struggle, or the progression of society through various historical stages, such as, the transition from feudalism to industrial capitalism. Thus, the conflicts in King Lear might be read as being 'really' about the conflict of class interest between the rising class (the bourgeoisie) and the falling class (the feudal overlords). 

2. Another method used by Marxist critics is to relate the context of a work to the social-class status of the author. In such cases an assumption is made (which again is similar to those made by psychoanalytic critics) that the author is unaware of precisely what he or she is saying or revealing in the text. 

3. A third Marxist method is to explain the nature of a whole literary genre in terms of the social period which 'produced' it. For instance, The Rise of the Novel, by Ian Watt, relates the growth of the novel in the eighteenth century to the expansion of the middle classes during that period. The novel 'speaks' for this social class, just as, for instance, Tragedy 'speaks for' the monarchy and the nobility, and the Ballad 'speaks for' for the rural and semi-urban 'working class'. 

4. A fourth Marxist practice is to relate the literary work to the social assumptions of the time in which it is 'consumed', a strategy which is used particularly in the later variant of Marxist criticism known as cultural materialism (see Chapter 9, pp. 182-9). 

5. A fifth Marxist practice is the 'politicisation of literary form', that is, the claim that literary forms are themselves determined by political circumstance. For instance, in the view of some critics, literary realism carries with it an implicit validation of conservative social structures: for others, the formal and metrical intricacies of the sonnet and the iambic pentameter are a counterpart of social stability, decorum, and order.

 

Examples: 

House of Pleasures (Bertrand Bonello, 2015) 

House of Tolerance 2015. House of Pleasures (also known as “House of Tolerance” and “L’Apollonide: Souvenirs de la maison close”) chronicles the final days of a Parisian brothel at the turn of the century. The women of the brothel have no other options in life and must continue working to pay off their debts. Meanwhile, the madame struggles to keep the brothel afloat as the landlord increases the rent. The film does not put particular attention on any one character. Instead, it tells the collective story of women forced to give in to the whims of their bourgeois clients.

Money Heist 

Money Heist Season 5: The Release Date Possibilities Of The Show And Other Details We Should Know!! - The Scuttle Paper. 

 

Money Heist (Spanish: La casa de papel, "The House of Paper") is a Spanish heist crime drama television series created by Álex Pina. The series traces two long-prepared heists led by the Professor (Álvaro Morte), one on the Royal Mint of Spain, and one on the Bank of Spain, told from the perspective of one of the robbers, Tokyo (Úrsula Corberó). The narrative is told in a real-time-like fashion and relies on flashbacks, time-jumps, hidden character motivations, and an unreliable narrator for complexity. 

 Marxist reading:

 Red color: Money Heist, a very popular web series. It has five sessions. The motives of the story are also very Marxist. They do heist not because of personal use but because of social equality. 

The dressing code is also significant to read this entire web series from the Marxist perception. It has red color which is very fundamental idea of Marxism. 

Ecocriticism: 

Ecocriticism is a term used for the observation and study of the relationship between the literature and the earth’s environment. It takes an interdisciplinary point of view by analysing the works of authors, researchers, and poets in the context of environmental issues and nature. Since the purpose, scope, and methodology of this theory are a bit confusing, it is difficult to have all ecocritics agreed to this.

Ecocriticism was first defined by Cheryll Glotfelty in simple words making it clear for the other critics and writers. Considering the definition, it can be called an “increasingly heterogeneous movement” that takes an entirely earth-centered approach. It is mainly about the literature on the environment. So, it is mostly seen in association with the “Association for the Study of Literature and Environment” this is also referred to as ASLE and it holds biennial meetings for the scholars writing about the environmental issues in their literature.

Ecocriticism was a term coined in the late 1970s by combining “criticism” with a shortened form of “ecology”—the science that investigates the interrelations of all forms of plant and animal life with each other and with their physical habitats. 

“Ecocriticism” (or by alternative names, environmental criticism and green studies) designates the critical writings which explore the relations between literature and the biological and physical environment, conducted with an acute awareness of the damage being wrought on that environment by human activities.

DEFINITION:

Cheryl Glot-felty :

"Ecocriticism WA is the study of the relationship between literature and the physical environment"

Key Concerns of Eco criticism:

• Reigning religions and philosophies of Western civilization are deeply anthropocentric.

• Prominent in ecocriticism is a critique of binaries such as man/nature or culture/nature, viewed as mutually exclusive oppositions. 

•  Many ecocritics recommend, and themselves exemplify, the extension of “green reading” (that is, analysis of the implications of a text for environmental concerns and toward political action) to all literary genres, including prose fiction and poetry, and also to writings in the natural and social sciences. 

• There is a growing interest in the animistic religions of so-called “primitive” cultures, as well as in Hindu, Buddhist, and other religions and civilizations that lack the Western opposition between humanity and nature, and do not assign to human beings dominion over the nonhuman world.

Example: 

I wandered Lonely as Cloud 

A great example of an ecocritical reading of Wordsworth’s “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” is Scott Hess’s article “John Clare, William Wordsworth, and the (Un)Framing of Nature.”

Hess argues that Wordsworth treats the daffodils like a photo on a postcard. Wordsworth doesn’t involve himself in nature. Instead, he looks at nature from afar (like a cloud), and leaves as soon as he has had his fill. In other words, Wordsworth acts like the tourist who comes by once and snaps a quick picture before moving on. In the end, Wordsworth seems more concerned about his own feelings than about nature:

The narrator composes the landscape into aesthetic form from a single point, located outside that landscape, exactly in the manner of a picturesque viewer, and in the process constructs a purely visual and seemingly disembodied subjectivity. Even as he claims to connect to nature, he views that nature through a kind of invisible frame and turns it into a resource for the construction of his own seemingly autonomous self. (Hess 33)

Just like some early readers complained that Wordsworth seemed a bit egotistic in his desire to experience the sublime, so Hess finds Wordsworth guilty of using nature to construct his own identity.

Hess concludes that by framing the scene as a moment of nature at its best–beautiful, restorative, sublime–Wordsworth is being too selective in his representation of the environment. In fact, Hess compares Wordsworth’s attitude to the way Americans treasure their National Parks as perfect and pristine natural places, while caring less about the degradation of nature everywhere else.

With any theoretical approach there is always the danger that we misrepresent the text in order to further our own agenda. In this case it might be pointed out that Wordsworth is at pains to describe the communion he has with nature. He is not simply a solitary observer, watching from a distance. The personification of the flowers suggests a kind of kinship between people and nature. As Ralph Pite points out, “In Wordsworth’s work, ‘the natural world’ is always social, both in itself and in its relation to man. Consequently, nature does not offer an escape from other people so much as express an alternative mode of relating to them”.

From this perspective, Wordsworth sees nature as a teacher, a friend, and a mirror of what it means to be human–and yet he also respects nature’s independence, the distance and difference between humans and their environment.

It is not easy to tell which view is correct. Is Wordsworth selfish or not? Even if we can’t offer a definitive answer, the ecocritical perspectives sampled here demonstrate that Wordsworth’s poem is more relevant than ever.

Read here to my another blog about the Feminist Theory and Queer Theory

Thinking Activity

Thinking Activity: CS and feminism - Cyberfeminism : Artificial Intelligence and unconscious bisases:

 

Hello friends, 

 I am Nidhi Dave student of Department of English Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University.  This blog response of my thinking Activity. This thinking Activity given by professor Dr. Dilip Barad sir. Here i discuss about what is the Feminism and cyber feminism. 

Cyberfeminism is a feminist approach which foregrounds the relationship between cyberspace, the Internet, and technology. The term was coined in the early 1990s to describe the work of feminists interested in theorizing, critiquing, exploring and re-making the Internet, cyberspace and new-media technologies in general.

What is Cyberfeminism?

Cornelia Sollfrank who is the famous Cyberfeminist  from the Old Boys Network states that:

"Cyberfeminism is a myth. A myth is a story of unidentifiable origin, or of different origins. A myth is based on one central story which is retold over and over in different variations. A myth denies one history as well as one truth, and implies a search for truth in the spaces, in the differences between the different stories. Speaking about Cyberfeminism as a myth, is not intended to mystify it, it simply indicates that Cyberfeminism only exists in plural."

Cyberfeminism: Artificial Intelligence and the Unconscious Biases:

Cyberfeminism appeared in the 1980s and founded on the ideas post-humanist feminist thinker Donna Haraway expresses in her A Cyborg Manifesto. In this manifesto, she lays the groundwork for the concept of the internet being a revolutionary tool to overthrow patriarchy, destroy the existing gender binary and achieve feminist liberation. She sees the internet as a new neutral space women need to ally with and that needs to be shaped by women in a way that will allow them to overthrow the existing social order.

 Kirti Sharma - How to keep human bias out of Al? 

Kirti Sharma, who has several degrees in computer science and has been building robots from the age of 15, says that based on her appearance and gender it is regularly assumed she doesn’t know much about artificial intelligence.

In her talk she gives examples of when AI takes these biases and reinforces them: men are more likely to be programmers and historically outnumber women in this field; based on this data, an algorithm designed for recruitment purposes can assume that male applicants are preferable and filter out female candidates, she explains.

“This is not about the talent; this is about an elitism in AI that says a programmer needs to look like a certain person,” says Sharma.

Sharma says these biases are reinforced by the genders we assign to AI-powered devices. She gives the examples of Siri and Alexa, AI technologies with female voices which we are used to giving orders to. On the other hand, more powerful AI programmes such as Watson are designated “male”.

Robin Hauser: Can we protect AI from our biases?

Robin Hauser, tells about her experience working with AI and the biases that can develop by humans teaching the machines and how to avoid these biases when creating algorithms. ”

Robin is the director and producer of cause‐based documentary films at Finish Line Features, Inc. and Unleashed Productions, Inc. As a business woman, long time professional photographer and social entrepreneur, Robin brings her leadership skills, creative eye and passion to her documentary film projects. Her artistic vision and experience in the business world afford her a unique perspective on what it takes to motivate an audience. Her most recent award‐winning film, CODE: Debugging the Gender Gap, premiered at Tribeca Film Festival 2015, and has caught the eye of the international tech industry and of policy makers and educators in Washington, DC and abroad. Robin is currently directing and producing Bias, a documentary about unconscious bias and how it affects our lives socially and in the workplace.Documentary filmmaker Robin Hauser argues that we need to have a conversation about how AI should be governed and ask who is responsible for overseeing the ethical standards of these supercomputers. "We need to figure this out now," she says. "Because once skewed data gets into deep learning machines, it's very difficult to take it out."

Our experience of cyber space and women's identity:

So for understanding these spaces of biases of AI. So as Kriti mentioned when she first applied for AI she received comments and queries. It’s about gender biases. In this similar way when any girl puts her own identity she might receive queries first from there family members, importantly males of the family. If the same thing happened to us we have to observe such things. Like till the date some girls have not their own Gmail Id, Facebook Id and so many things. So patriarchy is also described. Women or girls make a fake Id on Facebook to hide their gender because they don’t want any kind of hurdles. 

Cyberfeminism is a very interesting term for discussing and thinking. It's very interesting to see that still some women are facing some kind of problem Technology with social media and they are getting afraid of using such a thing. So we have to write our own experience about cyber feminism. I had the same experience when I started Facebook, Instagram so at that time I hid my profile and my identity because I was afraid that I might be talking wrong. Still i have not Sher some personal think in social media and photos also. Slowly and steadily we are coming out from this kind of fear. 

Thank you

Thinking Activity

Thinking Activity: The culture of Speed and the counter cultural of Slow Movement.

Hello friends,  

I am Nidhi Dave a student of Department of English Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University. This Thinking Activity given by professor Dr. Dilip Barad sir. Here i discus about The culture of Speed and the counter cultural of Slow Movement.

The Culture of Speed and Slow movement:

Today man is constantly exposed to attacks of two dominant forces of the contemporary world, which organize and structure its logistic of perception: speed and technical images. Paul Virilio, the “high priest of speed” deals with the impact of speed on the contemporary world in his texts. Virilio’s theory shows the far-reaching extent to which the speed conquered all and everything over the centuries: transportation and production, peace and war, men and women, urban and rural areas, work and leisure time, arts and commerce. Virilio clearly shows us how the principle of acceleration of the word has taken root in professional and private lives of individuals and societies in both good and bad sense, and how it has changed and continues changing our standards, values, perceptions and mentality. Vilem Flusser speaks of “technical images” in general. Technical images furnish the space of our everydayness in a similar way as an architect furnishes a room with new furniture. Technical images work by supplying a reality where it is needed. Technical image is an abstraction of the third order. The technical image is an image produced by apparatuses. Our new arrangement of the world, new after the end of the age of linear writing, depends on two things – on apparatuses and on their programmes.

Paul Virilio - Dromology:

The word Dromology is derived from Greek noun 'Dromos' which is used for race or racetrack. With this meaning in his mind he coined the term Dromology which means "Science of Speed" According to Virilio Speed became the soul agent of progress. He further said that..

"There was no industrial revolution, 

only Dromocratic Revolution, 

There is no Democracy only Democracy, 

There is no Strategy only Dromology."

Dromos is an Ancient Greek noun for race or racetrack, which Virilio applied the activity of racing (Virilio 1977:47). It is with this meaning in mind that he coined the term 'dromology', which he defined as the "science (or logic) of speed“. Dromology is important when considering the structuring of society in relation to warfare and modern media. He noted that the speed at which something happens may change its essential nature, and that which moves with speed quickly comes to dominate that which is slower. 'Whoever controls the territory possesses it. Possession of territory is not primarily about laws and contracts, but first and foremost a matter of movement and circulation.'

Virilio clearly shows us how the principle of acceleration of the word has taken root in professional and private lives of individuals and societies in both good and bad sense, and how it has changed and continues changing our standards, values, perceptions and mentality. Vilem Flusser speaks of “technical images” in general. Technical images furnish the space of our everydayness in a similar way as an architect furnishes a room with new furniture. Technical images work by supplying a reality where it is needed. Technical image is an abstraction of the third order. The technical image is an image produced by apparatuses. Our new arrangement of the world, new after the end of the age of linear writing, depends on two things – on apparatuses and on their programmes.

TED-Talk on 'In Praise of Slowness':

Journalist Carl Honore believes the Western world’s emphasis on speed erodes health, productivity and quality of life. But there’s a backlash brewing, as everyday people start putting the brakes on their all-too-modern lives.

Honore’s bestselling book In Praise of Slowness plots the lineage of our speed-obsessed society; while it recognizes the difficulty of slowing down, it also highlights the successes of everyday people around the world who have found ways of doing it. In this video he talked about the speed movement. 

 According to Carl Honore “A world obsessed with speed, with doing everything faster, with cramming more and more into less and less time. Every moment of the day feels like a race against the clock.” He asked two questions. The first was, how did we get so fast? And the second is, is it possible, or even desirable, to slow down? So we are afraid that we might not do work at the time so we are trying to do something faster. A world obsessed with speed, with doing everything faster, with cramming more and more into less and less time. Every moment of the day feels like a race against the clock. To borrow a phrase from Carrie Fisher, which is in my bio there; I'll just toss it out again -- "These days even instant gratification takes too long." It is said in this video that we have to slow down now.  At the same time we have to pay some attention to nature and human being.

In the wrong progress we are making, we have to slow down and move towards slow movement nature. So in brief it is a kind of benefit of ‘Slow Movement’. We are going very fast but we have to be more alert about each and everything and specially what happens around us. So all of that said, is it, I guess, is it possible? That's really the main question before us today. Is it possible to slow down? And I'm happy to be able to say to you that the answer is a resounding yes. And I present myself as Exhibit A, a kind of reformed and rehabilitated speed-aholic. I still love speed.

Thinking Activity

Thinking Activity: The Curse of Karna

Hello friends, 

I am Nidhi Dave student of the Department of English MKBU, This blog is response of my thinking Activity given by professor Yesha Ma'am. Here i discuss about some questions answers to the play The Curse of karna.

T. P. Kailasam:

Tyagraj Paramasiva Iyer Kailasam (1884–1946), was a playwright and prominent writer of Kannada literature. His contribution to Kannada theatrical comedy earned him the title Prahasana Prapitamaha, "the father of humorous plays" and later he was also called "Kannadakke Obbane Kailasam" meaning "One and Only Kailasam for Kannada".

The play was written in five acts. In the five act it is describing the life story of Karna and his Curse.

Two curses of Karna given to him by his guru Parshurama and by a Brahmana have some impact on his defeat to Arjuna and, ultimately, his death during the battle in Mahabharata.

Question - Answer 

1, Interpret the 'End' of all acts and scenes.

 Ans, 

Act-1

Raama:

POOR KARNA! POOR, POOR KARNA!

Act- 2

Gandharaj

POOR ANGA! POOR POOR HONEST ANGA!

Act- 3

The King Suyodhan

The King POOR ANGA! OUR POOR GREAT ANGA !

Act- 4

Bheema

Anga crumples into Bheema’s arms who carries him out muttering amid tears: POOR ANGA! POOR GREAT ANGA!” The THRONE ROOM, empty now, is exposed for a minute before—

Act 5

Aswatthama

“OUR ANGA!” “OUR GREAT ANGA!”

“OUR POOR POOR ANGA”!

All the act of this play ends with Karna being Poor. All are sympathetic with Karnas character and this way all act end with same way.

2, Is 'moral conflict' and 'Hamartia' there in Karna's character?

Ans,

What is ‘Hamartia”?

Hamartia arose from the Greek verb hamartanein, meaning "to miss the mark" or "to err." Aristotle introduced the term in the Poetics to describe the error of judgment which ultimately brings about the tragic hero's downfall. As you can imagine, the word is most often found in literary criticism. However, media writers occasionally employ the word when discussing the unexplainable misfortune or missteps of celebrities regarded as immortal gods and goddesses before being felled by their own shortcomings.

Karna's role in moral context. Well there was nothing moral about karna. He was a great warrior but so was satyaki, bhagadatta, duryodhana and many others. If we read Mahabharata, we see that Duryodhana has done many evil things. Karna, he was involved in almost all of those evils and sometimes he was the instigator. We see that karna is known for his charity but he always boasted about his charity. He gave his kavach to Indra but received a weapon to kill Arjun so that was no charity it was a trade. Karna didn't even care for Duryodhana, all he wanted was a fight to the death with Arjun. If karna was morally correct then he would stop duryodhana from doing evil things.

If we read about karna's past then we see that he was a demon named sahastra kawach in his previous birth. Guess destiny didn't want him to lose his demon nature.

3, Karna - The voice of Subaltern

The story of Karna begins with the misfortune of his secret birth and unfolds itself amidst the unremitting gloom of injustice and insult. A long time ago, a beautiful young princess named Kunti lived with her Uncle, King Kuntibhoj, in a lovely palace along the banks of a wide river. One day Maharishi Durvasa visited the palace of Kuntibhoja. He stayed there for almost a year. During his stay Kunti was given the responsibility of attending to his needs. Kunti served the Maharishi with great reverence without caring for her own comfort. The sage had a very peaceful and happy stay and wanted to reward Kunti for her services. Maharishi said, “Child, one day you will need the help of the Gods. I am going to teach you a secret mantra for inviting the Gods into your life. Be very careful with this mantra! Use it wisely.”Early the next morning Kunti was playing by herself in the royal garden. The sun had risen and Kunti watched its rays touch a flower here, a leaf there.She coated the basket with the wax to make it waterproof, and lined it with layers of the silk to make it soft and warm. She placed the baby carefully in his new bed and carried the basket to the river. Then she kissed him good-bye and set the basket afloat and whispered, “May the Sun-God watch over you always and keep you safe. May you find parents who will love you and care for you.” Downstream, Adhiratha was sitting on a rock, hoping to catch a fish for the midday meal. He was a gentleman,a charioteer by trade, and his wife Radha was a gentle and good woman.

When Radha saw the tiny baby lying peacefully asleep, she was overjoyed and said to her husband, “Swamy, it seems that our prayers have been answered. We will keep this baby and bring him up as our own”.He repliedI agree with you. He is a gift from God in answer to our prayers. In fact,he himself is Godlike with these divine earrings and armor. After consultation with the Brahmins,he was named Vasushena since he was wearing a Vasu Varma(signifying rich armor; the significance of ‘wealth’ in his name was further validated by his legendary generosity later in adult life). He also came to be known as Radheya or the son of Radha, and more famously as Karna (signifying ear, because he was born with the divine earrings). Radheya was outgrowing like every other young boy of his age in the village. special features and personality, anybody could see that the boy did not quite belong to the category of ordinary village lads.

Adhiratha was particularly tense, as he recalled how Dronacharya had initially refused to do anything with a Suta Putra (charioteer’s son), and how he had to seek the intervention of King Dhritarashtrahimself.Guru Dronacharya had only agreed to impart basic education and training in arms to his son. In due course both father and son entered the hut of Guru Dronacharya and touched his feet with due reverence.

After a few days when Adhiratha visited his son in his lodgings, he found him tense and somewhat angry as well. Before entering the room he had assured him that his son was very bright and a quick learner. But on entering the room he found him in a different frame of mind which made him apprehensive. On being asked, Karna started asking all sorts of questions with his father. He asked, “Baba is it a crime to be a Suta-Putra? Why do scriptures sanction this class-based discrimination? Why the princes and other so-called upper-class students should be given better food, better lodgings,and better education as compared to students like me,who seem to have an inborn stigma attached to their names? Where does my fault lie in all this?” Similarly, this scenario is also denoted by the term 'subaltern conventionally denotes an inferior military rank, it is more generally used as ‘a name for the general attribute of subordination in South Asian society’ often expressed in terms of caste and gender as it is being acquired at birth and is non-changeable. The term ``Subaltern Was coined by Ranjit Guhaand later it was adopted by Marxist Antonio Gramsciand further it was discussed by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak in her essay ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’People consider Subaltern as the unrepresented group of people in the society, people of inferior race, not fit for making any real contribution to the society and therefore they cannot speak, but in reality subaltern can speak but others do not have the patience to listen to them and same can be seen with Karna, he is capable but he ultimately he is Suta Putra. To console Karna Adhiratha sensibly replied, “My dear son, during your education you will surely study scriptures and find out for yourself that they don’t sanction any kind of discrimination. These divisions are all manmade and tools used by those people who wield power to subjugate those who are weak and less fortunate. Let me assure you, my son, being a Suta is not a crime. We earn our living by fair means and struggle hard to make both ends meet. Be assured there is no dishonor involved in all this. But you and I are not in a position to change the system. My advice to you is that you can earn recognition by hard work and dedication and outshine everyone with your superior capabilities.  

Thank you.

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