Journal of Contemporary Poetics

Initial Pages

2024-12-26T08:58:12+05:00

Hyperseparation and Value Dualism: An Ecocritical Analysis of The Hungry Tide

2024-12-26T09:05:20+05:00

The burgeoning gulf between humans and nature is an inevitable corollary of an anthropocentric approach towards nature. It strengthens the illusion of human disembeddedness in nature and conceives their relation in dualistic terms, suggesting their polarised identities. In this way, the human-nature duality enables the domination and exploitation of nature, posing a threat to its integrity and lifesustaining capacity. The paper provides an ecocritical analysis of Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide (2004), drawing on Val Plumwood’s critique of human-nature dualism and employing textual analysis methodology. The excessive divide between humans and nature is used as a tool for colonisation and a view of nature as separate/inferior to humans. This dualistic perspective on nature is a major factor driving the current environmental degradation. Through its setting, the novel reflects that the self-centred approach of power structures in dealing with the unique part of the land of the tide-country has rendered a great blow to the ecological balance of its rare ecosystem. The references to the declining number of keystone species like crabs, which are vital for the existence of the mangrove forests, and Piya’s task to survey the endangered Irrawaddy dolphins present a poor spectacle of aquatic life. It reflects the dominant orders’ (marine life traders, rulers & forest officials) detached perspective on the natural world. The paper attempts to provide an understanding that hyperseparation as an oppressive feature of dualistic thinking underpins the subjugation and exploitation of the sphere of nature as well as the underprivileged humans associated with it.
Key Words: ecocriticism, anthropocentrism, hyperseparation, value dualism

Generalisation of Patriarchy in Pakistan: Analysing Negation Concerning Women in Ziauddin Yousafzai’s Let Her Fly

2024-12-24T17:25:36+05:00

Negation is a linguistic tool used to express denial, contradiction, non-existence, or falsification of a proposition or a sentence. This paper highlights the use of negation as a strategy to misrepresent Pakistani society as highly patriarchal. Patriarchy exists in every culture, but its intensity varies in different cultures. The present study examines how Ziauddin Yousafzai and Louise Carpenter employ negation to illustrate the concept of patriarchy in Pakistan. However, this view cannot be extended to the whole country. Gerda Hedwig Lerner and Sylvia Walby’s theory of patriarchy supports the argument of the paper. Gunnel Tottie’s model for the identification of negation words and negative propositions has been used to analyse textual references. The model is used to highlight negation on a syntactic level that gives a compound effect in the propositions, thereby generalising patriarchy in Pakistani society. The memoir serves as a window that lets the reader look into Ziauddin Yousafzai’s social life in Swat, Pakistan. The study of negation in the paper is significant as it attempts to highlight the misrepresentation of Pakistani society as being patriarchal. The strategic use of recurrent negation words concerning women seems to add the writers’ narrative to the list of ones who talk about gender inequalities in the East with aims to gain Western readership and praise. The research concludes that non-affixal negation (both in no-negation and not-negation types) has been generously used concerning women to misrepresent Pakistan to Western readers by focusing only on a smaller group and generalising it all over Pakistan.

Key Words: Negation, patriarchy, Pakistani society, women, generalisation

Revisiting Exile: A Case of Waziristan

2024-12-26T09:02:48+05:00

This paper aims to analyse Cheegha: The Call from Waziristan, The Last Outpost by Ghulam Qadir with reference to the continuous war in Waziristan. Waziristan has been at the centre of the conflict since the arrival of the Russian invasion and then after the incident of 9/11. The USA launched drone strikes after the 9/11 incident to seek out the terrorists who are thought to have found a safe haven in Pakistan. The constant bombardment of drones has destroyed the customs and traditional folkways. This cultural genocide generated feelings of homelessness and alienation in the people of Waziristan which made them exiled to their land. The notion of exile has already been discussed in relation to the experience of migration or expulsion from the homeland. However, this paper appropriates the concept of exile to include the category of those people who have become exilic from within. It seeks to analyse the effects of continuous war via the projection of displaced feelings of the people of Waziristan. By integrating the theoretical perspective on exile developed by Avatar Brah, Bill Ashcroft, William Safran, Paul Gilroy, and Edward Said, and cultural genocide as theorised by Raphael Lemkin, Elisa Novice, and Lawrence Davidson, I attempt to highlight that the exiled are not necessarily migrants from another country but rather it is possible to be exiled within the boundaries of their homeland due to the loss of culture, folkways, and traditions.

Key Terms: exile, Waziristan, cultural genocide, homeland.

Interpolating Xenophobia through Cultural Artefacts: A Case Study of Selected Bollywood Historical Adaptations as G(local) State Apparatus

2024-12-24T17:34:32+05:00

Cinema has a unique quality that engages diverse audiences and transcends spatial and cultural constraints. Considering this widening impact of films on designing and influencing thought paradigms, my study investigates how film media can be used as a Glocal state apparatus to gain greater ideological ends. Over the years, the Bollywood film industry has produced many films that reinforce the national sentiment by weaving racial, ethnic, and cultural prejudices into the narrative of productions exclusively dealing with the us/them dichotomy. The study’s argument would restrict itself to scrutinising the characters, narrative, plot construction, point of view, and mise en scene, as filmed in the Bollywood historical adaptations Padmavaat (2015), Jodha Akbar (2008) and Earth (2009). Though the movies are cross-temporally situated, the author has chosen these film texts on thematic grounds, i.e. ethnic dichotomies. These film texts will be analysed by referring to Althusser’s theorisation of ideology, ideological state apparatuses, and interpellation to find out how certain cultural artefacts can transcend their prescribed role as means of entertainment and become Glocal state apparatus to get the local as well as the global audience interpellated into a desired narrative. Moreover, the study has also benefitted from Linda Hutcheon’s journalistic formula for analysing adaptations, which is used as a supporting lens to uncover the ideological implications of the selected film texts. The study has delimited its discussion on the role of ideological state apparatuses in executing an ideology.
Keywords: Interpolation, Cultural Artifacts, Bollywood Historical Adaptations, Glocal, Xenophobia, Interpolation

Reimagining the Cinematic Gaze: An Analysis of Iranian Mystical Cinema in Majid Majidi’s Baran

2024-12-24T17:38:37+05:00

For the last few decades gaze as a theoretical concept has been explored from philosophical, political, and psychological perspectives. However, its exploration in media studies has been the most extensive where it has been used to explore the viewers’ engagement with visual media. Theories of male gaze (Mulvey), female gaze (Lorraine Gamman, Margaret Marshment), objectifying gaze (Fredrickson and Roberts) and imperial gaze (E. Ann Kaplan) have explored the function of art and viewer’s relationship with the views in the West. However western-centric theoretical frameworks that explore the role of gaze become problematic when one initiates a discussion on mystical cinema as it is developed outside the influence of mainstream cinematic thrust and its purely capitalist and consumer-driven markets. A case in point is Iranian mystical cinema that is theopoetic in tradition and provides a viewing experience distinctly opposed to scopophilia. Taking everyday ordinary protagonists, instead of larger-than-life heroes, this cinema takes us on a journey of their inner selves as they grapple with mundane experiences of life. The objective is not to depict the everyday life of individual characters objectively but to use the ordinary, banal, and everyday to ask philosophical questions about life, death, and the connection between the real and the spiritual. The need for a gaze theory that is steeped in Iranian culture is required to process these films. This paper argues for the idea of mystical gaze as a broad code with which to process these films and applies it to Majid Majidi’s film, Baran.
Keywords: Iranian cinema, cinematic gaze, media studies, gaze theory, mysticals