Reviewing Nachiketa’s Lyrics as a Protest against Diverse Malpractices: A Study from a Post-colonial Perspective

Songs are not always a source of recreation that soothes one’s mind with beautifully romantic hearttouching sugar-quoted lyrics. Songs may also be angry in tone and harsh in voice, as is noticeable in many of the songs of Nachiketa Chakraborty. Likewise, the crucial period of Colonialism may be over, but a more critical period of Neocolonialism is now a dominating practice in the developing countries by rich and most developed countries, mostly through their political and economic strategies. The interesting thing is that power and resistance go side by side. Nachiketa’s melodious lyrics are the literary resistance to Neocolonial forces. Nachiketa is one of the few Kolkata-centric artists whose late post-90s modern Bengali songs have won the hearts of both West Bengal and Bangladeshi people. What is less noticeable during these three decades is that Nachiketa has a strong presence through vocal and melody, where his rebellious voice has not failed to criticize the government, political, religious, financial, or cultural institutions that indirectly represent Neocolonial ideologies like Capitalism, Globalization, and Cultural Imperialism. This article is going to excavate how Nachiketa has criticized different layers of malpractices prevailing in the diversified aspects of day to day life through his best known, surprisingly turbulent anti-imperial lyrical creations.

Literature, Powerlessness, and Modernity: A Reading of Takeuchi Yoshimi's “What Is Modernity?”

While the Japanese sinologist Takeuchi Yoshimi is frequently mentioned in discussions of “alternative modernity” on the part of Asia, people have not sufficiently addressed the asymmetrical relationship between literature and politics in Takeuchi's thinking, as his literary analysis is oftentimes associated with a Hegelian reading of subjectivity. Through a reading of Takeuchi's “What Is Modernity?,” published in 1948, this article examines Takeuchi's discourses on politics from a literary standpoint that is radically nondialectical and “powerless” with regard to “politics” as he understands it. Takeuchi's critique of modernity as well as his idea of Asian nationalism cannot do without his idiosyncratic understanding of literature, especially his reading of Lu Xun, and his insistence on the powerlessness of literary resistance. Takeuchi's literary reshuffling of the political, the article argues, opens up a horizon where the very historico-political condition of possibility of existing political institutionalizations can be put into reexamination—it helps us reconsider the concepts of relation, otherness, and equality, which are still in operation to frame our understanding of the world.

Nuevas cartografías del humanismo a partir de la escritura

New Writing’s Cartographies of Humanism: Chilean Literary Resistances: Nona Fernández and Alia Trabucco Testimonial and Fiction Writings of recent past, especially traumatic recent past, have effects and impacts in our complex contemporary times. This confusing, disenchanted, liquid present is the mark of neoliberalism and biopolitics in bodies and minds (“threaten eros”, Byung Chul-Han said). However, we can find an answer to death, pain and ideological scepticism and individualism in a community of affection (Berardi, Emmelhainz), in the pleasure of language, in humor or lightness (Todorov Calvino). The way to access knowledge is diverse and social and poetic memories can be more interesting than historical documents. The trauma of Chilean postdictatorship is written and told by contemporary narrative in a mixture of fantastic and realistic engagement. These writers are part of the postmemory generation (Hirsch). Mapocho (2002) by Nona Fernández and La resta by Alia Trabucco are the books who can help us to draw a possible map of some Chilean literary resistance.

Chairil Anwar Service Literature Practices, 1942-1949

Chairil Anwar's literary resistance practices in 1942-1949 were supported by ‘literary habitus’--foreign and local literature, literary totality, and literary rationality-- as a foundation with the support of ‘literary modal’ --literary totality, literary rationality, and ideals of literature-- with consideration of the ‘literary fields’.Although the dominance of a ‘pujangga baru’ generation through literary practices is quite strong, Chairil Anwar's ‘literary practice’ is a successful practice.This success was marked by several things, including (1) Chairil's poetry writing model was considered as a new model that was not available before in Indonesian literature; (2) the influence of Chairil's literary practice which is growing in Indonesian literary society; (3) Chairil's coronation as a pioneer of the 45th generation; and (4) the increasingly massive publishing of Chairil's works which certainly brings 'capital modal' to Chairil's family. Keywords: literary resistance practices, Chairil Anwar, 1942-1949 Abstrak Praktik sastra perlawan Chairil Anwar pada tahun 1942-1949 didukung oleh 'habitus sastra' --sastra asing dan lokal, totalitas sastra, dan rasionalitas sastra-- sebagai landasan dengan dukungan 'modal sastra' --totalitas sastra, rasionalitas sastra, rasionalitas sastra , dan cita-cita sastra-- dengan pertimbangan 'ranah sastra'. Meskipun dominasi generasi 'pujangga baru' melalui praktik sastra cukup kuat, 'praktik sastra' Chairil Anwar adalah praktik yang berhasil. Keberhasilan ini ditandai oleh beberapa hal, antara lain(1) Model penulisan sajak Chairil dianggap model baru yang belum ada sebelumnya di kesusasteraan Indonesia; (2) pengaruh praktik sastra Chairil yang semakin besar dalam masyarakat sastra Indonesia; (3) dinobatkannya Chairil sebagai pelopor angkatan 45; dan (4) semakin masifnya penerbitan karya-karya Chairil yang tentunya mendatangkan modal kapital bagi keluarga Chairil. Kata kunci: praktik sastra perlawanan, Chairil Anwar, Tahun 1942-1949

Prophetic Translation

Prophetic Translation: The Making of Modern Egyptian Literature explores the move from Qur’anic to secular approaches to literature in early 20th-century Egyptian literary translations, asking what we can learn from that period and the promise that translation held for the Egyptian writers of fiction at that time. Through their early adaptations, these writers crafted a prophetic, secular vocation for the narrator that gave access to a world of linguistic creation and interpretation unavailable to the common reader or the religious cleric. This book looks at the writers’ claim to secular prophecy as it manifests itself in the adapted narrative voice of their translations to suggest an original sense of literary resistance to colonial oppression and occupation in the early Arabic novel.

Vivência e (re)existência à margem do cânone: Olhos d’água, de Conceição Evaristo

A literatura contemporânea brasileira tem se configurado como território que congrega disputas e jogos de poder, espaço de produção de contradições e desconstruções constantes. Assim, destaca-se o fato de que o monopólio da produção artística não se encontra mais estritamente ligado a grandes padrões econômicos – se, por um lado, a literatura, em sua maioria, ainda é produzida pelos mesmos rostos/experiências, por outro, a nova literatura procura ser democrática e “aposta na instituição de um sistema literário partilhado, que reconhece novas subjetividades e novos atores no mundo da cultura, e na reconfiguração do próprio termo literatura” (RESENDE, 2014). O presente artigo, entretanto, objetiva andar à margem do tapete vermelho do cânone para esquadrinhar identidades silenciadas: a mulher negra, enquanto produtora de arte, e as sexualidades não hegemônicas, enquanto representação literária. Para tanto, parte-se da análise de dois contos contidos no livro Olhos d’água (2014), da escritora Conceição Evaristo. Pode-se observar, ao final, que há uma produção de resistências discursivas e corporais à noção de campo literário brasileiro ainda como um lugar reservado à branquitude, ao falocentrismo e à heterossexualidade, – e que essa resistência literária se presta, nesse sentido, como força política que coloca em cheque a manutenção de um poder estabelecido. *** Experience and re(existence) outside the canon: Olhos d’água, from Conceição Evaristo ***The contemporary Brazilian literature has been configured as a territory that congregates disputes and games ofpower, space for the production of contradictions and constant deconstructions. Thus, the fact that the monopoly of artistic production is no longer strictly linked to high economic standards – if, literature, on the other hand, is still produced by the same faces/experiences, on the other hand, the new literature seeks to be democratic and “focuses on the institution of a shared literary system that recognizes new subjectivities and new actors in the world of culture, and in the reconfiguration of the term literature itself” (RESENDE, 2014). The present article, however, aims at walking away from the red carpet of the canon to search for silenced identities: the black woman as an art producer, and non-hegemonic sexualities, as a literary representation. To do so, we start with the analysis of two short stories contained in the book Olhos d’água (2014), by Conceição Evaristo. In the end, it can be observed that there is a production of discursive and corporal resistances to the notion of the Brazilian literary fieldas a place still reserved for whiteness, phallocentrism and heterosexuality – and that this literary resistance provides itself, in this sense, as a political force that puts in check the maintenance of an established power.Keywords: Afro-Brazilian literature; female authorship; contemporary literature.