Animals, others, and postcolonial ecomasculinities: Nadeem Aslam’s The Blind Man’s Garden

2020 ◽  
pp. 002198942095212
Author(s):  
Shazia Rahman
Keyword(s):  
Women Characters ◽  
Gender Equity ◽  
War On Terror ◽  
International Conflict ◽  
Hegemonic Masculinity ◽  
Toxic Effects ◽  
Snow Leopard ◽  
The Novel ◽  
The Us ◽  
Nonhuman Animals

Nadeem Aslam’s novel The Blind Man’s Garden (2013) describes the post-9/11 international conflict in Afghanistan and its effect on a Pakistani character named Mikal, who ends up imprisoned and tortured by both Afghan warlords and American soldiers and remains especially cognizant of the multispecies nature of our world. In this article, I argue that even though the novel presents the toxic effects of hegemonic masculinity by depicting war, it also provides an alternative. In particular, Mikal, with his non-hierarchical response to the War on Terror, gender equity, and nonhuman animals, models much-needed helpful rather than harmful behaviours. I call this stance postcolonial ecomasculinity and link it to the way in which a snow leopard cub influences Mikal’s decision to rescue a US soldier by risking his own life and wellbeing. Even though the US soldier also befriends the same snow leopard cub, his hegemonic masculine desire for dominance makes it difficult for him to overcome his ethnocentrism. Similarly, Aslam’s novel depicts Rohan, who identifies with and appreciates nonhuman birds and trees, but because of his patriarchal privilege cannot see the ways in which women are also oppressed. As the novel ends, its women characters provide hope for Rohan, the blind man, to navigate through the garden, which is Pakistan, using a rope walk to connect Rohan to the plants and trees in the garden. These connections are symbolic of lessons in egalitarian masculinity, teaching not only Rohan but also two young boys how to live without domination and violence. As a result, we are left with images of pathways which broaden our vision of masculinity beyond the stereotypical.

scholarly journals THE PORTRAIT OF THE AMERICAN WOMAN IN MARGARET MITCHELL'S NOVEL "GONE WITH THE WIND"

2019 ◽  
Vol 31 (6) ◽  
pp. 1749-1753
Author(s):  
Lirije Ameti
Keyword(s):  
Women Characters ◽  
American Woman ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Gone With The Wind ◽  
Woman Character ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Artistic Achievement ◽  
History Of

This theme, The Portrait of the American Woman in Margaret Mitchell's Novel " Gone With The Wind " is broad, challenging, interesting and among many contradictory to one another's point of view, at different social grounds , periods of time simply or merely of the fact that a female writer of this tremendous saga read mostly by women represents multi dimensional themes. It is an interweave of tradition, history , war, social classes, Reconstruction, transition and more. All these and many other themes written with a masterful disciplined imagination put in the longest novel in history. A masterpiece of 1037 pages published in 1939 and subsequently in the greatest and longest motion picture on screen. Piling up records and building it's own history and legends. The novel has sold in more than 25 million copies in at least 27 languages in thirty countries and in more than 185 editions according to the research conducted in 2004. These figures continue to increase, not to mention that the film is seen by more individuals than the total population of the USA. GWTW has grown and conflated into a phenomenon of American and later into a phenomenon of levels of basic appreciation after international popular culture. Thus criticism was attested at the levels of basic appreciation , often in the opposite poles of love and /or hate , the evaluation again in bipolar terms of praise and / or scorn. On the popular level the book was lauded and in the literary world it was defamed. Mitchell's novel " Gone With The Wind " was seen as important symbols of American culture forces. A serious biography in 1965 sparked reconsiderations simply by the assumption of Mitchell's importance as a writer. Other re- evaluations followed which asserted the literary quality of the work, notably in feminist terms. Attesting the qualities that critics wrote such as Michener who said: " The spiritual history of a region". Many other scholarly papers have been undertaken to attack it and completed to praise it. Because of the enormous popularity , readability , embodiment of the heroine woman character Scarlett O'Hara with many other women who saw themselves in those situations or experienced the same then or even nowadays. These multi themes to discuss about, issues primarily of women, the novel is defined as a woman's literary artistic achievement, seen through the eyes off a woman Scarlett herself and many other women characters. Is seen the distinction of the past and present of the old and new society. Mitchell herself says it is about courage and gumption to change as a necessity in order to survive war, reconstruction and transition. The search of survival by poor and nearly defeated young women who had no control or capacity to understand these tensions. Indeed this novel has become an icon of the US culture.

War and Terror

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Avinash Paliwal
Keyword(s):  
War On Terror ◽  
Global War On Terror ◽  
Military Action ◽  
Global Trend ◽  
The Us ◽  
The World ◽  
Global War

The Taliban’s destruction of the Bamiyan Buddha in March 2001 outraged India (and the world). It killed any scope for conciliation with the Taliban. In this context, the US decision to take military action in Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks was welcomed by many in India. However, Washington’s decision to undertake such action without UN approval (which came only in December 2001) sparked another round of debate between the partisans and the conciliators. As this chapter shows, the former were enthusiastic about supporting the US in its global war on terror, but the latter advocated caution given Washington’s willingness to partner with Islamabad. Despite the global trend to ‘fight terrorism’, the conciliators were successful in steering India away from getting involved in Afghanistan militarily.

Deterrence and Democracy

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard A. Falkenrath
Keyword(s):  
War On Terror ◽  
Terrorist Attacks ◽  
Global War On Terror ◽  
Counter Terrorism ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
The Us ◽  
Democratic Societies ◽  
Global War ◽  
Taking Action ◽  
The Given

This chapter examines strategy and deterrence and traces the shift from deterrence by ‘punishment’ to deterrence by ‘denial’ in Washington’s conduct of the Global War on Terror. The former rested on an assumption that the consequences of an action would serve as deterrents. The latter may carry messages of possible consequences, but these are delivered by taking action that removes the capabilities available to opponents – in the given context, the Islamist terrorists challenging the US. Both approaches rest on credibility, but are more complex in the realm of counter-terrorism, where the US authorities have no obvious ‘return to sender’ address and threats to punish have questionable credibility. In this context, denial offers a more realistic way of preventing terrorist attacks. Yet, the advanced means available to the US are deeply ethically problematic in liberal democratic societies. However, there would likely be even bigger questions if governments failed to act.

Antisemitic or Bordering on Antisemitic? Grey Areas in Romanian Fake News Discourses in the Wake of the Covid-19 Pandemic

Transilvania ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 121-127
Author(s):  
Anca-Simina Martin
Keyword(s):  
Influenza Pandemic ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Fake News ◽  
Jewish Communities ◽  
Elie Wiesel ◽  
Working Definition ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
The Us ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Novel Coronavirus

Jews as a collective have long served as scapegoats for epidemics and pandemics, such as the Bubonic Plague and, according to some scholars, the 1918–1920 influenza pandemic. This practice reemerged in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic, when more and more fake news outlets in the US and Europe started publishing articles on a perceived linkage between Jewish communities and the novel coronavirus. What this article aims to achieve is to facilitate a dialogue between the observations on the phenomenon made by the Elie Wiesel National Institute for the Study of the Holocaust in Romania and the latest related EU reports, with a view to charting its beginnings in Romania in relation to other European countries and in an attempt to see whether Romania, like France and Germany, has witnessed the emergence of “grey area” discourses which are not fully covered by International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance working definition of antisemitism.

Writing Refugee Crisis in the Age of Amazon: Lost Children Archive's Reenactment Play

Genre ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 54 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-66
Author(s):  
Patricia Stuelke
Keyword(s):  
White Male ◽  
Central American ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Refugee Crisis ◽  
The Us ◽  
Mexico Border ◽  
Colonial Capitalism ◽  
Road Novel ◽  
Colonial Frontier ◽  
Us Mexico Border

This essay analyzes Valeria Luiselli's 2019 novel Lost Children Archive's attempt to imagine anti-imperialist solidarity aesthetics in a moment of the increasing imbrication of the US literary sphere and settler colonial capitalist surveillance of the US-Mexico border, as well as the nonprofit care regime that has arisen to oppose and ameliorate its effects. Because these structures converge around overt and subterranean investments in settler colonial frontier fantasy, the essay focuses particularly on Lost Children Archive's engagement with the tradition of the white male road novel Western in the Americas—Luiselli's attempts to write both through and against this form—as part of the novel's larger attempt to grapple with the formal problems that adhere in representing the temporality and scale of ongoing Central American Indigenous dispossession and refugee displacement in settler colonial capitalism. In exploring the degree to which the Western genre's tradition of, per Philip Deloria, “playing Indian” might oppose the brutal bureaucratic violence of the xenophobic carceral settler US state, the novel builds a critique of the frontier road novel fantasy that it cannot quite sustain.

Educating the Engineer of 2020

2008 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alice M. Agogino
Keyword(s):  
Engineering Education ◽  
Gender Equity ◽  
Practice Change ◽  
Academic Science ◽  
Engineering Practice ◽  
Science And Engineering ◽  
The Us

How will engineering practice change in the next twenty years? What are the implications to engineering education? Will we have achieved gender equity? These questions will be discussed in the context of three recent reports of the US. National Academy of Engineering – The Engineer of 2020: Global Visions of Engineering in the New Century; Educating the Engineer of 2020: Adapting Engineering Education to the New Century; and Beyond Bias and Barriers: Fulfilling the Potential of Women in Academic Science and Engineering.

scholarly journals Matriarchal Society in The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 28-33
Author(s):  
Teta Irama Setri ◽  
Dwi Budi Setiawan
Keyword(s):  
Women Characters ◽  
Qualitative Method ◽  
Economic Condition ◽  
Literary Work ◽  
Decision Making Process ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Historical Approach ◽  
The Past ◽  
Library Research ◽  
Feminine Divine

This research discusses a novel which written by Sue Monk Kidd entitled The Secret Life of Bees. The writers aims to describe the matriarchal society issue that is often regarded as the opposed of patriarchy. This research aims to answer the question how levels of matriarchal society described in the novel The Secret Life of Bees through women characters in the story. This study applies descriptive qualitative method and typically library research. This research applies socio-historical approach in order to look at the relation between literary work and society’s historical elements that happen in the past. At political level, August character shows as the matriarch or the leader in community with important role for overcoming conflict and decision making process. At economical level, it shows that matriarchal society common practice has right and same position in economic affair and giving gift each other to make the economic condition balance. Last, at spiritual and cultural level, it is described that women characters in The Secret Life of Bees believe in feminine divine which is the Black Mary and doing worship for her. In conclusion, The Secret Life of Bees novel clearly depicts matriarchal society based on the theory of Matriarchy by Heide Göettner-Abendroth.Keyword: The Secret Life of Bees, Matriarchy, Matriarchal Society, Levels of Matriarchal Society, Socio-historical Approach

scholarly journals Women in Patriarchy: A Study of Sexual Colonialism in Colleen McCullough’s The Thorn Birds

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (7) ◽  
pp. 52-59
Author(s):  
Dr. Deepali Sharma
Keyword(s):  
Women Characters ◽  
Central Character ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Australian Society ◽  
Women Of Letters

Colleen McCullough, a famous Australian women novelist, extensively deals with the issue of sexual colonization by exhibiting the fact that this world belongs to men not to women where women suffer and men cause them pain. Meggie, the central character in the novel is shown as the victim, sufferer and the colonized individual and Paddy, Ralph and Luke are shown as the epitome of the British colonizers who misused, misbehaved and degraded the women during their colonial rule. The novelist while sketching women characters does not asseverate as ostensible women of letters but for the delineation of patriarchy in the novel The Thorn Birds which clearly manifests her declivity in the vicinity of the infringement with women in Australian society. 

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