Speaking and Speaking Differently: Language as Resistance, Liberation and Celebration in Dalit Women’s Autobiographical Narratives

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 138-148
Author(s):  
Bijaya Kumar Sethi ◽  
Amarjeet Nayak
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Autobiographical Narratives ◽  
Work Space ◽  
Dalit Women ◽  
Passive Strategies ◽  
Pain And Suffering ◽  
Political Weekly ◽  
Hard Labour

This article undertakes a close reading of Dalit women’s autobiographical narratives to underline the folly of generalizing Dalit women as helpless exploited beings and to explore other important aspects of their lives. It is the intent of this article to explore how Dalit women use specific linguistic expressions as a symbolic way of claiming their distinct identity which in consequence results in an act of resistance against the dominant linguistic culture of Brahminical inheritance. Gopal Guru states that Dalit women ‘talk differently’ (Guru, [2016], Economic & Political Weekly, 30[42], 2548–2550), because their talking differently functions as a potential act of resistance against both casteism and patriarchy along with signifying a mark of distinct identity of their own. Furthermore, the article locates different passive strategies used by Dalit women to resist the oppressor in their everyday life, because, in many conditions, an open resistance is found to be counterproductive for them. Finally, the article investigates Dalit women’s strategies to carve a space for enjoyment and avenues of entertainment amid the pain and suffering, mostly in their work space. It is instructive to see how the work field, which is generally seen to be a place of pain and hard labour, is often used by Dalit women as a place of freedom and enjoyment.

scholarly journals Ultra Groups as Social Space for Leisure

2017 ◽  
Vol 74 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-11
Author(s):  
Daniel Seabra
Keyword(s):  
Young People ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Social Space ◽  
Autobiographical Narratives ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Direct Participation ◽  
Social Leisure ◽  
Group Members ◽  
The Media ◽  
Regular Practice

AbstractThe paper aims to demonstrate that violence is far from a regular practice in Ultra groups, despite its notorious visibility as transmitted by the media. The paper attempts to demonstrate that Ultra groups are a social space of leisure for young people, rather than a space for violence. Actually, having used observation through direct participation and having registered the discourses of Ultra group members, it is possible to demonstrate that life in these groups represents, for many, not only a break from difficult everyday life, but also the only and/or the most important moment of social leisure in their lives.The object of this research was four Ultra groups who support the teams of Oporto City: Super Dragõe, Colectivo Ultras 95 (both support Futebol Clube do Porto), Panteras Ngeras (supporting Boavista Futebol Clube), and Alma Salgueirista (supporting Sport Comércio e Salgueiros). The research was based on observation through direct participation made among the groups over six years. Also conducted were 90 semi-structured interviews, 20 autobiographical narratives, and surveys (sample 206 for estimated n=1766).

Joyce Anthologized in Post-Ulysses England

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eleni Loukopoulou
Keyword(s):  
Close Reading ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
Political Weekly ◽  
Literary Circles

“Joyce Anthologized in Post-Ulysses England” dismantles the predominant assumption that Joyce was largely rejected by the British intelligentsia and literary circles of the inter-war period. Drawing on recent scholarship on modernist networks of promotion, the chapter outlines the dissemination of Joyce’s work through anthologies, publisher’s series, bookshops, the BBC and political weeklies. It ends by offering a close reading of Joyce’s piece “From a Banned Writer to a Banned Singer” published in London’s widely read political weekly The New Statesman and Nation in February 1932.

scholarly journals Problematising Testimony in Autobiographical Narratives by Dalit Women in the English Translation

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Keyword(s):  
English Translation ◽  
Lived Experiences ◽  
Life Stories ◽  
The Self ◽  
Autobiographical Narratives ◽  
Feminist Standpoint ◽  
Politics Of Language ◽  
Dalit Women ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
True False

Dalit autobiographical narratives are widely and habitually being categorised by critics as testimonios or sociobiographies, with an implication to be understood as representative life-stories. Because of the genre’s perceived emphasis on ‘authenticity’, ‘representation of collective suffering’, and immanent connotations of being a political genre of speech for the marginalised, scholars/critics of Dalit literature have been applying the term testimonio to describe autobiographical narratives, which has inadvertently led to a normativisation of the available modi of ‘truth production’ about Dalit lived experiences. The objective of this paper is to dispute the adulatory assessment of testimonio as a genre, by highlighting the instances where the relationship between the self and the community in autobiographical narratives by Dalit women appears uneasy, fraught with dissensus and problematic, when examined from a Dalit feminist standpoint. By looking into ways of reading agency in Karukku (2000), Sangati (2005), and Viramma, Life of an Untouchable (1997), beyond the true-false, victim-oppressor and Dalit-Savarna simplistic binaries, this paper enunciates the problematic implications of using the nomenclature testimonio for reading these autobiographical narratives translated in English. Further, it posits arguments for shifting the emphasis on the politics of language and narrative to avert the trappings of the genre.

The Shema in the Second Temple Period

2015 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 58-84 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarit Kattan Gribetz
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Second Temple ◽  
Rabbinic Literature ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Second Temple Period ◽  
Community Rule ◽  
Historical Moment ◽  
The Temple ◽  
At Home

The precise historical moment when Deut 6 (Shema Israel) was transformed into a prayer ritual is uncertain and a matter of scholarly debate. It is generally assumed that by the time of the Mishnah’s redaction (ca. 200 C. E.), the recitation of the Shema was already a standardized ritual because the Mishnah refers to it as a well-known practice. Indeed, the Mishnah takes for granted that its audience is so familiar with the prayer that it does not define it at all, but rather delves immediately into detailed discussions of its timing and exceptions that might arise in everyday life. Other sources from the Second Temple period, however, challenge the idea of the antiquity and ubiquity of such a standard prayer ritual composed of biblical verses from Deuteronomy and Numbers. This paper examines a number of key texts from the Second Temple period that seemingly refer to the recitation of the Shema prayer and that have been used by scholars to reconstruct the origins of this liturgical ritual. Through a close reading of four of these sources (the Letter of Aristeas, Philo, the Community Rule, and Josephus), I argue that they might not refer to the practice of the Shema recitation that we know from later rabbinic literature. Rather, they provide us with a lens into the diversity of ways that Deut 6:6–7 – “take to heart these instructions… impress them on your children… recite them when you stay at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you get up” – was understood and fulfilled in the Second Temple period. The Letter of Aristeas describes an act of meditating on God’s works of creation; the Community Rule prescribes daily recitation of laws; Philo emphasizes the instruction of justice; and Josephus frames the obligation as a commandment to commemorate the deliverance out of Egypt twice daily. The particular framing of the Shema ritual that we come to know in the Mishnah might have appropriated and extended the practice of reciting the Shema in the temple (some evidence suggests that the Shema was recited in the temple), but this was only one of the ways in which Deut 6:7 was enacted and fulfilled in the pre-destruction period.

Concealing the urban dominant: The socio-spatial dialectic and urban protest in Gonzalo Torrente Ballester’s La saga/fuga de J.B.

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-56
Author(s):  
Michael L. Martínez, Jr
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Present Article ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Urban Life ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Urban Context ◽  
Henri Lefebvre ◽  
Critical Pathway ◽  
Urban Protest ◽  
Gonzalo Torrente Ballester

In the post-Fordist world, cities emerged as increasingly contested terrains upon which capital and ordinary citizens struggled to control the urban process. Henri Lefebvre discerned this contestatory dynamic early on and in response developed the ‘urban’, a concept that cleaves a critical pathway towards a host of material, cultural and ideological processes that attach to capitalist modernity. Around the same time, the Spanish novelist Gonzalo Torrente Ballester was working to sketch the contours of his magnus opus La saga/fuga de J.B. Torrente would eventually come to recognize the roles that the urban process and the socio-spatial dialectic play in mediating contemporary urban life. The present article thus carries out first a close reading of Torrente’s personal journals to detail the ascendency of the ‘urban dominant’ as a central structuring component of his fictional writings. Thereafter, the critical analysis of La saga/fuga de J.B. will reveal that the ‘urban dominant’ stands concealed at the heart of this notoriously complicated novel. This urban cultural studies reading of La saga/fuga de J.B. will argue that, like Lefebvre, Torrente denounces capital’s static conception of space at the same time that he draws upon historical movements of urban protest for textual inspiration. And what will eventually emerge is that, beyond a master of the metafictional novel, Torrente was also an astute observer of everyday life in the urban context.

Caste Patriarchy and the Dehumanization of Dalit Women in Indian Society: Phoole–Ambedkarite Perspective

2021 ◽  
pp. 2455328X2110393
Author(s):  
Nibedita Priyadarsini ◽  
Satya Swaroop Panda
Keyword(s):  
Experiential Learning ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Critical Consciousness ◽  
Academic Discourse ◽  
Caste System ◽  
Indian Society ◽  
Critical Examination ◽  
Self Identity ◽  
Dalit Women ◽  
The Way

Indian society is entrenched in graded inequality with the continuity of Brahminical order among the Hindu caste. The Ambedkarite perspective of graded inequality paves the way towards the possibility of a critical examination of the discourse based on a prospective theorization of the caste patriarchy having its epistemological origin in the ideas propounded by Mahatma Jyoti Rao Phoole and Dr B. R. Ambedkar. The article seeks to explore the potential of such a theorization emerging from the predominant practices in Indian caste society that are pervasive across the communities with respect to the dehumanization of Dalit women in their everyday life. The article also focuses upon the strength of such a stand-point which would not only form the basis of an alternate academic discourse but also contribute towards the agenda of Dalit women collective in envisaging their role in terms of self-identity embedded with critical consciousness. The multiplicity of vulnerabilities of being a Dalit and a woman reflects the way the Dalit women get dehumanized in a number of cases, and they are often considered a gateway to the caste system. There is an emerging need of such theorization based on experiential learning along with the realization of its importance in defining the base of a radical sociopolitical alternative championing the ideological principles of a Phoole–Ambedkarite perspective.

Remembering rape: The temporal construction of sexual violence in autobiographical narratives from 1990s Finland

Sexualities ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 136346072199303
Author(s):  
Matleena Frisk ◽  
Riikka Taavetti
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Violence ◽  
Life Events ◽  
Life Story ◽  
Temporal Changes ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Autobiographical Narratives ◽  
Research Project ◽  
Sex Research

This article examines how historical contexts affect the recollection of experiences of rape. We reanalyze sexual autobiographies that were gathered in Finland in 1992 in a sex research project called FINSEX. To illustrate how the time of the rape as well as the time it is recalled shape the possibilities of narrating a life story, we present a close reading of four autobiographies that we place in the context of the collection as a whole, and compare our analysis of the autobiographies to their interpretation in the FINSEX study. The narrative elements of the autobiographies reflect the violent experiences in complex and layered ways. For the authors of these autobiographies, temporal changes in cultural and social understandings of sexual violence enable the reinterpreting of life events and the naming of previously unnamed experiences.

The digital ephemeral turn: queer theory, privacy, and the temporality of risk

2019 ◽  
Vol 41 (8) ◽  
pp. 1069-1087 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin Haber
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Queer Theory ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Digital Communication ◽  
The Political ◽  
Close Reading

Social media’s shift from storing media permanently by default, to supporting increasingly diverse temporalities of display and interaction has important implications for understanding the political economy of the digital. In this article, I use queer theory to complicate the normative dimensions of the privacy discourses that popularly frame digital ephemerality, suggesting instead that we understand the ephemeral as redistributing the pleasures and dangers of risk. To demonstrate, I do a close reading of the functions, design choices, and aesthetics of popular digital communication platforms, which increasingly provide the affective texture and context for everyday life. Using Snapchat and Apple’s Find My Friends and iMessage as case studies, I highlight a profitable dynamic between promiscuous exposure and monogamous retrenchment.

scholarly journals Fechner on a Walk

2021 ◽  
Vol 51 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-47
Author(s):  
Joshua Bauchner
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Scientific Practice ◽  
Scientific Work ◽  
Empirical Science ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Sensory Physiology ◽  
Historiography Of Science ◽  
Mind And Body ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Crucial Part

The Leipzig physicist Gustav Theodor Fechner (1801–88) is best known for his introduction of psychophysics, an exact, empirical science of the relations between mind and body and a crucial part of nineteenth-century sensory physiology and experimental psychology. Based on an extensive and close reading of Fechner’s diaries, this article considers psychophysics from the vantage of his everyday life, specifically the experience of taking a walk. This experience was not mere fodder for his scientific practice, as backdrop, object, or tool. Rather, on foot, Fechner pursued an investigation of the mind-body parallel to his natural-scientific one; in each domain, he strove to render the mind-body graspable, each in its own idiom, here everyday and there scientific. I give an account of Fechner’s walks as experiences that he both undertook and underwent, that shaped and were shaped by the surrounding everyday cacophony, and that carried a number of competing meanings for Fechner himself; the attendant analysis draws on his major scientific work, Elemente der Psychophysik (1860; Elements of Psychophysics), as the thick context that renders the walks legible as an everyday investigation. What results are three modes of walking—physiopsychical, interpersonal, and universal—each engaging the mind-body at a different level, as also engaged separately in Elemente’s three major sections, outer psychophysics, inner psychophysics, and general psychophysics beyond the human. This analysis ultimately leads to a new view of Fechner’s belief in a God who was “omnipresent and conscious in nature” and whom Fechner encountered daily on his walks in the budding of new blooms and rustling of the wind. More broadly, I aim to bring the analysis of everyday experiences as experiences into the historiography of science.

scholarly journals Poetizing Everyday Life in the Works by Wilhelm Genazino

2021 ◽  
pp. 108-125
Author(s):  
Svitlana Macenka
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Cultural Significance ◽  
Everyday Objects ◽  
Underlying Principle ◽  
Inner World ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Narrative Skill ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Everyday Reality

Increased interest in everyday life and routine explains a new and relevant perception of the creative agenda of contemporary German writer Wilhelm Genazino (1943-2018), known as “poetizing everyday life”. The article, thus, aims to offer a comprehensive view into the poetics of the German novelist to identify ways in which everyday life is poetized, which is an example of linguistic mastery, narrative skill, and philosophical generalization. A close reading method is used to analyze specific scenes from the novels (An Umbrella for One Day, Happiness in Unhappy Times, The Foolishness of Love, If We Were Animals), in which the characters actively practice the “extended gaze”, theoretically validated in W. Genazino’s essay, to reveal a system of special ties important to their inner world behind the routine situations and worn clothes. The writer believes that in such a way, characters experience an epiphany, which provokes further musing about art and the mystery of everyday life. In this connection, it is established that Genazino’s characters manage to avoid the negative influences of society by distancing from it via self-invented aesthetic processes. They are constantly searching for individual vision. It is also noted that the writer focuses on prolonged disappearance scenes, works with time accumulated in objects, and projects distancing from one’s own self to clothes. The extended gaze which the protagonists use to watch their own portrayals helps them overcome identity crisis and generate art, which promises salvation, through simple observance. It is concluded that W. Genazino talks about the aesthetic link between the subject and object perceived as individual “cultural significance”. It enables the protagonists to discard the routine and enter a space outside the limits they have themselves created. Everyday objects and familiar situations have the capacity to stimulate memories and boost creative perception. Their fleeting nature provides for compensatory narration, which means dropping the inessential and petty and is, consequently, perceived as a productive narration. Everyday reality emerges as something that may be perceived as visible existence, which upon some consideration may reveal unique dimensions and gain particular significance based on intermediary space between what is perceived by the eye and the invisible, actualized by the inner vision. Such reflexive vision transcends the limits of things, transforming them and constituting new reality. Such is the underlying principle that the writer used to recreate everyday life in his works.

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