scholarly journals Negotiating Representation: The Self and Community in The Story of a Tribal: An Autobiography

Author(s):  
Badakynti Nylla Iangngap ◽  

Literature as a means of representation and understanding selfhood and identity was oral based for the Khasis prior to colonialism but the coming of education via the proselytising efforts of the Welsh Mission led to the development of Khasi literature by the end of the 19th century. As mode of representation, literature for Khasis became a space of negotiation and of adaptation of foreign modes of expression and representation to reclaim an identity which has been suppressed by the colonial rulers via their discursive practices. This is clearly seen in the trend of the literary production of the community. The 20th century saw a mushrooming of literary production by Khasi writers, with most of them preferring to write in their own language and about their oral tradition. Interestingly, despite this trend, the first autobiography by a Khasi, B. M. Pugh’s The Story of a Tribal (1976), was written in English. The title of the text itself alerts the readers of the highly politicised term ‘tribal’ as Pugh himself points out in his Preface and along with the fact that it is an autobiography the implication of issues of representation in terms of identity and selfhood cannot be missed. The text is also historically significant because of the author’s articulation of his understanding of identity making in the midst of the cultural and political forces of colonialism and later Indian nationalism especially because it provides a glimpse of the hill state movement that surged in the Northeast immediately after Independence. This text thus gives an eye-witness account of the struggle that the hill tribes of Northeast faced to maintain their political and cultural identity.

wisdom ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 107-113
Author(s):  
Gegham HOVHANNISYAN

The article covers the manifestations and peculiarities of the ideology of socialism in the social-political life of Armenia at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century. General characteristics, aims and directions of activity of the political organizations functioning in the Armenian reality within the given time-period, whose program documents feature the ideology of socialism to one degree or another, are given (Hunchakian Party, Dashnaktsutyun, Armenian Social-democrats, Specifics, Socialists-revolutionaries). The specific peculiarities of the national-political life of Armenia in the given time-period and their impact on the ideology of political forces are introduced.


Think India ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 14-19
Author(s):  
Ms.Geetika Patni ◽  
Dr.Keshav Nath

In the realm of feminist study, the woman story writers deal with the themes of love, marriage, loneliness and quest for identity. Self is related to individual where as the Identity is concerned with position in society. Cultural identity of feeling makes connection to the part of the self conception and self awareness. It concerns with nationality, customs, religious and religious convictions, age group, community and any other social group type. The present paper reveals the discussion on the key findings with regard to the ‘self’ and cultural identity of protagonist in the short stories of Jhumpa Lahiri in special reference to The Interpreter of Maladies. She is a superb interpreter of a cultural multiplicity. Lahiri’s stories are insightful critique of human relationships, bonds as well as promise that one has to make with native soil along with the migrated land


2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 (10-4) ◽  
pp. 196-205
Author(s):  
Vadim Mikhailov ◽  
Konstantin Losev

The article is devoted to the issue of Church policy in relation to the Rusyn population of Austria-Hungary and the Russian Empire. In the second half of the 19th century, the policy of the Austro-Hungarian administration towards the Rusyn Uniate population of the Empire underwent changes. Russia’s victories in the wars of 1849 and 1877-1878 aroused the desire of the educated part of the Rusyns to return to the bosom of the Orthodox Church. Nevertheless, even during the World War I, when the Russian army captured part of the territories inhabited by Rusyns, the military and officials of the Russian Empire were too cautious about the issue of converting Uniates to Orthodoxy, which had obvious negative consequences both for the Rusyns, who were forced to choose a Ukrainophile orientation to protect their national and cultural identity, and for the future of Russia as the leader of the Slavic and Orthodox world.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam Wiesner

With a conscious attempt to contribute to contemporary discussions in mad/trans/queer/monster studies, the monograph approaches complex postmodern theories and contextualizes them from an autoethnographic methodological perspective. As the self-explanatory subtitle reads, the book introduces several topics as revelatory fields for the author’s self-exploration at the moment of an intense epistemological and ontological crisis. Reflexively written, it does not solely focus on a personal experience, as it also aims at bridging the gap between the individual and the collective in times of global uncertainty. There are no solid outcomes defined; nevertheless, the narrative points to a certain—more fluid—way out. Through introducing alternative ways of hermeneutics and meaning-making, the book offers a synthesis of postmodern philosophy and therapy, evolutionary astrology as a symbolic language, embodied inquiry, and Buddhist thought that together represent a critical attempt to challenge the pathologizing discursive practices of modern disciplines during the neoliberal capitalist era.


Author(s):  
Jonathan Morton

The chapter outlines different models of nature in medieval Aristotelian and Platonic philosophy in order to show how the Rose plays them against each other to articulate its own model of the complex relationship between art and nature. For the Rose there is no getting at nature except by means of art, as suggested by the self-conscious artificiality of the figure of Nature, taken from the allegories of twelfth-century Neoplatonism. Art, a broad category that encompasses all human activity, is insufficient in describing nature’s truths and is potentially sophistic in its lies. However, questions of nature are always questions of art on whose help humans depend to understand and to represent to themselves a nature that can never be fully known. Finally, the model of reproductive nature is used to legitimate the reproduction of texts and the continuation of arts that is literary production.


Genes ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 383
Author(s):  
Aornpriya Mawan ◽  
Nonglak Prakhun ◽  
Kanha Muisuk ◽  
Suparat Srithawong ◽  
Metawee Srikummool ◽  
...  

The hill tribes of northern Thailand comprise nine officially recognized groups: the Austroasiatic-speaking (AA) Khmu, Htin and Lawa; the Hmong-Mien-speaking (HM) IuMien and Hmong; and the Sino-Tibetan-speaking (ST) Akha, Karen, Lahu and Lisu. Except the Lawa, the rest of the hill tribes migrated into their present habitats only very recently. The Thai hill tribes were of much interest to research groups focusing on study of cultural and genetic variation because of their unique languages and cultures. So far, there have been several genetic studies of the Thai hill tribes. However, complete forensic microsatellite database of the Thai hill tribes is still lacking. To construct such database, we newly generated 654 genotypes of 15 microsatellites commonly used in forensic investigation that belong to all the nine hill tribes and also non-hill tribe highlanders from northern Thailand. We also combined 329 genotypes from previous studies of northern Thai populations bringing to a total of 983 genotypes, which were then subjected to genetic structure and population relationships analyses. Our overall results indicated homogenous genetic structure within the HM- and Tai-Kadai (TK)-speaking groups, large genetic divergence of the HM-speaking Hmong but not IuMien from the other Thai groups, and genetic heterogeneity within the ST- and AA-speaking groups, reflecting different population interactions and admixtures. In addition to establishing genetic relationships within and among these populations, our finding, which provides a more complete picture of the forensic microsatellite database of the multiple Thai highland dwellers, would not only serve to expand and strengthen forensic investigation in Thailand, but would also benefit its neighboring countries of Laos and Myanmar, from which many of the Thai hill tribes originated and where large populations of these ethnic groups still reside.


2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 119-131
Author(s):  
Sitharthan Sriharan

Periyar’s Self-Respect Movement challenged the ideological hegemony of the Indian Independence struggle by demanding that equality between sexes and eradicating caste be put on an equal footing with national liberation. The author analyses a chapter in a novel written by Muvalur Ramamirthammal, a reformer from a devadasi community, who joined the Self-Respect Movement and became an ardent abolitionist of the devadasi system. In a dialogue between an ex-devadasi, who is represented as a Self-Respect activist, and a Brahmin man with Indian nationalist views, the former devadasi highlights the Self-Respect Movement’s definition of modern citizenship based on the principles of self-respect and dignity of all beginning with women. The article concludes by discussing the novel's wider connection to the Self-Respect Movement and why further research on both respectively is crucial.


2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-64
Author(s):  
Anne Obono Essomba

Globalization led by Europe has spread so-called 'universal' values across the globe, which seems to have cultural intermingling as its backdrop. All human endeavors are based on a culture that has become multidimensional. All the time, in their diversity, cultures try to complement and absorb each other. However, in this meeting of cultural giving and receiving, it takes on a new face, the culture shock.  This encounter causes major changes in our modern societies, giving way to a loss of cultural identity and internal imbalance. This article aims to analyze the way in which contemporary Cameroonian musicians use cultural and linguistic facts for communication purposes and other arguments. The aim of our work is to show how the various songwriters have found, through song, a new mode of resistance so that African traditions escape sedimentation. In this way, they reconcile the elements of oral tradition and the contributions of modernity to create a hybrid product. To illustrate our point, we have chosen oral texts from different regions of Cameroon.  In order to better understand the transcultural reality in the texts, we will highlight the marks of traditional and modern aesthetics, then show that the transcultural is seen as a space of symbiosis between the traditional and the modern.


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