scholarly journals Body of Woman As A Site For Battle: A Critical Study of Sidhwa’s Ice-Candy Man

sjesr ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 243-250
Author(s):  
Dr. Shamshad Rasool ◽  
Dr. Raza-E-Mustafa ◽  
Dr. Zahoor Hussain
Keyword(s):  
Critical Study ◽  
Social Discourse ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Methodological Framework ◽  
Women's Bodies ◽  
Male Aggression ◽  
Discourse Model ◽  
History Of ◽  
A Site ◽  
Mega Event

Partitioning of the subcontinent into Pakistan and India is a mega event in the history of South Asia that haunts the minds of the inhabitants because of the untold destruction and the atrocities inflicted on the migrants. The later generations come to know of the havocs carved on women's bodies mostly through stories of the victims or who witnessed molestation of women. In this connection, this article aims to critically analyze the novel Ice-Candy Man by Sidhwa which delineates the defilement of women at the periphery. The views of different feminist critics constitute the theoretical framework while Fairclough’s social discourse model serves as a methodological framework. For analysis, the technique of Content Analysis has been employed. The findings reveal that Sidhwa has caricatured the predicament of the women whose bodies became sites for male aggression as icons of the ethnic groups during the communal strives. They undergo physical and sexual furiousness of men before, during, and after the partition. Men dehumanized them to disgrace the opponents/the other. The novel may, further, be studied from psychoanalytical, cultural, and Marxist perspectives.

Women, Writing and the Iraqi Ba'thist State

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hawraa Al-Hassan
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
The State ◽  
Woman Question ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Cultural Resistance ◽  
Cultural Revival ◽  
Counter Narratives ◽  
History Of ◽  
A Site ◽  
Material Form

The book examines the trajectory of the state sponsored novel in Iraq and considers the ways in which explicitly political and/or ideological texts functioned as resistive counter narratives. It argues that both the novel and ‘progressive’ discourses on women were used as markers of Iraq’s cultural revival under the Ba‘th and were a key element in the state’s propaganda campaign within Iraq and abroad. In an effort to expand its readership and increase support for its pan-Arab project, the Iraqi Ba‘th almost completely eradicated illiteracy among women. As Iraq was metaphorically transformed into a ‘female’, through its nationalist trope, women writers simultaneously found opportunities and faced obstacles from the state, as the ‘Woman Question’ became a site of contention between those who would advocate the progressiveness of the Ba‘th and those who would stress its repressiveness and immorality. By exploring discourses on gender in both propaganda and high art fictional writings by Iraqis, this book offers an alternative narrative of the literary and cultural history of Iraq. It ultimately expands the idea of cultural resistance beyond the modern/traditional, progressive/backward paradigms that characterise discourses on Arab women and the state, and argues that resistance is embedded in the material form of texts as much as their content or ideological message.

The End of Heterosexuality?

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joe Rollins
Keyword(s):  
Queer Theory ◽  
Reproductive Rights ◽  
Methodological Framework ◽  
Women's Bodies ◽  
Cultural Changes ◽  
Thick Description ◽  
Political Conflicts ◽  
Childhood Sexuality ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Common

This chapter outlines the theoretical and methodological framework for the book. The theoretical foundation is developed from a survey of the long history of scholarship on feminism and queer theory in order to examine heterosexuality, reproduction, abortion rights, and childhood in greater detail. Drawing on law and culture scholarship, the chapter proposes a methodology that utilizes thick description to explore the legal and cultural changes in marriage, particularly insofar as the sexuality of the institution has changed in recent decades. The common theme running through the chapter is the elusiveness of heterosexuality as a concept and its resistance to sustained investigation and critique. Working backward across the timeline of life—from adult marriage, to childhood, to fetuses—the chapter foreshadows the end of the book and the ways that the marriage debate is part of the same set of social and political conflicts as childhood sexuality, fetuses, women’s bodies, and reproductive rights.

Kim Kardashian's Korset

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adib Rifqi Setiawan
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Medical Intervention ◽  
Reality Tv ◽  
Women's Bodies ◽  
Susan Sontag ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Look ◽  
A Site ◽  
Dress Reform

The 2019 Met Gala’s theme was based on the Susan Sontag essay “Notes on Camp,” and the celebrity attendees had a broad range of interpretations. The look that caused the most controversy was worn by the reality TV star Kim Kardashian, in a Thierry Mugler dress and Mr. Pearl corset. Rather than focus on the design, the first for Mugler since 2002, or how the dress fit into the theme, critics instead chose to focus on the corset and repeat a rhetoric about the controversial garment that has been recurrent for over a hundred years. There is a long tradition of opposition to corsets, including claims that the accessory is bad for the health of the wearer, that corsets are unnatural, and that they are anti-feminist. This article explores the history of corsets, health, popular culture, and fashion, using Kardashian as a contemporary source of examination. Kardashian’s body is a site of controversy, much like corsets, as she wears and sells shapewear. The critique of Kardashian’s use of modern shapewear reflects a long tradition of controlling women’s bodies through dress reform and medical intervention, a debate the Met Gala dress reignited.

scholarly journals The Peculiarities of English Culture

2018 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 165-174
Author(s):  
Benjamin Noys
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
The Novel ◽  
The Future ◽  
History Of ◽  
A Site ◽  
British Culture ◽  
English Culture

Abstract Francis Mulhern’s Figures of Catastrophe argues for the existence of a hitherto-unnoticed generic form: the condition of culture novel, which offers a metacultural reflection on the conditions for the existence of culture and for access to culture. Mulhern’s analysis is located within the framework of Marxist reflections on culture, the history of British cultural Marxism, and Mulhern’s own project of the critique and analysis of ‘metaculture’ in Britain. In particular, this review focuses on Mulhern’s contention that the ‘condition of culture novel’ offers a catastrophic or even nihilistic vision of the access to culture by the working class. Mulhern’s argument is that the ‘condition of culture’ novel accompanies the emergence, solidification and collapse of the British culture of ‘labourism’. This review explores the consequences of this argument for the assessment of ‘culture’ and the future of the novel as a site of reflection on the condition of culture.

scholarly journals La représentation du corps féminin : ostracisme, stéréotypes et concupiscence dans David’s Story de Zoë Wicomb

2015 ◽  
pp. 31-41
Author(s):  
Férial Khella
Keyword(s):  
Female Body ◽  
Black Female ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Women's Bodies ◽  
Women Warriors ◽  
Zoe Wicomb ◽  
Work Tasks ◽  
Narrative Techniques ◽  
A Site

This article explores Zoë Wicomb’s complex representation of the Black female body in her first novel David’s Story, which deals mainly with the condition of the female guerrilla fighter during and after the struggle for liberation. These women warriors have served the nation and have contribu-ted to its liberation through their bodies, but have also been silenced and ignored in the post-apartheid era. In addition, they have been subjected to multiple forms of physical and sexual violence by their own comrades within the Anti-apartheid Movement. The Black female body, as it appears in the novel, is a site of power, oppression, violence, and even complicity. The pre-sent work tasks itself, firstly, with analyzing not only how the author deconstructs the stereotypical images of the strong female guerrilla but also those concerning Coloured women’s bodies which have been marked by racial and sexual differences, focusing here especially on the question of concupiscence. Then, I will concentrate on the way the female body is represented and inscribed in language. Finally, I will analyze Zoë Wicomb’s narrative techniques by considering the impossibility of representing the body in the absence of discourse.

scholarly journals The Kurious Kase of Kim Kardashian's Korset

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Alanna McKnight
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Medical Intervention ◽  
Reality Tv ◽  
Women's Bodies ◽  
Susan Sontag ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Look ◽  
A Site ◽  
Dress Reform

The 2019 Met Gala’s theme was based on the Susan Sontag essay “Notes on Camp,” and the celebrity attendees had a broad range of interpretations. The look that caused the most controversy was worn by the reality TV star Kim Kardashian, in a Thierry Mugler dress and Mr. Pearl corset. Rather than focus on the design, the first for Mugler since 2002, or how the dress fit into the theme, critics instead chose to focus on the corset and repeat a rhetoric about the controversial garment that has been recurrent for over a hundred years. There is a long tradition of opposition to corsets, including claims that the accessory is bad for the health of the wearer, that corsets are unnatural, and that they are anti-feminist. This article explores the history of corsets, health, popular culture, and fashion, using Kardashian as a contemporary source of examination. Kardashian’s body is a site of controversy, much like corsets, as she wears and sells shapewear. The critique of Kardashian’s use of modern shapewear reflects a long tradition of controlling women’s bodies through dress reform and medical intervention, a debate the Met Gala dress reignited.

The European Charter of Local Self-Government

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chris Himsworth
Keyword(s):  
Critical Study ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Future Prospects ◽  
Council Of Europe ◽  
International Treaty ◽  
Additional Protocol ◽  
Domestic Courts ◽  
The Status ◽  
History Of ◽  
Regional Authorities

The first critical study of the 1985 international treaty that guarantees the status of local self-government (local autonomy). Chris Himsworth analyses the text of the 1985 European Charter of Local Self-Government and its Additional Protocol; traces the Charter’s historical emergence; and explains how it has been applied and interpreted, especially in a process of monitoring/treaty enforcement by the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities but also in domestic courts, throughout Europe. Locating the Charter’s own history within the broader recent history of the Council of Europe and the European Union, the book closes with an assessment of the Charter’s future prospects.

Re-imagining Reproduction: Unsettling Metaphors in the History of Imperial Science and Commercial Surrogacy in India

Somatechnics ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 88-103 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kalindi Vora
Keyword(s):  
Assisted Reproductive Technologies ◽  
Reproductive Technologies ◽  
The Body ◽  
Body Parts ◽  
Colonial History ◽  
Women's Bodies ◽  
Commercial Surrogacy ◽  
Art Practices ◽  
History Of ◽  
Travel Industry

This paper provides an analysis of how cultural notions of the body and kinship conveyed through Western medical technologies and practices in Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ART) bring together India's colonial history and its economic development through outsourcing, globalisation and instrumentalised notions of the reproductive body in transnational commercial surrogacy. Essential to this industry is the concept of the disembodied uterus that has arisen in scientific and medical practice, which allows for the logic of the ‘gestational carrier’ as a functional role in ART practices, and therefore in transnational medical fertility travel to India. Highlighting the instrumentalisation of the uterus as an alienable component of a body and subject – and therefore of women's bodies in surrogacy – helps elucidate some of the material and political stakes that accompany the growth of the fertility travel industry in India, where histories of privilege and difference converge. I conclude that the metaphors we use to structure our understanding of bodies and body parts impact how we imagine appropriate roles for people and their bodies in ways that are still deeply entangled with imperial histories of science, and these histories shape the contemporary disparities found in access to medical and legal protections among participants in transnational surrogacy arrangements.

“What Freedom?”

2019 ◽  
Vol 74 (3) ◽  
pp. 305-331
Author(s):  
John Owen Havard
Keyword(s):  
South America ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Free Condition ◽  
Narrative Design ◽  
Economic Liberalism ◽  
History Of ◽  
Ways Of Thinking ◽  
John Owen

John Owen Havard, “‘What Freedom?’: Frankenstein, Anti-Occidentalism, and English Liberty” (pp. 305–331) “If he were vanquished,” Victor Frankenstein states of his monstrous creation in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818), “I should be a free man.” But he goes on: “Alas! what freedom? such as the peasant enjoys when his family have been massacred before his eyes, his cottage burnt, his lands laid waste, and he is turned adrift, homeless, pennyless, and alone, but free.” Victor’s circumstances approximate the deracinated subject of an emergent economic liberalism, while looking to other destitute and shipwrecked heroes. Yet the ironic “freedom” described here carries an added charge, which Victor underscores when he concludes this account of his ravaged condition: “Such would be my liberty.” This essay revisits the geographic plotting of Frankenstein: the digression to the East in the nested “harem” episode, the voyage to England, the neglected episode of Victor’s imprisonment in Ireland, and the creature’s desire to live in South America. Locating Victor’s concluding appeal to his “free” condition within the novel’s expansive geography amplifies the political stakes of his downfall, calling attention to not only his own suffering but the wider trail of destruction left in his wake. Where existing critical accounts have emphasized the French Revolution and its violent aftermath, this obscures the novel’s pointed critique of a deep and tangled history of English liberty and its destructive legacies. Reexamining the novel’s geography in tandem with its use of form similarly allows us to rethink the overarching narrative design of Frankenstein, in ways that disrupt, if not more radically dislocate, existing rigid ways of thinking about the novel.

A Critical Study of Stephen King and Horror Fiction

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (5) ◽  
pp. 23
Author(s):  
Dr. Sudhir V. Nikam ◽  
Mr. Rajkiran J. Biraje
Keyword(s):  
Research Problem ◽  
Extensive Study ◽  
Serial Killers ◽  
Critical Study ◽  
Research Attention ◽  
Stephen King ◽  
Special Place ◽  
Fiction Writers ◽  
Horror Fiction ◽  
A Site

This present research undertakes the extensive study of horror fiction genre with reference to the select novels of one of the finest and celebrated horror fiction writers of all time, Stephen King. This paper is a substantial assessment of the select horror fiction of King. The research problem revolves extensively around the word fear. Stephen King has conjured up the images of most horrific creatures, monsters, places, and stories, and some of the most enduring villains in fiction. These unimaginable evil beings test the limits of the protagonist. Some of these villains have gone to the extent of becoming as famous (or infamous) as the writer himself. Many of Stephen King villains are monsters of the human variety such as serial killers, power hungry despots, nihilists, etc. His most memorable and monumental characters are the supernatural ones who use their dark powers to twist the orderly world around them into a special place of chaos and pain. It has been assumed that the horror elements in the fiction of Stephen King are the result of his strategic use of supernaturalist and non-supernaturalist elements. The techniques that he uses to evoke horror in reader have been treated as a site for research attention by the researcher.

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