INTERNATIONAL SEMINAR | S B COLLEGE

Post-Graduate and Research Department of English

“Marx Today”

Call for Papers

The Post-Graduate and Research Department of English, S B College, Changanacherry, Kerala, is organizing a two-day International Seminar on 3rd and 4^th of September 2018 on the Topic: “Marx Today”.

The conference on Marx is organised around the life and works of Karl Marx in the context of the two hundredth year of his birth and the 150^th anniversary of the publication of Das Kapital.

Political thought and philosophy are incomplete without a Marxian dimension. Marx’s 1859 Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy posits a notion of politics that sets subjective agency in relation to its objective determinants. Marx here contends that human society “inevitably sets itself only such tasks as it is able to solve, since closer examination will always show that the problem itself arises only when the material conditions for its solution are already present or at least in the course of formation.” The problem of politics, in other words, is how to correlate specific sites of struggle to the deeper structures that condition them.

However, the enduring relevance of Marxist intellectual thought remains a point of spirited debate in the ideological history of the late twentieth century. With the collapse of socialism in the Soviet Union, the emergent currency of postmodern concepts, and the rise of new social protest movements in the spheres of race, gender, and sexual orientation, Marxism came to appear the ‘signifier par excellence of theoretical hubris, redundancy and

error’ (Pendakis and Szeman 2014).

In the twenty-first century however, propelled by the succession of economic and ecological crisis scenarios, Marxist criticism has experienced a critical resurgence. Fredric Jameson, David Harvey, and Alex Callinicos have provided new formal readings of Marx’s seemingly ‘inexhaustible’ text (Jameson 2011). 

Accompanying the apparent epistemological exhaustion of post-structuralist approaches, what palpably remains are the visible signs of an underlying crisis – secular stagnation, intensification of racism, sexism and xenophobia, militarised state repression, ecological collapse, deepening inequality and general human suffering for vast segments of the population.

In the face of what some have argued is capital’s terminal crisis, our political world seems singularly unable to tackle the problems it has created and desperately needs to solve.

But times of crisis are also times of possibility and the conference seeks to posit both questions and answers that address the matter of “The relevance of Marxism Today”.

Proposals on all topics of relevance to Marxist theory and practice are welcome, including but not limited to:

Subalterninty

Postcoloniality

Economic Thought

Cultural studies

Marxian Literary Criticism

Political Thought

Marxism and aesthetics

Protests, Political Movements, Manifestos

Literature as praxis and theory

Marxism, ecology, and the Anthropocene

Papers from teachers, research scholars and students of Universities and Colleges in India are invited.

Dates to Remember

Confy @ BITS, Goa

Region/Nation/Trans-Nation: 

Literature-Cinema Interface

January 31-Feb 2, 2019

 BITS Pilani, Goa

Call for Papers 

This conference traces the various modes of engagement that exist between some of the globally dominant literary and cinematic forms, without limiting itself to the age-old domain of adaptation. It tries to locate these engagements and negotiations across three geopolitical formations and locations of culture, namely region, nation and trans-nation. These three locations work as contact zones where the literature-cinema interface manifests in various forms. With the emergence of transnationalism and comparative film studies as methods in cinema studies, multiple modes of literature-cinema negotiation are becoming increasingly evident with cinema studies borrowing concepts such as ‘world literature’ and ‘comparative morphology’. In the Indian/South Asian context, these locations are entangled with issues such as the language question, regional nationalisms, the crumbling idea of a federal republic with an increasingly stronger unitary governance, linguistic identity politics as manifested in popular cinemas and literatures, translational politics and the formation/development of certain national centres for the production of various modes of translation, India’s cultural/literary/cinematic negotiations with the trans-nation before and after globalization/economic liberalization etc. 

With contemporary India as its primary site of inquiry, the conference moves towards inter-continental geopolitical engagements without considering Indian regional/national and literary/cinematic questions in isolation. Apart from thematic and ideological associations with the trans-nation, it involves participants beyond the borders of the Indian nation (from Sri Lanka and Bangladesh), transforming itself into a discursive space where the conceptual apparatus meets with the narratives that inform and shape the former. Narratives from the margins will also significantly feature in the conference, with panels and plenaries on and from the Indian North-East. Moreover, a panel and a plenary will be devoted to Goa and its distinctive history of colonial and postcolonial politico-cultural engagements as manifested in indigenous literature and art.

Possible topics for presentation might be, but are not limited to, the following:

Transnationalism as Method

Comparative Cinema Studies and the transnational question

South Asia’s Cultural Engagement with the ‘West’

Cultural/Literary/Cinematic Migration within South Asia 

Environmental Humanities: Theory and Praxis in Australia and India

Seventh International Conference

          

Organized by

Indian Association for the Study of Australia, Eastern Region

12-13 January, 2019

Astor Hotel, Kolkata

Concept Note

With the publication of Lawrence Buell’s Environmental Imagination in the late 1990s and consequent debates on the relevance of Environment to humanities disciplines, there emerged a growing consciousness of linkages between humanities and environment. In other words, this critical mode of studying literary/political/historical texts in terms of environmental activism opened up a whole range of interdisciplinary studies. Gradually, Environmental Studies came to open up a new interdisciplinary space which could inflect on environmental issues in terms of history, political science, literature, law, philosophy and so on.

But what led to the development of Environmental Humanities as against Environmental Studies?  Ursula K Heise  posits a distinctive argument: “…quite a few environmentally oriented humanists and social scientists have felt disgruntled with environmental studies programmes that, for all their pathbreaking interdisciplinary work, have often limited their reach to the natural sciences, civil engineering and a few experts on law and policy”( Introduction: The Routledge Companion to Environmental Humanities, 2017)

Under the general rubric of Environmental Studies, a new intersection of critical orientation began to develop. Critics began to distinguish between “nature writing” and “ecopoetics”. “Nature writing” seemed to be looked upon as a genre articulating just an imaginative perception of nature as it is. But “ecopoetics” began to question the ways how nature has been ravaged and destroyed by mankind. This even gave rise to another sub-genre “ecofeminism” which created a binary between “man” and “nature” (envisaged as woman). In this way, it called for a gendered perception of nature.

It is possible to locate three distinctive phases of the study of environment: Environmental philosophy in 1970s, environmental history in 1980s, ecocriticism as well as ecofeminism in 1990s, thereby negotiating multiple forms of interdisciplinary domains in the context of the study of environment. Such collaborative paradigms gradually led to the development of Environmental Humanism as an interdisciplinary genre.  

Ideological State Apparatus | Peter Brooker

A description introduced by the French Marxist philosopher, Louis Althusser in an important essay in his Lenin and Philosophy.

The concept develops Antonio Gramsci's emphasis on the operation of ideology in civil society, and has been extremely influential on a range of work within Literary, Film and Cultural Studies.

Althusser distinguishes between two kinds of state apparatus: repressive state apparatuses (or RSAs - for example, the penal system, police and army) and ideological state apparatuses (ISAs - including religion, the legal system, education, the family, culture and communication).

The first are coercive in their operation, while the second function to unify society through ideology and reproduce a regime through consent.

The latter are relatively independent of the state, though they serve to ratify and legitimize it, and to function, says Althusser, 'beneath the ruling ideology which is the ideology of "the ruling class".

Althusser's concept is an important aspect of his critique of traditional Marxism and his re-reading of Marx.

Deterritorialization | Peter Brooker

A key concept in the philosophy of Deleuze and Guatarri, and especially elaborated in their Anti-Oedipus (1984) and A Thousand Plateaus (1987).

Their philosophy depends on a particular lexicon, including, in addition to the current term, rhizome, flows, nomadism, strata and assemblages.

The concluding section of A Thousand Plateaus comprises a brief summation of some of these terms. Here 'assemblages' are described as always 'basically territorial' composed of different contrary aspects:

In the first instance they are both non-discursive bodies and discursive utterances ('content and expression'); in the second, they are defined by their constitution as 'territories' and by a counter 'deterritorializing' interior movement that agitates for change.

Animal, social and political assemblages are therefore seen as dynamic combinations of reterritorializing forces that seek stability and the 'lines of flight', creative energy or DESIRE, that 'cut across' or deterritorialize a given assemblage and 'carry it away'.

The 'Conclusion' of A Thousand Plateaus further distinguishes in abstract fashion between 'relative' and 'absolute' types of deterritorialization.

The first takes place in the actual world and can take a 'negative' form when the lines of flight are blocked, or 'positive' when the lines of flight escape the forces of repressive reterritorialization.

'Absolute' deterritorialization refers to a deeper movement in the 'virtual' order of things, acting on the 'molecular' rather than 'molar' plane of existence.

'Deterritorialisation is absolute,' write Deleuze and Guattari, 'when... it brings about the creation of a new earth'.

Essentialism | Peter Brooker

A term describing the assumption that human beings, objects or texts possess underlying essences that define their 'true nature'.

This illustration from Amy Hayes Stellhorn and her team, i guess, sums it up quite elegantly!

An 'essence' is fixed and unchanging, but has a double existence: as both the inherent or innate property of an individual object or being, and the abstract, external essence governing the type to which all examples conform.

From Aristotle onwards there has been a long debate in European philosophy on the very existence of essences, their relation to appearances or natural forms, and the accessibility of this essence to human knowledge or perception. A common recourse - to a secular age, a last resort - has been the idea of the creator in whom the essence and knowledge of all things are seen to reside.

The most thorough-going critique of this tradition has been made by Jacques Derrida who argues that western philosophy as a whole is founded on a 'metaphysics of presence' - that is to say, upon a belief in a transcendent first cause or point of pure origin. All such thought, he argues, is 'centred' upon 'an invariable presence ... (essence, existence, substance, subject)... transcendentality, consciousness, God, man and so forth'.

Derrida's method of Deconstruction has inspired a wide critique of the binary oppositions that invest a first term in a series - such as speech/writing, nature/culture, man/woman, God/human, the real/representation – with the authority of a governing fixed point.

Ecosophy, Assemblage and the Symbiocene...!

GUATTARI’S ECOSOPHY | Heather G-Spencer

At the start of The Three Ecologies, Felix Guattari reminds us of the ‘ecological disequilibrium’ that threatens ‘the continuation of life on the planet’s surface. Alongside these upheavals, human modes of life, both individual and collective, are progressively deteriorating’.

Guattari catalogues the degradation of the soil, water, and air, the massive economic crises, the increasing gaps between the wealthy and poor, the unfettered racism and sexism, and he argues that we need a new type of theory, a new philosophy, that can help us grapple with all of these overlapping problems.

Guattari writes, ‘political groupings and executive authorities appear to be totally incapable of understanding the full implications of these issues . . . only an ethico-political articulation—which I call ecosophy . . . would be likely to clarify these questions’.

Guattari advocates ecosophy as an ‘articulation’ that foregrounds overlapping spheres of reality, and the ways these overlapping spheres can be articulated in new ways toward transformation. He highlights both mentalities and materialities as he advocates for an ecosophy that engages with the material, social, and ideological ‘registers’ of life.

All Our Social Problems are Interdependent

According to Guattari, our social problems are interdependent and spread through multiple registers or fields of existence, so we need a theory capable of engaging with these overlaps and inter-dependencies. He argues that we need to enunciate new assemblages of existence; we need collective assemblages of human-nonhuman that ‘assemble’ to form spaces and modes of being that subvert capitalist trajectories of destruction.

Guattari is calling for a more radical way of understanding and engaging with economics, social development, and environmental damage. His call for more radical change is not new, but he adds something new with his insightful discussion of the interactions, relationality, and also dynamism of the ways that the material, social, and ideological fields interact and shape each other.

Ecosophy, as a term, has not only been used by Guattari. For example, the term ‘ecosophy’ was first coined by Arne Naess.

An Alternate Reality in an Alternate living, spent on Trees!

How would you like it, when a youngy nobleman of very high rank, suddenly, one fine day, climbs up and up, higher and higher into the trees as an act of rebellion and never ever decides to come back down to the earth?

There’s this young Italian nobleman by name Cosimo, who nests himself comfortably within the branches of hugey trees, and then - surprise of surprises - resolves to be perched there amongst the trees, the rest of his entire life!

From here, settled amongst the branches of the trees, he does a soulful connect with the great minds of the Enlightenment with vigor and gusto, and towards the end of his life, steps onto a better, wiser and higher plane.

Interestingly, Calvino, oops Cosimo ;-) comes up with wonderfully unique and ingenious answers to the pressing problems of humankind such as food, hygiene, clothing, friendship, etc.

Although superficially the story might look weird, there’s a wonderful thread of enriching philosophy or ecosophy that runs deep through its storyline.

Although he’s now a man so confined to the branches of the wildest of trees, he is still able to get the most revolutionary of thoughts and ideas, thanks to the books!

In fact, Calvino portrays Cosimo’s whole life has being guided passionately by three things: books and books and books!

Some of the descriptions found at the beginning of the book are so throbbing with the solace and the luxuries of Nature: on the nature of each tree, the animals, the sounds and scents.

The young baron’s resolve to lead an arboreal existence, makes him one of the most believable characters in the entire gamut of world literature. The alternate reality that enthralls the reader skyhigh with such intense wisdom, connecting so subtly with memory, history and nature, is unique and so one of its kind!

A few excerpty lovely lines from the text for us all -

On a fig tree, though, as long as he saw to it that a branch could bear his weight, he could move about forever; Cosimo would stand under the pavilion of leaves, watching the sun appear through the network of twigs and branches, the gradual swell of the green fruit, smelling the scent of flowers budding in the stalks. The fig tree seemed to absorb him, permeate him with its gummy texture and the buzz of hornets; after a little Cosimo would begin to feel he was becoming a fig tree himself, and move away, uneasy.

Zadie Smith on Creative Writing!

A lovable, much adorable manual on Creative Writing - Adele Ramet has given us all!

And so has Hazel Smith!

And so has Patti Smith!

And so has Umberto Eco!

And so has Stephen King’s wondrous book On Writing, born out of decades of trial and error on the field, from which he gives budding writers his TOP 20 Rules for Writers.

Yet! Yet! Yet! Zadie Smith stands out tall’est from amongst ‘em all! and how!

Thanks to a brilliant lead by Dr. Aparna Srinivas on Zadie Smith, which gave me an impulsive inspiration of sorts!

This feature takes for its point of departure, from off Zadie Smith’s insights. I have divided the feature into three parts, basing ‘em all exclusively on Zadie’s impactful observations.

Well, here goes…

Zadie Smith on Massive Cultural Currents: “We forget that our particular moment, with all its tribulations and triumphs, is not neatly islanded in the river of time but swept afloat by massive cultural currents that have raged long before it and will rage long after.”

Well, John Corner’s observations merit a citation here. To him, this cultural current is “energetic & dynamic” and something that’s always on the flow – on the move! It never ain’t static! Says he: “In any period of human history a culture and society are partly sustained by the tension between that which is thought to be of value, inherited from the past, and that which is the product of energetic, dynamic, and deliberate innovation.”

Honore de Balzac too merits a retell here: And well, he wanted to be called the ‘Secretary of his Age,’ and his realist novels and plays have intensely focused on the milieu of French society after the fall of Napoleon Bonaparte!

His masterpiece La Comedie humaine (1842–1850), a multivolume work involving about one hundred interwoven novels and stories, has had a tremendous influence on big names in the publishing industry - like Marcel Proust, Charles Dickens, and Henry James!

Balzac’s The Girl with Golden Eyes is a fine piece of craftsmanship that attests to this aura of the cultural currents within its texture.

Nike and Knight = ne plus ultra | The Nike Narrative! ❤️

The Nike Narrative 

How Phil Knight Turned the Everyday Jogger into a Hero

#lovelyreads

At 24, after backpacking around the world, Phil Knight, the co-founder of Nike, decided to take the unconventional path, to start his own business - a business that would be dynamic, different.

And for this, he borrowed just $50 from his father and created a company with a simple mission: import high-quality, low-cost athletic shoes from Japan. Selling the shoes from the trunk of his lime green Plymouth Valiant, Knight grossed $8,000 his first year. Today, Nike’s annual sales top $30 billion.

In an age of startups, Nike is the ne plus ultra of all startups, and the swoosh has become a revolutionary, globe-spanning icon, one of the most ubiquitous and recognisable symbols in the world today.

And how did he achieve this great victory?

Simple! By crafting a narrative!

Well, in its early days, Nike relied exclusively on elite track stars like Steve Prefontaine to build credibility. But as the brand grew, Knight realised that focusing solely on top-tier performers was alienating. His narrative needed a broader protagonist.

Hence, his story shifted to align with a foundational philosophy from Bowerman –

If you have a body, you are an athlete.

And in this story, Nike made the everyday person the hero.

So the protagonist isn’t just Michael Jordan! it’s the person waking up at 5:00 AM in the freezing rain to jog before work, reflecting the everyday hero's own inner potential.

And who pray, is the antagonist?

Every compelling narrative requires conflict. Knight understood that his true antagonist wasn’t rival companies like Adidas or Puma. The villain in the Nike story is purely internal. It is the voice in your head telling you to sleep in, the physical pain of the last mile, the self-doubt, and the inertia of modern life.

Knight famously viewed business and life as a constant battle against chaos and complacency.

And what is the lucky talisman?

The Shoe

In mythological terms, the hero always needs a weapon or a magical artifact to aid their quest - think of Arthur’s Excalibur!

Knight and Bowerman positioned the shoe as the essential tool required to defeat the antagonist.

And the climax?

Well, the climax of the Nike story is not standing on an Olympic podium.

When the “Just Do It” campaign launched in 1988, it fundamentally shifted the narrative’s resolution from winning to trying. The victory is the act of stepping out of the door. Because the antagonist is “internal resistance”, defeating it happens the moment you take action.

The resolution is ongoing, emphasizing resilience over finality - which aligns to a tee with with another of Knight’s famous maxims –

There is no finish line.

By making the consumer the hero and their own self-doubt the villain, Knight ensured that Nike didn’t just sell apparel - it sold a story and a mindset that, continues to “live in the minds of people.”

All this and more in this candid and riveting memoir, titled Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of NIKE

Some of the lovable quotes from this book are so much of an inspirational for us all days of the week, 24 x 7!

I was also quite surprised to find a lot of literary interpretations and interpolations from this ‘knight’ in shining armour – Phil Knight!

Well, in a nutshell, the entire book is all about running far away from mediocrity and shunning pessimistic, negative people in one’s life, and instead, surround yourself with positive, vibrant, dynamic minds who would inspire you to giving the best that you are!

I thought of highlighting some real impactful quotes from Phil, that’ve got some mighty literary interpolations!

There’s a Heideggerian, a Nietzschean, a Kantian, a Deleuzian, in some of his spontaneous yet mighty lines.

And as reviewers have quite raved about him, he ain’t preachy or platitudinous, ever! That makes his read all the more endearing!

As the web portal startup says, “It is an interesting journey, full of struggle and problems, but also full of hope and victories. Knight distributes small morsels of wisdom throughout the chapters.”

So here goes…

1. “So that morning in 1962 I told myself: Let everyone else call your idea crazy . . . just keep going. Don’t stop. Don’t even think about stopping until you get there, and don’t give much thought to where “there” is. Whatever comes, just don’t stop.”

2. “When you see only problems, you’re not seeing clearly.”

3. “You are remembered, he said, prophetically, for the rules you break.”

4. “I thought back on my running career at Oregon. I’d competed with, and against, men far better, faster, more physically gifted. Many were future Olympians. And yet I’d trained myself to forget this unhappy fact. People reflexively assume that competition is always a good thing, that it always brings out the best in people, but that’s only true of people who can forget the competition. The art of competing, I’d learned from track, was the art of forgetting, and I now reminded myself of that fact. You must forget your limits. You must forget your doubts, your pain, your past. You”

5. “I’d tell men and women in their mid-twenties not to settle for a job or a profession or even a career. Seek a calling. Even if you don’t know what that means, seek it. If you’re following your calling, the fatigue will be easier to bear, the disappointments will be fuel, the highs will be like nothing you’ve ever felt.”

6. “I was a linear thinker, and according to Zen linear thinking is nothing but a delusion, one of the many that keep us unhappy. Reality is nonlinear, Zen says. No future, no past. All is now.”

7. “Like books, sports give people a sense of having lived other lives, of taking part in other people’s victories. And defeats. When sports are at their best, the spirit of the fan merges with the spirit of the athlete.”

8. “History is one long processional of crazy ideas.”

9. “He was easy to talk to, and easy not to talk to-equally important qualities in a friend. Essential in a travel companion.”

10. “The art of competing, I’d learned from track, was the art of forgetting, and I now reminded myself of that fact. You must forget your limits. You must forget your doubts, your pain, your past.”

11. “So that morning in 1962 I told myself: Let everyone else call your idea crazy . . . just keep going. Don’t stop. Don’t even think about stopping until you get there, and don’t give much thought to where “there” is. Whatever comes, just don’t stop. That’s”

12. “When you make something, when you improve something, when you deliver something, when you add some new thing or service to the lives of strangers, making them happier, or healthier, or safer, or better… you’re participating more fully in the whole grand human drama. More than simply alive, you’re helping others to live fully, and if that’s business, all right, call me a businessman.”

13. “Don’t tell people how to do things, tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results.”

14. “The single easiest way to find out how you feel about someone. Say goodbye.”

15. “The cowards never started and the weak died along the way. That leaves us, ladies and gentlemen. Us.”

So what is the “story” that Phil Knight is “narrating” to us?

Banish the antagonist in your mind, grab your talisman, and run as fast as you can away from mediocrity! 

That way you are a real hero! 😊

Bioregional Consciousness!

With Ecoliterature having gained much currency all over academia for the past two decades, there’s been a kinda dearth of extensive research in the field of bioregionalism, which, interestingly, is an offshoot of Ecoliterature, but a study that tends to be more specific, and inclined more towards an environmental awareness of a particular region!

Cheryl Glotfelty, the well-renowned nature lover, ecocritic and co-founder of ASLE, (which has, coincidentally hosted a confy in MCC, way back in 2004), who has also authored the famous Ecocriticism Reader has come out with a wonderful volume on The Bioregional Imagination!

This book is a lovely primer for aspiring scholars intending to do their research on Bioregional Studies.

The Introduction to the book, written by Glotfelty and her team, is a wonderful eye-opener of sorts to the theory and practice of Bioregionalism.

Thought of sharing with y’all quite a few interesting excerpts from Glotfelty’s!

Here goes –

On a September evening in eastern Nebraska, several hundred community residents gather at Spring Creek Prairie Audubon Center, a restored tallgrass prairie, for a “Twilight on the Tallgrass” celebration.

As people wander the trails, they encounter stations where they learn about native insects, birds, wildflowers, and medicinal plants.

At one station, local writers read from their prairie-inspired work.

Nearby, a Winnebago tribe dance troupe gets into costume for a performance of traditional powwow dances.

A Bioregion

Outside the visitors’ center, a local astronomy club sets up telescopes they will later use to show visitors a close-up of the night sky.

In South Dakota, a rancher replaces his herd of cattle with bison, then writes a book recounting the pains and delights of the experience.

His book is chosen as a One Book South Dakota selection and subsequently read, discussed, and debated by tens of thousands of citizens around the state.

In North St. Louis, a predominantly African American community, crowds gather every Saturday morning from June through October for the North City Farmers’ Market.

In this neighborhood, where gas stations, convenience stores, and liquor stores long ago crowded out the grocery stores, and some residents have no way to travel to distant supermarkets, the stands selling fresh produce are a much-needed source of healthy food.

Just as importantly, the market brings neighbors together and provides a source of community pride.