kriticulture

By M. L. Raina Marxist Shakespeares Edited by Jean Howard& Scot Cutler Shershow Routledge, London & New York Pages xii+304. $27.95 “Others abide our question/Thou art free”—Matthew Arnold. Is he, really? Quite often, the bard has been wheeled around in the shopping trolleys of gossip and rumour-mongers, ideologues and sundry other interpreters, and, in our time, the peddlers of post-modern, post-structuralist, new historicist and feminist merchandise. He has been deglamourised and brought down from his pedestal by critics, stage directors and film makers. We are asked not to look up to him but to see beyond his myth. As a student I read my Shakespeare in ignorance of Ernest Jones’s Freudian speculations and Laurence Olivier’s guilt-ridden rendering of Hamlet on film. We knew nothing of Sergei Bondarchuk’s film of Hamlet as a critique of the feudal age, nor did have access to John Gielgud, Paul Robeson, Ralph Richardson or Dam...

Essay By HENRY ALFORD We may never fully understand what prompts people to leave unusual objects inside books. I speak of the slice of fried bacon that the novelist Reynolds Price once found nestled within the pages of a volume in the Duke University library. I speak of the letter that ran: “Do not write to me as Gail Edwards. They know me as Andrea Smith here,” which the playwright Mark O’Donnell found some years ago in a used paperback. I speak of any of those bizarre objects — scissors, a used Q-tip, a bullet, a baby’s tooth, drugs, pornography and 40 $1,000 bills — that have been discovered by the employees of secondhand bookstores, according to The Wall Street Journal and AbeBooks.com. Mystery surrounds these deposits like darkness. But the motives of some depositors — the novelist David Bowman, for instance — are knowable. “I was cleaning out a drawer and thought, Let’s do something with this,” Bowman said of the day four years ago when he stumbled upon all of the rejection lette...

The Nigerian writer talks about literature and faith I’m fascinated with the process of creating a character and the freedom of the creative process. I’m discovering as well, learning myself. Since I only realized I had the gift ten years ago, I felt I needed to develop this. I also like fiction because it is not doctrinaire. It is exploratory and you are invited to come and see, just like Jesus first invited would-be disciples to ‘come and see’. What you do after seeing is left to you. ... ... ... ... For example, when I read in newspapers that one million Rwandese were killed by their compatriots, it makes no sense to me. I have not seen a million people before. For me to even begin to understand, I may have to see how one person was killed and how much propaganda went into such an act. And if I hear someone sacrificed her life for another person, I try to work out in my mind how this was possible. Link

Fifteen Theses Rajesh Kumar Sharma 1 If democracy in India has not failed dramatically, this may not mean it has succeeded beyond question. Failures need not be absolute. The absence of one or more disasters in the short history of a democracy might screen from view some subtler and larger failure. Acknowledging the possibility of such a failure would require us to reconsider the very terms in which the public discourse of democracy is conducted. 2 If democracy is a particular “form of government”, the “form” may be still in good shape and yet all may not be well. 3 There is a danger in envisaging democracy as a state of affairs that comes to obtain for ever or long. The end of democracy does not necessarily mean, as Plato surmised, its replacement by some other form of government. Democracy may retain its form and yet have been undone. In the age of universal democracy, the real threat to democracies lurks within and in the realm of the universal. Hence the need to interrogate the po...

Of Which Real is this Crisis the Spectacle? Alain Badiou, Le Monde, 17/10/08. As it is presented to us, the planetary financial crisis resembles one of those bad films concocted by that factory for the production of pre-packaged blockbusters that today we call the "cinema". Nothing is missing, the spectacle of mounting disaster, the feeling of being suspended from enormous puppet-strings, the exoticism of the identical – the Bourse of Jakarta placed under the same spectacular rubric as New York, the diagonal from Moscow to Sao Paulo, everywhere the same fire ravaging the same banks – not to mention terrifying plotlines: it is impossible to avert Black Friday, everything is collapsing, everything will collapse... But hope abides. In the foreground, wild-eyed and focussed, like in a disaster movie, we see the small gang of the powerful – Sarkozy, Paulson, Merkel, Brown, Trichet and others – trying to extinguish the monetary flames, stuffing tens of billions into the c...

Save Farmer Movement Here is the petition sent to the President of India. Kind attention: Hon’ble President of India, Rashtrapati Bhawan, New Delhi-1 Subject: Appeal for imposition of ban on BT cotton all over India and President Rule in Haryana State due to death of lakhs of animals due to BT cotton and disastrous ill effects of BT cotton on health of lakhs of humans and animals Hon’ble President Madam, I the undersigned hereby bring to your kind notice that in the state of Haryana genetically modified BT cotton is being cultivated for past about 5-7 years now. Our recent state-wide survey conducted during the year 2007-2008 shows that lakhs of animals including buffaloes and sheep have died due to consumption of the following: 1. BT cotton seeds fed to animals as feed. 2. BT cotton seed based oilcake fed to animals as feed. 3. Fresh Leaves and other plant parts of BT cotton plants. Government of Andhra Pradesh (Animal Husbandry Department) has confirmed presence of...

A poem by Jean Wahl which almost, haiku-like, explicates electracy avant la lettre: It's time to pack your suitcases again: Your four ideas, your eight feelings. -----

The Greek word sympotein means literally "to drink together." In the era of Socrates and Plato, the symposium was a central part of Greek culture: a gathering where men consumed wine freely and debated the issues of the day. Philosophers, wine critics, and winemakers share their passion for wine through well-crafted essays that explore wine's deeper meaning, nature, and significance. Wine & Philosophy offers a playfully fresh, insightful - and, at times, controversial - perspective on the philosophical dimensions of wine and wine appreciation. Joining Beer & Philosophy and Food & Philosophy in the "Epicurean Trilogy," the essays herein celebrate the ongoing relationship between wine and philosophical reflection, discussion, and debate. Wine and Philosophy: A Symposium on Thinking and Drinking By Fritz Allhoff * Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell * Number Of Pages: 328 * Publication Date: 2007-10-29 * ISBN-10 / ASIN: 1405154314 * ISBN-13 ...

A reader has sent the following searing comment on Pankaj Chaturvedi's poem At Such A Time As This that appeared on this blog a few days ago. It is being published separately here so that the readers may not miss it. The comment with its poem has what I can only term as atomic economy: i am a son of an infantryman. i was also infantry. i have 2 of my children,who have done 2 deployments each to america's "wars" in these times money talks hands listen our children pay for our silence

Slavoj Žižek One of the most striking things about the reaction to the current financial meltdown is that, as one of the participants put it: ‘No one really knows what to do.’ The reason is that expectations are part of the game: how the market reacts to a particular intervention depends not only on how much bankers and traders trust the interventions, but even more on how much they think others will trust them. Keynes compared the stock market to a competition in which the participants have to pick several pretty girls from a hundred photographs: ‘It is not a case of choosing those which, to the best of one’s judgment, are really the prettiest, nor even those which average opinion genuinely thinks the prettiest. We have reached the third degree where we devote our intelligence to anticipating what average opinion expects the average opinion to be.‘ We are forced to make choices without having the knowledge that would enable us to make them; or, as John Gray has put it: ‘We are forc...

By V.V.B. Rama Rao (Professor Rama Rao has suggested that we write about our beloved teachers. We begin with his memories of Acharya Ronanki. It is hoped that other readers of the blog will help sustain this fine thread of memories. -RKS) Renowned as Acharya Ronanki , Ronanki Appala Swami was a polyglot. He was one of the diggajas (eight elephants standing in the seven diks) who made Vizianagaram, the seat of the PoosapaTi rajahs of fame, in Andhra. A product of Banaras Hindu University , he couldn’t make it to a high grade and had to settle down to be a teacher. But his voracious reading and thirst for acquiring knowledge of the European languages sent him to the priests of Western origin staying in the citadel city and the treasure house of books acquired by the renowned Rajas of Vizianagaram. He mastered not only Greek but also French by self-study alone. It has been my great good fortune to be taught by him during my four years of study at Maharajah’s College. I...

OBITUARY By Ismaa Saadat Raffat Karim stood and listened for a long time. Then once more he climbed up the hall with tired steps and left the class, as if Hamlet was exiting the stage. The news of Professor Raffat Karim’s death took me back to 1997: the quiet, slow-paced gait of Raffat Karim carrying his diminutive and graceful figure through the crowded corridors of the Department of English in Karachi University, while walking to his room every morning, discussing a variety of subjects with his students. Nasty and naughty as we were in those days, and condoned for being so by our generous teachers, one day we spread the news of the mix ‘n match socks Mr Karim was wearing. Raffat Karim received the largest number of students in his office that day as everybody was keen to have a good laugh at the professor’s tiny mistake. He very well knew what had massively transpired in the students’ body and allowed laughter at his own expense with a wistful smile. All along we thought he was unawa...

“My message will be very clear; it is that I think we have to continue to read novels. Because I think that the novel is a very good means to question the current world without having an answer that is too schematic, too automatic. The novelist, he’s not a philosopher, not a technician of spoken language. He’s someone who writes, above all, and through the novel asks questions.” - Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio

Learning from the Global Economic Crisis By Rajesh Kumar Sharma The bubble economy of speculative finance capital is in a crisis. People are losing jobs and money. The students who borrowed huge sums to finance their education and who are half way through their study programs are anxious whether all the trouble has been worthwhile. Placements have shrunk and, in several favourite courses, stopped altogether. These are some of the grim, ordinary truths of our time. You have only to visit a few institutions offering ‘professional’ and ‘job-oriented’ courses, or speak to your friends in the finance, banking or consumer sectors to find out the actual state of affairs. Or try and find on the pages of your newspaper any images of jubilant young people beckoning the reader to join them in the sunrise sectors of the new economy. Those images have quietly stopped appearing. The situation offers an historic opportunity to seriously reconsider the course we have taken during the las...

Wall St. Crisis Should Be for Neoliberalism What Fall of Berlin Wall Was for Communism Extract: So, we know that the crisis is coming, and the question is, how are we going to respond? I think there needs to be better ideas lying around. I think the Milton Friedman Institute is about keeping the same old ideas that have been recycled so many times, that actually make these public crises worse, making sure that they are the ones that are ready and available whenever the next crisis hits. I think that is what—at its core, that’s what so many of the right-wing think tanks are for, and that’s what the Institute is for. And I think that is a waste of the fine minds at this university. I think it is a waste of your minds, your creativity, because all of these crises—climate change, the casino that is contemporary capitalism—all of these crises do demand answers, do demand actions. They are messages, telling us that the system is broken. And instead of actual solutions, we’re throwing ideolog...

A translation of Pankaj Chaturvedi's Hindi poem Ek Aise Samay Mein from his anthology Ek Sampoornata Ke Liye At such a time as this when people think that not a trace of the conscience remains in responsible people, I do not tire repeating that if you visit injustice upon someone, your soul too shall suffer a scratch. At such a time as this when hungry kites circle above and a silent proclamation does the rounds for each hiding place that anyone daring to dig his hand into it will be torn to pieces, I wander through the streets as an easy prey, seeking the truth of my speech – that when there is drought all around, the rainfall will depend on how our call pierces the cloud. At such a time as this when everything has been put on sale, when in this all-sale people cannot refrain from selling themselves even if they can hide from one another’s looks, when the race is not for ascension but for self-degradation, the only happiness we ...

The Telegraph, October 2 , 2008 IN LOCO PARENTIS - When a remarkable republic turns into a majoritarian State by Mukul Kesavan I teach in Jamia Millia Islamia, a university in Delhi that was recently in the news because two young men said to be terrorists were killed in its vicinity, in the course of an ‘encounter’ or shoot-out with the police. One of these men was a student of the university. Subsequently, the police made more arrests in connection with the recent bomb blasts in Delhi and two of those arrested were enrolled in Jamia. The university authorities made it clear that they would deal strictly with any student found to be involved in terrorism. The university also declared that it would provide legal aid to the arrested students (a) because they were members of Jamia in good standing, and (b) till such time as their guilt was proved they were entitled to due process. The response to this declaration was at once odd and unsurprising. Various spokespersons for the Bharatiya Ja...

'No Double Standards in the Fight Against Terrorism' Please send your signed copy to: southasiadocuments@gmail.com In recent months the country has witnessed a spate of terrorist attacks in different cities as well as organised communal violence against religious minorities in several states. We the undersigned strongly condemn all these acts of violence that have resulted in loss of life and grievous injury to scores of innocent people. It is clear that whoever is responsible for such violence should be severely punished under Indian law and all measures be taken to protect the lives of ordinary citizens under threat from their activities. We find it deeply disturbing however that the Indian government as well as concerned state governments have adopted double standards in dealing with the two equally deadly phenomenon of terrorist bombings and communal violence. On one hand throughout the country Muslim youth are being targeted, without any or litt...