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Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Teaching Quality is poor in higher education institutions: Prof. Balagurusamy | India Education Review

Teaching Quality is poor in higher education institutions: Prof. Balagurusamy | India Education Review:

'via Blog this'

Conference on Dalit Experience and the Question of Marginality


Department of English, University of Delhi
Annual Conference 2012
The Dalit Experience and the Question of 
Marginality
16-18 February 2012
Call for Papers

Recent times have seen a rapid growth of interest in marginality in literary and cultural studies. Marginal cultures  and identities are by definition the ‘other’ of hegemonic cultural formations; their place and plight are always determined by and peripheral to the dominant culture. Typically, Dalits are framed as socially 
frail, politically powerless and economically backward. However, in India, while the nature of traditional caste society does make Dalits a marginalized people, the discourse of marginality needs to be taken in conjunction with the fact that Dalits (along with Bahujans) constitute a majority work force.  Further, the decisive alterations to the public sphere made by an assertion of Dalit political consciousness must be recognized. 

Against this background the Department of English, Delhi University is organizing a conference on “The Dalit Experience and the Question of Marginality” from February 16  – 18, 2012. The conference aims to probe the relation between the public sphere consolidation of Dalit identity and the continued devaluation of Dalit labour. At what point, can these different coordinates of the Dalit experiences be mobilized to constitute a counterhegemonic citizenship? What are the various theorizations of caste reality as it pertains to questions of symbolic and not-so-symbolic acts of violence? What are the limits and possibilities of framing the Dalit question as an identity question? How do we critically examine the institutional practice of Dalit studies especially within the cultural rubric of experience and affect? A core part of our conference intends to open up the question of modernity as imagined by Dr. Baba Saheb Ambedkar, given that 2012 will see the celebration of his 120th birth anniversary. In so far as the idea of the annihilation of caste remains central to Ambedkar, the embrace of modernity cannot simply be seen in terms of reconciliation. It was envisioned very much as a transformative project. 

Papers can be from any discipline. They should address but not be limited to the 
following topics:
• Theorizing Dalitness: rigorous location in caste versus more open-ended category of the downtrodden.
• Myths of origin: invented or historical proofs of indigeneity which trace Dalit ancestry to the broken men, nagas, rakshashas, adi-dravida, namashudras, Buddhists etc. and the expression of this genealogy in 
contemporary politics.
• Questions of faith: differentiations within a broad Hindu  habitus, relationship with Hindutva and conversion to Buddhism or other faiths.
• Dalit Citizenship: the articulation of Dalit citizenship in relation to the issue of affirmative action as well as human rights. 
• Using the Media: representation of Dalits in the upper caste media and Dalit intervention in the different branches of mass media—print, electronic, publishing, theatre and films.
• Globalisation and Dalit entrepreneurship: the role of the emergent Dalit diaspora; the indigenous Dalit bourgeoisie and the political class’s complicity with neoliberal policies on the one hand and Dalit (and tribal) 
displacement and resistance on the other.
• Dalit and gender question: specificities of Dalit patriarchy.
• Dalit aesthetics and the Dalit intellectual: the question of Dalit aesthetics and the forms of Dalit expression. 

Please send your abstract (300 words) and a brief bionote (150 
words) to the following email or postal address by 9 December 2011:
Dr. Raj Kumar
Department of English
Delhi University, Delhi – 110007
Conference Committee:
Dr. Raj Kumar (Director), Dr. Hany Babu, 
Dr. Tapan Basu, Dr. Nandini Chandra

Thursday, October 13, 2011

National Seminar New Media Technologies and Emerging Challenges in Communications.

The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India (CBCI) Commission for Social Communications, New Delhi, in collaboration with the U.S. Consulate General in Kolkata, is organizing a national seminar for students of media departments and faculties of colleges and universities in India. The theme of the seminar is New Media Technologies and Emerging Challenges in Communications. The two-day seminar will be held on December 1-2 at the American Center, Kolkata. We invite each university and college to send a maximum of four students and one faculty member of the Department of Journalism/Mass Communication/Media Studies to participate in the seminar. While the participants have to bear the travel costs, the seminar costs- including food and accommodation during the seminar days will be taken care of by the organizers.

The Commission founded in 2009 a national network called Media Faculties Network (MFN). The network conducted a two-day national seminar in 2010 at Christ University, Bangalore. The objectives of the network include fostering greater professional exchange, staff development and student exchange programs, internship, creation and exchange of media books and resources, promotion of media research, conducting national seminars on current issues in media, engaging faculty and students in outreach media education programs as part of their academic and co-curricular activities.

The theme chosen for the 2011 National Seminar is - New Media Technologies and Emerging Challenges in Communications. The seminar aims at providing student delegates of media and their teacher representatives a platform to interact with each other and foster greater participatory learning and collaboration in academic field. Sub themes include:
           New Media Enhancing Participatory Democracy in India
           Mobile Phones Bridging Information Divide
           Internet as a tool for Empowerment
           Do we communicate better or worse in the age of New Media? A critique of media
           New Media as a tool of Empowerment for the Masses
           New Media and the Global Village, Global Citizenships
           Is new media a threat to traditional media: how to synergize?
           New Media and Gender Issues
           Convergence in Communication Technology and its Impact

Colleges and Universities are invited to send the names of a maximum of 4 students who would benefit by the seminar and are able to contribute to the deliberations. They may be accompanied by one faculty member. Student delegates would be offered useful information on opportunities of higher studies in media in the U.S., and an info-pack comprising useful materials on the theme of the seminar.  

Colleges and institutes wishing to send student delegates may kindly register by completing the following form and send it to the address, mentioned in the attached registration form latest by October 31st.

With warm regards,
Sincerely,  



George Plathottam sdb                                                                                        Scott E. Hartmann
Executive Secretary                                                                                             Public Affairs Officer and
CBCI Commission for Social Communications                                                        Director, American Center

Wednesday, October 12, 2011

BA V Semester Postcolonial Literatures Model Question Paper


Answer Any Five of the Following.                                                             (5x8=40)
1. Orientalism
2. Kipling as an Orientalist
3. Macaulay's views on Arabic and Sanskrit langauges being taught in India
4. Fanon's views on the 'Native intellectual'
5. Harlem Renaissance
6. Wide Sargasso Sea as altering reading of Jane Eyre
7. The significance of the Praise Singer

Answer Any Four of the Following.                                                            (4x15=60)
9. Delineate the shift from commonwealth literature to postcolonial literature? Emphasise on the historical circumstances that necessitated such a shift.
10. What are the criticisms of Orientalism? If the criticisms are valid what is the relevance of Orientalism for you today? Explain.
11. Explain the images, sounds and colors used by Senghor in 'New York'
12. Attempt a postcolonial gothic reading of Wide Sargasso Sea.
13 Wole Soyinka utilises the conventions of the ‘western’ tragedy in the play Death and the King’s Horseman. He succeeds in refuting the ideology and the aesthetic on which the ‘western’ conventions are based. Apply this statement to discuss the structure of the play.
14. Which are the 'many separate worlds' that Naipual talks about in his essay 'Reading and Writing'?

Sunday, October 09, 2011

www.cpracsis.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/cf.pdf

www.cpracsis.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/cf.pdf

Philosophy and Literature class notes - 1st Oct. 2011

Class notes for October 1, 2011 (Saturday)

Chapter 6, The Aesthetics of Semiotics:  Greimas, Eco, Barthes, was read and discussed in class. There was a discussion on the semiotic concepts of Greimas and Eco.  The chapter helped us to understand the ‘aesthetic heterogeneity of semiotics’ and how Greimas develops a semiotic theory of the content plane.  Greimas’s structural semiotics was discussed with the example of Oedipus Rex. The monosemic and polysemic nature of texts were demonstrated through the structural relations in Oedipus Rex.   Concepts of semantic isotopies, classemes, and sememes were discussed. The nuances of academic writing were also discussed in class. The stress was on maintaining a uniformity of style while writing.

citation

Pinto, Anil. Literature and Philosophy. Christ University. 1 Oct. 2011. Lecture.
Zima, Peter. The Philosophy of Modern Literary Theory. New Jersey: The Athlone Press, 1999. Print.
Bijoy Philip V.G (1134101)

Model questions for Philosophy and Literature course.

Chapter 1:Nomi

 1) Explain the concepts 'expression plane' and 'content plane' with reference to the philosophies of Kant and Hegel.

 2) What are the philosophical foundations of Kant and Hegel in literary theory?
 3) Trace the development of philosophical thought in literary theory from Romanticism and Young Hegelianism to Nietzche.

Chapter 2- Fathima
1. How did the early literary foundations by Kant and Hegel paved the
way for New Criticism and Russian Formalism? Explain.
2.How does Russian Formalism dwell in between the philosophy of Kant
and Avant-Garde? Elaborate.
3.How Kant's'expression' is different from Croce's 'expression'?
Explain with suitable examples.

(Chapter 3- Ipshita
1. Discuss the arguments of Czech structuralism in the light of Mukarovsky and Jacobson.
2.   Compare and contrast the arguments of Czech structuralism and Avant Garde movement.
3.   How the arguments of Czech structuralism are different from the arguments of New Criticism?    Explain in the light of Kantian idea of aesthetic and Hege’s idea of concepts.

Sharon Abraham : chapter 5
1) How does philosophy distinguish Marxism from critical theory?
2) Analyze the Hegelian philosophy that overlooked the 'magic aspect of language'?

3) Analyze Marxist aesthetics with reference to postmodernism ?

Gracy simon : Ch 6
1) How does Eco occupie intermediate position between Greimas and Barthes?
2) Explain the Greimas' literary and non literary text ?
3) Distinguish between Barthe's readable text from the writable text?
Dhanya G Nair : chapter 7
1) How do "iterability" and "dissemination" work in Derrida's analysis?

2) How does Hartman, through his explicit critique of Hegelian classicism opposes a Romantic and Nietzschean idea of the text?
3) "Nietzsche's theory of language eliminates the metaphysical conceptual dimension which Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Hegels and Kant's philosophy thrive on." Discuss 
Chapter - 8- Suschismitha
1. compare and contrast Lyotard's notion of the sublime and Kant's notion of the beautuful.
2. Discuss how LYotard uses Kant's notion of the sublime to develop an aesthetic of contradiction.
3. Discuss Lyotard's aesthetic of the sublime.
Chapter -9 Vipin George
1. Explain the critical theory of literature that Zema proposes.
2. How does Zema try to reconcile the dichotomy between Kant's and Hegel's literary theories? explain.
3. Hos does Zema propose  a permanent dialogue between particular and hetrogeneous theoretical positions theough his notions of literary theory?

Thursday, October 06, 2011

Literature and Philosophy class notes- 4th oct.2011



Today the last chapter, “Towards a Critical Theory of Literature”  from The Philosophy of Modern Literary Theory by Peter Zima, was discussed in the class. This chapter concludes with the ideology of Literature and Philosophy and he conveys the concept of literariness; that every idea has a philosophical background. In the poststructuralist view, it’s asking questions to its own very foundation therefore it’s a theoretical improvement of questioning the literary text. Through this chapter Zima suggests how to build up a new theory and shows the dialectic between openness and closure, polysemy and monosemy; and the relationship between expression plane and content plane. Research therefore is primarily meant to build theory. It synthesises the literary theory which aims at certain degree of universality that can be obtained by permanent dialogue between heterogeneous and particular positions..

 The objectives of a research is to build up theory, by this, one may reject the existing theory, find gap in the existing theory and propose a new theory. A good research, essentially be a construction of literary text, with its multiple possibilities that distinguishes and analyses to verify  in what extent it is relevant. Each literary theory comes out with its own ideology, constructed to convey its truthful representation. In this process the reader has a multiple engagement, he engages himself with the theoretical text very closely. So, for a scholar any text is a material to analyse, justify, categories  and find something new

Although the book The Philosophy of Modern Literary Theory began its chapters with Kantian concept; that one literary text cannot anchor itself to other concept. But as per Jameson and Jacobson’s’ view that one can keep one’s own ideology and  stand on its own field, at the same time  it’s possible to appreciate the ideology of the others, so it’s moving away from Kantian ideology. This sheds new light on the conceptuality of literary structures that exists in literary texts with in particular theoretical perspectives.

Then we moved on to the topic of how to make the class room teaching and learning, interesting and alive.  In the class room, discussions may be one of the solutions, where interactions, sharing ones ideas, and asking questions. Thus every participant actively participates in the   discussion and learns something new from the work that is being read and the teacher would be totally engaged and alert in the class.
Prepared by  Gracy Simon
Citation



Pinto, Anil. Literature and Philosophy. Christ University. 4 Oct. 2011. Lecture.
Zima, Peter. The Philosophy of Modern Literary Theory. New Jersey: The Athlone Press, 1999. Print.

Tuesday, October 04, 2011

Model Question Paper

Sir, Could you please upload a Model Question paper for Post Colonial Literature (similar to what you uploaded during last sem).

Thanking you,
Shruti Kedia

Ideas in Architecture Theory


Arbour: Research Initiatives in Architecture

 
will run the second cycle of its six-month seminar/teaching programme
 
Ideas in Architecture Theory
 
This programme aims at providing a set of ideas and methodological tools to approach a critical understanding of architecture. The field of architecture will be discussed not only within certain historical conditions, but also as perceived and discussed through the scope of its own practice, visual theory, cultural studies and philosophical locations. Architecture as it is constructed lives a material life, but by nature of its own existence is a field of experience, geography, identity, beauty, time, memory and certain other such concepts. At the same time architecture also struggles between object-hood and its anti-object nature. This introductory seminar will lay out the ground from which many questions could be generated, which could be tackled at various levels and with different intensities later on in the practice of an architectural professional, historian, thinker, critic, teacher or journalist, or for those who may be interested in the field of architecture through their own fields of interest and expertise.

The seminar is designed within 2 basic brackets – ‘Architecture History’ and ‘Approaches to Architecture’. ‘Architecture History’ does not deal with a chronology of architectural types, styles or samples, but basically discusses ideas related to architectural practice and thinking that have been closely related to particular historical conditions and/or events. On the other hand, ‘Approaches to Architecture’, as the name suggests, wishes to map a selection of methodologies that have been employed to understand, critique, analyze, and evaluate architecture. From looking at ideas in Visual Studies and the role of criticism, to questions of Colonialism and Modernism, to reading texts by the likes of Kracauer and Lefebvre, and dealing with topics like Body & Space, Memory & Dwelling, Representation & Voice to also hearing architects discuss architectural projects, the course will structure a range of issues and ideas in a cohesive format. The aim is to finally contextualize the debates and concerns in architectural practice in contemporary India, while being conscious of how international and global exchanges have always been a part of any field, and understanding that ideas in the world of theory often assume an all-pervading image.

‘Writing’ will be an important component of the seminar programme.

The seminar programme is conducted through modules (4 sessions) around particular conceptual frameworks.

Schedules: The programme runs every Monday and Wednesday from 6:30 to 8:30 pm, starting 16 January, through 20 June, 2012 (about 23 weeks)

Resource Scholars: Scholars and practitioners from the world of Architecture, Art History, Theory and Criticism, Visual Studies, Cultural Studies, etc. will be teaching at the course; those involved with the seminar include Sen Kapadia, Venkatesh Rao, Mustansir Dalvi, Shimul Jhaveri-Kadri, Ranjit Hoskote, Nancy Adajania,  George Jose, Shilpa Ranade, Rajiv Thakker, Abhay Sardesai, Sudhir Patwardhan, Shilpa & Pinkish Shah, Rahul Gore, Sonal Sancheti, Ainsley Lewis, Nuru Karim, Ashok Sukumaran, Suprio Bhatacharjee, Kaiwan Mehta and also some others.

Admission Eligibility: All graduates from Architecture or Art History can apply with their CV.
Graduates in subjects other than the two mentioned above can apply with their CV and a short interest-indication paper or a writing sample.
Students of 4th and 5th year Bachelor of Architecture course can apply with a CV and a writing sample.
An informal meeting with the director will take place before you enroll.

Number of student-participants: Maximum 15 nos.

Fees: INR 16,000/- (inclusive of basic reading material)

Saturday, October 01, 2011

Philosophy and Literature notes- 30th sept 2011.


It was for the first time that any of us attended an M.Phil defense and to say the least, we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. I think it would be an injustice not to mention that Sreyashi Dhar’s paper on “Representation of Female Body in Select Films of Alfred Hitchcock and Basic Instinct 1 & 2” won accolades from the external examiner who even mentioned that it was perhaps one of the best defenses that he had attended thus far.

Sreyasi explored the diegetic gaze in the movies of Hitchcock and in Basic Instinct 1 & 2. While in Hitchcock the woman is “voiceless” and always “victimized” and “objectified,” in Basic Instinct, parts one and two, Sharon Stone shatters all these patriarchal norms using her “body as a weapon” and an agent of empowerment. The graphic inputs and the visual aids enhanced the audiences’ understanding of the key elements of Sreyashi’s discussion—woman’s body in sexual terms, body element, male gaze and voyeurism, sadism and fetishism. The theories and frameworks that Sreyashi uses, and simultaneously refutes, while her argument progresses, include Michel Foucault’s “theory of repression,” the psychoanalytic framework used by Laura Mulvey, Lacan’s concept of the “mirror stage” and Freud’s psychoanalytic theory.

Laura Mulvey in her essay writes, the woman “stands in patriarchal culture as signifier for the male other, bound by a symbolic order in which man can live out his phantasies and obsessions through linguistic commands by imposing them in the silent image of woman still tied to her place as bearer of meaning, not marker of meaning” (834). In the section: Pleasure in Looking/Fascination with the Human Form, Mulvey explains that one of the pleasures that cinema offers is “scophophilia,” where both looking and being looked at become sources of pleasure, but later in the section on “Woman as Image, Man as Bearer of the Look,” Mulvey seems to be passing a judgment that Sreyashi contradicts through the portrayal of Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct. Mulvey says: “In a world ordered by sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking has been spilt between active/male and passive/female. The determining male gaze projects its phantasy on to female figure which is styled accordingly” (837). Sreyashi counter-argues that Mulvey completely overlooks the idea of a “female gaze,” an example of which is Sharon Stone’s seductive gaze in the movies in question. However, the external examiner raised a pertinent question, saying Stone was merely aping the male gaze, and arriving at a concept of “female gaze” was hurried, but at the same time he acknowledged that the counterargument to Mulvey was indeed a prospective contributory step in the realm of post-feminism, especially the concept of the manipulation of the male gaze for the empowerment of the objectified female on screen.

Sharon Stone’s explicit sexuality as contrasted to Hitchcock’s representation of the body as sexual, completely, in Sreyashi’s words, “shatters all norms of the repressive hypothesis” and the notion of “guilt” that Michel Foucault talks about. What is the repressive theory? “Stated broadly, the repressive hypothesis holds that through European history we have moved from a period of relative openness about our bodies and our speech to an ever increasing repression and hypocrisy” (Dreyfus and Rabinow 128). In the blog, Foucauldian Reflections, Ali Rizvi mentions that “the point of repressive hypothesis is to reject a simplistic conception of power as domination and repression and consequently simplistic conception of freedom as ‘exit’ and ‘way out.’” One of the insights that he gives, and which becomes all the more relevant in the context of Sreyashi’s argument is: “But these notions are dangerous in the context of the workings of modern power, which does not work by ‘starving’ desire but prospers on creating, inducing and multiplying and through ramification of desire” (Foucauldian Reflections).

The Defender’s Insights:

ü  Mulvey fails to talk about the female gaze

ü  Mulvey does not take into consideration the process empowerment of the one who is objectified, through manipulation of the male gaze

ü  There is a complete breakdown of Michel Foucault’s repressive theory in the context of Basic Instinct 1 and 2

ü  Sharon Stone’s representation is post-feminist

ü  Sharon Stone does not define or exemplify any gender stereotypes and archetypes

The Expert’s Insights:

While it is definitely a refined and progressive understanding of the male gaze, the inter and extra diegetic gazes have been overlooked. Comment.

[Defense: Limitations of the scope of the research]

We cannot yet theorize about a “female gaze” but the insights on “gaze” are a definite contribution towards post-feminist theories. Comment.

[Defense: Female informant reversing the male gaze]

Does the research contribute to new ways of looking at gender?

[Defense: She is neither the masculine stereotype nor the feminine stereotype. Also, in the film she claims to be a lesbian*]

*Sharon Stone is also a self declared bisexual, and whether casting her in the role of Catherine Tramell is deliberate or otherwise, is speculative, but this definitely strengthens the argument with regard to the contribution of the research towards redefining ways of looking at gender



Class-room Discussion:

The class-room discussion ensued with individual reactions and observations pertaining to Sreyashi’s defense. The contributions that the class made were:

ü  We cannot dismiss any cinema as being commercial or use it in the derogatory sense. There is an excellent analysis of the difference between art and commercial cinema in Art and Commercial cinema – The different shades by Sreesha Belakvaadi, and I quote:

“Today, the idea of an art movie is that – it is slow moving; but that is not genuinely true. This is a gross misconception about art movies. The pace of a movie whether it is slow-moving or fast-moving is fundamentally a subjective matter. When we say slow, the question is : what is slow? Is it the story or the acting or the script or the music or the camera movement; and if slow, it is slow relative to what? And only such questions can throw some light here.

There is certainly a difference between art and commercial movies; but is it not how the general audience tries to infer the meaning. It has more than mere branding and labeling movies. The idea to perceive a movie as art or commercial lies in the “observation” of the beholder” (OurKarnataka). 

Commercial to go by the Online Dictionary of Etymology is an adjective that came into being in the “1680s, ‘pertaining to trade,’ from commerce + -al”(Online Etymology Dictionary). So anything that is shown to a larger audience and reaches the theatre would then become commercial.

ü  In the context of discussing cinema we discussed Stuart Hall. Hall in his essay on ‘Encoding/Decoding’ proposed a model of mass communication which highlighted the importance of active interpretation within relevant codes. The following image explains the concepts of coding and encoding as understood by Hall (Semiotics for Beginners).


To understand Hall’s concept let us take an example: If X tells Y that the latter has to make a movie for the Nazi’s that show the Jews as traitors, Y (as director) would give it to Z (a script writer). So at the script writing level some form of coding will occur and when the script is filmed, the director will enforce his own set of codes, the actor his own, and finally the audience will read it through a different coding system all together. Thus Hall’s argument justifies that the audience also has an agency.

ü  From the idea of the audience as having agency, we moved to cinepolitics and discussed Madhav Prasad who makes an interesting observation regarding South Indian and North Indian stars; the former never presenting themselves as stars off-screen but the latter live their image even off-screen.

ü  This difference necessitated a mention of S.V. Srinivas’ concept of mass mobilization, especially through politics, where he shows that the South Indian stars significantly abstain from such political mass mobilization strategies.

We finally returned to Zima and began reading the 6th chapter. The two questions raised were:

§  Why are we constantly returning to the question of meaning in literary texts, i.e. trying to reduce it to concepts?

§  Why does Zima use “remotely” in brackets when he says: “Eco’s idea for example, that the aesthetic object imposes limits on conceptual knowledge is (remotely) Kantian?”

We also discussed how Terry Eagleton in his essay does not delve into or trace the Prague structuralism, thereby eliminating the concepts of literariness and Greimas’ concept of identifying meaning in texts.

Citation

Belakavaadi, Sreesha. Art and Commercial Cinema—The Different Shades. OurKarnataka.Com, Inc. 1998. Web. 30 Sept. 2011.
Chandler, Daniel. Semiotics for Beginners. Aberystwyth University. 19 Sept. 2001. Web. 30 Sept. 2011.
Dreyfus, Hubert l., and Paul Rabinow. Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics. The University of Chicago: Britain, 1983: 128. PDF.
Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary. 2001-2010. Web. 30 Sept. 2011.

Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings. Eds. Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen. New York: Oxford UP, 1999: 833-44. PDF

Pinto, Anil. Literature and Philosophy. Christ University. 30 Sept.2011. Lecture.

Rizvi, Ali. “The Repressive Hypothesis.” Foucauldian Reflections. Blogspot.com, 16 Dec. 2004. Web. 30 Sept. 2011.

Zima, Peter. The Philosophy of Modern Literary Theory. New Jersey: The Athlone Press, 1999. Print.

Prepared by: Suchismita Das

Philosophy and literature notes- 29th sept 2011.


The class discussed the third chapter of Peter Zima’s Literature and Philosophy. The chapter mainly discusses about Czech Structuralism and their structuralist thinkers Jakobson, Mukorovscky and that of Vodicka.

Czech structuralism is mostly known as Prague structuralism. Prague criticism mainly emerged in Europe and that the New criticism from that of United States of America. Saussure the Swiss Linguist not only talks about sign but also talks about language having two levels that of langue and parole. Langue is nothing but what we hear in parole. It’s said that the manifestation of langue are endless that is idea is possible but not language. Langue is a basic structure and that Prague structuralists were not interested in content but structure. For them the whole work of art, novel per say depends upon the structure and not the content. Saussure died on 22 February 1913.

The Russian formalist showed hardly any interest in the idea that the literary text is a sign which permits communication between author and reader. The Prague structuralists on the contrary were particularly interested in that notion. They conceived of literature as a communication process as a continuation process, as a dialogue between author and public. Mukarovsky’s way of thinking is that of a semiotician. The textual sign maintains its independence with respect to the communication process. The text is neither a direct expression of the authors psyche nor can it be identified with its reflections in the readers psyche. Moreover in spite of its central and independent position in the communication process, the text loses its absolute character of a formal construction fixed for ever.   

In Linguistics and Poetics, a well-known article by Jakobson, he distinguishes six functions of language:

Ø   The emotive function which is linked to the sender or author of a message.

Ø  The connotative function that is the connotation which is related to the receiver or listener.

Ø  The metalingual function that discusses about the language is geared towards the code in question.

Ø  The phatic function which is oriented towards the contact medium.

Ø  The referential function which designates the context of communication

Ø  The poetic function which becomes an end in itself.

According to Mukarovsky and Jakobson, a verbal message, produced, transmitted and perceived in the process of communication, and embedded in its socio-cultural context, always carries a dominating function and that the other functions may be present as  accessory. The dynamic aspect of function, pointing to the historicity, or socio historical embededness of verbal messages, implies that one and the same text may acquire different, especially the dominant functions at different times and in different cultures.

The conception of semantic gesture expressed at once both the dynamic semantic unity and inner differentiation and the human significance of the concrete work of art. 

Philosophical angst is different from that of normal day to day life “angst” (acute but nonspecific sense of anxiety or remorse) that we discuss because philosophically this means the dread caused by man’s awareness that his future is not determined but must be freely chosen.

The class also discussed and was enlightened about:

·        Knowledge system always links to the political power. In 44 BCE that is Before Common Era, Romans became powerful and continued to be powerful for several years. It was during this period that they made roads to make trade easier. After this the scholarships from Rome goes to Prussia and Prussia becomes the knowledge keeper but with the emergence Renaissance this status of Prussia was moved to Europe.

·        Turkey, the then Istanbul (Constantinople) was known as the first Islamic centre which was later moved to Italy, this continued till the First World War. Islamic renaissance ends in the 9th century and that the in first university was established in Paris in the 12th century followed by the second one in Belgium which was known as the University of Nouvelle and finally it was in the 13th century that University of Oxford and University of Cambridge was established.

·        First World War was mainly fought by the kings; this was mainly the culmination point. It was in the year 1912 that the people from different countries started getting passports which made trade and travel easier, due to this the ideas and knowledge started moving from country to country.
Prepared by
Dhanya G Nair


Works Cited:

Pinto, Anil. “Class on Anglo-American New Criticism and Russian Formalism.” Christ

          University. Bangalore. 26 Oct. 2011. Lecture.

Zima, Peter V. The Philosophy of Modern Literary Theory. New Jersey: The Athlone 

           Press, 1999. Print.