The Subject and Power- Michel Foucault

the following is a write up on 'The Subject and Power' by Nidhi V. Krishnan

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In the essay, “The Subject and Power”, Michel Foucault explores and investigates the relations of power. He states that when a human subject is placed in relations of production, he is equally placed in complex power relations. Foucault clarifies that it is not power, but the subject which is the theme of his research. However, he wishes to access the subject by exploring the intricacies of the relations of power. He states that there is a scarcity of good instruments and tools to study (understand and analyze) power. Foucault points out that in order to facilitate a good critical conceptualization of power, historical awareness of the present conditions is required along with the knowledge of the type of reality that one is dealing with.

Foucault demonstrates that an abstract investigation of “reason” is not useful in ascertaining conceptual clarity about the relations of power because it will mislead us into the deadlock of the debate between rationalism and irrationalism. In his opinion, investigating the general reason of the Enlightenment will also not allow for the conceptualization of power. Instead, he proposes that we should look at the rationalities in specific fields in terms of fundamental experiences, for example, looking at specific instances of madness, illness, death, crime, sexuality etc. He states that the investigation of the forms of resistance can also be used to reveal power relations.

Foucault elucidates the characteristics of anti-authority struggles: 1. The struggles are transversal and hence not confined to a particular geography, economy of political form of government. 2. The aim of the struggles is to combat the effects of power. 3. The struggles are “immediate” in that they do not locate the “chief enemy” but look for the immediate enemy i.e., criticize instances of power which are closest to them. 4. The struggles question the status of the individual. 5. The struggles are an opposition to the effects of power that are linked to knowledge, competence, and qualification and also an opposition against secrecy, deformation and mystifying representations imposed on people. 6. The struggles revolve around the question: Who are we?

Foucault states that the main objective of class struggle is to attack not the opposing class or institutions of power but rather to attack a technique or form of power. Foucault asserts that this form of power applies itself to immediate everyday life, categorizes the individual and thereby makes the individuals subjects. Foucault advances two meanings of the “subject”: subject to someone by control and dependence and subject tied to one’s own identity by a conscience or self-knowledge. However, both these meanings suggest a form of power which subjugates and makes subject to. Foucault categorizes struggles into three types: 1. Struggle against forms of domination. 2. Struggle against forms of exploitation. 3. Struggle against subjection, forms of subjectivity and submission.

Foucault asserts that the struggles of subjection are caused because of the fact that the modern state is similar to the new form of pastoral power. Pastoral power can be characterized as follows: 1. Its ultimate objective is to assure salvation in next world. 2. It is potentially sacrificial in the sense that it is prepared to sacrifice itself for benefit of the masses. 3. It practices life-long individualizing of its subjects 4. It holds the knowledge about the conscience of people and possesses the ability to control it.

Pastoral power therefore produces and reproduces the truth of the individual through the manipulation of people’s conscience. The new form of pastoral power spread throughout social field while being regulated by state. The characteristics of the new form of pastoral power were as follows: 1. The objective was changed from salvation in the next world to salvation in this world. Health, well-being, security, protection against accidents etc. were endorsed as the components of salvation in this world. 2. There was an increase in the agents and officials of pastoral power. 3. The development of the knowledge of man was encouraged around two roles: globalizing and quantitative, concerning the population and analytical, concerning the individual. Hence, pastoral power that had been initially liked to religious institutions spread out to the entire social body as it found support in a multitude of institutions.

Foucault declares that the reason why it is difficult for a subject to break away from ideology is because of the political structure of the state. Foucault affirms that the state uses a tricky combination of individualization as well as totalizing procedures to trap the subject in a “double bind”, making it extremely difficult for the subject to overcome any form of subjection. Foucault asserts that the solution to the problem is not to liberate the individual from the state (and it apparatuses and institutions) alone but to liberate the individual both from the state as well as the form of individualization that is linked to the state. Foucault is in favour of exploring the possibilities of new forms of subjectivity through the refusal of both the subjectivity as well as individuality imposed by the state and its institutions.

Culture and Cultural Studies

The following write up is by Vandana S.

It talks about ‘Culture’ and ‘Cultural Studies’ based on the reading of the chapter Cultural Studies and Cultural Theory from the book Contemporary Cultural Theory by Andrew Milner and Jeff Browitt.

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Cultural Studies attained an important position in the academic circles during the last quarter of the twentieth century. The obvious meaning of cultural studies is that it is the academic study of culture. But the problem, however, is that there is absolutely no agreement as to what exactly we mean by ‘culture’. The word ‘culture’ is one of the most widely used abstract nouns in the lexicon. The different meanings attributed to ‘culture’ are ambiguous.

In his first major work, Culture and Society 1780-1950 Raymond Williams drew attention to four important kinds of meaning that attached to ‘culture’: an individual habit of mind; the state of intellectual development of a whole society; the arts; and the whole way of life of a group of people. In his later book Keywords, only the latter three usages remained in play. He reintroduced the first usage in his sociology textbook, Culture, grouping it together with the second and third as ‘general’, and contrasting these with the fourth. According to Williams “the complexity, that is to say, is not finally in the word but in the problems which its variations of use significantly indicate. The range and overlap of meanings, the distinctions simultaneously elided and insisted upon, are all in themselves ‘significant’.

Geoffrey Hartman, Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Yale University observed culture as ‘an inflammatory word’, which in some circumstances can even kindle ‘actual wars’. Both Williams and Hartman attempted to trace the intellectual history of the concept. Williams’ version of history remained overwhelmingly English in focus leading to Eliot, F.R.Leavis and Orwell while Hartman’s version is more cosmopolitan and leads to Spengler, Benda, Nazim and Heiner Muller.

With the culture wars, cultural studies became a ‘proto-discipline’ in American higher education. Cultural studies as a discipline is deeply indebted to the pioneering work of the Birmingham Centre founded in 1946, as a graduate research unit under the directorship of Richard Hoggart. The Centre became the intellectually pre-eminent institutional location for cultural studies, both in Britain and internationally, for most of the 1970’s and 1980’s.

Reference

Milner, Andrew, and Jeff Browitt. Contemporary Cultural Theory. New Delhi: Rawat Publications, 2002.

WHAT FUELS INDIAN NATIONALISM - ASHIS NANDY

the following is a write up on 'What Fuels Indian Nationalism' by Josy Mary Edwin

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Nationalism involves a strong identification of a group of individuals with a political entity defined in national terms, i.e. a nation. Often, it is the belief that an ethnic group has a right to statehood, or that citizenship in a state should be limited to one ethnic group, or that multinationality in a single state should necessarily comprise the right to express and exercise national identity even by minorities.

It can also include the belief that the state is of primary importance, or the belief that one state is naturally superior to all other states. It is also used to describe a movement to establish or protect a homeland (usually an autonomous state) for an ethnic group. In some cases the identification of a national culture is combined with a negative view of other races or cultures.

Conversely, nationalism might also be portrayed as collective identities towards imagined communities(The imagined community is a concept coined by Benedict Anderson which states that a nation is a community socially constructed, which is to say imagined by the people who perceive themselves as part of that group), which are not naturally expressed in language, race or religion but rather socially constructed by the very individuals that belong to a given nation. Nationalism is sometimes reactionary, calling for a return to a national past, and sometimes for the expulsion of foreigners. Other forms of nationalism are revolutionary, calling for the establishment of an independent state as a homeland for an ethnic underclass.

Nationalism emphasizes collective identity - a 'people' must be autonomous, united, and express a single national culture. However, some nationalists stress individualism as an important part of their own national identity. National flags, national anthems, and other symbols of national identity are often considered sacred, as if they were religious rather than political symbols.

According to Ashis Nandy, since the mid 1980’s, there are three major concerns that has infected our view of nationalism. First being the diminishing role of the sacred in daily life, even though India is seen as a country flooded with religions and rituals. The traditional religious sensitivity has weakened up since people move from villages to cities, from state to state and from one linguistic zone to another. This uprooting has created a need for a generalized version of faith, in which a person who moves from Kerala to Uttar Pradesh can continue to believe that he is a part of his religion. So atlast secularization of life has accentuated the fear of losing one’s faith.

The second concern is the result of urbanization. India is still predominantly a rural society. However, urban norms, life styles and tastes have begun to make their presence felt in a way that would have been unthinkable two decades ago. The cities have opened up the possibility for an individual to escape and reinvent himself in an ambience of anonymity and impersonality. We know that the rural poverty has been considered to be one of the most important problems of the country in recent decades. Despite having spent huge sums of money on rural poverty alleviation, the incidence of poverty has not reduced to the desired levels. Gradually, poorer people in rural areas began to realise that it was a good idea to migrate to the cities to get productive employment that helps to cross the poverty line. Migration to cities is considered to be a serious problem and most of the political parties as well as the municipal bodies are generally interested in reversing this trend of rapid urbanization. But migration is not the only reason for growth of the cities. Internal growth of cities and inclusion of the periphery areas are two other reasons for growth of the urban areas. It is expected that in the coming two decades, the urban population share in the total population of the country would increase to 50 per cent.

Rural poor come to the cities and towns to look for productive work with a view to get two square meals for their families and secure better education for their children. They also migrate to the cities to ensure that they are able to lead a better life than their forefathers and the cities act as the dream destinations for the poor for a better tomorrow. But more often than not, their dreams get shattered as they arrive in the cities. They are hassled by the problems like lack of affordable housing, lack of availability of clean drinking water, lack of cleanliness, sanitation and other civic amenities.

Problems In Urbanisation

Lack of civic amenities is yet another problem. As per 2001 slum census only 65.4 per cent of the households in the cities and towns had access to drinking water within their premises. Remaining households either had the water supply source outside their premises or away from their houses.

Urbanisation - Source of lighting: Source of lighting is another important area which was surveyed during the census. Though the percentage of households having an electric source of energy was much higher than in the rural areas, yet more than 12 per cent of the households in the urban areas did not have an electric source of lighting and had to depend on other sources like kerosene. About 0.4 per cent of the households in cities and towns had no source of lighting at all.

Urbanisation - Availability of education facilities : In the urban areas is also a key area, particularly for the poor. While the affluent and upper middle classes normally have best of educational facilities available to them in the cities, the poorer sections find it hard to have access even to basic educational facilities. The level of male and female literacy rates in the slum areas is distinctly lower than non-slum population of cities, with Patna recording highest difference of almost 30 per cent between the level of literacy rates in slum and non-slum areas of city.

Urbanisation – Healthcare facilities : Lack of good healthcare facilities is also an area of serious concern. As per the report of a Task Force appointed by the government of India to advise on health scenario in the urban slums, it was pointed out that 6 out of 10 children in slum areas are delivered at home in Indian slums. Further, more than half of India’s urban poor children are underweight and the state of under-nutrition in urban areas is worse than in the rural areas. Reach and utilisation of essential preventive health services by the urban poor is generally found to be very low and about 60 per cent of the children below one year of age are not fully immunized.
In addition to the above mentioned problems pertaining to urban and social services, there are serious gaps in the availability of infrastructure facilities in urban areas. Roads are getting congested with more and more new vehicles getting registered every day and parking has become a serious problem in most urban areas. Solid waste management is also a serious problem in the country, particularly in the cities. Safe disposal of the solid waste in a scientific manner is a major issue in Indian cities and towns. With over 350 million people living in urban areas and generating millions of tonnes of garbage every day, without proper arrangements for safe disposal of the garbage serious problem of water contamination and environment pollution is on the anvil. The problem is worst in the areas inhabited by the poor and in the slums. So urbanization in India did more evil than good. Considering the migrants Ashis Nandy says that If one happens to be a first-generation migrant to the city, one is bound to look back nostalgically on the life and social ties he/she has left behind, and seeks the old sense of belonging.

Third concern, since the 1830s, the Indian middle class has been consistently exposed to a form of modern education that has underwritten a global hierarchy of cultures. Over 150 years they have come to believe that western societies are modern and Indian society is premodern and backward. Distinctions between westernisation and modernisation have not touched the bulk of western educated modern Indians, who are convinced that their future lies in being exactly like Europe and North America. Do not be taken in by radical rhetoric. If you examine where most of our Left and Swadeshiwallahs send their children to study, you will find remarkably little difference between them and other sections of the Indian bourgeoisie. Inevitably, modern Indians have come to live with a deep feeling of inadequacy. They seek parity, not with other Asian countries doing well, but with the West itself. Last year, a study found that Indians are the most nationalistic people in the world, overtaking countries like the US, Japan and Pakistan.This nationalism is propelled by a deep sense of inferiority.

The only set of political actors who have responded to these anxieties are the Hindu nationalists,( Hindu nationalism has been collectively referred to the expressions of social and political thought, based on the native spiritual and cultural traditions of historical India.) though their close competitors, the Islamic fundamentalists, too have come close to reacting to these anxieties. During the first 40 years of Indian independence, the electoral support base of the Hindu nationalists ranged between seven to nine percent approximately. It has expanded to more than 20 percent now. This support base is disproportionately higher among the urban middle classes and among educated, modern Indians. The support base of Hindu nationalism is more than 90 per cent. It is true that this base is unlikely to rise much further. But even this base goes a long way in Indian politics today, given the fragmented party space. The democratic process in India has brought close to power many social sectors that would not have dreamt of having access to power only 30 years ago. But in the process of creating a nation-state called India, this process has also ensured that those who are close to the Indian state also imbibe its global, homogenising message. Ashis Nandy says that if one wants to be successful as a nation-state in the global arena, one has to do to his/her cultural diversity, to the minorities, the forest dwellers and the tribes, what Europe and North America and Australia have done to theirs. According to him The Hindu nationalists seem well-equipped and well-qualified to do so.

Natural Selection and Cultural Rates of Change: A Summary

the following is a write up on 'Natural Selection and Cultural Rates of Change: A Summary' by Rini Thomas

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This paper is a summary of the essay ‘Natural Selection and Cultural Rates of Change’ by Deborah S, Rogers and Paul R. Ehrlich from the Department of Biological Sciences, Stanford University and was published by the National Academy of Sciences. The essay focuses on cultural evolution. It claims that a meaningful theory is not possible as it is understood that human beliefs and behaviours do not have patterns that can be predictable. But in the development of societies it is believed that patterns in cultural evolution do occur. This excerpt analyses how two sets of related cultural traits, one that is tested against the environment and the other not. The final outcome is how they both evolve at different rates among the same populous. Ultimately the analysis boils down to a point which indicates how cultural change like that of genetic evolution can follow theoretically derived patterns.

As stated earlier, scientific theory of cultural evolution is not possible as critiques of cultural evolution from the science domain object that analogies with genetic evolution do not hold. They also argue that culture is altered by a series of historical events. The way biologists have developed theoretical models to understand patterns in genetic evolution; certain theorists have tried it in cultural evolution as well. It refers to the change in the behaviour affected by transmission and innovation. But it does not still answer the question if it helps in comprehending the patterns through theoretical models. The next argument is, cultural characteristics that are tested against the environment evolve faster than that of characteristics that are not tested. Several examples are given to prove the same. But is it possible that this can be applied to cultural evolution? Human cultural groups, like genetic demes, live in different environments and have a high rate of within group exchange of traits but also have the potential for some exchange with other groups through migration and cultural borrowing.

In order to understand the traits of cultural evolution ten Polynesian island groups were studied. Polynesia is a useful model system for looking at cultural development because this region was originally colonized by one cultural group and then it set of to related islands. The traits were divided into functional and symbolic traits and through canoe designs it was analysed. The final outcome shows that the environmental characteristics are faster than the other ones and this is clearly depicted in Figure 1, 2 and 3. The results indicate that functional traits have changed at a slower rate than the symbolic traits. These results suggest that cultural changes are evolutionary and it happens through theoretical based patterns.

The methods that were chosen for this study; 1. Presence/Absence Data Matrix, 2. Jaccard Distance Matrices, 3. Mantel Test, 4. Sign Test, and 5. Wilcoxon Signed Ranks Randomization. These methods help in finding out the results that prove the thesis statement of the essay. This proves how cultural change like that of genetic evolution can follow theoretically derived patterns.

Reference

http://www.jstor.org/stable/25461249 Vol. 105, No. 9 (March 4, 2008) pp 3416 – 3420

Ideology in Michael Moore’s Documentary-Fahrenheit 9/11

the following is a write up on 'Ideology in Michael Moore’s Documentary-Fahrenheit 9/11' by Farah Aleem Ghori

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Fahrenheit 9/11 is a documentary by Michael Moore. It deals with the assaults of 9/11 and the subsequent invasion and occupation of Iraq. This documentary shows the world the pitfalls of American political thinking. American politics reduce every political issue to psychoanalysis of individual motives, the politics of the individual and sociological discussions of racism.

This political documentary, released in 2004, serves as a treatise against the Bush administration. It highlights what Moore sees as governmental corruption and disinformation by the former president and his staff in the wake of the September 11, 2001, terrorism attacks, and in the lead up to the American invasion of Iraq. At the time of its release, Fahrenheit 9/11 was a critical success, sparking widespread debate about the United States’ involvement in Iraq and raising public outcry against Bush administration policies.

An ideology can be understood as a set of ideas that constitutes one's goals, expectations, and actions. An ideology can be a comprehensive vision, as a way of looking at things. The main purpose behind an ideology is to offer either change in society, or adherence to a set of ideals where conformity already exists, through a normative thought process.

Fahrenheit 9/11 is a film that politically attacks the President of the United States. The film started with the 2000 U.S.Presidential Elections wherein Bush “supposedly won” against Al Gore and moved forward to the 9/11 terrorist attacks and how Bush dealt with the war in Iraq. One can simply recognize the propaganda that Moore made. In order to be able to convince people watching, he made footages that made his arguments looked more persuasive. He described Bush as a President who spent most of his time on vacation.

Moore made an attempt to convince Americans that the current President is not doing his job and thus Bush and his administration was only deceiving the people. After the attack, he let the family of Osama Bin Laden leave the country and the investigations were delayed. The documentary then shows the initial reactions of Bush when he came to know about the attack. He is seen in Florida with the local school children. Innocent lives were not spared, several US soldiers died and their families were grieving but until this time Bin Laden was not caught. In general, Moore wanted to impart in his documentary film that Bush lacks political planning, cleverness, and interest to handle seriously his position. The main purpose behind conveying this ideology is to show Bush as an irresponsible president.

The Americans were grieving as well as the world when the 9/11 happened. Bush declared war against Bin Laden and attacked Afghanistan, his reason was the Taliban were protecting Bin Laden. Bush tried to warn the American to enjoy life but be very observant, the result was fear and unsecured environment. The information that he handed were all against Bush. Moore has not shown the real essence of the existence of Bush to the Americans.

One of the most powerful statement occurred in the documentary at the end, when Moore refers to the powers that keep the masses ignorant and apathetic. It is their ignorance and consent, which keeps the hierarchal nature of our society intact.

This can be seen in relation to Gramsci's notion of ideology hegemony. Ideology is here defined as "meaning making in the service of power". So hegemony is a way of meaning making that carries with it a politics of domination. It is the theory that the rulers of society maintain their rule by winning over the normal understandings held by the masses (i.e. in Fahrenheit 9/11the woman who responds to Lila Lipscomb's grief over the death of her son by telling her to blame "al quada" illustrates this).

Gramsci used the term hegemony to denote the predominance of one social class over others. This represents not only political and economic control, but also the ability of the dominant class to project its own way of seeing the world so that those who are subordinated by it accept it as 'common sense' and 'natural'. This film is full of emotional, documentary dramatics, is still a valid and intensely powerful piece of counter-hegemony.

Counter-hegemony refers to attempts to critique or dismantle hegemonic power. In other words, it is a confrontation and/or opposition to existing status quo and its legitimacy in politics. It can also be observed in various other spheres of life, such as history, media, music, etc. Neo-Gramscian theorist Nicola Pratt has described counter-hegemony as “a creation of an alternative hegemony on the terrain of civil society in preparation for political change”

The documentary critically looks at the presidency of George W. Bush, the War on Terror, and it coverage in the news media. It encourages people to share their view against hegemony through the use of persuasion and/or propaganda whilst raising awareness. It convincingly argues that the Bush administration manipulated the terrorist threat to foster fear among the American people and build support for an invasion of Iraq. The film provides us with an alternative hegemony to Bush in preparation for political change. Bush is shown as all powerful and also irresponsible. He is shown going for a holidaying after winning the election.

In addition, Moore provides viewers with the horrific war footage of Iraqis and American soldiers that have been missing from Pentagon-manipulated media coverage of the war. The face of war is not pretty, and Moore disturbs and challenges us with these images. Moore concludes his film by asserting that we should never again risk the lives of our young people in wars that are not essential for the country’s security.

Political ideology of Moore, Fahrenheit 9/11 does raise some troubling questions which should be part of the political discourse in a democracy which values free speech and artistic freedom. The movie ends with Bush’s paraphrased quote of “fool me once…” after which Moore quips, “For once we agreed.” As the Internet culture evolves, audiences are demanding the right to participate in media culture and are pulling together to produce answers and solutions. Fahrenheit 9/11 had a lasting effect on the social consciousness and led to a convergence of politically targeted documentary films.

Cultural Identity and Diaspora- Stuart Hall

the following write up on 'Cultural Identity and Diaspora' is by Inchara BR

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Stuart Hall beings his discussion on Cultural Identity and Diaspora with a discussion on the emerging new cinema in the Caribbean which is known as Third Cinema. This new form of cinema is considered as the visual representation of the Afro-Caribbean subjects- “blacks” of the diasporas of the west- the new post colonial subjects. Using this discussion as a starting point Hall addresses the issues of identity, cultural practices, and cultural production.

There is a new cinema emerging in the Caribbean known as the Third Cinema. It is considered as the visual representation of the Afro-Caribbean in the post colonial context. In this visual medium “Blacks” are represented as the new postcolonial subjects. In the context of cultural identity hall questions regarding the identity of this emerging new subjects. From where does he speak? Very often identity is represented as a finished product. Hall argues that instead of considering cultural identity as a finished product we should think of it a production which is never complete and is always in process.

He discusses two ways of reflecting on cultural identity. Firstly, identity understood as a collective, shared history among individuals affiliated by race or ethnicity that is considered to be fixed or stable. According to this understanding our cultural identity reflects the common historical experiences and shared cultural codes which provide us as “one people.” This is known as the oneness of cultural identity, beneath the shifting divisions and changes of our actual history. From the perspective of the Caribbean’s this would be the Caribbeanness of the black experience. This is the identity the Black diaspora must discover. This understanding did play a crucial role in the Negritude movements. It was a creative mode of representing the true identity of the marginalised people. Indeed this act of rediscovery has played crucial role in the emergence of many of the important social movements of our time like feminist, ani-colonial and anti-racist.

Stuart Hall also explores a second form of cultural identity that exist among the Caribbean, this is an identity understood as unstable, metamorphic, and even contradictory which signifies an identity marked by multiple points of similarities as well as differences. This cultural identity refers to “what they really are”, or rather “what they have become.” Without understanding this new identity one cannot speak of Caribbean identity as “one identity or on experience.” There are ruptures and discontinuities that constitute the Caribbean’s uniqueness. Based on this second understanding of identity as an unstable Hall discusses Caribbean cultural identity as one of heterogeneous composites. It is this second notion of identity that offers a proper understanding of the traumatic character of the colonial experience of the Caribbean people.

To explain the process of identity formation, Hall uses Derrida's theory ‘differance’ as support, and Hall sees the temporary positioning of identity as "strategic" and arbitrary. He then uses the three presences--African, European, and American--in the Caribbean to illustrate the idea of "traces" in our identity. A Caribbean experiences three kinds of cultural identities. Firstly, the cultural identity of the Africans which is considered as site of the repressed, secondly, the cultural identity of the Europeans which is the site of the colonialist, and thirdly, the cultural identity of the Americans which is a new world- a site of cultural confrontation. Thus the presence of these three cultural identities offers the possibility of creolization and points of new becoming. Finally, he defines the Caribbean identity as diaspora identity.

The Cornerstones: Marx and the Theory of Culture - Luke Ferretter

the following is a write up on 'The Cornerstones: Marx and the theory of Culture' by Josna Joseph

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Althusser is a Marxist Philosopher. Although he took a journey towards Marxism in his early works, but he began to think outside its frame of reference in his late works. In order to make sense of Althusser’s work we need to understand the basic elements of Marx’s thought.

Marx and Engels develop a systematic philosophy they call the ‘materialist conception of history’. The first premise of all human history, for Marx and Engels, is the existence of living human individuals. The first fact to be understood about these individual is that they find themselves. They distinguish themselves from other animals as soon as they begin to produce their means of subsistence out of the raw materials of nature. When men and women produce their means of subsistence in this way, according to Marx and Engels, they are indirectly producing their material life. According to this conception, a given society consists fundamentally of the forces and relations of production of its members’ material lives. Althusser intends correctly to expound is that the first and fundamental fact of human life is not at all human ideas, whether the idea of God, of man, of the good, or whatever. It is forces and relations of production into which men and women enter in order to maintain and develop their material lives. It is a person’s place in the system by which society produces the material conditions of the lives of its members and not any innate quality like humanity or personality which determines their life in every respect.

The second fundamental principle of the materialist conception of history, namely that the sum total of the force and relations of production in a given society constitutes its ‘base’ or ‘infrastructure’, which is its first and fundamental reality. Out of this economic base develops a ‘superstructure’, consisting of every other aspect of the life of that society. In the first place, the superstructure consists of the political and legal system, its judiciary, and its defence systems and so on. In the second place, it consists of all the forms of consciousness in whose terms the members of society understand and represent themselves to each other, namely legal and political theories, religion, art, literature and other kinds of cultural production. All these forms of consciousness comprise what Marx and Engels called ‘ideology’.

Since human history has always been the history of class struggles, ideology is a discourse of class interest, reflecting the positions of the antagonistic classes in society, especially that of the ruling class. The kind of literary and cultural criticism that follows from materialist conception of history, such as Althusser’s interprets the meaning that has produced it as such. Marx arrived at this materialist conception of history after an intellectual journey through the humanism that characterizes his early work, in which he describes the alienation of men and women from their humanity under capitalism, and their re-appropriation of this humanity under communism.

Masks of Conquests- Gauri Viswanathan

the following is a write up on 'Masks of Conquests' by Rinu Dina John

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Gauri Viswanathan’s Masks of Conquests is about the institution, practice, and ideology of English studies introduced in India under British colonial rule. It does not seek to be a comprehensive record of the history of English, nor does it even attempt to record, in minute historical fashion, the various educational decisions, acts, and resolutions that led to the institutionalization of English. The work draws upon the illuminating insight of Antonio Gramsci, writing on the relations of culture and power, that cultural domination works by consent and can (and often does) precede conquest by force. Power operated concurrently at two clearly distinguishable levels where, according to Gramsci, the supremacy of a social group manifests itself in two ways: firstly as ‘domination and secondly as ‘intellectual and moral leadership.’

This book sets out to demonstrate in part that the discipline of English came into its own in an age of colonialism, as well as to argue that no serious account of its growth and development can afford to ignore the imperial mission of educating and civilizing colonial subjects in the literature and thought of England, a mission that in the long run served to strengthen Western cultural hegemony in enormously complex ways.

The author has two general aims in writing this book. Firstly she studies the adaptation of the content of English literary education to the administrative and political imperatives of British rule; and secondly she examines the ways in which these imperatives in turn charged that content with a thoroughly changed significance, enabling the humanistic ideals of enlightenment to coexist with and indeed even support education for social and political control.

Among the several broad areas of emphases in this book the first and perhaps most important is that the history of English and that of Indian developments in the same areas are related but at the same time quite separate. The word separate indicates the gap between functions and uses of literary education in England and in India, despite the comparability of content at various points. One of the great contradictions in early nineteenth-century developments is uncovered at the level of comparison of the educational histories of England and India. With the educational context, one runs head on into the central paradox of British deliberations on the curriculum as prescribed for both England and India. While Englishmen of all ages could enjoy and appreciate exotic tales, romantic narrative, adventure stories, and mythological literature for their charm and even derive instruction from them, their colonial subjects were believed incapable of doing so because they lacked the prior mental and moral cultivation required for literature-especially their own-to have any instructive value for them.

The argument of this book leans toward the second proposition, specifically, that the introduction of English represented an tormented response to historical and political pressures: to tensions between the East India Company and the English Parliament, between Parliament and missionaries, between the East India Company and the Indian elite classes.

The book does not attempt to be a “definitive” study of English studies in India. It leaves aside many questions apart from those concerning the effects of literary instruction on individual Indians and the readings that educated Indians gave to the English texts they were taught

Dr. Pam's HRD Consulting: Grant for Institute and NGO

Dr. Pam's HRD Consulting: Grant for Institute and NGO

Department of Psychology, Periyar University, Salem -636011, Tamil Nadu, India.

Department of Psychology, Periyar University, Salem -636011, Tamil Nadu, India.

the Annual of Urdu Studies

the Annual of Urdu Studies

Full List - ALL TIME 100 Novels - TIME

Full List - ALL TIME 100 Novels - TIME

Capitalism for the Long Term - Harvard Business Review

Capitalism for the Long Term - Harvard Business Review

Harvard Business Review Case Studies, Articles, Books

Harvard Business Review Case Studies, Articles, Books

Scholarships - External

Scholarships - External