Derrida and Deconstruction

 Hello my dear friends !

I am Nidhi Jethava and a student of MK Bhavnagar University, department of English. As we know after completing a particular unit we have to do some thinking activity. So this time we have to do a very interesting activity. We have to briefly talk about deconstruction and deconstruct any advertisement, text, movie and serial. So let’s do it. 

Q. 1 What do you understand by 'Deconstruction'? 

Answer :- 

Before discussing Deconstruction it is very much needed to know who gave this term ? 

So it was Jacques Darrida who gave this theory of deconstruction. 

Jacques Derrida (/ˈdɛrɪdə/; French: [ʒak dɛʁida]; born Jackie Élie Derrida; 15 July 1930 – 9 October 2004), born in Algeria, was a French philosopher best known for developing a form of semiotic analysis known as deconstruction, which he analyzed in numerous texts, and developed in the context of phenomenology. He is one of the major figures associated with post-structuralism and postmodern philosophy.

Deconstruction :- 

So according to Derrida it is very difficult to give a particular definition of deconstruction. So many students are stuck between whether it is a negative trem or not but it is not a negative term. Derrida brought this term from Martin Heidegger. Heidegger wanted to 'dismantle' the entire tradition of Western philosophy by pursuing the question of being of beings. Darrida is highly influenced by Hedigger. He continues the tradition of western philosophy of Hedegger.

The very interesting is to understand what is DiffeAnce 

 

DiffeAnce = to differ + to defer 

DiffeAnce does not have audible difference, thus it becomes difficult to understand. For understanding this we have taken the example of ‘Dictionary’. So Darroda questioned, “ What do you mean by understanding ?’ and he gave some arguments. It is different as we differentiate a word from another to understand its meaning. We do not define, actually, we differentiate.It is different because the meaning is postponed - meaning is adjourned, put back.

It is difference + Deference. Derrida combines both words and coins a new word.

So in a nutshell Deconstruction is not a negative term. It is something that goes beyond what we think. It says that I do not believe in conventional meaning.

Here also we can see that it is idea against structuralism. Words are arbitrary and it has binary opposites like

Good-bad

man-woman

rich-poor

white-black

Some of the examples of deconstruct reading. 

First I would like to give an example of the recently released serial “Bade Achhe Lagte Hain.”  I have seen the promo of that serial and I tried to read that promo from my perspective.  

First I would like to give an example of the recently released serial “Bade Achhe Lagte Hain.”  I have seen the promo of that serial and I tried to read that promo from my perspective.  

So in this promo we find class conflict. It's another season of a popular series. It is one love story but what I have read is class conflict. Here we can see binary theory. Ex  Man/woman 

Rational/emotional

                            Rich/Poor 

Another important thing deconstructed here is our way of thinking that men should be rational and women emotional. This idea also crossed here. The Importance is given to rain.  How We are assuming rain. It's romantic and rainy which is connected with some privileges. Here rain is deconstructed. It is not only a beautiful thing. Poor people suffer a lot in the rainy season. 

     

Same theory we can see in this promo. Male and Rich are privileged while women and poverty are on the same side. So in this short video we saw this class conflict. 

 My second example is from one advertisement. 

So in this advertisement we can be aware about skin conflict. Mindset of black skin and Wight skin. Nor even in western but in India also mentality of white skin is there. Girl worried about her black skin color and she wanted to look fair. It's a traditional way of thinking that if a girl is fair enough only then she finds a good and rich husband. 

Another I would like to give example of movie ‘Bhuj’

This movie is about the war between India and Pakistan. But it also deconstructs the idea about women in India as well as every woman. Generally we think that women are like dolls. She can’t do labor or hard work. In this movie that tradition is broken. Gujarati women helped the Indian air force to reconstruct the runaway within 24 hours. 

Next is from Movie 'MIMI'

‘MIMI’ is a very interesting movie. It is the best example of deconstructing our conventions. This movie talks about one dancer named. ‘Mimi’ and she wanted to be an actress and for that she requires lakhs of rupees.  One American couple higer her as a surrogate mother. So here we found the deconstruction of a child born and at the climax we saw that an American couple ran away and Mimi had decided to give birth to them. She became the mother of white skin baby.  She loved him like her own baby. Then suddenly after four year an American couple came to India and claimed their child. At the end we come to know that an American couple adopted a child who has black skin and Indian. So this skin conflict is also there. Now we are becoming broad minded and accepting black skin. 

Thank You

Postcolonial Studies

 Hello everyone!

 In this blog I am going to summarize two articles about postcolonial studies. I am going to discuss the summary of two articles. One is about Conclusion: Globalization and the future of postcolonial studies and another one is Conclusion: The future of postcolonial studies. 

So, let’s discuss both the articles.

All we know is that the term postcolonialism is a very old term, and some critics might have said that now it is no necessity to talk about it but the dynamics of the term has changed nowadays. Now we have to look this term in different ways. 

1. CONCLUSION: GLOBALISATION AND THE FUTURE OF POSTCOLONIAL STUDIES. 

Both articles are taken from Ania Loomba. These articles are about impact postcolonialism in the 21st century. 

Article opens with the events of 11 September 2001, the so-called global war on terror, and the US of Afghanistan and Iraq, it is harder than ever to see our world as ‘postcolonial’. It is a series of bomb attacks on America. 

Article focuses on some important discussions like  Liberalization, Privatization and Globalization.  

 

⇛Some observations from the article :- 

• Michael Herdt and Antonio Negri’s 'Empire'.

• Arjun Appadurai’s Modernity at Large: cultural dimension of Globalisation  

• Simon Gikandi 

• Samuel Huntington ‘s rhetoric of clash civilization. 

• Joseph E. Stiglitz’s phase Market Fundamentalism.

• Nicanor Apaza’s  An Unemployment miner 

• P. Sainath’s And then there was the market.

• Niall Ferguson 

• NBA

• ACTA

Summary :- 

The article opens with the incident of 26/11. It is a series of bomb attacks on the twin towers. Then we move on to the discussion on ‘Empire’ by Michael Herdt and Antonio Negri. This ‘Empire’ argues that the contemporary global order has produced a new form of Sovereignty which should be called ‘Empire’ but which is best understood in contrast to European empires. 

“ In contrast to imperialism, Empire established no territorial center of power and does not rely on fixed boundaries or barries. It is a decentered and deterritorializing apparatus of rules that progressively incorporates the entire global reals within its open, expanding frontiers, Empire manages through modulating networks of command. The distinct blended in the imperial global rainbow.” 

Hardt and Negrt suggest that the new Empire is better compared to the Roman Empire rather than to European colonialism, since imperial Rome also loosely incorporated its subject states rather than controlling them directly. 

Next we turn toward ‘Cultural crisis’ and we have seen an example of ‘Modernity at Large’ by Arjun Appadurai . Simon Gikandi astutely observes that despite the fact that globalization is so often seen to have made redundant the term of postcolonial critique, newness of globalization, key terms of post colonial studies: hybridity and difference’.

One of the interesting things connected with it is ‘Market Fundamentalism.’ P. Sainath observes, far from fostering ideological openness, has resulted in its own fundamentalism, which then catalyzes other in reaction: 

“ Market Fundamentalism destroys more human lives than any other simply because it cuts across all national, cultural, geographic, religious and other boundaries. It’s as much at home in Moscow as in Mumbai or Minnesota. South Africa- whose advances in the early 1990s thrilled the world- moved swiftly from apartheid to neoliberalism. It sits in early Hindu, Islamic or Christian societies. And its fundamentalisms. Based on the premise that the market is the solution to all the problems of the human race, it is, too, a very religious fundamentalism. It has its own Gospel: The Gospel of St. Growth of St. Choice…” (2001:n.p.)

While discussing market fundamentalism we have also discussed Movie ‘ Reluctant Fundamentalism’. What is ‘Reluctant Fundamentalism’, so it is a Combo of Religious and market fundamentalism. The next description is also about how markets take out the world and concept of colonialism. 

Postcolonialist scholarship must engage with new socio-economic realities and thus, it is necessary to keep pace with newer developments 'without being in thrall to the cultural kaleidoscope of contemporary world capitalism'. None of the traditional or modern or post-modern conflicts in literature will help us in identifying this dynamics of 'Capitalist controlled Globalization'.

Some conflicts are

- Man vs Market Fundamentalism (which is even more dangerous than Religious Fundamentalisms)

-Man vs Nexus between Private Corporations and Democratically Elected Politicians

- Man vs Private Companies

-Man vs Multinational Companies (MNCs)

I would like to give some examples of movies connected with this literary conflict: 

Sonali cable  - conflict between a girl who runs local tv/internet cable service vs giant company 'Shining' which started providing broadband

Ghayal Once Again  Again - the conflict of younsters who witnessed Murder of RTI activist against multi-business owner Bansal (represents Ambanis)

Rang De Basanti  - A nexus  between politician and businessman vs young college boys (one them has to murder his own father who was corrupt businessman before murdering the politician)

Zee5 Original Web-movie ' Tigers' - based on a Pakistani salesman's conflict with giant MNC Nestle

Madaari - The conflict between common man (father whose child died in bridge crash) and nexus between construction company and politicians

Reluctant Fundamentalism - the conflict between market fundamentalism and religious fundamentalism in the aftermath of 9/11

Now it is time when postcolonialism have to think about globalization and at the end of the article we have several examples of ecocriticism. First one is about the NBD and the second is ACTA. So Behind ‘Narmada Bachao andolan’ we can see both the sides in Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh. So I would like to put here a video which is about NDA. 

Now let’s discuss ACTA. The American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) is an American non-profit organization whose stated mission is to "support liberal arts education, uphold high academic standards, safeguard the free exchange of ideas on campus, and ensure that the next generation receives a philosophically rich, high-quality college education at an affordable price." ACTA does so primarily by calling on trustees to take on a more assertive governing role.

In this article Niall Ferguson Suggests that the US must learn from Britain and send its best and brightest students from its leading universities on the imperial mission. 

One of the interesting things I have found is “ACTA had complained only that Shakespeare and Renaissance classes were being polluted by a focus on social issues such as poverty and sexuality( ACTA 1996). 

At the end of this article we come across with Edward said’ s Orientalism. This book is not simply to established the connection between scholarship and state power in the colonial period, but to indicate its afterlife in a ‘post-colonial’ global formation which the US at its epicenter. 

 “ The core premise of post-colonial theory is that it is immoral for a scholar to put his knowledge of foreign languages and cultures at service of American Power”.

2. CONCLUSION: THE FUTURE OF POSTCOLONIAL STUDIES. 

 This article begins with the claim of Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “‘no longer have a post-colonial perspective. I think postcolonial is the day before yester-day’ (Spivak 2013: 2).

Now it is time when postcolonial studies are very interested in ecology. Dipesh Chakrabarty finds that all his ‘readings in theories of globalization, Marxist analysis of capital, subaltern studies, and postcolonial criticism over the last twenty-five years’ have not prepared him for the task of analyzing the ‘planetary crisis of climate change’ (2009: 199).

Vandana Shiva has exposed the connection between colonialism and the destruction of environmental diversity. She argues that the growth

of capitalism, and now of trans-national corporations, exacerbated the dynamic begun under colonialism which has destroyed sustain-

able local cultures; these cultures were also more women-friendly,

partly because women’s work was so crucially tied to producing

food and fodder. Other feminist environmentalists are more sceptical

of such an assessment of pre-colonial cultures, which, they point

out, were also stratified and patriarchal; however, they agree that

questions of ecology and human culture are intricately linked.

Especially in the so-called third world, they state, one cannot talk

about saving the environment while ignoring the needs of human

lives and communities (Shiva 1988; Agarwal 1999).

So now it is time to think about ecology. It is about displacement. Humans become greedy and they constantly harm ecology. So in post colonial studies there is one concern about displacement and here is something about this term. So what is displacement ? 

“It is about losing a river. Losing access to clean, safe, drinking water…losing land that is watered richly…losing the grass that your herds grazed on. Losing your cattle. Losing the milk that came from your cattle…losing honey and herbs…losing the right to protest when somebody in a uniform shows up to set fire to your home. What else was left to lose?”

In our classroom discussion we have seen several examples which discuss the concern of ecology.  So let’s put some light on it.

1. Sherni by Amit Masurkar. 

 

This movie discusses how one tiger is stuck between that place where industrial development was grown up. The story goes like this tiger became the talk of town and politicians use this for upcoming elections. One forest officer called Vidhya tries to save a tiger and send them to a zoo and one professor helped her and at the climax of the movie we found that at the middle there is a mill. Tiger is not able to across it and that’s why she stuck.  

Second example is from movie Chakravyuh by Prakash Jha

Chakravyuh (transl. Wheel formation more idiomatically puzzle) is a 2012 Indian Hindi-language political action thriller film directed by Prakash Jha starring Arjun Rampal in the lead role with Abhay Deol, Esha Gupta, Manoj Bajpayee and Anjali Patil in supporting roles. Chakravyuh aims to be a social commentary on the issue of Naxalites. The first theatrical trailer of Chakravyuh was released at midnight on 16–17 August 2012. The film was released on Durga Puja.Chakravyuh released in 1100 cinemas in India. Despite being well-praised, the movie failed to attract an audience.

Third example was “Tatvamasi” by Dhruv Bhatt. 

When the book was written that time the NBD took a place. Dhruv Bhatt in his novel keeps silent about Narmada Bachao Andolan. It is one kind of escape from contemporary movement. It has also film adaptation but also producer did not mention about #NDA

 

There are several examples connected with Globalization and postcolonial studies and environmentalism and postcolonial studies.

1.  Globalization and postcolonial studies :

A. Nestle's Maggie ban in India - unhealthy food controversy

However, the controversy grew when the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) asked Nestle to recall Maggi Noodles. Nestle was left with no choice but to recall the popular snack from the market. ... Maggi's share in the Indian market went down from 80 per cent to zero. But later on India started to eat Meggie. This incident remind us that how Multinational companies rules over us.

B. Ban on Pepsi & Coke in India owing to pesticide issues

A court in southern India on Sept. 22 lifted a ban on the manufacture and sale of soft drinks by US giants Coca-Cola and Pepsi, amid claims that their beverages contained pesticides. The government in Kerala state had imposed the ban on August 11 after claims by a New Delhi-based environmental group, but the Kerala High Court ruled that the state government did not have the authority to do so. "The ban order issued by the state government was not within the legal powers that rest with the government. Thus we set aside the government order," chief justice V.K. Bali and justice M. Ramachandran said in their ruling.

Kerala to restrict use of groundwater by Pepsico; traders may ...

-Kerala to restrict use of groundwater by Pepsico; traders may stop sale of Pepsi, Coke. Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan welcomed the move of traders and said government would extend support to the initiative to check the threat to exploitation of water, pollution and lifestyle diseases.

Chardham Yatra project 

This project concerns the harm of the environment. 

SO these all are points which concern postcolonial studies. Now we have to think about ecology. Human has only one house for live and that is #EARTH. 

Thank You...

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