Digital Humanities

#Thinking Activity: Digital Humanities


Hello readers!

    This is my blog on Digital humanities, it is an area of scholarly activity at the intersection of computing or digital technologies. It includes the systematic use of digital resources in the humanities, as well as the analysis of their application. 

Definition of Digital humanities

   A precise definition is difficult to pin down. At its core digital humanities is more akin to a common methodological outlook than an investment in any one specific set of texts or even technologies... Yet digital humanities is also a social undertaking. 

Thinking Activity : Technoculture, speed and Slow movement

Slow Movement

Slow Movement: A Cultural shift towards Slowing Down Life's Speed

Hello readers!

  Here is my task is that write a brief note by connecting all these Baudrillard ( Hyperreal, simulation and simulacra), Paul Virilio ( Dromology) and Ulrich Beck (Risk Society) and then about slow Movement, dots about the culture of speed and the need for the culture of Slow Movement Or Slow philosophy. So let's see....

   Before going on over all views, let's know some basic information about it, it is a cultural revolution against the notion that faster is always better. The slow philosophy is not about doing everything at a snail's pace. It's about seeking to do everything at the right speed. Savoring the hours and minutes rather than just counting them. Doing everything as well as possible, instead of as fast a possible. It's about quality over quantity in everything from work to food to parenting.

The World  Institute of Slowness

  Geir Berthelsen and his creation of The World Institute of Slowness presented a vision in 1999 for an entire " Slow plannet" And a need to teach the world the Way of slowness. The motto of the slow philosophy is- The fastest way to a good life is to slow down'. This website explain this philosophy in these term:

Why Slow? 

What it's all about? 

Slowness is a new way of thinking about time.. 

The vision of The World Institute of Slowness is to slow the world down to create healthier, happier and more productive people. 

Thinking Activity: Cultural Studies in practice: Frankenstien & Writer's Market

❂Frankenstien & Writer's Market 

Hello readers!

     This is my blog as a part of the thinking activity on cultural studies, practice in Frankenstien, the greatest horror story novel by Mary Shelley, in which we can also read this novel through the len of cultural studies.Here is my task is that write on Frankenpheme in contemporary Indian culture and Any popular artist/writer & his market(material condition).so let's see.....

 Frankenpheme in contemporary Indian Culture

   Marry Shelley's novel has morphed into countless forms in both highbrow and popular culture, including the visual arts, fiction and nonfiction, stage plays, film, television, advertising, clothing, jewelry, toys, key chains, coffee mugs, games, Halloween costumes, comic books, jokes, cartoons, pornography, academic study, fan clubs, web sites, and even food. Shelley's creation teaches us not to underestimate the power of youth culture.

  When we look at Frankenpheme in contemporary Indian Culture, then we came to know that it's play vital role or highly influence on Indian Culture, especially Bollywood play vital role than any Book. whenever Movie are release that movie highly influenced on culture like in advertisement, jewelry,toys, key chains, coffee mugs, cartoons, pornography, academic study,clothing etc.

Here, i would like to take one Indian movies, which is highly influence on Indian Culture especially in clothing Named "Bahubali-2"

 So After release of this movie there is a huge influence on culture especially in clothing, there is the business world connect the dots in between like Bhubali saree.

The hub of this bahubali sarees is Surat city.


# popular writer Amish Tripathi and his       market:

   India's literary popstar who dare to see the gods as mortal.

  Whith his debut bnovel immortals of Meluha, author Amish Tripathi fascinated some and intrigued many. And why should't he have.
      It isn't everyday that a IIM Kolkata graduate with a career in finance musters up the courage to translate his love for history, phlilosophy and mythology into a full-fledged career. Coupled with creative promotional strategies, the immortals of Meluha introduced many to the world of mysticism where Shiva was mere mortal couted among one of  country's most eminent storytellers today, Tripathi's shiva Trilogy is believed to be Indian's fastest selling book series in the history of Indian publishing.

 Above all these images we can surely said that his  marketing is at the top level in India

Thinking Activity : Cultural Studies in Practice: Hamlet and To His Coy Mistress

# Hamlet and To His Coy Mistress

Hello readers!

       this is my blog as a part of thinking activity to practice cultural studies through the play "Hamlet" by Shakespeare and  the poem "To His Coy Mistress" by Andrew Marvell.

       Any literary text , film, cartoons, magazines, clothing, music,game, Food, even in politics, we can find out some cultural aspects or it's influence, these all are not apart from culture but but vitally reflects some cultural aspects.so here i would like to took one literary text "Hamlet" to practice cultural studies, but sir has ask some particular Question of Hamlet like...

Hamlet

• If these two characters were marginalized in hamlet,they are even more so in Stoppard's handling.If Shakespeare marginalized the powerless in his own version of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern,Stoppard has marginalized us all in an era when - in the eyes of some- all of us are caught up in forces beyond our control.

       The approach of Shakespeare's Hamlet with a view to seeing POWER  relationship in its cultural context, and Veeser, Harold Aram, The New Historicism ' ...Credited the new historicists with dealing with questions of politics,power, indeed on all matters that deeply affect people's practical lives.'and this we can understand by it's two marginalized character Rosencrantz and Guildenstern

     There is two significance of the cultural study of two marginalized characters in 'Hamlet' is  that, one can get deeper insight into shakespeare's culture by thinking not about kings and princes but about the lesser persons caught up in the massive opposites. The poor and powerless are nothing but 'pawns' in the power conflicts of 'mighty opposites'.


Besides, all above the shakespeare's  perspective, one of the writer Tom Stoppard wrote the absurd play 'Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead' here Tom Stoppard alluded these marginalized characters  as they are archetypal human beings caught up on a ship-spaceship Earth for the twentieth or the twenty-first century -that leads nowhere, except to death, a death for person who are already dead

 # To His Coy Mistress

     The poem 'To His Coy Mistress' is written by Andrew Marvell, the major cultural concern in reading of this poem is that to study implied culture versus historical fact .

      As we know that the speaker is Knowledgeable about poems and conventions of classic Greek and Roman literature, about other conventions of love poetry, such as the courtly love conventions of medieval Europe, and about Biblical passages.

    We can also said that  the speaker, listener- like poet Andrew Marvell- are highly educated persons, those well read, whose natural flow of associated imges moves lightly over details and allusions that reflects who they are and expects listener/readers to respond in a kind of harmonic vibration, because the speaker thinks in terms of precious stones,of exotic and distant places, of a milieu where eating , drinking, and making merry seem to be an achievable way of life. 

   But,  when we are see through the angle of cultural studies of the poem 'To His Coy Mistress'  it's ignored some reality or real cultural aspects like ..

• It does not think of poverty, the demographics and socio-economics details of which would show how fortunate his circumstances are.
• It does not think of disease as a daily reality that he might face.
• It shows that wealth and leisure and sexual activity are his currency,his coin for present bliss.

There are some historical realities that the poem  ignored :

• Disease- real and present disease-what has been called the 'chronic morbidity' of the population
• Plague- more ominous,more wrenching, in its grasp of mind and body of the general population
• Syphilis and other sexualy transmitted disease were just as real a phenomenon in Marvell's day as in our era.

Thinking Activity on Feminism

# Feminism: Elaine Showalter and Gayatri Spivak 

Hello readers!

  this is my blog on the Feminism as a part of Cultural studies, there is Elaine and Gayatri Spivak two major contributor,Showalter is an American literary critic, feminist,and writer on culture and social issues. She is one of the founders of feminist literary criticism.while Gayatri Spivak is an Indian schoral feminist critic, who utilizes methods and approaches from Marxism, feminism and deconstruction.

About the author: Elaine Showalter :

      Elaine Showalter born January 21, 1941 is an American literary critic,feminist, and Writer on cultural and social issues.she is one of the founders of Feminist literary criticism in United states academia, developing the concept and practice of gynocritics.

        She is well known and respected in both academic and popular culture fields and also specialist in Victorian literature and the Fin-de-Siecle. Her most innovative work in this field is in madness and hysteria in literature, specially in Women's writing and in the portrayal of female characters.

   

Showalter's best known works are...

• Toward a Feminist poetics (1997)
• The Female Malady:Women,Madness, and English Culture(1985)
• Sexual Anarchy : Gender At Cultural  the Fin de Siecle (1990)
• Hystories : Hysterical Epidemic and Modern Media (1997)

          Showalter's book Inventing Herself (2001), a survey of feminist icon, seems to be the culmination of a long-time interest in communicating the importance of understanding feminist tradition. Showalter's early essays and editorial work in the late 1970s and the 1980s survey the history of the feminist tradition within the "wilderness" of literary theory and criticism

              Working in the field of feminist literary theory and criticism, which was just emerging as a serious scholarly pursuit in universities in the 1970s,  Showalter's writing reflects a conscious effort to convey the importance of mapping her discipline's past in order to both ground it in substantive theory, and amass a knowledge base that will be able to infrm a path for future feminism academic pursuit.

        Showalter  is concern by sterotype of feminism that see feminist critics as being 'obsessed with the phallus'. Another problem for showalter is the way in whick feminists turn away from theory as a result of the attitudes of some male academics.

#The Woman as Reader or feminist Critique 

        ' The way in which a female reader changes our apprehension of a given text, awakening it to the significance of its sexual codes' ;' subjects include the images and stereotypes of and misconceptions of literary phenomena'

        One of the problems of the feminist critique is that it is male-orientated. If we study stereotypes of women, the sexism of male critics, and the limited roles women play in literary history , we are learning what women have felt and experience,but only what men thought women should be.

#The Women as Writer or Gynocritics 

     Showalter coined the term 'gynocritics; to describe literary criticism based in a Feminine perspective.Probably the best desciption showalter gives of gynocritics is in Towards a Feminist Poetics:

          The program of gynocritics is to construct a female framework for the analysis of women's literature, to develop new models based on the study of female experience, rather than to adapt male models and theories, it's only intend to gender would lose its power, in which all texts would be sexless and equel , like angels"

        

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak

       Gayatri Spivak is an Indian scholar, literary theorist, and feminist critic. she is a Univesity Professor at Columbia University and a foundind member of the establishment's Institute for Comparative Literature and Society.
           A distinguished literary and cultural critic Gayatri Spivak utilizes method and approaches from Maexism, feminism and decostruction. Her work in postcolonial studies has great relevance to Cultural studies, especially those dealing with formerly colonized nations.
   

 

The term 'Subaltern'  Spivak borrows from the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci to signify the oppressed class. Spivak's well- known argument is that the subaltern cannot speak for him/herself because the very structure of colonial power preventing the speaking. For colonial Woman speaking is even more impossible because both colonialism and patriarchy ensure that she keeps quit. The subaltern cannot, therefore, represent herself. Spivak argues that the work of intellectuals is to make visible the position of the marginalized. The subaltern must be 'spoken for'.


Thank you....

Thinking Activity on Five types of Cultural Studies

FIVE TYPES OF CULTURAL STUDIES 

Hello readers !

In this thinking activity, i have supposed to write a paragraph on:

1.Your understanding of British Cultural Materialism,in your own Words.

2.What is contribution of Michel Foucault in New Historicism?

3.How can New Historicists help in answering the question raised against Laputa episode in Gulliver's Travels?

4.Examplify four types of analyses of popular culture.Apply it on popular artefacts.

5.Difference between modernism and postmodernism.If possible,give example also.

•  British Culture Materialism

         Cultural studies is referred to as " cultural materialism" in Britain, and it has a long tradition. In the later nineteenth century Mattew Arnold sought to redefine the "givens" of British Culture. To appreciate the importance of this revision of "culture" we must situate it within the controlling myth of social and political reality of the British Empire upon which the sun never set.Cultural materialism began in earnest in the 1950s with the work of F.R.Leavis. there is also improve the sensibilities of a wider range of readers than just the elite.

Althusser insisted that ideology was ultimately in control of the people.

Walter Benjamin attacked fascism by quetioning the value of what he called the "aura' of culture.

Lukacs developed what he called a "reflection theory"

• New Historicism 

        Michael Warner phrases new historicism's motto as, "The text is historical' and history is textual" New historicism concern itself with extraliterary matter- letterds, dairies, films, paintings, medical,treatises-looking to reveal opposing historical tensions in a text.New historians see such cross-culture phenomena as texts in themeselves. Bruce connects Gulliver's anxious fixation on the female body to the anxieties of his age involving the rise of science and the changing role of women.

• Four types of popular culture 

     There are four main types of popular culture analyses:

1. production analyses
2. textual analysis
3. audience analysis
4. historical analysis

   these approaches view culture as a narrative or story-telling process in which particular texts or cultural artifacts consciously or unconsciously link themselves to larger stories at play in the society.

• Difference between modernism and postmodernism     

 Postcolonialism refers to a historical phase undergone by Third World countries after the decline of colonialism: for example, when countries in Asia, Africa, Latin, America, and the Caribbean separated from the European empires and were left to rebuild themselves.
  Many Third World Writers focus on both colonialism and the changes created in a postcolonial culture. 

Thinking Activity on Culture and Anarchy

Culture and Anarchy (1869) - Matthew Arnold 

  Culture and Anarchy is a series of periodical essays by Matthew Arnold, first published in Cornhill Magazine 1867-68 and collected as a book in 1869. The preface was added in 1875.

 Arnold's famous piece of writing on Culture established his High Victorian culture agenda which remained dominant in debate the 1860s until the 1950s.

Culture and Anarchy, major work of criticism by Mthew Arnold, published in 1869. in it Arnold contrasts culture, which he defines as "the study of perfection,"with anarchy,the prevalent mood of England's then new democracy,which lacks standards and a sense of direction.

The published book on these essays in divided in following chapter:

Preface

Preamble.What is culture?

Chapter I Sweetness and light

Chapter II Doing as One Likes- Anachy

Chapter IV Barbarian, philistines, Populace

Chapter V Porro Unum est necessarium

Chapter VI Our Liberal Practitioners 

 here is my task to write key points of each chapter and what would i understand of this key points so let's discuss...

Chapter I : Sweetness and Light      

      Key Points 

• A study of perfection
• Harmonious perfection 
• General Perfection 
• Epictetus sing of aphuia      

    The pursuit of perfection, Then, is the pursuit of sweetness and Light. He who works for sweetness works in the end for light also; he who works for light works in he end for sweetness also.But he who works for sweetness and light united,works to make reason and the will of Good prevail.

Chapter II : Doing as one Likes - Anarchy 

      Key Points 

• Sweetness & Light
• Beauty
• Perfection
• Light- doing the right thing

    "Culture is ought to be the and pursuit of perfection; and that of perfection as perfection as pursued by culture, beauty and intelligence,or,in other words,sweetness and light,are the main character.

   "Doing as one Likes" means giving one the right to do as he /she want to do, But this access freedom can result in to indulgence,and anarchy may rear its ugly head.

Chapter III : Barbarians, Philistines, Populace

        Key Points 

• Image of three class 

1. The Barbarians - Aristocracy
2. The Philistines - Middle class
3. The Populace _- Working class 

• For Aristocratic class his views that this class lacks adequate courage for resistance.He cthe class The Barbarians. Because they believe in their personal individualism, Liberty and doing as one likes.
• The philistines are the middle class,according to Arnold By Philistine,in its orignal German sense is meant the uncultured people like most of the shop keepers.The Philistines are worldly -wise men, captains of industry busy in trade and commerce.
• The Populance are the Working class who help the empire builders in Arnold's parlance they are law and half- developed by the philistines and the Barbarians so long. Now there is a stir and an awakening among the populance the people of this class are becoming politically conscious and are coming out from the obseurities to assert.

Chapter IV : Hebraism and Hellenism 

          Key Points 

• Hebraism
• Hellenism

Hellenising : a more holistic, internal, intellectual transformation to see things "As they truly are"

Hellenism : Tendency towards action, fire,strict adherence to rules.

Thinking Activity on Cultural Studies

Cultural studies: Media,Power and Truly Educated Person

Hello readers !

          This is my blog as a part of thinking activity on cultural studies,which is the subject of our academic study,so here is my task is that, write on:

• What is Culture?
• What is Cultural Studies?
• Four Goals of Cultural studies.
• How is understanding 'Power' at the center of Cultural Studies?

What is Culture?

         To above the question,we can be gave answer in my ways but it is nearly impossible to define Cultural studies in definite terms.it is difficult because the concept of culture itself has been made ambiguous.The pendulum of the definition of culture ranges from Matthew Arnold's idea of " Perfecting what was best thought and said" .

       Much of the difficulty of understanding the concept of culture stems from the different usages of the tern as it was increasingly employed in the nineteenth century. Broadly speaking ,it was used in three ways. First,as exemplified in Matthew Arnold's Culture and Anarchy (1867),culture reffered to special intellectual or artistic endeavors or products,What today we might call "high culture"as opposed to "popular Culture".by this definition,only a portion-typically a small one-of any social goups "has"culture.this sense of culture is more closely related to aesthetics than to social science.

   
What is cultural studies ?

       " Cultural studies" is hard to define. cultural studies is not so much a discrete approach at all,but rather a set of practice.As Patrick Brantlinger has pointed out, cultural studies is not "a tightly coherent, unified movement with a fixed agenda,"but a"loosely coherent group of tendencies,issues,and questions" Arising from the social turmoil of the 1960s, Cultural studies is composed of elements of Marxism ,poststructuralism and postmodernism,feminism,gender studies,film theory, urban studies: those fields that concentrate on social and cultural forces that either create community or cause division and alienation.

Four goals of cultural studies

• First : Cultural studies transcends the confines of a particular discipline such as literary Criticism or History.
• Second : Cultural studies is politically engaged.
• Third : Cultural studies denies the separation of "high" and "Low" or elite and popular culture.
• forth : Cultural studies analyze not only the cultural work,but also the means of production.

How is understanding power 'power' at the center of Cultural studies ?

 As a cultural studies reads 'Power' with critical insights, it makes the students/ scholars 'politically incorrect'.This makes it difficult for CS to survive in the academia where 'political correct' and 'right-wingers' are in majority. However , it is but sure that the study of Cultural Studies in incomplete without the study of 'Power'.

First of all let's understand 'POWER'.   

  This Video help us to understand where power comes from,how it is exercised and how can one read and write power.

                         POWER n.

                         IS THE ABILITY TO

                         WHAT YOU WOLD 

                          HAVE THEM DO

   Six source of civic power

1. Physical force
2. Wealth
3. State Action
4. Social Norms
5. Ideas
6. Numbers

Here, i would like to mention one example, which can be connect with third type of  civic power State action . this is the use of loyal to compel people TO WHAT TO DO OR TO NOT DO CERTAIN THINGS. In democracy  people elect the government but, once after the election government have much more power over people like State action

      Abrogation of article 370 ,this is about acknowledges the special status of the state of Jammu and kashmir in terms of autonomy and its ability to formulate laws for the state's permanent residents.In the 1954 Presidential order, among other things,the Fundamental Rights in the Indian Constitution were made applicable to Kashmir with exceptions.

   Through this some opinion of  Kashmir citizen ,we can see the State Action. Not any amendment can be imposed without state assemble but political leader make people in swirl and confused what is going on and people also said that this is the unconstitutional. even people can not communicate with family members because of banned of Internet service. one of the Kashmir's student said that this is not the solution, even They are not take decision with agreement of citizen of Kashmir that means they only want to KASHMIR LAND not KASHMIRIAN. By this all we can transparently see the State Action power

Thank you !

3

Ecofeminism in Mass Media Imagery

#Reading Mass Media Imagery: Ecofeminism


Hello readers!

   Here, is my blog on Ecofeminism in Mass Media imagery, answer of the question which is given by Dr. Dilip Barad sir as a task:

* What do you understand by the theory of  'Ecocriticism'? 

* What is your understanding of       'Ecofeminism'? 

* Explain with the illustration. 

The theory of 'Ecocriticism'

     Ecocriticism is the study of literature and the environment from an interdisciplinary point of view, where literature scholars analyze texts that illustrate environmental concerns and examine the various ways  literature treats the subject of nature.

In simple words, "Ecocriticism is a study of the relationship between literature and physical environment."

#Ecofeminism:

              It is normal practice to associate female imagery wherever mass media deals with Nature. The mass media is all about popular, shallow and superficial human psychology. It deals with what is popular and at superficial shallow level of memory. At this conscious level of memory, people readily accepts imagery which are floating at upper surface of memory. That is the reason why nature is so easily and conveniently associated with female. Without any question, it is readily accepted by the people of all cultures. 

                      who will help us to critically examine this and similar mass media imagery where female is equated with nature.well let's quote Richard Kerridge at length to contextualize this hypothesis in proper theoretrical framework.

           " In 1974, an influential essay by sherry B.Ortner, 'Is Female to Male as Nature Is to Culture' ,sought to explain,in terms of structuralist anthropology, the presence in diverse cultures of the idea that women were subordinate to men. the underlying idea,ortner discover.is that woman is closer to nature.this helps to explain the acquiescence of women in their own subordination of nature. Beliefs that legitimate the oppression of women also legitimate environmental degradation. This is ecofeminism's key insight. Certain fundamental binary oppositions fit neatly over one another, creating the ideological basis for both sorts of harm:

                                        Male    |      Female

                                      Culture   |      Nature

                                   Reason     |      Emotion

                                     Mind      |       Body

                                             (Kerridge)   

                    

she further her questioning by asking : Why Is Woman Seen as Closer to Nature ?

In her own words:

The discussion on following arguments is based on universal human and cultural values:

1) Woman's physiology seen as closer to nature.

2)Woman's social role seen as closer to nature.

3)Woman's psyche seen as closer to nature.

Feminist environmental justice campaigners, such as Vandana Shiva' points out also that women and children are disproportionately vulnerable to environmental hazards. This particular ad makes use of both mother and child.