My Belgaum Journey: Absorptions from a Silent city

A journey reflecting imperfections ...

It is this Belgaum journey from 11th November 2012 to 12th November 2012, which made me realize that the beauty of life does not lie in being perfect but in realizing its imperfections each moment and in enjoying it. I may fondly call this aspiration as in an assertion ‘life is beautiful’. It may be the sum of my experience but realised by reading an autobiographical work ‘What I require from life’ by J.B.S.Haldane that triggered this thought in me.

Before delving further into the reflections on this thought, let me not kill the soul of this travelogue. My journey was full of surprises beginning with the punctuality and professionalism of Karnataka State Transport Corporation (KSRTC) service itself. Contray to my previous disastrous Multi-Axle Volvo Bus journeys in private travellers this service had kept its timings well within the schedule, of course giving passengers enough breaks in between. For the first time I slept more than 2 hours in a night journey in a Volvo Bus! When I woke up at 6 AM city outskirts appeared sleepy in fogs and thick mist but by the time I reached the city at 7 AM, it was full of fresh sunny rays and toilers all around.

I was accompanied by my Father in this journey, both of us being ardent followers of all flavours and varieties of teas all around the world. We went to a ‘Tea Bar’ just opposite to the KSRTC Belgaum Bus stand. Quite interestingly the tea was as good as in any top class restaurants. Its Elachi fragrance was very polished and refined. It was enough to compensate for all the lessened hours of sleep last night. With the help of the tea maker itself, we went in search of a lodge to refresh before venturing with the appointment.

We could see plenty of lodges all around. And randomly we picked one, though name was a suggestive. When we came out to the streets again we could see tender coconut sellers all around as in Bengaluru. And I was assigned the task of getting the delicious ‘Kunda’ sweets from Belgaum for my friends in office. I could see plenty of shops selling these sweets all around to my choice.

Before beginning this journey I had apprehensions that whether my Kannada will be an issue in this city. But it was never an issue. Our breakfast was coarse and fine Idli and a kind of sweet Sambar which made a good combination. Through out our commuting in the city we could see roads scarcely crowded and lanes devoid of much traffic. This could be because it was a public holiday here due to Diwali. Quite surprisingly even the Diwali firecrackers were not heard much all around the city. The fully covered Auto rickshaws and very minimal fares were another surprising feature of this city. And I could feel that this city was well managed with the proper man power of police force. May be this is a quite early observation.

Purchasing the ‘Kunda’ and some associated sweets we began our returning journey to Bengaluru. This time, the un-interrupting rain bid farewell to us with its nascent fragrance and soothing presence following us till the middle of our rail pathways. Even the cup of coffee in the railway platform was well beyond the taste of the coffees I had tasted anywhere in India. And the coffee maker was confident about it as well. Perhaps this confidence is the hallmark of this city which I could see in almost all the people from policeman to Auto-rikshaw driver. When I am penning down these words, our train has reached some unknown station. Like the city, the train is also very vacant, adding some more silence to my mind. And I realise this perpetual vein of silence and unpredictable rush of wilderness are all mere reflections of the worldly experiences I receive and reciprocate. Hence now I am cultivating a habit to live with these imperfections and waves of turbulences and exuberances without retreating to the aspirations of eternal tranquility… ‘Life IS beautiful’.

#Gokul

A Critique of Identity Politics

Exposing Identity Politics

Identity politics spells out various meanings. This convenience is used by different movements. It communicates something surreal yet ubiquitous in a society. It is used as a wrapper for many movements from its inception. Some treat it as a counter current for class politics; where as some others use it against nationalist politics. There are some others who consider it as a prelude to the class politics.  Beneath this polymorphic composition and ambiguity there lay vexed questions on the terrains of identity politics.

In the works of Michael Keith and Steven Pile [Politics and Spaces of identity], modernist identity politics have created a sort of essential-ism that rests on the exclusivity of certain norms. They allege that this sort of exclusivity and selectivity of modernist identity politics have made it very divisive. This was not congenial for working toward a multiple, pluralized yet still radical conceptualization of agency and identity.

We can see an array of works on the national identity discourses. It may tempt us to think that identity politics have superseded the national polity. Simon Bekker defines Identity politics as the search of reconciliation between nation building and demands by different citizens for recognition of communal identity. He goes on to say that identity politics has emerged as a primary challenge in many nation states. He accuses the national tendencies to achieve homogeneity as the primary reason for the unrest and ethnic conflicts. This conveniently ignores the external interventions that stir ethnic unrest.

Moreover, homogeneity is an apparent ideology resting on the ethos of cultural nationalism. In that sense, the attempt for a cultural homogeneity itself is an identity politics. Rashtriya Swyayamsevak Sangh (RSS) which preaches a ‘Hindutva India’ is one instant example for this. They are the ones who raise voice for uniform civil code and hegemony of Hinutva ideology.

Thus any attempt to unify the nation based on culture or religion or language devoid of considerations of productive forces and the social relations will become identity politics in reality. Stanford Encyclopedia highlights that identity politics strive to achieve a political freedom for a specific constituency of marginalized people. But this fails to explain the causes of marginalization. The awareness that only a particular constituency of people is marginalized is because of identity politics. It confines the perspective to specific identity ignoring the totality in exploitation.

In a market economy, if someone says that only tribes are marginalized, it is a cruelty to slum dwellers and the millions in the unorganized sector. The process of marginalization acts as a time warp for all those who labor  Only those outside the dominant mode of production will be in a perpetual state of marginalization. Detaching tribes from the dominant mode of production by way of identity politics will only worsen their plight.

The case of Narmada Bacho Andolan (NBA) is a grim example of identity politics. The apolitical struggle of environmental politics detached the struggling people from the political process and its dynamics. Their voices became unheard in the political ecosystem. What the identity politics has achieved in NBA is creating a perpetual apolitical site. This generates a question: who creates marginalization, NBA or National government?

Capitalism has evolved to become sustainable in ecology of unequal modes of production. It no longer standardizes the economy. As capitalism now thrives on the expanding market economy rather than nation states, it stimulates multiplicity of choices. It is in this focal point where the pluralism of identity politics and the market’s desire for multiple choices converge.

The question of identity rests on the epidemiological currents initiated by modernism. The essence of modernism lies in the characteristic methods of a discipline to criticize itself, not in order to subvert it, but to enrich it more firmly in its area of competence [Modernist Painting, Clement Greenberg]. Thus it inherits a tendency to criticize itself. As self-criticism is the organic element of Marxism, it is easy to draw parallel lines between Modernism and Marxism. The awareness of identity is a dialectical process between objective knowledge and subjective experience. Identity is a subjective knowledge of objective experience as well. It is rooted in both of them. Thus identity is the dialectical product of objectivity and subjectivity. Identity of identity is nothing but the labor process and life process. Hence identity is both reflexive and self critical in nature. With the progress of either objective knowledge or subjective experience identity undergoes transformation in form and content. This means that identity of a child born to a religious family undergoes change if he studies in a national institution and it changes further if goes on to work in a multi-national corporate organization.

Thus if class is the dynamic product of self in labour, identity is the transient process by which self changes. It is this volatility of identity that becomes the instrument of imperialism. It captures one by its fractured identity and tempts to organize based on it. Fractured identity and identity crisis can be rooted in both crisis in knowledge and crisis in experience. It implies a crisis in the criticism itself. It is this fractured identity or identity crisis that is being targeted by the architects of identity politics. These formations of identity groups are not self made always. Imperialism purchases the identity formations through various funding agencies. And using the power of money, imperialism exercises hegemony over the identity groups. And using this funded economy, identity groups will be integrated to the imperial market economy. Collectively, these preys can be named as social capital.

Novel writing and the Historicity beyond

Novel Typology through Historical Lenses

Points: Abstract Synthesis in writing novel.

Dilthey’s method was having traces of Kantian philosophy.

It showed a kind of inclination towards irrational-ism.

Hegelian influence in theory of novel:

1.     Mode of totality in epic and dramatic art. 

2.     One important legacy of Hegel is the historicisation of aesthetic categories. 

3.     Towards a general dialectic of literary genres. 

4.     Question of life & relation to essence in epics 

5.     World of platonic forms and methodological archetypes. 

Frederic Jameson on Georg Lukács:

• As a cultural object, Marxism returns itself against general activity in general to devalue it and lay bare its class privileges and the leisure which it presupposes for its enjoyment. 
• Hegelian Lukács of the Theory of the novel
• The chief conceptual opposition within which all of the examinations of literature have taken place is the famous Hegelian one of the concrete and abstract. 
• Epic, Tragedy and platonic philosophies. 
• Abstract idealism of Novel typology. How Don Quixote differs … Heroes of abstract idealism no longer find their justification in the moment of history, but increasingly to become arbitrary, mere grotesques. Here the external world is merely temporal. 
• Cases in Dickens, Balzac etc – we can see a sort of de-totalized totality. With Balzac novel of abstract idealism has exhausted as a form. 
• Novel of romantic disillusionment. Here the external world achieves temporal qualities. Flaubert’s ‘Education Sentimentale’. Here again novel achieves a sense of unity. 
• Goethe’s Wilhem Meister and in novels of Tolstoy – A third category of Synthesis type.
• Marx dissolved Hegelian series of ideal forms into empirical reality of History. 
• Trajectory from metaphysics to history in Lukacs.
• It is history rather than nature which constitutes the privileged object of human knowledge.
• Class consciousness is not so much an empirical and psychological phenomenon, or those collective manifestations explored by sociology.

Zizek and his constructs: A short annotation

In Zizek's terms, Leninism is a convenient praxis as a revolutionary sign for the contemporary micro-politics  Removing the crux of the scientific socialism posited by Lenin, he is signified as a mere priest with rhetoric merits. In his annotations, 'Revolution at the Gates', Zizek tries to create a contradiction alias wedge in Marxist theory by denoting Marx as a Euro-centrist based on his personal letters, at the same time not criticizing him for it, just like pardoning him off!

Zizek thus becomes a sublime example for the misinterpretations of epistemology for the deconstruction of Marxism. Marx and Freud are deconstructed using Lacanian framework to derive the new thesis of imperialism. Thus , interpolating ideology in the name of epistemology a new thesis of imperialism is born!.

Zizek uses Lacan who formulated psychoanalysis and hypothesized it into three orders :

Imaginary order, Symbolic order and the Order of the real;

Zizek uses the term, little Other and the big Other; This is nothing but an attempt to mystify the contours of subjectivity of modern psyche. Thus it is a post-structuralist attempt to create mechanical formal-isms within the contexts of subjectivity. Zizek goes further from Lacan who divulges in mechanical relativism of language systems and introduces the rhetoric of ambiguity in the linguistic terrains.

Zizek as the philosopher of the real: When all the philosophers tried to theorize the relation between Symbolic and the Imaginary, Zizek tried to find the relationship between the real and the symbolic.

He takes on Cartesian philosophy and tries to dissect the notion of 'Individual'. This is nothing but an attempt to germinate the thought even at the individual level.

Zizek, and his parallax view is nothing but the blatant negation of the dialectical logic.

Comparing Two Poets: Neruda & Yeats

Comparing Two Poets: Neruda & Yeats

Two greatest artists of 20^th century share a lot of immediate similarities.

It is Neruda (July 12, 1904–September 23, 1973) and Yeats (13 June 1865 - 28 January 1939). Both were recipients of Nobel Prize. Both of them held political positions. But Neruda could only live two more years after receiving the Nobel.

Yeats: A true National Poet

Yeats saw early half of 20^th century only, seeing two world wars and its reverberations on the Irish nationalism. He could see the imperial royal waves and decolonization spree that happened to British imperialism. But he was deeply affected by the drifting conscience of Irish nationalism alike the personal unfulfilled love towards Maud Gonne. He was influenced by all sorts of knowledge and philosophical systems in history. His sensibility was attuned by the intellectual beauty of womanhood and historical legacy of Ireland. His personal agonies accentuated his poetic sensibility towards a greater national consciousness. It stirred a new spirit in the national arena, inspiring contemporary artists and future ones to come. His poetry was the reflection of the Irish psyche eager to see the dawn of nationhood, above the clutches of British Empire.

Yeats drew energy from the pagan folklores and Gaelic myths. His imagery was full of Celtic threads and had a poetic vision in par with any great national poet. He sensed the troublesome future of nationhood. In the twilight of life he was attracted to the ideals of totalitarianism through Ezra Pound, but regained his senses and became attracted to the republican waves in Spain. He interacted with Neruda through letters about the Spanish Civil war and the dangers of fascism.

Though influenced by all sort of religious myths and philosophies when it came to the cause of nationalism, Yeats fought with Catholic Church for interfering with politics and stirring a divide between South and North Ireland regions. Thus Yeats saw a tumourous period of Irish history.

Thus national sovereignty and personal quest for love were two unflinching ends of a poetic beacon named W.B.Yeats.

Neruda: A true Working Class Poet for all the nations

For Neruda everything was lovable even when it is invisible and absent. He loved abundance of nature and sang like the ancient nomadic tribe free to wander the entire earth.  But he was devoid of any sort of wealth and was accompanied by stark wings of poverty. He had to embrace the wings of darkness to feel the depths of real women. But he epitomized women and craved for uniting with female soul, when he was in exile in Rangoon.  So Neruda started from null and void of nature and traveled through the Asian continent. He invented a new style in Spanish poetry with his The Twenty Love Poems. His poetry captured the attention of awakening Chile. He became a cultural diplomat of a continent rich with myths and human harmony with nature. Neruda was a human being his senses were awakened every time seeing the meta-narratives of life, be absence of love, despair for freedom, and greatness of Inca civilizations. His encounters in Spain with Lorca made his views truly revolutionary. 

May be we can say that for Yeats love and nationalism were inspired by the intellectual admiration for womanhood of Maud Gonne and this sense continued with Yeats till the end of his life. But for Neruda, he was more than a national poet who drew abstract energies from concrete beauty of life. He learned the beauty of things which have been shielded from him, yet he never gave up. He continued to see the matter of things from a labourer’s perspective.

If women’s beauty is not my personal asset, let it be a public asset. He praised women’s private body like the fertile and flowering nature. It was a really provocative and innovative approach.

This aesthetic sense is actually driven by the creative energies of modernist art. It made his poetry really surreal. When he wrote about Machu Picchu, he made the achievements of Inca civilization both aesthetic and poetic material. Thus we can say that Neruda used modernist methods of imagery he absorbed from French and African art in poetry with the best use of Spanish verse. He was influenced by the surrealist imagery of Lorca as well. The anarchist threshold of Lorca ignited Neruda to the pinnacles of poetic astuteness.  Neruda became more and more political and became more and more clear and sharp in his poetic approach.

This transition is not much visible in Yeats and but he continued to write in paganistic vein. His pessimistic melancholy has encompassed more and more humanscapes and became true emotive expressions of a national spirit to the Hegelian scales that Germany had seen in the advent of 20^th century.

So to summarise, we can see that Yeats and Neruda scene the deeper landscapes of human history, through different lenses. Yeats ignited poetry to the fiery ranges through conventional style and diction to depict the deplorable fate of imperialism and alienation of a lifelong lover of feminine energy and intellect. Neruda through the regenerating poetic brilliance spanning mythical human history and natural imagery in the surrealist realms draw a world of monumental scales that has universal reverberations.

@Gokul Alex

A Brief Film Review: Blue Angel by Joseph Von Strindberg

A movie shot in the Pre-World War period. This movie is known as the emblematic of Wiemar Germany. Joseph Von Strindberg is the director who was deeply influenced by the Hollywood film ideology and its apparatus.

Blue Angel is the story of an eccentric absent-minded professor marrying a destitute vagrant girl of a local cabaret. This turns his life totally. His life long suppression of his sexual desires manifest as a sort of adoration of her feminine skills. He forgets all his academic life and leaves it in a moment of humiliation by his students. The very students were the reason for his accidental visit to the cabaret. The vagrant girl is the headline of this cabaret. She is named ‘Lola Lola’.

The whole movie is taken in a working class township. From the discipline of the class room and monotony of Professor Rath, story progresses to the anarchist world of cabaret and low art. From an academician ‘Rath’ transforms into a weird clown in the company of destitute and flesh traders.

But ‘Lola Lola’ and her instincts remain the same; always she is attracted to new men. When Professor Rath meets Lola for the first time a clown is found roaming passively all over the cabaret. Fate of Professor turns out to be the same, but he has an societal ego influenced by  his education that resist the subjugation of his ego to her libido. She treats him like a slave.

Many a people find the elements of Jungian analytic psychology in this movie. There are some scenes where Prof: Rath shows gestures of a child in front of the charismatic Lola. It is sometimes denoted as the subjugation of his societal self to the intrinsic anima of his masculine psyche.

The film is a good composition of humor, tragedy and transient states of mind. The film set is full of stairs and narrow streets. Also we can see most of the events in the movie is shot inside various indoor locations.