Diaspora by Vijay Mishra in Diasporic Imaginary 

The Literature of the Indian Diaspora 

Vijay Mishra in Diaspora Imaginary, chapter from his much debated text The Literature of the Indian diaspora focuses on the nature of Indian diaspora and the role of imagination in constituting the diasporic imaginary. Mishra deals with the idea of 'home' and 'homelands' by the memories of the diasporic experiences and a longing for returning home. The history of his shared past and memories cannot be erased from the mind of a diaspora community. Mishra focuses on the psychopathology aspects of diasporic experiences. He uses the term emergenery in its lacanian sense to mean that the homelands in the mind of an immigrant is a fantasy and a nation thing. The word 'imaginary' reminds us of Salman Rushdie's Imaginary Homelands (1992).

According to Vijay Mishra, all the diasporic people are unhappy because they are neither satisfied with their singular identity (non hyphenated identity) nor with their diasporic identity (hyfenated). They want to immigrate and at the same time longing for returning to their motherlands. They are in a flux. They suffer the fear of schiophonia that is the loss of the original communal identity and acquiring of a new communal identity. Vijay Mishra focuses on the distinguishing between the old and the new Indian diasporic people. The primary difference is the difference of the historical conditions that produces them. The old Indian produces against the background of colonization. The immigrants then tried to preserve the imagination of their homeland by the socio-cultural icons such as ganesh idol, copy of the Ramayan and old saree or other desi outfit, a photograph of an pilgrimage etc. In the age of postmodern and globalisation, homeland is now available in one's bedroom the electronic communication system has taken the mastery. Imagination places a secondary imagination in a new dimensional way.

When the longing for homecoming is not fulfilled, the homeland exists in the minds of the diasporas as an absence and the fact is that the diasporic experience reproduces an additional diasporic imaginaries such as the ocean of the communal utopias.

Diasporic Literature 

What is Diaspora?

Diaspora is a term used to describe the dispersion or scattering of a particular group of people, usually referring to a community that has been forced to leave its homeland due to political, economic, or social factors. The term is commonly used to refer to groups of people who share a common cultural or ethnic identity, such as African diaspora, Jewish diaspora, or Indian diaspora.

The term diaspora can also refer to the community of people who have migrated from their homeland to other parts of the world, often forming new communities that are connected to their original culture and traditions. These communities may maintain close ties with their homeland and often face challenges related to their identity and sense of belonging in their new surroundings.

Diaspora can also refer to the cultural and social movements that emerge from these dispersed communities, such as the development of new art, music, literature, and other forms of cultural expression. The term diaspora is often used in academic and cultural studies to explore the experiences and impact of diasporic communities on the world at large

 

Diaspora in Diaspora Imaginary 

In Vijay Mishra's book "The Diaspora Imaginary: Theorizing the Indian Diaspora," diaspora is defined as an imaginary construct that reflects the experiences of displacement, longing, and cultural hybridity that are common to many migrant communities. Mishra argues that diaspora is not simply a physical phenomenon, but also a cultural and imaginative one, shaped by the memories, aspirations, and cultural practices of displaced communities.

Mishra suggests that the diaspora imaginary is characterized by three key elements:

Disjuncture:-

Diaspora communities are often separated from their homeland and are forced to navigate new social, cultural, and political environments. This experience of disjuncture creates a sense of fragmentation and dislocation that shapes the diaspora imaginary.

Hybridity: 

Diaspora communities often exist in a state of cultural hybridity, where they must negotiate and blend their original cultural identity with the cultures and practices of their new surroundings. This experience of hybridity shapes the diaspora imaginary, which is marked by a sense of cultural diversity and multiplicity.

Longing: 

Diaspora communities often experience a profound sense of longing for their homeland, their cultural traditions, and their sense of identity. This sense of longing is an important aspect of the diaspora imaginary, as it reflects the emotional and psychological impact of displacement and cultural dislocation.

Overall, Mishra's concept of the diaspora imaginary is a way of understanding the cultural and imaginative aspects of diaspora communities, as well as the ways in which these communities navigate the challenges and opportunities of displacement and cultural hybridity. 

What is Nation?

Nation state is a type of state in which the cultural entity of a nation has become its political entity. In other words, in a nation state, the citizens have one nation identity cultural and linguistic homogeneity. for example in China 92% of the population is Han, in Bangladesh 98% of the population is Bengalee. The United Kingdom is an unusual example of nation state. 

The diasporic subjects, according to Mishra, are those who fear the communal  schizophonia and therefore depend on the diasporic imaginary. The diaspora communities are always haunted by the ghosts of the past and the nostalgic memories of this homeland. The formerly used to preserve the memories of home by preserving some cultural icons is a symbol of homeland attraction of the migrated people. In the postmodern context, that diasporic imaginary takes less crucial rule than what the diasporic people did in the past. In the age of hyper mobility and globalisation, diasporas are celebrated. A diasporic subject is always conscious in its ethnic identity. The national imaginary exists only as the unitary principles. One thinks in terms of one's racial, cultural and ethnic identity. The homing desire makes the diasporic imaginary crucial in forming communal solitary. For the Jews, the notion of Desh and homeland are quite different. The place they left for another one was their immediate homeland. As a result, their nationalism was diasporic nationalism. 

Impossible Mourning :-

In the introductory chapter of "Diasporic Imaginary", Vijay Mishra argues that the lost object 'homeland' assumes a fantastic form and impossible mourning for the loss of homeland. To illustrate he takes cue from Sigmund Freud to Derrida. Freud in his 1917 essay 'Mourning and Melancholia' argues that mourning is a conscious act. The mind can define lost object and the libido shifts from lost object to something else. Mourning emerges with the ego but Melancholia is a pathological condition. Sometimes we fail to define the loss of the object. As a result, the loss hangs on our unconscious like a shadow. Derrida by "Impossible Mourning" suggests that mourning is impossible simply because in mourning, the lost object is never present. As a result, the absence for the memory requires a play of absence. 

According to Vijay Mishra, diasporic mourning is impossible and it always turns to Melancholia. For the diasporic people, the 'desh' or homeland is always irreplaceable. The diasporic people do not want to replace their Homelands with the land of imagination (Videsh). They do not abide by the dictates of reason. They romanticize the lost homeland, otherwise the purity of the lost object will be lost.

Gender politics as a Literary Theory by Judith Butler 

Gender politics in Judith Butler's Book Gender Trouble

Judith Butler's path breaking book Gender Trouble heralded a new introspection into the notion of gender identity. In her preface to the Gender Troubles, after ten years of success of the book, she in a new way, produces theory and a brief note on gender and subjectivity. Butler introduces or takes up feminism concerned with women and feels an element of emancipation on lurking in the very concern of the subject of women. The very question arises who is this woman and what is it that actually makes a woman. If feminism's basic notion is taken into concern, a woman is necessary to be a female and the one who has been marginalised and oppressed by patriarchy. Judith Butler claims that there is essential bias in feminism concerned with a dual factor with 'man and woman' having through obliteration and the third factor that is the 'others.' Butler considers this stance taken as the feminism and another form of exploitation whereas the third factor is recognised at all. Feminism's concern with women as the second sex or the second gender, too is not very appropriate. 

Gender Politics as a Literary Theory by Judith Butler 

Gender politics and Gender Trouble

Regarding this dichotomy between male and female, Butler claims that unlike in the statements that one is born with sex but assumes a gender because gender is culturally constructed. Judith Butler states that sex, too is culturally constructed. Like the gender, sex, according to her, is that factor which counts out of representation. According to her, sex does not precede identity, instead it is one's urge to be identified in a particular way. Sexuality is cultured for it is how a person identifies oneself. The moment a person is born, the space with surrounded of a being in forms the way with its identity. Here the first factor becomes the seats which signifies the biological aspect which gain the significance of maleness and femaleness. Here Butler provides an example in a manner that in case of a lesbian relationship when two women start a family of their own and move up on parenting, then one behaves like a dad and the other as mom. Here he shows how subject and adhere implication not to a particular gender but for his identification. Butler takes up this process of representation and this urge that any of the two poles of sexual identification privilege heterosexuality (predominantly taken to be normative.) 

Performance is very powerful act and the understanding of Butler has myth of identification, especially on dimension of sexuality. we are exactly what we wish to be. This thought brings zizek's notion whereby we believe that we look at the mirror but the image that we look at is actually what we form in our mind. Hear it must be said that this performance is not thoroughly what the person performed but the identity gets its 'reception'.

Gender politics

Gender politics refers to the political and social issues related to gender, particularly the ways in which gender shapes and is shaped by political and social structures, policies, and attitudes. This can include topics such as gender inequality, gender-based violence, reproductive rights, gender identity and expression, and discrimination based on gender.

Gender politics can play out in various spheres of life, including the workplace, education, healthcare, media, and government. It can also intersect with other social and political issues such as race, sexuality, and class.

There are different perspectives on gender politics, with some advocating for greater equality and recognition of gender diversity, and others pushing back against these changes. Debates and discussions around gender politics can be contentious, but they are important for promoting understanding and progress towards a more equitable and inclusive society.

Gender as Performative act

Butler's theory doesn't accept as stable and coherent, gender identity. According to Butler in Gender Trouble,  Gender is "a stylized repetition of acts... which are internally discontinuous... so that the appearance of substance is precious that a constructed identity, a performative accomplishment which the mundane social audience including the actors themselves, come to believe and perform in the mode of belief". To say that Gender is performative and gender is "the real only to the extent that it is performed." Butler argues that "the act that one does, the act that one performs is, in a sense, an act that has been going on before one arrived on the scene." [Gender Trouble] Butler criticizes that one of the central assumptions of feminist theory is that there exists an identity and a subject that requires representation in politics and language.

Judith Butler in an attempt to break free from your traditionally construct identity makes cope for legitimising minority expression and behavioural practices. Heterosexuality, in a  normative form, was done in a way and she questioned the framework of The Identity of the gender function. Her study itself based on psychological criticism, poststructural criticism, monolithic structure of society and gender. Gender is basically one certain to reach into 'a desirous status'. However Butler believes within gender can be coursed with reorienting normative sexuality at whole. But there should be a scope for cohabitation for different sexual practices and gender bending in discourse. 

Traditional Feminism and Butler's Philosophy 

Examining the work of the philosophers Simone de Beauvoir and Lui Irigaray, Butler explores the relationship between power and categories of sex and gender. For Beauvoir, women constitute lack against which main established their identity; for Irigaray, these dialectics belongs to 'signifying economy' that excludes the representation of women alltogether because it employs phallocentric language. Simone de Beauvoir's primary argument is that one is not born as a woman. It is society as a whole that produced the second sex. Motherhood leaves a woman helpless like an animal and make it possible for a man to dominate her. Both assume that there exists a female 'self identical being' in the need of representation and their argument hide the impossibility of being 'a gender' at all. Butler argues that gender is a performative act. In this way, Butler provides an opening for submersive action. A woman is not allowed to be brought up with the same freedom equality as a man does. Butler provides that in a lesbian relationship, one performs as a dad and another as mom, or one as Butch and another Femme. Butler argues that the false distinction introduces a split into the supposedly unified subject. Sexed bodies can not be signified without gender and the apparent existence of sex prior to discourse and cultural imposition is only an affect on the function of Gender.

 Carnivalesque by Mikhail Bakhtin

Carnivalesque by Mikhail Bakhtin as a Literary Theory 

Mikhail Bakhtin first coined the term'Carnivalesque'. The source of this term is Dostoevsky's Problems of Poetics and In Rabelis and his world. The term 'Carnivalesque' is used to refer to a particular literary mode that liberates the assumptions and dominant style of atmosphere to humour and chaos.

 Carnivalesque is related to feast of fools. It is a medieval festival held around the first of January consisting with the feast of circumcision where the performance of burlesques of the sacred ceremony was ensured. Bakhtin relates the Carnivalesque with a dialogue of Socrates and the legacy of menippean satire which the history of the serio-comic is derived. Carnival is a profane but burlesque is a grotesque.

 Through this term, we find that the term carnival means fair. The social hierarchy does not function. This is used in the novels and poems by Dostoevsky, a novelist. In Rabelis and his world, Mikhail Bakhtin finds this thing. Death is the greatest Carnivalesque where Social hierarchy does not function.

Mikhail Bakhtin's Four categories of Carnival 

Feast of Fools:- 

Feast of Fools is first originated in French cathedrian. In the USA, it is associated with the festival of Mardigras which is a catholic revolution traditionally festive drivers take place bhakti in refuses to compare the modern day Mardi grass festival with the mediaeval carnival because is basically is spectacle. But the medieval carnival was a powerful creative event involving most participant. Bakhtin makes this word in the Rabelai and his world.

 Carnival is a social discourse. Discourse is a whole modality of expression. In the case of carnival, quotidian  social hierarchies are dismentated and official solemnities and official etiquette is profaned. Instinct suppressed voices are brought to the forefront. In the case, fools become wise, king becomes begger. These heavenly become hellish  and the boundary between fact and fiction collapses. In that case, whatever is maintained in terms of sociology and considered highly opposite because hierarchy collapses the carnival. 

Bakhtin's Four categories of Carnival:-  

The Carnivalesque categories of the world are given below -

1) Familiar and free interaction between people:

carnival brings together people of diverse background and United them. It also encourages the unity of different classes of people.

2) Eccentric Behaviour:

This carnival emphasizes eccentric behaviour and it reveals one's natural attitude because unexpectable behaviour is welcomed before carnival. In other words, one's natural behaviour can be revealed without consequences.

3) Carnivalestic Misalliances:- 

the free and familiar attitude of the carnival enables everything which is normally seperated to connect - the sacred with the profane, the new and the old, the sacred with the profane.

4) Sacrilegious:- 

something which can cross the religious boundary. For Bakhtin, carnival was absolved of the need of punishment and sensual ritualistic performances were given the nod of consent.

Bakhtin states that carnival is confined in time, not in space. The carnival for Bakhtin is an event in which all rules, inhibitions, restrictions and regulations which determine the course of everyday life are suspended, and especially all form of hierarchy in society.

 Russian Formalism 

What is Russian Formalism?

Russian formalism is a school of literary criticism popular in Russia from 1910s to 1930s. The exponents of Russian formalism are victor Shklovsky, Roman Jacobson, Gregory Gukovsky, Boris Eickenbaum, Vladimir Propp. The term 'Russian Formalism' was first coined by the adversaries of the movement. 'Formalism' has come from 'ism' (theory) of form. It means the study of literary form. Viktor Shklovsky, Roman Jacobson revolustionized the literary criticism in Russia between 1914s and 1930s by establishing the specificity and autonomy of poetic language and literature. Russian formalism is distinctive for its emphasis on the functional role of literary devices and its original conception of literary history. Russian Formalists advocated a "scientific" method for studying poetic language, to the exclusion of traditional psychological and cultural-historical approaches. 

Russian Formalism exerted a major influence on thinkers like Mikhail Bakhtin and Yuri Lotman. According to Russian formalists, form is more important than the content (subject matter). Technique is more important than the subject matter. The use of technique in fiction and plays is more important than the theme of the plays or fictions. The battle of cry of Russian formalism was to delimit the literary scholarship from other disciples. The formalists focus on literariness of a text. 

Also Read:

Carnivalesque

What is Automalization? 

Automalization is the use of traditional techniques. It means that a traditional technique is used in novels and plays. That's why, a traditional technique is very common in all kinds of poetry and fictions.

What is Defamiliarization?

Viktor Shklovsky used the term in 'Art as Device'. Defamiliarization is the technique where familiar things are strange to us. If any familiar things become very difficult or unconventional, then it would be expected to be able for a good success.

Russian Formalism as a Literary Theory 

What is Laying Bare?

The formation of literature is hidden from the products the literary techniques are visible to readers we find the family are techniques in Bertolt Brechet's drama Mother Courage. Then the audience becomes concers of the message when a novel is different from others then the audience would focus on the novel.

What is Motif ?

Moti piece the smallest unit of literary text. In James Joyce's Arabia and J.M. Synge's Riders to the Sea, there are so many elements of motif. There are two types of motif - Bound Motif and Free Motif.

1) Bound Motif:-

Bound Motif is a motif that has a purpose. We see in J.M. Synge's Riders to the Sea that Bartley is going to the Galway Fair. Bartley and Galway Fair are the Bound motifs. Here is a purpose of giving these two names.

2) Free Motif:- 

Free Motif is not demanded by the text. The things or matters do not have any necessary in text. In many plays and novels there are many scenes that are interpolated and unnecessary. This is free Motif.

What is plot and story?

Plot (Mythos/Suzhet):- 

plot is the arrangement of incidents. In a drama, there are so many plots where incidents are sequentially arranged as the story goes forward. According to Aristotle, plot consists of free motives.

Story (Fabula):- 

Story is the raw material of a plot. A story goes with the demands of the necessary plot.

What is Carnivalesque?

Mikhail Bakhtin first coined the term'Carnivalesque'. The source of this term is Dostoevsky's Problems of Poetics and In Rabelis and his world. The term 'Carnivalesque' is used to refer to a particular literary mode that liberates the assumptions and dominant style of atmosphere to humour and chaos. Carnivalisk is related to feast of fools. It is a medieval festival held around the first of January consisting with the feast of circumcision where the performance of burlesques of the sacred ceremony was ensured. Through this term we find that the term carnival means fair. The social hierarchy does not function. This is used in the novels and poems by Dostoevsky, a novelist. In Rabelis and his world, Mikhail Bakhtin finds this thing. Death is the greatest Carnivalesque where Social hierarchy does not function.

Read in detail about Carnivalesque.

What is Chronotope?

Heteroglossey and chronotope are dealt with dialogic imagination. chronotope is the relation between the time and space. Everything exists within time and space. The chronotope between time and space are internally represented in language. According to Bhaktin, for the analysis of language, the ratio is the characteristic of the temporal and passional representation that language should be analysed. Time becomes the character and space becomes a background. The primary category of chronotope is time. The time and space are interrelated.

What is polyphony? 

Polyphony means 'multiple perspectives'. polyphony is the ingredient of dialogue and element of biology exam these are depicted with different point of view. In post modernist plays, novels and poems, there are polyphony.

What is Dialogism?

By dialogism backed means biologyic word that beards biology relation with other words of literature and other authors. In linguistics, dialogue is a means biologic relation of languages. According to Bhaktin, every language is used in dialogism. The use of language in such a way in which the characters and narrators are different they have their different will.

What is collective unconsciousness?

Carl Jung has coined and defined the term 'Collective unconsciousness'. It is a seat of primal memories to the human trees existing below each persons conscious mind.

The movie Avatar as a postcolonial study 

The movie Avatar as a postcolonial study

Avatar is a 2009 science fiction movie and it can be studied from postcolonial perspective. Avatar movie shows how humans who are supposed to be more powerful than the native people are trying to colonize the Navi people. The movie Avatar as a postcolonial study is profoundly holding the subjective form of colonization. The native who are colonized or have been colonized are still being dominated and manipulated through neo-colonization and neo-capitalisation.

The movie Avatar as a Postcolonial study 

Oscar awarded movie

Avatar movie plot overview

In 2154, the natural resources of the Earth have been depleted. The Resources Development Administration (RDA) mines the valuable mineral unobtanium on Pandora, a moon in the Alpha Centauri star system. The Na'vi people, 10-foot-tall, blue-skinned, sapient humanoids inhabit in Pandora whose atmosphere is gaseous. They live in happy harmony with nature. To explore Pandora, genetically matched human scientists use Na'vi-human hybrids called "avatars". Jake Sully who is a paraplegic marine is sent to Pandora to replace his deceased identical twin, who had signed up to be an operator. Avatar Program head Dr. Grace considers jake Sully incapable but accepts him as a bodyguard.

While escorting the avatars of Grace and Dr. Norm Spellman, Jake's avatar is attacked by Pandoran wildlife and he flees into the forest, where he is rescued by female Na'vi Neytiri, the heroine of the movie. Witnessing an auspicious sign, she takes him to her clan. Neytiri's mother Mo'at, the spiritual leader of the clan, orders her daughter to initiate Jake into their society. Colonel Miles Quaritch, head of RDA's security force, promises Jake that the company will restore the use of his legs if he provides information about the Na'vi and their gathering place, the giant Hometree, under which is a rich deposit of unobtanium. Learning of this, Grace transfers herself, Jake, and Norm to an outpost. Jake and Neytiri fall in love as Jake is initiated into the tribe. He and Neytiri choose each other as mates. When Jake attempts to disable a bulldozer which is threatening a sacred Na'vi site, Administrator Parker Selfridge orders Hometree destroyed. Despite Grace's argument that destroying Hometree could damage Pandora's biological neural network, Selfridge gives Jake and Grace one hour to convince the Na'vi to evacuate.

Jake confesses that he was a spy and the Na'vi take him and Grace captive. Quaritch's men destroy Hometree, killing many including Neytiri's father, the clan chief. Mo'at frees Jake and Grace, but they are detached from their avatars and imprisoned by Quaritch's forces. Pilot Trudy Chacón, disgusted by Quaritch's brutality, airlifts Jake, Grace, and Norm to Grace's outpost. Grace is shot during the escape. Jake regains the Na'vi's trust by connecting his mind to that of Toruk, a dragon-like creature feared and revered by the Na'vi. At the sacred Tree of Souls, Jake pleads with Mo'at to heal Grace. The clan attempts to transfer Grace into her avatar with the aid of the Tree of Souls but she dies. Supported by new chief Tsu'tey, Jake unites the clan, telling them to gather all the clans to battle the RDA. Quaritch organizes a strike against the Tree of Souls to demoralize the Na'vi. Jake prays to Na'vi deity Eywa via a neural connection with the Tree of Souls. Tsu'tey and Trudy are among the battle's heavy casualties.

The Na'vi are rescued when Pandoran wildlife unexpectedly join the attack and overwhelm the humans, which Neytiri interprets as Eywa answering Jake's prayer. Quaritch, wearing an AMP suit, escapes his crashed aircraft and breaks open the avatar link unit containing Jake's human body, exposing it to Pandora's poisonous atmosphere. As Quaritch prepares to slit Jake's avatar's throat, he is killed by Neytiri who saves Jake from suffocation, seeing his human form for the first time. With the exceptions of Jake, Norm, and a select few others, all humans are expelled from Pandora. Jake is permanently transferred into his avatar with the aid of the Tree of Souls.

Jake sully's Avatar and Navi woman Neytiri

Avatar can be studied as a postcolonial text

Avatar is a 2009 Oscar awarded Hollywood science fiction film. It took tremendous success because of its various dimensions from the perspective of postcolonialism and posthumanism. The term 'Avatar' has two connotations. In Bengali, the word avatar means a figure that is God's decent on earth as incarnation and the another meaning is that a creature that is completely different in characteristic traits, strange behaviour from rest of the society. The meanings of the word 'Avatar' reflect the re-examination on the postcolonial theory and its application to analyse the film in the era of Globalisation and multicultural politics. The essence of the film focuses on the identity Navi people who remain close to the native land and they are forced to be evicted from their land identity. The film hero Jake Sulley, a paraplegic marine takes the form of Avatar to be befriended with the Navi people. The critical lenses of postcolonial theory focuses on understanding how the mechanism of subject-production hs changed the geo-political present compared to the colonial past. The outsiders who come here learn from the natives (their lifestyle, culture, behaviour, customs, their way of living and so on). This colonial resistance is shown in the film. The clones are sent to the Navi people to teach them to be civilized. They are taught that humans are strong and civilized. The ethnic recognition or native recognition emphasizes the Navi people's way of living and culture. The third world postcolonialism is restructured and grouped in European enlightenment epistemology. This hollywood movie holds the epitome of the postcolonial essence. The postcolonial and the post humanistic elements are mingled in a new postmodern version where human dominated themes are emphasized. Excessive greed of humans on material by remaining disconnected to nature is pointed out in a broad sense.