Editorial Publish the Proceedings of the Seminar
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contributors and paper presenters for their effort and to the UGC for the financial sanction to organise a national level event and also to Editorial publish the proceedings of the seminar. I am indebted to the Principal, SPU College and the members of the management committee for their untiring and generous support. Post modernism in literature is reflected in changing forms, themes – Dr. Gautam Sharma and the language adopted by contemporary authors who have chosen to look at reality around them with an unconventional eye. The traditional value systems are mocked at and the new values are celebrated in such literature. The philosophy of ‘Small is beautiful’ has come to be globally accepted and this has created greater spaces for the marginalised and minority voices. This trend has set in almost every sphere of life, literature and media. Fiction, cinema and the life of the youth are all swinging together to the voice of the changing times. Today what is funky is more popular than the formal. Things which were taboo a decade earlier, are creating the norm of the day. Concepts like lesbian and gay marriages, live-in relationship are now content of programmes in sociology and social research. In literary criticism the theory of post modernism has become an area of contestations and debates. Besides aesthetic and literary parameters, it has political overtones also. The creation of a unipolar world after the disintegration of erstwhile USSR has given a new face to the geo–polotical contours of the world. The balance of power has broken and a new world order has come into being. The philosophers of the new order have given rise to concepts which are full of controversy and deserve a lot of debate. Therefore, it was thought proper to have a discussion on this theme in a UGC sponsored National Seminar on “Postmodernism in Literature”. The present volume is a collection of research papers presented at the seminar. I hope this will prove useful to the aspiring scholars interested in contemporary society and literature. I am thankful to the Unraveling The Post-modernist Mosaic in Gelber’s Sleep 95 – Dr. Kalpana Purohit and Rakhi Vyas CONTENTS Exorcism of Illusion in Post Modern Literature – With Special 104 Page Reference to - Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia A Postmodern Reading of Orhan Pamuk’s My Name is 1 Woolf – Priyanka Jain Red – Vaibhav Shah Awareness of One’s being in Waiting for Godot 109 Alienation in the Novels of Anita Desai: Special Reference 9 – Vinu George and Richa Bohra to Fire on the Mountain – Dr. Kalpana Purohit and Postmodernism Floating on Silver Screeen – Pooja Rawal 117 Sunidhi Bissa Crisis in Modern Legal Thought and the Postmodern 123 Historicity in Girish Karnad’s Play Tughlaq 19 Expressions of its Reconstruction: Toward A Postmodern – Sulochana Choudhary Theory of Law – Gopal Krishna Sukhwal The Saga of Struggle and Survival: African-Americans in 27 Postmodernism in Indian Music & Movies – Some Essential 135 Alice Walker’s Novels – Niyatee Ayyar Aspects – Dr. Rashmi Rajpal Singh Voicing the Marginalised in Amitav Ghosh’s The Circle of 32 Sun and Sand in Anna Ram Sudama’s Novel Meve Ra Runkh Reason – Tamishra Swain – Dr. Tarana Parveen 146 Postmodernist Trends in Cinematic Version of Sharat Chandra’s 46 Tradition and Modernity in Rama Mehta’s Inside the Haveli Devdas – Manoj Kumar – Dr. Rekha Tiwari 152 A Struggle for Existence in Arun Joshi’s Fiction – Asha Arora 52 Postmodernism and Representation of Indian myths in Githa A Postmodernist Study : Image of Woman in Indian Cinema 62 Hariharan’s The Thousand Faces of Night – Divya Maheshwary – Gautam Sharma 163 Kamila Shamsie’s Burnt Shadows: Refracting the Shadows 66 Postmodern Feminism: The Emerging Role of New Woman with of Troubled History – Kiran Deep Special Reference to Shauna Singh Balwin’s What the Body Remembers– Manobi Bose Tagore and Shibani Banerjee 173 Postmodernism in Om Shanti Om – Rajnish Mishra 74 Interrogating Ideology, Power and Gender: A Postmodern A Satire on Politics and Prejudices : Mahesh Dattani’s Final 82 Critique of Selected Dalit Short Stories – Karan Singh 184 Solutions – Dr. Sonu Shiva and Prashant Yadav Interrogating the Pressures of Race and Gender : Jean Rhys’s A Cartographic Journey Unto Self - A Postmodernist View of 86 Wide Sargasso Sea – Usha Kunwar 195 The Shadow Lines – Manisha Sharma Our Contributors 203 Communalism and Other Issues in Mahesh Dattani’s Final 91 Solutions – Niranjan Gangwal Journal of Rajasthan Association for Studies in English 7:1-8 (2011) 2 Vaibhav Shah The designation “modern” does not refer to a period in history as much as to a constellation of positions (e.g., a rational demand for unity, certainty, universality, and ultimacy) and beliefs (e.g., the belief that words, ideas, and things are distinct entities; the belief that the world represents A Postmodern Reading of Orhan Pamuk’s a fixed object of analysis separate from forms of human discourse and My Name is Red cognitive representation; the belief that culture is subsequent to nature and that society is subsequent to the individual) (Stephen). Vaibhav Shah Modernism laments over fragmentation and chaos which is explicitly reflected in highly reflexive and discontinuous narratives of early 20th Postmodernism is one of the most discussed and disputed theories of century literature. The art movements like Impressionism, contemporary era. It has given rise to many controversial issues of Expressionism, Surrealism, Dadaism, and convoluted modern techniques today’s time. Many theorists and scholars have tried to define the term like Stream of Consciousness, imagist poetry, Symbolism made the in their own way but still there is a dissension among them. However, modern literature obscure and difficult to read. Postmodernism, Postmodernism is hard to define as it is not simply an age or movement undoubtedly, preserves the similar trends and characteristics but with a but set of ideas prevailed in the various disciplines of art like philosophy, different approach. To quote: literature, architecture etc. It has its roots in modernism which is as Depending on the artistic discipline, post-modernism is either a contentious as postmodernism itself. However, scholars believe that radicalization of the self-reflexive moment within modernism, a turning postmodernism is only a continuation of modernism and it can not be away from narrative and representation. And sometimes it is both. separated from modernism. To quote: (Encyclopaedia of Postmodernism, 121) A work can become modern only if it is first postmodern. Postmodernism Thus, Postmodernism also rejects the boundaries between high and thus understood is not modernism at its end but in the nascent state, and low culture, rigid genre distinctions, order in system and favours disorder, this state is constant. (Francois De La Roche foucauld) fragmentation, chaos, self-reflexivity and discontinuity in all fields. Thus, postmodernism can not be conceived of as an end of modernism However, as has been stated earlier, postmodernism differs from but rather a concept that is predominating the ‘modern’ age. modernism in its attitude toward a lot of these trends. Postmodernism Postmodernism can not be understood without first comprehending the perceives chaos and fragmentation from a different point of view. As term ‘modernism’ as most of the characteristics of both the terms are Mary klages points out: same but with different purpose and objectives. Modernism can be Many modernist works try to uphold the idea that works of art can provide seen as a revolution or reaction in art against traditional values and the unity, coherence, and meaning which has been lost in most of modern beliefs that dominated throughout the centuries. The age old structures life; art will do what other human institutions fail to do. Postmodernism, were pushed back to the periphery and superseded by the new in contrast, doesn’t lament the idea of fragmentation, provisionality, or incoherence, but rather celebrates that. The world is meaningless? Let’s approaches and applications. Objectivity was replaced by subjective not pretend that art can make meaning then, let’s just play with attitude; values were substituted by practical needs and, the distinction nonsense. (Mary Klages) between high and low culture was also diminished. Thus, as Stephen Daniel opines, Postmodernism does not mourn over disorder and chaos but takes it lightly and celebrates it. The play or function is more important than the A Postmodern Reading of Orhan Pamuk’s My Name is Red 34 Vaibhav Shah meaning or purpose in postmodernism. Hence, it is beyond any entertainment. Even serious literary works incorporate the genres which systematic pattern or structure. The lack of order, set patterns etc. were once considered pertaining to popular culture or fiction. A related leads to the incoherence, ambiguity, and simultaneity which can be phenomenon is the development of numerous hybrid genres that erode explicitly found in the various forms of postmodern techniques used in the distinctions, for instance, between literature and journalism, literature contemporary fiction. The elements like pastiche, parody, bricolage, irony and (auto) biography, and literature and history. Thus, Postmodernism play a significant role in constructing the postmodern art and literature. has vigorously affected the contemporary literature and all the traits of Postmodernism mark their presence explicitly or implicitly in it. The major characteristic of postmodernism, unlike modernism, is its perception of meta-narratives or grand stories. Jean-Francois Lyotard, Orhan Pamuk is one of the leading postmodern writers of the in his The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, sired the contemporary era. His novels are deeply imbued with the social, cultural term Metanarrative to define the grand stories in terms of postmodern and religious history of Turkey. A common theme in his novels has scenario. Lyotard argues that all aspects of modern societies rely on been that of cultural change.