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'Love' in Bengali Literature and Cinema

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'Love' in Bengali Literature and Cinema (Mis) Reading Romance: An Enquiry Concerning Representation of 'Love' in Bengali Literature and Cinema (Abstract of the PhD thesis submitted to Centre For The Study Of Culture & Society, Bangalore, affiliated to Manipal University) Abstract This research project is an enquiry into the cultural imagination of romance within a specified historical domain. The dissertation is a study of certain moments within the cultural history of Bengal when representational constructions of ‘romantic intimacy’ get meshed with other socio-political dimensions of modern Bengali subjectivity. I have chosen Bengali literature of the colonial period, especially of the late 19th and early 20th centuries and a specific genre of Bengali popular cinema of the post-colonial period, as two sites of enquiry into the cultural trajectory of romantic love. The argument shall chart this specific trajectory of the romantic imagination that is intimately linked to the substantive reformulation of cultural ‘identity’ in relation to the other socio-political parameters, which oversee the historically defined ‘identifications’ of the Bengali subject. My arguments demonstrate through illustrations from various literature and cinema, how such creative reconceptualizations in the field of romance enable the Bengali subject to gain a critical perspective on the very historical frameworks and social mandates that locate him within the aegis of modernity. Instead of tracing the linear evolution of Ideas of romance or sociological transformations within the community, my argument seeks to trace a series of significant moments which as products of creative imagination and representational work problematize the dominant ways in which the modern frameworks overseeing social life have been appropriated by the colonial and post-colonial subject. My investigation attempts to identify a specific cultural imagination that confronts the impingement of modernity on its own terms and effectively deflects its mandates thereby creating a rupture within its gaze, and correspondingly a split in the location of the historical subject. The dissertation begins by charting the specific scope and nature of my investigation and the particular notion of historical overview that animates my arguments. I proceed by locating the significant transformations in the colonial world afforded by the birth of the indigenous novel and the various consequences that the moment generates. The following discussion will focus on the ways in which the discursive conflicts operating in the colonial milieu negotiates the literary production of a new ‘interiority’. The argument traces the process through which such a productive articulation leads to a substantive reconstruction of social relationships through a reformulation of romantic desire as a form of private exchange. While the ongoing social discourses attempt to appropriate and neutralize the expressive charge of such cultural constructions, I show how another set of representational interventions seek to elaborate a new and distinctive dimensions of the same. Following from a discussion of literary works that mediate such reconstructions I arrive at the significant moment when a series of interventions by Rabindranath Tagore deflects the trajectory of romance towards an obtuse path. I shall discuss how in various phases of his literary work Tagore analyzed and reproduced ‘privacy’ as a substantive aspect of subjectivity and thereby redefined the meanings of modern romantic attachment. Through a further set of negotiations Tagore effectively produces a split in the self-articulation of the historical subject and elaborates a new idea of temporality enabling the subject to devise ways of inhabiting modernity without being wholly determined by its operational parameters. I shall argue how the critical distinction between ‘identity’ as an imaginative locus of habitation and ‘identification’ as a domain of structural mandates splits up the core of the historical subject thereby producing a reflexive perspective on modernity. Such a move builds on a sense of directionality and affords the subject a way out of the domain of colonial conflicts to produce a specific perspective for its post-colonial incarnation. Representational work by its very nature enables cultural effects beyond their own contexts, which go on to determine and validate many historical imaginations that are removed from its own context. With such historical movement and theoretical orientation in mind, the rest of the two chapters in the dissertation will try to arrive at an understanding of this post-colonial predicament through critical readings of the distinctive form of romance that characterizes this historical moment in the field of popular cinema. I shall elaborately discuss the production, evolution and reception of 50’s romantic socials emblematized by the star pair Uttam Kumar and Suchitra Sen, as a distinctive and significant form of regional romantic imagination. The discussion shall begin by charting the field of reception of ‘romantic socials’ where this new cultural object functions as a locus for reconstruction of a community network under the transformed socio-political conditions. The various public discourses around romantic desire and its value implicates the film romance within a set of ongoing conflicts and thereby uses the cultural object as a locus for redefining modern nexus of community values. The following discussion will focus in detail on the narrative elaboration of romantic aura and identify how such representational work again critically negotiates and consequently moves beyond the logic of various social processes that attempt to resist or appropriate its disruptive charge. I shall show how the new cinematic imagination not only produced a distinctive figuration of romantic desire within the domain of social and regional film history, but also how the shadow of a particular formulation of identity haunts such a figuration. I would argue that such specific figuration of desire signifies the attempt to chart new ways of belonging to the modern, new formulations of identity that foreclose itself out of the dominant ‘identifications’ constitutive of modern social habitation. Finally I contend that all these critical and creative moments of imagination marks various points in this specific trajectory of an intimate history of the Bengali subject, a history that uses creative energy to imagine a horizon of possibilities to critically inhabit modernity. Simultaneously all such moments would also produce a rupture into the ways in which dominant negotiations within the field of the modern attempt to appropriate the historical subject. SUBHAJIT CHATTERJEE (MIS) READING ROMANCE: AN ENQUIRY CONCERNING REPRESENTATION OF 'LOVE' IN BENGALI LITERATURE AND CINEMA Ph D. Thesis submitted to MANIPAL UNIVERSITY SUBHAJIT CHATTERJEE CENTRE FOR THE STUDY OF CULTURE & SOCIETY (Affiliated to Manipal University) BANGALORE- 560011 APRIL 2007 Bangalore 21 April 2007 Declaration I, Subhajit Chatterjee, do hereby declare that this thesis entitled (Mis)reading Romance: an Enquiry Concerning Representation of 'Love' in Bengali Literature and Cinema contains original research work done by me in fulfillment of the requirements for my PhD Degree in Cultural Studies from the Centre for the Study of Culture and Society and that this report has not previously formed the basis for the award of any degree or diploma in this or any other institution. This work has not been sent anywhere for publication or presentation purpose. Subhajit Chatterjee. Bangalore 21April 2007 Centre for the Study of Culture & Society (Affiliated to Manipal University) 466, 9th Cross, Madhavan Park Bangalore 560011. Certificate Certified that this thesis entitled (Mis)reading Romance: an Enquiry Concerning Representation of 'Love' in Bengali Literature and Cinema is a record of bonafide study and research carried out by Subhajit Chatterjee under my supervision and guidance. The report has not been submitted by him for any award of degree or diploma in this or in any other university. Dr. M. Madhava Prasad (Supervisor) Ashish Rajadhyaksha (Member, PhD Committee) Dr. Kakarala Sitharamam (Director) Dedicated to ------- all those encounters which made me reflect on the meanings of romance… Acknowledgements The intellectual and non-intellectual struggles that went into finishing the thesis draft need due acknowledgement as they have reconstituted my perceptions about life, people and of course academic work itself. The journey through and across troubled times and situations during these years have been rewarding in the end as it served to build a minimum conviction on my intellectual capacity. Numerous acknowledgements are due for people without whose human, intellectual and technical contribution this thesis would not have seen light of the day. First and foremost a huge and earnest thanks to my research guide M. Madhava Prasad for the patient and meticulous critical response to my writings and for helping me to concretize my developing ideas in a fairly comprehensible language and structure. Where I have failed to maintain clarity or technical competence the fault is entirely mine. Our interaction over years has made me appreciate his quality not only as an intellectual but also as an immensely generous and honest human being. I frankly admit that it is rare to come across a character of his integrity in everyday experience. I thank CSCS as an institute for giving me the opportunity to undertake the research project
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