Papers by Animesh Bag
Revolutionary women, body, and the limits of nationalist ideology in colonial Bengal: re-reading the memoirs of Bina Das and Kamala Dasgupta
Journal for Cultural Research, Taylor & Francis, 2024
This paper deals with the memoirs of two Bengali revolutionary women, Bina Das’ Srinkhal Jhankar ... more This paper deals with the memoirs of two Bengali revolutionary women, Bina Das’ Srinkhal Jhankar published in 1948, translated as Bina Das: A Memoir, and Kamala Dasgupta’s Rakter Akshare (Written in Blood) in 1954 to argue how their subjective desire and experience dismantle the gendered rhetoric of nationalism in colonial Bengal. The accounts of Bina and Kamala present their involvement in militant activism and subsequent imprisonment. Notably, there is an inherent urge in their writings to sacrifice life for the nation and a determination not to retreat from the torturous conditions of the colonial prison. The paper contends that the rhetoric of nationalism in colonial Bengal is embedded in hegemonic masculinity that initially confined women to the spiritual and domestic realm and later allowed them to be educated and modern without acknowledging their subjectivity. Activities of these political women thus destabilise the gender discourse prevalent in the private and public sphere of colonial society, which calls for a revision of the nationalist historiography. So, this essay will examine how tropes of the body, self-sacrifice, and penal experience, as produced in these memoirs, negotiate the nationalist ideology, subvert the binary of masculine and feminine, and establish their political subjectivity.
Sacral and Profane: Sacral Kingship, Society and Tamil Nationalism in The Cilappatikaram: A Tale of An Anklet
Indian Classical Literature Critical Essays, 2023
Modernism's Illegitimate Offspring: Genre Tropes, Detective Fiction, and Sharadindu Bandyopadhyay's "Byomkesh Bakshi Series"
Modernist Transitions Cultural Encounters between British and Bangla Modernist Fiction from 1910s to 1950s, 2023
Horror-(fic) Turn: Understanding Contemporary Horror Films (Issue 65), 2022
This Editorial looks into the idea of radical acceptance and how it is presented and conceptualis... more This Editorial looks into the idea of radical acceptance and how it is presented and conceptualised in contemporary horror films.
Dibrugarh University Journal of English Studies (DUJES), 2022
In the early twentieth century Bengal, a group of young artists called Kallol poets introduced mo... more In the early twentieth century Bengal, a group of young artists called Kallol poets introduced modernism in Bengali literature through their experimental writings, and called for a revision of the traditional spiritual idealism Tagore and others held so far. This generation of poets truly captures the essence of the time, its general mode of depression though they are in some way associated with Rabindranath either through their appreciation or negation. The poetry of Jibanananda Das along with Kavi Nazrul Islam who belongs to the Kallol era fundamentally departs from the Tagorean ideal of humanism and consolidates literary modernism in Bengal. Das’s poetry is sensuous, surreal filled with violent imagery, creaturely human/non-human relationships and especially death thoughts. It argues that the poet Jibanananda is difficult to detangle from the person Jibanananda as he had to go through poverty, loss, and existential dilemma. The paper, therefore, would attempt to explore the poetic self of Jibanananda inscribed in that modern chaotic time. How his complex, nihilistic poetic expression, the theme of despair, remorse, and death, which are characteristics of the modern poetry merging the personal and political, nature and culture, and worldly and metaphysical would be the main thrust of this paper.
জ্যোতিরাও ফুলে, যুক্তিবাদ, বর্ণ-চেতনা ও তাঁর ভাবদর্শন, 2022
এই প্রবন্ধটিতে আমরা উনবিংশ শতাব্দীতে ভারতের সামাজিক প্রেক্ষাপটে ফুলের শ্রেষ্ঠ রচনা গুলামগিরির বিশ... more এই প্রবন্ধটিতে আমরা উনবিংশ শতাব্দীতে ভারতের সামাজিক প্রেক্ষাপটে ফুলের শ্রেষ্ঠ রচনা গুলামগিরির বিশ্লেষণের মধ্যে দিয়ে তাঁর নির্মিত অব্রাহ্মণ গণ আন্দোলেনের আবহ ও ব্যাপ্তি ধরার চেষ্টা করব। কিভাবে তিনি মিথ ও ধর্মের যৌক্তিক খন্ডন ও সমাজ চেতনার দ্বারা জাতিপাতবিহীন এবং বর্ণ বিদ্বেষহীন সমাজের খসড়া রচনা করেছিলেন, অব্রাহ্মণ ভাবাদর্শ (ideology) নির্মাণ করেছিলেন সেটিও আমাদের আলোচনার প্রতিপাদ্য বিষয় হবে। সর্বোপরি কেন তাঁর আন্দোলন ব্যর্থ হয়ে পড়ে তার কারণ অনুসন্ধান করব।
Calcutta Comparatists 1919, 2021
Teaching English is not about delivering the same old notes years after a year or providing tasks... more Teaching English is not about delivering the same old notes years after a year or providing tasks to the student that are too easy and slapdash. It never intends to manage students, manipulates them, or creates make-believe situations as the dean of Pembroke, Paul Larson wants to. Probably it is truly suggested by the messy, somewhat unprofessional professor of modernist studies Bill Dobson played by Jay Duplass that English literature teaches us to be dissent, stimulates us to question every sphere of life, adds 'value' to the deceptive surface of reality. This is why Professor Dobson did not apologize or suppress students' voices even when he had been wrongly suspended. He adds at the end of the show, "To be an English teacher, you have to fall in love with stories, with literature. … The text is kind of a living thing. Sometimes you love a poem so much every time you read it you learn something new; you feel transformed by it." Literature is like the symbol of the giant whale in Moby Dick, that the show constantly refers to. It cannot be diminished by the managerial turn of the 21st century because it's always evolving as a discipline. Ji-Yoon Kim, the chair of the English department rightly mentions that a lot has happened in the past 30 years like affect theory, digital humanities, ecocriticism, new materialism, book history, development in gender studies, critical race theory, and so on. These critical theories posit further questions to our thinking, widens our approach to any text, and even turns upside down the critical theory itself. More importantly, the discipline provides tools to its students to deconstruct reality, thereby, always infused with the potent of resistance.
MIZORAM UNIVERSITY JOURNAL OF LITERATURE AND CULTURAL STUDIES, 2021
Horror focuses on the aesthetic and cathartic effect on
the reader/audience. It triggers our emot... more Horror focuses on the aesthetic and cathartic effect on
the reader/audience. It triggers our emotive experiences such
as fear, dread, anxiety and disgust. As a genre, it does not
follow a single, closed structure like other literary genres. Such
equivocacy facilitates horror a trope not to be conformed to
one particular ideology. It surprisingly comes with all or
nothing, maximum or minimal keeping the beholder guessing,
starling and leaving them bizarre and ambivalent. The desire
of the audience to stay connected or to feel as a part of the
film/show has always been kept in check. This experience of
association and engagement comes in the form of continual
disengagement here. The genre with its utter denial to be a
genre exposes our monotonous, structured way of
everydayness, challenges our rigorous narcissistic fixation and
throws us into chaotic, anarchical and nihilistic existence.
The recent escalation of horror in popular platform can
be called as revive and rediscovery of this art form. Now any
historian of this genre may claim that this is the golden age of
horror. But, my point of departure here is why there is suddenabundance of horror films and shows. Why are we fascinated
with ghost, monster, spirit, someone or something more than
mystery, magical and unknown? The easy answer is choice
and religious propaganda? This, I argue, is limited and too
fragile in understanding of the physio-psycho-cultural
conditions. The paper, therefore, would be a brief introduction
to explore the depth and possibility of horror as a genre vis-àvis a cultural and philosophical reading of the contemporary
horror films and shows.
Yearly Shakespeare Journal, 2021
Prison is the site of control, discipline and surveillance where every subject is
strictly regul... more Prison is the site of control, discipline and surveillance where every subject is
strictly regulated under the ‘carceral timespace’. Prison theatre acts like the refuge for them
bringing imagination, fantasy and hope into the iron fetters. Theatre and prison are,
therefore, antithetical in the sense of theatre being about self-expression, lively
performance, and creative imagination while prison is the ‘total institution’, a space of
exhaustion of human liberty and agency. Still, the long, rich history of prison theatre
project suggests to the success of art in a disciplinarian setting. Shakespeare Behind Bars
(SBB) is a prison theatre project founded and directed by Curt Tofteland brings the eternal
socio-cultural significance of Shakespeare’s The Tempest to the inmates of Luther Luckett
correctional complex and provide them a unique space where they can rethink over their
past events of life, wicked self, trials and so on. However, a regeneration through a drama
performance is almost unattainable as the process signifies rebirth, erasure of past self and
events that constructs an individual. The Shakespearean text undeniably has the potential
to produce much conflict and confrontation especially in such authoritarian space for its
own expository nature. But most studies on Shakespeare prison theatre have been
empirical and descriptive based on this assumption of a priori that the prisoner will be
heavily influenced by the programme. The paper, therefore, would try to investigate how
a theatre performance particularly the SBB project of The Tempest could offer a path of
self-discovery to the inmates. Why Shakespeare as a dramatist is so significant there? If
the production is the adaptation of The Tempest, does it bear a new interpretation of the
original text or simply the urtext is eventually assimilated in the process?
Print journal, 2018
The bricoleur … is the instruments he finds at his disposition around him, those which are alread... more The bricoleur … is the instruments he finds at his disposition around him, those which are already there … not hesitating to change them whenever it appears necessary, or to try several of them at once, even if their form and their origin are heterogenous-and so forth. All human beings are practicing historians. … We stress different events as having been decisive at different times in our life history, as we do so, we give those events new meanings. … We live our lives; we tell our stories. It is as natural as breathing. Conventionally history is deduced to be factual whereas literature is fictional. Historical representation appears authentic and immutable prior to the postmodernist who finds this foundational concept of history as an objective, empirical search of truth fallacious. Postmodernism whether it is in art, history or literature is marked by its denial of grand narratives as deployed since the Enlightenment. The postmodernist historical novel, which has endowed it with fresh nuances, calls for an analysis of the modes in which history is inscribed in fiction. These novels, contrary to the eighteenth and nineteenth century realist tradition question the conventions of narrative, of the inscribing of subjectivity and its textual identity and their implication in ideology. This paper focuses on Graham Swift's Waterland from the postmodernist perspective to explore the challenges and changes bestowed upon postmodernism since the rise of historical fiction. The article eventually presents how the novel problematizes the praxis of narrativity and fabulation, objects to the notion of history as a teleological progressive process and proclaims the shift of history from an empirical to ontological discourse.
The grail of subaltern studies is to retrieve the voices, enshrouded in the history being eradica... more The grail of subaltern studies is to retrieve the voices, enshrouded in the history being eradicated from the hegemonic social power system. A subaltern scholar propounds for those marginalized people who has been quieted and ostracized from the biased elitist history. On the other hand, feminism, a political manoeuvre is a stance towards gender bigotry and gender oppression. Therefore, these movements have a different historiography; while the former indulges in the discourse level; the latter seeks to change the reality and is itself an argumentation as well. My paper renders a feminist critique of subaltern studies mainly based on the argument of Spivak, by arraying the gender context in the subaltern fore, through a rereading of the play, Bayen (1997) of Mahasweta Devi. The play intends to probe a searching analysis of torture, pain, accusation and victimization of the gendered subaltern under the tutelage of witchcraft, showing their incapability of resistance and revelation. In this context, the article will also promulgate how Devi characterizes the tribal communities as the distressed denizen of India, exploited even in the twenty first century.
This paper will traverse on how Salman Rushdie's 2005 novel, Shalimar the Clown has unveiled poli... more This paper will traverse on how Salman Rushdie's 2005 novel, Shalimar the Clown has unveiled politics, Muslim jihadist, terrorism and Kashmir through a sprawling tale of love and revenge. This postcolonial novel debates India's state military presence, the neo-imperialist strategies of post-war US foreign policy, economic globalisation and resurgent separatist and terrorist movements with its effect on individual. The novel begins at the end, with the murder of the former American ambassador to India, Maxmilan Ophuls, now a counterterrorist expert, then introduces his murderer, Shalimar the clown, Kashmiri actor and acrobat-cum-terrorist, and Ophuls's illegitimate daughter - India, who draws the curtain to a conclusion as terror-filled and ambiguous. This tinsel and outrageous storyline hinges us with the unresolved issue of Kashmir, once a paradise, now becomes a land of evil extravaganza. The article, mainly, argues how Rushdie draws a transitional network of global violence, power-capital, Islamic terrorism and their regional and international impact on politics on a borderless canvas.
Books by Animesh Bag
The World of Amitav Ghosh: Blending aesthetics with politics
Prestige Books, New Delhi, 2020
This collection of scholarly essays explores Amitav Ghosh’s fiction and non-fiction theoretically... more This collection of scholarly essays explores Amitav Ghosh’s fiction and non-fiction theoretically keeping textual connections in central. Generically Ghosh’s narrative swings from realism to historical fiction to climate fiction. The volume includes his early novels to the recent publish, The Great Derangement. These incisive, insightful and highly argumentative articles upraise the concepts Ghosh’s fictions are deeply subscribed to: marginalization, agency, violence, hybrid language, home, migration and so on. But it never fails to recognize ‘in-betweenness’, key to Ghosh’s politics of writing. The book is indispensible for students, scholars and the general readers who share their interest in Ghosh study.
Book Reviews by Animesh Bag
Consortium: An International Journal of Literary and Cultural Studies; Volume 1, Issue 1, June 2021, 2021
At the end of Donald Trump’s presidentship, George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949)
which was... more At the end of Donald Trump’s presidentship, George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949)
which was published almost 70 years back suddenly became one of the best-selling novels in
the U.S. One could postulate that Trump’s various repressive racial policies, totalitarian
mindset, shared cultural insecurity of the Americans and Orwell’s broad minacious
dystopian vision were the reason behind this hasty popularity. This is the process, I think, by
which a book becomes canon by rediscovering its significance in every new ‘turn’ of history.
Dorothy M. Figueira’s Aryans, Jews, Brahmins: Theorizing Authority through Myths of Identity
although was first published in 2002, the book is in similar fashion more relevant at present
than ever before especially in the context of India. Why? I would provide an answer to this
statement at the end of my discussion.
Uploads
Papers by Animesh Bag
https://cafedissensus.com/2022/12/30/horror-fic-turn-understanding-contemporary-horror-films-issue-65/
the reader/audience. It triggers our emotive experiences such
as fear, dread, anxiety and disgust. As a genre, it does not
follow a single, closed structure like other literary genres. Such
equivocacy facilitates horror a trope not to be conformed to
one particular ideology. It surprisingly comes with all or
nothing, maximum or minimal keeping the beholder guessing,
starling and leaving them bizarre and ambivalent. The desire
of the audience to stay connected or to feel as a part of the
film/show has always been kept in check. This experience of
association and engagement comes in the form of continual
disengagement here. The genre with its utter denial to be a
genre exposes our monotonous, structured way of
everydayness, challenges our rigorous narcissistic fixation and
throws us into chaotic, anarchical and nihilistic existence.
The recent escalation of horror in popular platform can
be called as revive and rediscovery of this art form. Now any
historian of this genre may claim that this is the golden age of
horror. But, my point of departure here is why there is suddenabundance of horror films and shows. Why are we fascinated
with ghost, monster, spirit, someone or something more than
mystery, magical and unknown? The easy answer is choice
and religious propaganda? This, I argue, is limited and too
fragile in understanding of the physio-psycho-cultural
conditions. The paper, therefore, would be a brief introduction
to explore the depth and possibility of horror as a genre vis-àvis a cultural and philosophical reading of the contemporary
horror films and shows.
strictly regulated under the ‘carceral timespace’. Prison theatre acts like the refuge for them
bringing imagination, fantasy and hope into the iron fetters. Theatre and prison are,
therefore, antithetical in the sense of theatre being about self-expression, lively
performance, and creative imagination while prison is the ‘total institution’, a space of
exhaustion of human liberty and agency. Still, the long, rich history of prison theatre
project suggests to the success of art in a disciplinarian setting. Shakespeare Behind Bars
(SBB) is a prison theatre project founded and directed by Curt Tofteland brings the eternal
socio-cultural significance of Shakespeare’s The Tempest to the inmates of Luther Luckett
correctional complex and provide them a unique space where they can rethink over their
past events of life, wicked self, trials and so on. However, a regeneration through a drama
performance is almost unattainable as the process signifies rebirth, erasure of past self and
events that constructs an individual. The Shakespearean text undeniably has the potential
to produce much conflict and confrontation especially in such authoritarian space for its
own expository nature. But most studies on Shakespeare prison theatre have been
empirical and descriptive based on this assumption of a priori that the prisoner will be
heavily influenced by the programme. The paper, therefore, would try to investigate how
a theatre performance particularly the SBB project of The Tempest could offer a path of
self-discovery to the inmates. Why Shakespeare as a dramatist is so significant there? If
the production is the adaptation of The Tempest, does it bear a new interpretation of the
original text or simply the urtext is eventually assimilated in the process?
Books by Animesh Bag
Book Reviews by Animesh Bag
which was published almost 70 years back suddenly became one of the best-selling novels in
the U.S. One could postulate that Trump’s various repressive racial policies, totalitarian
mindset, shared cultural insecurity of the Americans and Orwell’s broad minacious
dystopian vision were the reason behind this hasty popularity. This is the process, I think, by
which a book becomes canon by rediscovering its significance in every new ‘turn’ of history.
Dorothy M. Figueira’s Aryans, Jews, Brahmins: Theorizing Authority through Myths of Identity
although was first published in 2002, the book is in similar fashion more relevant at present
than ever before especially in the context of India. Why? I would provide an answer to this
statement at the end of my discussion.
https://cafedissensus.com/2022/12/30/horror-fic-turn-understanding-contemporary-horror-films-issue-65/
the reader/audience. It triggers our emotive experiences such
as fear, dread, anxiety and disgust. As a genre, it does not
follow a single, closed structure like other literary genres. Such
equivocacy facilitates horror a trope not to be conformed to
one particular ideology. It surprisingly comes with all or
nothing, maximum or minimal keeping the beholder guessing,
starling and leaving them bizarre and ambivalent. The desire
of the audience to stay connected or to feel as a part of the
film/show has always been kept in check. This experience of
association and engagement comes in the form of continual
disengagement here. The genre with its utter denial to be a
genre exposes our monotonous, structured way of
everydayness, challenges our rigorous narcissistic fixation and
throws us into chaotic, anarchical and nihilistic existence.
The recent escalation of horror in popular platform can
be called as revive and rediscovery of this art form. Now any
historian of this genre may claim that this is the golden age of
horror. But, my point of departure here is why there is suddenabundance of horror films and shows. Why are we fascinated
with ghost, monster, spirit, someone or something more than
mystery, magical and unknown? The easy answer is choice
and religious propaganda? This, I argue, is limited and too
fragile in understanding of the physio-psycho-cultural
conditions. The paper, therefore, would be a brief introduction
to explore the depth and possibility of horror as a genre vis-àvis a cultural and philosophical reading of the contemporary
horror films and shows.
strictly regulated under the ‘carceral timespace’. Prison theatre acts like the refuge for them
bringing imagination, fantasy and hope into the iron fetters. Theatre and prison are,
therefore, antithetical in the sense of theatre being about self-expression, lively
performance, and creative imagination while prison is the ‘total institution’, a space of
exhaustion of human liberty and agency. Still, the long, rich history of prison theatre
project suggests to the success of art in a disciplinarian setting. Shakespeare Behind Bars
(SBB) is a prison theatre project founded and directed by Curt Tofteland brings the eternal
socio-cultural significance of Shakespeare’s The Tempest to the inmates of Luther Luckett
correctional complex and provide them a unique space where they can rethink over their
past events of life, wicked self, trials and so on. However, a regeneration through a drama
performance is almost unattainable as the process signifies rebirth, erasure of past self and
events that constructs an individual. The Shakespearean text undeniably has the potential
to produce much conflict and confrontation especially in such authoritarian space for its
own expository nature. But most studies on Shakespeare prison theatre have been
empirical and descriptive based on this assumption of a priori that the prisoner will be
heavily influenced by the programme. The paper, therefore, would try to investigate how
a theatre performance particularly the SBB project of The Tempest could offer a path of
self-discovery to the inmates. Why Shakespeare as a dramatist is so significant there? If
the production is the adaptation of The Tempest, does it bear a new interpretation of the
original text or simply the urtext is eventually assimilated in the process?
which was published almost 70 years back suddenly became one of the best-selling novels in
the U.S. One could postulate that Trump’s various repressive racial policies, totalitarian
mindset, shared cultural insecurity of the Americans and Orwell’s broad minacious
dystopian vision were the reason behind this hasty popularity. This is the process, I think, by
which a book becomes canon by rediscovering its significance in every new ‘turn’ of history.
Dorothy M. Figueira’s Aryans, Jews, Brahmins: Theorizing Authority through Myths of Identity
although was first published in 2002, the book is in similar fashion more relevant at present
than ever before especially in the context of India. Why? I would provide an answer to this
statement at the end of my discussion.