Why are We so Scared of Robots / AIs?

This blog task is published in response to an assigned task by Dr.Dilip Barad sir. While going through the topic of ‘Techno-culture and Risk’ with the reference of Ulrich beach and his thesis thesis ‘Risk Society- Towards a new Modernity (1992), we discussed the increased use of robots/ AIs in the world, how the robots/ Ais are demonstrated in Movies or in screens. Are they harmful or useful? And in this blog I am going to write about my understanding of Ulrich Beck's concept of techno culture and risk and Why we are so afraid of Robots/ AIs.

TECHNO-CULTURE AND RISK

We have been witnessing that today technology has been taking the place of humans in every sector whether in job or giving emotional support. Humans get tired, make mistakes and take holidays whereas technology/ robots don't need any of them. They can work day and night without any mistakes. Technology turns to be a one time investment while humans are to be salaried every month and technology produces double the man produce in lesser time without tantrums. And that's the reason technology is becoming an easy and preferable choice for everyone.

Ulrich Beck in his thesis has said that there is risk to every solution and it's a never ending cycle. Risks are potential disasters. E.g: mobile is a useful tool in the classroom to help students quickly search for answers or to have extra reading. To have a look at images it's a solution to a difficult learning process but it's a risk that if it's allowed students will misuse it and hence, it needs to be banned. We live in an increasingly technological world. ‘

Society is based on scarcity and removal of scarcity. We got rid of the scarcity of food as a solution to the green revolution, the use of pesticides and fertilisers increased for the more quantity of food but it resulted in a risk of health. The quantity of food increased but the quality of food decreased.

Technology/ computers came into existence because humans couldn't do multitasking. Mobile replaced the clock, torch, calculator, book etc many small things which are our regular needs. But now today technology is replacing humans which is again a risk for society. Also we are habituated to technology/ devices such a way that if it gets a virus or even a day we can't have it we become restless. It has become difficult to care for these devices since they contain all our personal data.

Risk and solution leading to other risks continues in the political world also. The party in power is not doing work. Citizens are not happy but the alternate party might or will do the same activities coming in power. We can say. Political party itself is a risk to democracy.

Thus techno-science reveals the risk involved in contaminated and other newer problems which were problems which were previously unknown, it also delivers information about these risks. Beck’s solution to the autopoietic risk culture is to find political potential outside government.

Why are We so Scared of Robots / AIs?

Technology is giving us solutions but with risk. And perhaps this idea is majorly illustrated in our literature, movies etc. Visit Dr. Dilip Barad sir’s on why are we so scared of Robots?

The first one is about babysitter robot who becomes so obsessed of the child that murders the murder.

The second one is on the iMom - Mom robot.

The third is on Satyajit Ray's short story 'Anukul' (1976) - directed by Sujoy Ghosh

These are three sci-fi short films we were assigned to watch. Further in this blog I will answer the question based on these films.

Oscar Schwartz in his Ted Talk on ‘Can Computers Write poetry?’ has given a wonderful insight that the computer, more or less, works like a mirror that reflects any idea of a human that we show it. And perhaps that can be one of the reasons why we are scared of AIs. We don't even trust ourselves or trust other humans and so we are afraid of humans' own reflection.

After watching all these short films I realised that robots work on algorithms. They do what is told to them, they don't have their own understanding or power of spontaneous thinking. They get programmed that he/ she is its owner or master and that programming makes them emotionally attached to their master and try to love their masters but when it comes to others or overcoming feelings they fail in it.

Satyajit Ray’s film very aptly takes a reference from Mahabharata, robot asks the questions which even confuses us and the ultimate answer what the protagonists gives is ‘heart gives us answer to differentiate between right and wrong’ and that is the thing that AIs don't have. For them their duties are their duty. AI understood Mahabharata as his master explained that whoever is against you stands for right and does what your instinct says and he killed masters Cousin.

We are finding humans in AI robots. The second short film about Imom aptly showed that human emotions cannot be found in AIs. Even a single malfunction can destroy a family. A mother in love called an infant a chicken and ordered Imom to cook chicken and it cooked a baby. AIs follow the order, don't think.

Since robots lack understanding, we tend to get unnerved. While safety systems are in place, we subconsciously fret that this isn't enough. What happens if the safety systems malfunction? As the robots get more capable, they also become more complex.

"The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race." 

-Stephen Hawking

We see the AIs/ Robots are villainous in all three short films. Same is also seen in Mary Shelly novel Frankenstein, The monster which is a form of robot created by humans, Victor Frankenstein is villainous. Villanising technology has been in fashion since this idea has come. Why? Perhaps as humans we are afraid that it will take our place in society, it will over power us.

While in the recent Bollywood Movies like Robot 2.0 and Ra. One we find the positive face of robots, they are not villainous and are portrayed as Saviour. Perhaps society is changing, their way of looking is changing. I personally feel that even if robots, AIs come into existence it won't be able to take humans' place so soon but for that human will have to keep their power over them or else they can enslave us.

I hope my blog is useful. Thanks for visiting.

Culture of Speed and Slow Movement Culture

Hello! This blog is written in response to a task assigned by Dr. Dilip Barad Sir. This blog deals with our understanding of Paul Virilio's Dromology - the study of Speed and the talk by Honore on Slow Movement. While going through Pramod K. Nayyar's text ‘An Introduction to Cultural Studies’ we came across Paul Virilio and his concept of Hyper-modernism. Discussing further sir also introduced a new concept of Slow Movement culture. Here I will exhibit my understanding about these two concepts.

The Culture of Speed and the counterculture of Slow Movement

Paul Virilio and Hyper-modernism/ The Culture of Speed

Dromology is derived from the Greek ‘dromos’: avenue or race course.

The literal meaning of Dromology is The science or logic of speed.

The theory of Dromology interprets the world and reality as a resultant of velocity. In Paul Virilio’s 1977 essay entitled Speed and Politics, the French philosopher makes a compelling case for an interpretation of history, politics and society in the context of speed. Virilio argues that speed became the sole agent and measure of progress.

He contends, that

“there was no ‘industrial revolution’, only ‘dromocratic revolution’; there is no democracy, only dromocracy; there is no strategy, only Dromology.”

Paul Virilio, 4 January 1932 – 10 September 2018, was a French cultural, theorist, urbanist, architect and aesthetic philosopher. He is best known for his writings about technology as it has developed in relation to speed and power, with diverse references to architecture, the arts, the city and the military.

Virilio’s work Dromology is an exciting reading of late 20th century cyberculture. It talks that with the advent of more technology and media, our lives are under constant surveillance.

• He argues that histories of socio- political institutions such as the military or even cultural movements demonstrate need for speed rather than commerce. He argues that politics should have relation with wealth but also with speed. Here the speed means the speed of social, cultural and economic growth of nation not of individual. He sees that speed belongs to the upper class of society and the lower are slower. The world in governed by speed and that’s increase in speed of transmission of information and messages/ news, transportation etc. but the bottom class of society are aloof of it which never grows the nation together with speech so the politics should speed up in joining the whole nation together only the upper class of society should not get all the speed or grow. We also witness that when the government works speedily it seems like it's never in favor of citizens.

• He gives the concept of ‘ Pure War’. Pure war is an invisible war that technology is waging against humanity. The main reason for pure war can be new information and technology wealth. Today we as humans are completely incomplete without technology, especially mobile phones. Our mobile phone consists of all our personal information and if it gets into the wrong hands we will be completely destroyed. This is an example on a personal level that a small technical device can destroy us. We also have an example of the 1987 stock market.

• Today speed and technology is replacing democratic participation and undermining politics. Effective media politics diminishes the space of democratic political participation. It says that today due to technology and fast transmission of news for example policies are passed so quickly that there's always absence of democratic participation which means it doesn't have a chance of discussion or debate which also says that everyone's vote for any decision is not taken. Recently we have faced such a situation on passing of farm Bills 2021, CAA 2019. In this process the basic rights of citizens are harmed.

• Virilio suggests that with contemporary technology, the world is growing like this one day the local time will be changed to global time. Whole world might be following one time. And it will be easier for dictators to ,telescope, rule the world, keep it under surveillance, every city from one place. We have got the glimpses of ‘Totalitarian world’ in George Orwell’s ‘Nineteen Eighty four’ but if technology will grow in same manner it will result into hyper-modernism and which will lend us to Globalitarianism, with advent of technology and globalization one can be under surveillance anywhere.

Today we are witnessing that the world is moving like a treadmill, the speed keeps on increasing. If we as humans won't be able to run on it with its speed we might fall and hurt ourselves.

Criticism of this treadmill world is a ‘Slow Movement’.

The counterculture of this culture of speed is culture of ‘Slow Movement.’

What is Slow Movement Culture?

The slow movement advocates a cultural shift toward slowing down life's pace. It is a cultural revolution against the notion that faster is always better. The Slow philosophy is not about doing everything at a snail's pace. It's about seeking to do everything at the right speed. Savoring the hours and minutes rather than just counting them. Doing everything as well as possible, instead of as fast as possible. It’s about quality over quantity in everything from work to food to parenting.

Geir Berthelsen and his creation of The World Institute of Slowness presented a vision in 1999 for an entire "slow planet" and a need to teach the world the way of slowness. Carl Honore’s 2004 book, In Praise of Slow, describes the slow movement.

Vision of world institute of slowness is-

A new way of thinking about time. Our aim is to slow the world down to create healthier, happier and more productive people.

“Don’t live life as if you’re afraid of being late to your own funeral”

-Geir Berthelsen, Founder The world Institute of slowness

Here is Carl Honore's Ted talk

As we also saw in the above discussion, the world is moving faster and humans need to run with it. And against this treadmill culture or roadrunner culture the new movement has come into existence and that is ‘Slow Movement Culture’. Slow here means a qualitative way of life, not a lazy or slothful life. The world is stuck in fast- forwardness, hyper-modernism and modernism. Humans are racing with clocks and we are obsessed with speed. We love boasting about our overnight reading and learning habits, we show- off our ability of multitasking. Good slow is, you know, taking the time to eat a meal with your family, with the TV switched off. Or taking the time to look at a problem from all angles in the office to make the best decision at work. Or even simply just taking the time to slow down and savor your life.

“how we try to make things better, what do we do? we do? No, we speed them up, don't we? So we used to dial; now we speed dial. We used to read; now we speed read. We used to walk; now we speed walk. And of course, we used to date and now we speed date. And even things that are by their very nature slow -- we try and speed them up too.” 

 - Carl Honore

Today we are living a fast life instead of a good life. We realize that we are lacking quality food and sleep when we fall ill, illness turns to be a wakeup call. "Time is money," as Benjamin Franklin said. We work as we don't have more time, on deadlines. But the reality is if we plan and schedule our work perhaps we will do more qualitative work in less time. Is it possible to be slow? And what will be the result? We will perhaps start losing the race! Or others will start overtaking us! But if the aim of life is quality, good life and slowing down will be a good step. Many have also started adapting it.

Recently in Italy they have begun the ‘Slow Food Movement’ which also spread across the world. They eat better; they make love better; they exercise better; they work better; they live better.

Even the children are running in this fast- paced world. They go to school, tuitions and extracurricular activities to sports and painting both types of activities. In this run they don't get a chance to know themselves, understand and think over. They are forced to run a race to which they are unknown.

“But why is it so hard to slow down? I think there are various reasons. One is that speed is fun, you know, speed is sexy. It's all that adrenaline rush. It's hard to give it up. I think there's a kind of metaphysical dimension -- that speed becomes a way of walling ourselves off from the bigger, deeper questions. We fill our head with distraction, with busyness, so that we don't have to ask, am I well? Am I happy? Are my children growing up right? Are politicians making good decisions on my behalf? Another reason -- although I think, perhaps, the most powerful reason -- why we find it hard to slow down is the cultural taboo that we've erected against slowing down. "Slow" is a dirty word in our culture. It's a byword for "lazy," "slacker," for being somebody who gives up. You know, "he's a bit slow." It's actually synonymous with being stupid.”

-Carol Honore

But this type of ideas can be adapted by the developed countries, countries which are economically, socially, culturally stable. Where there is no unemployment and everyone is capable of earning their own livelihood. E.g.- Finland, Sweden etc. the Third world countries, developing countries like India still have a long race to run, youth is unemployed, corruption is at stake. Before slowing down financial securities are necessary before slowing down.

Hope this blog is useful. Thanks for visiting

Cyberfeminism: Artificial Intelligence and the Unconscious Biases

Hello! This blog is written in response to a blog task by Dr. Dilip Barad Sir. This blog deals with the concept of cyber feminism. I have written a blog on Feminism also, CLICK HERE to read it. While reading about feminist theory we came across a new concept of Cyber- feminism and here I am reflecting my understanding on cyber feminism.

CYBER-FEMINISM

What is cyber- feminism?

Cyber- feminism is a feminist approach which foregrounds the relationship between cyberspace, the Internet, and technology.

Feminism is the advocacy of women's rights on the ground of the equality of the sexes. Feminists are trying and fighting for women equality in the society and culture. And in this we get a new concept of cyber feminism. The world is turning digital, technology is growing. We also see that today artificial intelligence (AI) is taking over human employment, their work and perhaps will be also considered as citizens soon.

But in this increased use of AI and technology we see a hope of an impartial world. Technology has no biases; it will work equally for everyone.AI is hoped and is thought to be bias free. But is it actually happening?

Is technology bias free? Is it racism and gender bias free?

What do cyber- feminists do?

The work of feminists interested in theorizing, critiquing, exploring and re-making the Internet, cyberspace and new-media technologies in general. We are in a world where people are judged, selected and selected based on their skin color, gender, background, past, body etc. so there is a hope that if AI will increase this bias will be strike out. But yet we find that AI is resulting or working differently based on gender, skin color etc. But if critics have to work on remaking technology then definitely there is some problem.

The term cyberfeminism was coined by VNS Matrix (read Venus Matrix), in 1980s by an Australian artist collective active between 1991 and 1997, who, inspired by Donna Haraway's A Cyborg Manifesto. This manifesto gave a concept that the internet is a revolutionary tool to overthrow patriarchy, destroy the existing gender binary and said internet to be a neutral place women need and needs to be shaped by women in a way that will allow them to overthrow the existing social order.

Bruce Grenville in The Uncanny: Experiments in Cyborg Culture mentions: "The dominant cyber- feminist perspective takes a utopia view of cyberspace and the Internet as a means of freedom from social constructs such as gender, sex difference and race. For instance, a description of the concept described it as a struggle to be aware of the impact of new technologies on the lives of women as well as the so-called insidious gendering of techno culture in everyday life."

But, the virtual world is nothing but a mirror of the real world. We somehow and somewhere experience AI is not a fresh start for this world or society. However it is designed by humans not intentionally but the unconscious human biases are also transferred to AI, technology. How do AI learn? Technology or AI works based on a dataset and this dataset is prepared by humans. Probably it is not intentional but transferring our biases to AI is like creating or designing or transferring same discriminate future world. We know that majorly algorithms and dataset for AI are prepared by ‘white men’. White thinking of them as superior has always been a top of the talk. While setting a dataset AI comes across more number of white and men. The Mindset of white men itself is transferred to AI.

Algorithms play an important role in making decisions. The Social Dilemma is a 2020 documentary which describes how algorithms work and the same happens in this case too. AI works on algorithms. The Internet through our surfing gives us more and more similar data. Alongside, they ask for our gender while making our account on any platform. This selection of gender itself is questionable. What is the need of knowing gender? Then later girls and boys are catered differently. If you are a woman you must be definitely getting fertility clinic ads, how to be a mother, IVF clinic etc.

I referred to a TED TALK by Kriti Sharma. CLICK HERE to watch it.

She has explained about biases in AI and also her personal experiences with AI. she aptly said what about the children who are growing in this world? If we see the robots like Alexa, Siri have female voices and what they have to do is be a obedient servant where we keep of ordering to order food, turns of lights, fans, sing a talk, talk to be being lonely etc. and when a child is working on the project the answers are mostly male. We also have male voice robots but they help in making decisions, handling business, salesforce like ROSS. The child's mind gets a framework of female voice working household work, being obedient and male voice taking decisions.

What happens when white designs technology and their racism is passed to AI.

Article on black people identifies as gorillas.

She pointing towards the solutions for this major issues gives three points-

1. Be aware of our own biases

2. Make sure that diverse team is making technology

3. Give AI diverse experience and atmosphere to learn from.

TED TALK by Robin Hauser

Robin Hauser focuses on ‘Can we protect AI from our Biased?’

We find biases in technology because humans are consciously and unconsciously biased and humans programme all shades of biases in technology. The reason is lack of foresight, malicious intent, using screwed data and loving their own biases.

Here she discussed ‘Tay’ and Tay tweets. Microsoft sent its artificial intelligence (AI) bot Tay out into the wild to see how it interacted with humans. Seeing how Tay had the “repeat after me” attitude, people started messing around and taught her inappropriate things such as “cuckservatism”, racism, sexually-charged messages, politically incorrect phrases, and even talked about the Gamergate controversy.

Today, we have to take serious steps against these biases happening in AI if we don't want today’s society to be captured by technology and the same issues to be forwarded to future society.

Today we are fighting against the patriarchal language which is completely internalized in human beings. E.g: chairman this word forces that man can only be a chairperson which is now changed into chair person.

Since childhood girls and boys are forced to have specific kinds of works which are also reflected in nursery rhymes.

Today we are fighting against all this language imbalance in the physical world. If technology is also conducted to be biased it will take decades again to change the virtual world.

Gender Shades by Timnit Gebru and Joy Buolamwini.

Here is a video Jay Buolamwini

I hope this blog helped you to get the concept of Cyberfeminism. Thanks for visiting.

CLASS ACTIVITY- MACHINE TRANSLATION- THE HOME AND THE WORLD

Hello! This blog is posted as an assignment given by Yesha Bhatt Ma’am. It deals with our class activities we did while learning Rabindranath Tagore’s ‘The Home and The World’.

THE HOME AND THE WORLD- CLASS ACTIVITY- TRANSLATION

Activities we did while learning The Home and The World are-

• Introduction to the text by the teacher
• Movie screening of Ghare Baire directed by Satyajit Ray
• Discussion on themes and concepts
• Reading of the original text
• Board work for the reading session
• Class activity- translating own write into Bengali with help of Machine Translation (Google)

Yesha ma’am assigned us a task to write anything in English or any other language and translate it to Bengali with the help of Google.

HERE IS MY ENGLISH WRITE UP

We are all feminists. We are perhaps unknown to the theory but might be playing a significant role in this fight. Girls are taught to be good wife material and boys are grown to be fearful of fragility. Boys are molded to be hard men which develop fragile egos and girls are molded to cater that ego and shrink ownself. Problem of gender prescribes how we should be rather than recognizing how we are.

ENGLISH TO BENGALI

আমরা সবাই নারীবাদী। আমরা সম্ভবত তত্ত্বের সাথে অজানা কিন্তু এই লড়াইয়ে একটি গুরুত্বপূর্ণ ভূমিকা পালন করতে পারে। মেয়েদেরকে ভাল স্ত্রী হতে শেখানো হয় এবং ছেলেদের ভঙ্গুরতার ভয়ে বড় করা হয়। ছেলেদেরকে শক্ত পুরুষ হিসেবে গড়ে তোলা হয় যা ভঙ্গুর অহংকার বিকাশ করে এবং মেয়েরা সেই অহংকে মেটাতে এবং নিজেকে সঙ্কুচিত করার জন্য তৈরি করা হয়। লিঙ্গ সমস্যা আমরা কেমন আছি তা চেনার চেয়ে আমাদের কেমন হওয়া উচিত তা নির্ধারণ করে।

Āmarā sabā'i nārībādī. Āmarā sambhabata tattbēra sāthē ajānā kintu ē'i laṛā'iẏē ēkaṭi gurutbapūrṇa bhūmikā pālana karatē pārē. Mēẏēdērakē bhāla strī hatē śēkhānō haẏa ēbaṁ chēlēdēra bhaṅguratāra bhaẏē baṛa karā haẏa. Chēlēdērakē śakta puruṣa hisēbē gaṛē tōlā haẏa yā bhaṅgura ahaṅkāra bikāśa karē ēbaṁ mēẏērā sē'i ahaṅkē mēṭātē ēbaṁ nijēkē saṅkucita karāra jan'ya tairi karā haẏa. Liṅga samasyā āmarā kēmana āchi tā cēnāra cēẏē āmādēra kēmana ha'ōẏā ucita tā nirdhāraṇa karē.

We had a wonderful session online with Budhiditya Das. She is an alumni of the Department of English. As we studied a novel by R. Tagore ‘The Home and the World’ and watched a Bengali movie Adaptation (with English subtitles). We got a chance where we could verify that our translation contained the same essence as our writeup or not. Budhaditya ma’am’s mother language is Bengali, our few students read their writing and translation and we realized that machine translation is not at all reliable. Machine disregarded a few sentences or words according to its flexibility. As we are not at all familiar with Bengali language we don't understand the pauses in the language.

Later I also translated my English writing into Hindi and from translated Bengali to Hindi.. Just to check the translation, which translation could catch the better essence of my English write up.

ENGLISH TO HINDI

हम सब नारीवादी हैं। हम शायद सिद्धांत से अनजान हैं लेकिन इस लड़ाई में महत्वपूर्ण भूमिका निभा सकते हैं। लड़कियों को अच्छी पत्नी बनना सिखाया जाता है और लड़कों को नाजुकता से डरने के लिए बड़ा किया जाता है। लड़कों को कठोर पुरुषों के रूप में ढाला जाता है जो नाजुक अहंकार विकसित करते हैं और लड़कियों को उस अहंकार को पूरा करने और खुद को सिकोड़ने के लिए ढाला जाता है। लिंग की समस्या यह निर्धारित करती है कि हम कैसे हैं, यह पहचानने के बजाय हमें कैसा होना चाहिए।

BENGALI TO HINDI

हम सब नारीवादी हैं। हम शायद सिद्धांत से अपरिचित हैं लेकिन इस लड़ाई में एक महत्वपूर्ण भूमिका निभा सकते हैं। लड़कियों को अच्छी पत्नी बनना सिखाया जाता है और लड़कों को नाजुकता से डरने के लिए पाला जाता है। लड़कों को सख्त पुरुष बनने के लिए पाला जाता है जो नाजुक अहंकार विकसित करते हैं, और लड़कियों को उस अहंकार को संतुष्ट करने और खुद को सिकोड़ने के लिए उठाया जाता है। जेंडर मुद्दे परिभाषित करते हैं कि हमें क्या होना चाहिए न कि हम क्या हैं।

ham sab naareevaadee hain. ham shaayad siddhaant se aparichit hain lekin is ladaee mein ek mahatvapoorn bhoomika nibha sakate hain. ladakiyon ko achchhee patnee banana sikhaaya jaata hai aur ladakon ko naajukata se darane ke lie paala jaata hai. ladakon ko sakht purush banane ke lie paala jaata hai jo naajuk ahankaar vikasit karate hain, aur ladakiyon ko us ahankaar ko santusht karane aur khud ko sikodane ke lie uthaaya jaata hai. jendar mudde paribhaashit karate hain ki hamen kya hona chaahie na ki ham kya hain.

We ended our session by writing our names in Bengali on the class board.

MY EXPERIENCE

My personal experience of using google translation, the machine translation is not able to catch the punctuation marks and pauses in the sentence of the paragraph. I also realized that machine translation is better programmed in translating Hindi into Bengali than English to Hindi. Many times the essence of the write up gets completely lost. After the talk with an expert we got to know about the perfect pronunciation of the Bengali language. She also told while checking the translations of the students in the class that the machine is many a time ignoring or bluffing some sentences according to its flexibility.

I am grateful to Yesha ma’am for this wonderful learning session.

Theories: Marxist, Ecocritical, Feminist and Queer Criticism

Hello! This blog is assigned by Dr. Dilip barad sir. It deals with the various literary theories like Feminism, queer study, eco- criticism, and Marxism. This blog deals with Ecocriticism, other blogs which deals with other theories are hyperlinked in the end.

Ecocriticism

“Ecocriticism” designates the critical writings that explore the relations between literature and the biological and physical environment, conducted with an acute awareness of the damage being wrought on that environment by human activities. It was first originated by Joseph Meeker as an idea called “literary ecology” in his The Comedy of Survival: Studies in Literary Ecology (1972). The term 'ecocriticism' was coined in 1978 by William Rueckert in his essay "Literature and Ecology: An Experiment in Ecocriticism".

Different types of ecocriticism include pastoral, wilderness, and ecofeminism.

• Pastoral, found primarily in British and American literature, focuses on the dichotomy between urban and rural life, often idealizing nature and rural life and demonizing urban life. There are three branches of pastoral ecocriticism: classical, romantic, and American.
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• Wilderness examines how the wilderness is constructed, valued, and engaged with. There are two branches of wilderness ecocriticism: Old World and New World.
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• The Old World portrays the wilderness as a scary, threatening place beyond the borders of civilization and as a place of exile.
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• New World portrays the wilderness as a place of sanctuary where one can find relaxation and reflection, similar to classical pastoral ecocriticism.

Ecofeminism analyzes the connection between the domination of women and the domination of nature, usually by men. It draws parallels between women and nature, which is often seen as feminine, fertile and the property of men. Ecofeminism also includes other aspects of environmental justice, such as racial environmental justice. There are two branches of ecofeminism:

The first branch of ecofeminism embraces the idea that women are inherently closer to nature than men on a biological, spiritual and emotional level. This branch is often called radical ecofeminism because it reverses the domination of men over women and nature. The second branch of ecofeminism contradicts the first, arguing that neither women nor men are more likely to connect with nature.

Key Concerns of Ecocriticism

• Reigning religions and philosophies of Western civilization are deeply anthropocentric
• Prominent in ecocriticism is a critique of binaries such as man/nature or culture/nature, viewed as mutually exclusive oppositions.
• Many Eco critics recommend, and themselves exemplify, the extension of “green reading” (that is, analysis of the implications of a text for environmental concerns and toward political action) to all literary genres, including prose fiction and poetry, and also to writings in the natural and social sciences.
• There is a growing interest in the animistic religions of so-called “primitive” cultures, as well as in Hindu, Buddhist, and other religions and civilizations that lack the Western opposition between humanity and nature and do not assign to human beings dominion over the nonhuman world.

Some of the important works of ecocritical theory are-

• Silent Spring (1962) by Rachel Carson
• Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness (1968) by Edward Abbey
• The Comedy of Survival: A Literary Ecology and a Play Ethic (1997) by Joseph W. Meeker
• Politics of Nature: How to Bring the Sciences into Democracy (2004) by Bruno Latour
• The Future of Environmental Criticism (2005) by Lawrence Buell
• Ecology Without Nature (2007) by Timothy Morton

You can read in detail about ecocriticism or green studies on Wikipedia here. I am going to share some of my readings of ecocriticism. How is the environment seen in our movies and literature?

How is the environment harmed? Generally, the layman is blamed for harming the environment. How? They are asked by the government to stop the usage of plastics. What about stopping the production of plastic? Laymen are asked to minimize the use of AC and fridges with the excuse of the ozone layer getting harmed. What about factories and multinational companies using ACs day and night? Laymen are blamed for dirty water, washing clothes, and bathing in rivers or lakes. What about the companies flowing their waste in water?

Yes, tribal people use natural resources, they eat animals. But, They use it in a required manner, nature gets time to grow, to repair itself when it is used by people. While industries and companies harm nature, there is abundance which doesn't give nature a chance to repair itself. We can take a very famous example of the Chipko movement in which people stood by nature to protect it.

Indian culture is the culture of religion. We agree with the point that God has created this world. But still, religion has become a way of polluting and harming the environment. Ganesh Chaturthi is one of the most celebrated festivals. During this festival everyone brings Ganesh murti to their places and on the last day puts it in water, lake/ ocean/ river. Which harms water, pollutes it, and also to water animals. Religion originated for peace and togetherness but today it's changing its way. The celebration of every festival is full of music DJs, and yagnas which pollute the air. Devotion and destruction.

Adding to it, our festivals and new years are incomplete without crackers. It does not only harm nature but a number of new born animals die in fear, by the loud voice of crackers. Human beings are selfish, for its fun and enjoyment it stops thinking of its surroundings.

This seems contradicting to the idea of not blaming laymen. Yes definitely laymen use these products harming the environment because they're sold. Government can take legal actions against these companies for its production or should/ can make policies to control all these events which harm the environment and ecology.

We are seeing the spreading awareness about ecology and environment through movies, and the environment as a theme in movies, since the crisis of the climate are introduced. The recent S. Rajampuli’s telugu Movie RRR is talking about the importance of ‘Jal, Jameen, Jungle’ and bringing the voice of tribal. Tribal who just want nature to be protected. The movie has two environmental activist Bheem Komram and Alluri Sitarama who fought for protecting of environment.

Another movie is Robot 2.0 in which the villain is ‘Pakshiraj’ (king of birds), he in order to safeguard the earth and to make it a better place for living for birds attracts or takes away mobile phones from all over the world.

Here is a Poem by Kedarnath Singh- Vidroh. This poem strongly suggests the ways in which we are surrounded by nature and what if nature decides to resign? This seems to be great example of how we humans are overtaking nature.

आज घर में घुसा

तो वहां अजब दृश्य था

सुनिये- मेरे बिस्तर ने कहा-

यह रहा मेरा इस्तीफ़ा

मैं अपने कपास के भीतर

वापस जाना चाहता हूं

उधर कुर्सी और मेज़ का

एक संयुक्त मोर्चा था

दोनों तड़पकर बोले-

जी- अब बहुत हो चुका

आपको सहते-सहते

हमें बेतरह याद आ रहे हैं

हमारे पेड़

और उनके भीतर का वह

ज़िंदा द्रव

जिसकी हत्या कर दी है

आपने

उधर आलमारी में बंद

किताबें चिल्ला रही थीं

खोल दो-हमें खोल दो

हम जाना चाहती हैं अपने

बांस के जंगल

और मिलना चाहती हैं

अपने बिच्छुओं के डंक

और सांपों के चुंबन से

पर सबसे अधिक नाराज़ थी

वह शॉल

जिसे अभी कुछ दिन पहले कुल्लू से ख़रीद लाया था

बोली- साहब!

आप तो बड़े साहब निकले

मेरा दुम्बा भेड़ा मुझे कब से

पुकार रहा है

और आप हैं कि अपनी देह

की क़ैद में

लपेटे हुए हैं मुझे

उधर टी.वी. और फोन का

बुरा हाल था

ज़ोर-ज़ोर से कुछ कह रहे थे

वे

पर उनकी भाषा

मेरी समझ से परे थी

-कि तभी

नल से टपकता पानी तड़पा-

अब तो हद हो गई साहब!

अगर सुन सकें तो सुन

लीजिए

इन बूंदों की आवाज़-

कि अब हम

यानी आपके सारे के सारे

क़ैदी

आदमी की जेल से

मुक्त होना चाहते हैं

अब जा कहां रहे हैं-

मेरा दरवाज़ा कड़का

जब मैं बाहर निकल रहा था.

Here is my presentation which I presented in competition. It talks about how we as an individual can safeguard the environment.

What can We do about Climate Change? Our Roles from Jheel Barad

Here is the paper I presented in a research paper writing competition. Its title is ‘Envirocentric Approach to Hard Times by Charles Dickens and William Wordsworth's Selected Poems’

Here is my research paper on envirocentrism CLICK HERE to visit.

I hope this blog is useful. Thanks for visiting.

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Theories: Marxist, Ecocritical, Feminist and Queer Criticism

Hello! This blog is assigned by Dr. Dilip barad sir. It deals with the various literary theories like Feminism, queer study, eco- criticism, and Marxism. This blog deals with Marxism, other blogs which deals with other theories are hyperlinked in the end.

Marxism

Karl Marx is the one to bring this theory and it is named after him only. Marxism is a philosophy developed in the second half of the 19th century that unifies social, political, and economic theory. It is mainly concerned with the battle between the working class and the ownership class and favors communism and socialism over capitalism.

Key Concerns of Marxism

1. In the Marxist literary analysis, the evolving history of humankind, of its social groupings and interrelations, of its institutions, and of its ways of thinking are largely determined by the changing mode of its “material production”— that is, of its overall economic organization for producing and distributing material goods.

2. Changes in the fundamental mode of material production effect changes in the class structure of a society, establishing in each era dominant and subordinate classes that engage in a struggle for economic, political, and social advantage.

3. Human consciousness is constituted by an ideology—that is, the beliefs, values, and ways of thinking and feeling through which human beings perceive, and by recourse to which they explain, what they take to be reality. An ideology is, in complex ways, the product of the position and interests of a particular class. In any historical era, the dominant ideology embodies, and serves to legitimize and perpetuate, the interests of the dominant economic and social class.

Seminal Writers and their works-

• Marx and Engels -The German Ideology,
• The Hungarian thinker Georg Lukács,
• Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheime-.
• Andrew Arato and Eike Gebhardt (1982),
• Walter Benjamin,
• French Marxist Louis AlthusserPierre Macherey, in A Theory of Literary Production (1966, trans. 1978)
• Italian Communist Antonio Gramsci
• Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe-Hegemony and Socialist Strategy (1985)
• Raymond Williams
• Terry Eagleton-A leading theorist of Marxist criticism in England
• Fredric Jameson- The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act (1981),

Marxist political theory views history as a constant struggle between these two classes. The bourgeoisie is the capitalist class that owns the wealth and the means of production. While the lower class who struggles and are depended on the bourgeoisie for income. Mostly this type of Bollywood movies are old movies where we see this struggle. The upper class is not ready to accept the lower class. They don't let their children marry the lower class and the struggles used to happen.

The recent movie of struggle between two classes is 2018 film Kedarnath. Here the struggle is between Hindu- Brahmin and Muslim couple which is perhaps the hot topic in India. But looking from the Marxist canon we see the same struggle the upper class not wishing their chlid to marry lower class who was local Muslim porter.

Ishq, 1997 movie also deals with the same theme of class issues. Children of two friends who belonged to the upper class wanted their children to marry so that their wealth remained with them but their children loved each other's friend who belonged to lower class. Parents tried to create problems among them but later they got married. Here also for the sake of wealth decide to go for same class marriage.

Looking at the literature, we find such themes are covered as a minor theme or can be read in various books. The Great Gatsby novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

The Great Gatsby is a story which begins with a narrator Nick Carraway talking about the market and his introduction which clarifies that he belongs to upper class society along with Tom Buchanan and her wife. The main Character is Jay Gatsby, his only aim is to win Daisy (upper class) to whom he couldn't marry. So he gets rich in order to win her, she is also in love with her. But he is judged on his dressing and living a fake life. When he died no one visited his funeral from the Buchanan family which shows that however a person struggles to be in the upper class, aristocratic society will never accept them and women like Daisy might fall in love but will never get ready to marry living their respectable way of life.

Marxism says that society involves a struggle between the upper and lower class, which is in essence what Gatsby is struggling against, as he fights to be accepted as upper class for once and all, ridding himself of his more humble origins. The Marxist idea that life is a continuous struggle between the bourgeois and the proletariat

Read the Great Gatsby from the Marxist canon in detail. CLICK HERE.

Richardson’s Pamela is also about a relation between two different classes. Panama is a proletarian. In the novel, Mr. B, upper class, falls in love with Pamela and being rich he feels his right on Pamela. He kidnaps her, tries to abuse her. In the end they get married as it was to Mr. B . We feel as if Pamela has lost her individuality.

Salman Rushdie’s Midnight Children contains all the aspects of India. We also have a character Joseph D'Costa, Mary Pereira's sweetheart and he is a Marxist. His love Mary Pereira is a nurse, he influences Pereira to change the children in the hospital, poor child to rich family so that that the imbalance of capital, wealth in the society can be balanced.

I hope this blog is useful. Thanks for visiting.

READ MY BLOG ON ANOTHER THEORY- FEMINISTIC THEORY

READ MY BLOG ON ANOTHER THEORY- ECOCRITICISM

READ MY BLOG ON ANOTHER THEORY- QUEER THEORY

Theories: Marxist, Ecocritical, Feminist and Queer Criticism

Hello! This blog is assigned by Dr. Dilip barad sir. It deals with the various literary theories like Feminism, queer study, eco- criticism, and Marxism. This blog deals with Queer Theory, other blogs which deals with other theories are hyperlinked in the end.

 Queer Theory

According to Jay Stewart, "Queer theory and politics necessarily celebrate transgression in the form of visible difference from norms. These 'Norms' are then exposed to be norms, not natures or inevitabilities. Gender and sexual identities are seen, in much of this work, to be demonstrably defiant definitions and configurations."

The rainbow flag is a symbol of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) pride and LGBT social movements. Also known as the gay pride flag or LGBT pride flag, the colors reflect the diversity of the LGBT community and the spectrum of human sexuality and gender.

Queer theory includes the studies of both gays and lesbians, anyone out of heterogeneous relationship. Queer theory is a term that emerged in the late 1980s for a body of criticism on issues of gender, sexuality, and subjectivity that came out of gay and lesbian scholarship in such fields as literary criticism, politics, sociology, and history.

Important works in this theory are

Judith Butler, in Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990), described the categories of gender and of sexuality as performative, in the sense that the features which a cultural discourse institutes as masculine or feminine, heterosexual or homosexual, the discourse also makes happen, by establishing an identity that the socialized individual assimilates and the patterns of behavior that he or she proceeds to enact.

• “Toward a Black Feminist Criticism,” 1977, reprinted in Within the Circle:
• An Anthology of African-American Literary Criticism from the Harlem Renaissance to the Present, ed. Angelyn Mitchell, 1994;
• and Ann Allen Stickley, “The Black Lesbian in American Literature: An Overview,” in Conditions: Five Two, 1979.

Our society has decided certain norms for gender and their way of life. It is decided how girls should be and how boys should be. Boys have bread, body hair, muscular body, strong voice etc. and girls tend to have clean faces in spite of their natural body hair, soft-spoken and perfectly shaped body. If girls have muscular characteristics and boys have feminine they are not accept and are made fun of. Even when they are not transgender. Then we can just imagine the humiliation transgender's/ third gender has to go through. When a child is born, we are asked if it is a boy or girl? There is no option for third gender, which indicates a lack of acceptance. Even when we go to buy gifts, clothes etc. for children we have only two choices for boys or girls. This suggests that our minds are not open towards those who are little different from us. It becomes very difficult to live a life breaking transitional or conventional society and going against it. Majorly in our society when such cases come out the basic answer is marry him/ her everything will be fine. They are forced to live a so- called natural life.

Today cinema is the mirror of society. It shows the reality of the world and also plays an important role in normalizing the things which are not normal. We see a large change in the roles of transgender's in Bollywood movies. In old movies of 80s-90s we see the roles of transgender's of third gender was generally used for comedy but today Bollywood has tried to portray the reality of their life and has taken it as a serious issue. It is trying to normalize the third gender. Recently we have movies like,

And many more which brings out the life of transgender and their world. Bollywood is trying to bring a third gender but there has always been a question that why aren't they using trans for its role? Why are normal people doing these roles? And we realize that there are no actors from the third community, they are completely away from it. Bollywood should open doors for them and they should be preferred to do the roles of third gender.

But we see that in many TVC they have used transgender for its role. Here is an advertisement of red labels which aptly describes human nature when they see a kinnara/ hijra/ third gender but they really want nothing but respect.

In 2015, Kaisi yeh Yaariyan, an Indian television series that aired on MTV India from 21 July 2014 to 31 December 2015 was a series on love and friendship but they also looked upon very deeply on issue of homosexual relationship, among the 5 friends one was transgender, Kabir, he never shared his homosexuality. His character is quite interestingly grown in serial and has tried to spread awareness about it.

If we look back in literature, we find a lot of literature which talks about the third gender. And there were many writer who were in homosexual relation. E.g. Virginia Woolf, Lord Byron, Samuel Butler, John Milton etc.

Here is my blog on W.H. Audens’ poem which has an underlying theme of lack of acceptance of homosexual relationship. CLICK HERE TO VISIT.

Coming in real life, real society. Cinema and television world is aptly trying to make space for the third gender. But looking around we have a ‘prince Manvendra Singh Gohil’. Manvendra Singh Gohil (born 23 September 1965) is an Indian prince who is the son and probable heir of the honorary Maharaja of Rajpipla in Gujarat. He is the first openly Gay prince in the world. He runs a charity, the Lakshya Trust, which works with the LGBT community.

He was forced to marry and have a heterogeneous relation but later he divorced his wife and announced himself to be part of LGBTQ community.

Read an article on him. CLICK HERE

Celebrities or anyone connected to Bollywood or the film industry are always trend setters. In Bollywood we do have accepted transgender's like Karan Zohar and Tushar Kapoor who have also adopted kids and are single parent.

The world is moving forward and one of the communities is still struggling to cope up among us. Being citizens we cannot largely contribute but we can stop humiliating them and consider them one the among us. Teach our future generation that is is also normal and natural.

I hope this blog is useful, thanks for visiting.

READ MY BLOG ON ANOTHER THEORY- FEMINISTIC THEORY

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