Digital Humanities

 Digital Humanities:-

Digital humanities is an area of scholarly activity at the intersection of computing or digital technologies and the disciplines of the humanities. It includes the systematic use of digital resources in the humanities, as well as the reflection on their application. DH can be defined as new ways of doing scholarship that involve collaborative, transdisciplinary, and computationally engaged research, teaching, and publishing. It brings digital tools and methods to the study of the humanities with the recognition that the printed word is no longer the main medium for knowledge production and distribution.The digital humanities at Stanford sit at the crossroads of computer science and the humanities. Since the 1980’s, a wide range of computational tools have enabled humanities scholars to conduct research at a scale once thought impossible. Digital humanities foster collaboration and traverse disciplines and methodological orientations, with projects to digitize archival materials for posterity, to map the exchange and transmission of ideas in history, and to study the evolution of common words over the centuries.

At Stanford, current digital humanities projects implement tools such as 3-D mapping, algorithmic literary analysis, advanced visualization techniques, and digitization of textual corpora in non-Latin languages. Researchers experiment and interact with source materials in ways that yield new findings, while also building community and sharing information. Stanford scholars harness new technologies through an array of digital humanities initiatives

The use of information technology to illuminate the human record, and the process of bringing the critical tools of human understanding to bear on information technology. While the scope of Digital Humanity is so daunting it may be paralyzing, the goal is to understand and promote humanity, which in our experience, is amazingly doable. While Digital Humanity provides us with a framework to do science there is no guarantee the tech community will be willing to adapt this model and if so, to assure the models continue to optimize for human growth, rather than say human manipulability.We’re bringing social and data sciences together to bridge the gap between traditional and digital humanity. The only people capable of leading this human-centric movement are those who design and develop these learning systems.  That developers work together to formalize a statement of goals for Digital Humanity.  A meeting in support of Digital Humanity be held in one year. The primary agenda item is to assure the development of Digital Humanity.

In The Big Humanities: Digital Humanities/Digital Laboratories, Richard J. Lane discusses a number of types of “humanistic labs, centres, projects, and products,” but he maintains a striking focus on the possibilities of the digital humanities (DH) lab. For Lane, the digital humanities lab provides an opportunity to bring a Big Science research model to the humanities, which includes a shift to “lab-based” knowledge production [Lane 2017]. Everything is larger: the research teams, the data sets, the duration of projects, the funding — evolution, so to speak, of what we might call a “lab ethos” [Lane 2017]. In addition, the construction of Big Humanities as a topic area correlates closely with a shift in philanthropy in higher education, which is “less concerned about creating in-perpetuity funds than solving a large, intractable problem” [Thorp 2010, 145]. DH funders such as the Mellon Foundation will fund projects for impact, which is viewed as highly interdisciplinary, with high levels of engagement, and market-consciousness [Thorp 2010]. The more scientific the model and technical the discourse, the more likely STEM funding may also be available [Thornham 2017]. For this reason, Big Humanities are in great demand, and labs compete for large-scale funding through the constructive and imagineering nature of their grants. Inevitably, the paradigm of funding shapes the kind of work that is done, and the tools and methods that are used.

we consider what invisible or less visible work becomes illuminated when practitioners understand the DH lab as a space for prioritizing graduate student needs. Graduate student perspectives may be sufficiently overlooked in the debates of “what,” “why,” and “who” is the digital humanities, despite the importance of graduate students to most DH teams reliant upon their labor.

Digital Humanities is not a unified field but an array of convergent practices that explore a universe in which: a) print is no longer the exclusive or the normative medium in which knowledge is produced and/or disseminated; instead, print finds itself absorbed into new, multimedia configurations; and b) digital tools, techniques, and media have altered the production and dissemination of knowledge in the arts, human and social sciences. The Digital Humanities seeks to play an inaugural role with respect to a world in which, no longer the sole producers, stewards, and disseminators of knowledge or culture, universities are called upon to shape natively digital models of scholarly discourse for the newly emergent public spheres of the present era (the www, the blogosphere, digital libraries, etc.), to model excellence and innovation in these domains, and to facilitate the formation of networks of knowledge production, exchange, and dissemination that are, at once, global and local.

Like all media revolutions, the first wave of the digital revolution looked backward as it moved forward. Just as early codices mirrored oratorical practices, print initially mirrored the practices of high medieval manuscript culture, and film mirrored the techniques of theater, the digital first wave replicated the world of scholarly communications that print gradually codified over the course of five centuries: a world where textuality was primary and visuality and sound were secondary (and subordinated to text), even as it vastly accelerated the search and retrieval of documents, enhanced access, and altered mental habits. Now it must shape a future in which the medium‐specific features of digital technologies become its core and in which print is absorbed into new hybrid modes of communication.

The first wave of digital humanities work was quantitative, mobilizing the search and retrieval powers of the database, automating corpus linguistics, stacking hypercards into critical arrays. The second wave is qualitative, interpretive, experiential, emotive, generative in character. It harnesses digital toolkits in the service of the Humanities’ core methodological strengths: attention to complexity, medium specificity, historical context, analytical depth, critique and interpretation. Such a crudely drawn dichotomy does not exclude the emotional, even sublime potentiality of the quantitative any more than it excludes embeddings of quantitative analysis within qualitative frameworks. Rather it imagines new couplings and scalings that are facilitated both by new models of research practice and by the availability of new tools and technologies.

pre independent

1) The poem is written before 120 years (approx.). Can you find any resemblance between the poem and the pandemic time?

“There is no god in that temple”, said the Saint.

The King was enraged;

“No God? Oh Saint, aren’t you speaking like an atheist?

On the throne studded with priceless gems, beams the golden idol,

And yet, you proclaim that’s empty?”

“It’s not empty; It’s rather full of the Royal pride.

You have bestowed yourself, oh King, not the God of this world”,

Remarked the saint.

The King frowned, “2 million golden coins

Were showered on that grand structure that kisses the sky,

I offered it to the Gods after performing all the necessary rituals,

And you dare claim that in such a grand temple,

There is no presence of God”?

The Saint calmly replied, “in the very year in which, twenty million of your subjects were struck by a terrible drought;

The pauperized masses without any food or shelter,

came begging at your door crying for help, only to be turned away,

they were forced to take refuge in forests, caves, camping under roadside foliages, derelict old temples;

and in that very year

when you spent 2 million gold to build that grand temple of your's,

that was the day when God pronounced:

“My eternal home is lit by everlasting lamps,

In the midst of an azure sky,

In my home the foundations are built with the values:

Of Truth, Peace, Compassion and Love.

The poverty stricken puny miser,

Who could not provide shelter to his own homeless subjects,

Does he really fancy of giving me a home?”

That is the day God left that Temple of yours.

And joined the poor beside the roads, under the trees.

Like emptiness of the froth in the vast seas,

Your mundane temple is as hollow.

It’s just a bubble of wealth and pride.’

The enraged King howled,

“oh you sham cretin of a person,

Leave my kingdom this instant’.

The Saint replied calmly,

“The very place where you have exiled the Divine,

Kindly banish the devout too".( Some hints: During the pandemic time temples were closed - people were dying - there was no place in hospitals for Covid patients)

2) Why do you think the King is angry on the Sage?

3) Why do you think the Sage denies to enter in the temple?

4) Can there be any connection between the text of the poem and the verdict of Ayoydhya Ram Mandir?

Marxist, Ecocritical, Feminist and Queer Criticism

 Marxist theory:-

 Marxist theory which is drawn from the economic, social, and political theories of the late 19th century and Karl Marx is the most popular, influential, and controversial theories of literature currently practiced throughout the Western academic world. Marxist theory can be described as an “economic” approach to interpreting literary texts. Marxist theorists often examine literary texts with a critical eye toward their various economic, ideological, and social contexts, suggestions, and assertions. Marxist theorists tend to focus their interpretations on considering how literary texts depict class oppression and strife and social inequality and, in turn, serve to critique elements of capitalistic Western life. Marxist theorists also consider how literary texts subvert and even overturn ordinary forms of social and political order. Marxist theorists give critical thought to how literary texts participate in or resist mass media and other forms of popular, capitalistic culture. They consider how such literary resistances might suggest possibilities for social revolution and, mutually, how the ruling classes might manipulate such for the purpose of social control over the other classes. Marxist theorists often take an interest in how an author’s own class, political positions, and other ideological positions serve to influence his or her writings, considering the ideologies presented within the text as well as the economic and social conditions under which particular texts are composed, published,, sold, and consumed by the public.

Example :-

 Hamlet might not be a strong Marxist example but  its protagonist is a man of privilege and that the play takes place in a fictional version of 16th century Denmark, Hamlet can be interpreted through a number of different Marxist theoretical approaches. 

A critic may also argue that Hamlet’s actions  demonstrate by which an oppressive  ideological regime can be countered and overcome. A Marxist theorist might argue that Claudius killed his brother King Hamlet in order to gain political, social, and economic power, and hence might be viewed as a figure who is corrupted by his desire for social and political power. Hamlet himself steps outside of the standards, rules, and norms established and encouraged by the ruling class that he was once a part of in order to resist its oppressive ideology. Such a critical viewpoint might serve to argue that Hamlet is at least partly about Hamlet’s own sudden separation from and realization of the ideological faults of the political structure he is or was a part of.  Marxist theorist might take interest in the plays focus on characters who belong to the ruling class and the lack of “voice” given to common people in the play. Marxist critique of Hamlet might take special interest in the famous grave digging scene of the play, and point out how Shakespeare positions the gravedigger who is the only common or non-privileged character given a prominent voice within the narrative as a source of wisdom capable of recognizing  truths about existence and the nature of the events that have come to pass within the story that the high-ranking and privileged characters in the play, including Hamlet himself, are unable to realize partly because of their own class positions.  Marxist theorist would probably not argue that Shakespeare was  protoMarxist, he or she might argue that in Hamlet, Shakespeare was anticipating and recognizing ideas concerning class distinctions and attitudes that were further developed by Karl Marx .

Ecocriticism theory :-

Ecology is the study of relationship of plants and animals to each other and to their environment. Eco is a short form of ecology. It means 'connected with the environment.'Criticism means opinions about their faults or bad qualities; a statement showing disapproval or the work or activity of making fair, careful judgements about the good or bad qualities of something, especially literary works etc. So, Ecocriticism is the study of relationship between social or natural environment and literature.  According to Wikipedia, "Ecocriticism is the study of literature and the environment from an interdisciplinary point of view, where literature scholars analyze texts that illustrate environmental concerns and examine the various ways literature treats the subject of nature."

Ecocriticism is a modern theory that describes relationship between physical environment and literature. It describes the application of ecology and ecological concepts to the study of literature. The aspects of Ecocriticism are rural setting, human nature like feelings,emotions, non-human nature such as darkness, weather, seasons and sense of consciousness towards nature and her elements like the impact of science and technology on modern society. Robert Frost is a prominent American poet in 20 th century. In his 'ThePasture', 'The Ghost House', 'The Road Not Taken', 'Out Out', 'Stopping by Woods on a SnowyEvening',' Mowing' , 'Reluctance', 'The Death of the Hired Man', 'After Apple-Picking', ' AtWoodwarrd's Gardens', 'Mending Wall'  etc., he focuses ecocritical aspects. I have studied some of his poem .

Ecocriticism is the  issue in the present world. Modern society depends on science and technology. They are being scattered from physical and natural environment day by day. giving emphasis on the human sensation and conscience of wilderness that have a great contribution changing environmental scenario reflected in literature.

Example :-

"The Road Not Taken" is a poem by Rober frost and this poem deals with the idea of Ecocroticism.This well-known poem is about making choices, and the choices that shape us. Robert Frost is an American poet who writes simply, but insightfully, about common, ordinary experiences.

Feminist theory :-

Feminism which can be defined as a range of ideologies, political movements and social movements which share a common goal to define,establish, to achieve economic, political, personal and social equality of genders. .Feminism is a belief that women and men should have equal rights and opportunities within the society. Feminism is a vibrant tradition which has contributed to social transformation.

We can say that feminism is a movement aimed at equal rights for women. Virginia Woolf is an English author a novelist and an Eassay writer and a most forward-thinking writer of the 20th century. Her real name is Adeline Virginia Stephen Woolf. Her work contains some techniques such as stream of consciousness and the interior monologue. She was the prominent member of the Bloomsbury group. Virginia Woolf argues about the rights of women before the Second World War and long before the second wave of feminism. Virginia Woolf is called the foremother of the feminist movement. She is called foremother because there are many reasons for it. The first  reason of this is because she has to face all the circumstances in her own life. She used to live in a society where there is no room for girl’s education. Her brothers were allowed to go outside and get education but she was not allowed to go outside for education. Virginia Woolf used her father’s home library for her education. She believed that women should also being able to get education, being able to make their own money and the ability to freely travel on their own.

Example :-

In her most famous book “Three Guineas” we get the idea of her feminism in best and clear cut way. This book is most often read as an opposing war. Virginia Woolf said about this book that “I have already said all I have to say in my book Three Guineas”. Virginia Woolf once wrote that “All women together ought to let flowers fall upon the tomb of Aphra Behn… for it was she who earned them the right to speak their mind”.

Queer criticism

Queer criticism is used to indicate a specific theoretical perspective. Queer theory, categories of sexuality can not be defined by such simple oppositions as homosexual. And what these categories mean to different individuals will be influenced by how they conceive their own racial and class identities as well. For queer theory, then, our sexuality is socially constructed rather than inborn to the extent that it is based on the way in which sexuality is defined by the culture in which we live.

lesbian studies and gay studies :-

  Gay and lesbian studies is a multi-disciplinary major that will give you a strong body of knowledge in gay and lesbian history and culture. The gay and lesbian community often called the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered (LGBT) community has faced many challenges over the years and still faces many challenges today. You’ll study how this culture has affected and been affected by heterosexual culture, and the conflicts that have arisen between them. You’ll learn about the LGBT population’s concerns with civil rights in the workplace and home, struggles with public policy, and battles over legal issues. Media portrayal of the LGBT community will be discussed, as well as how the media has both harmed and helped their efforts to establish their place in the culture.

Worksheet :- Screening of short film “An Astrologer’s Day” based on R.K.Narayan’s “An Astrologer’s Day”.

 Q-1 How faithful is the movie to the original short story?

Ans I think The original short story is having a more literal idea and thought which they want to put because as we know that it is not an easy task to capture the original short story into video form .all things might not be capture throw video. there might be some fault but we can say it is very useful to know the plot.

Q-2 After watching the movie, have your perception about the short story, characters or situations changed? 

Ans  My Answer is yes that after watching the movie, my perception about the short story is change and the last part of the movie is fearful. from the starting, we were thinking that it is a story about Astrologer who is getting from people by telling about their personal life or by solving their problem but at the end we knew that he has killed the landlord and came to the city. It's a terrible situation where we don't know who are our friends and who are enemies because all are praying for him as a god.

Q-3 Do you feel ‘aesthetic delight’ while watching the movie? If yes, exactly when did it happen? If no, can you explain with reasons? 

Ans - yes, find any aesthetic delight by watching the movie because when that man came to meet that Astrologer at that time he said that he will satisfy with his answer then only he will give money and we know that who has kill landlord that was also interesting part.

Q-4 Does screening of a movie help you in better understanding of the short story?

Ans yes , screening of movies help me in the understanding of the short story.

Q-5 Was there any particular scene or moment in the story that you think was perfect?

Ans yes, I think the ending of the story was perfect but then also i was not satisfied because he did not accept the truth or did not said truth to anyone that was a reason he was not able to sleep peacefully

Q-6 If you are the director, what changes would you like to make in the remaking of the movie based on the short story “An Astrologer’s Day” by R.K.Narayan?

Ans - when that man asks him a question he might tell a true story and after listing the other side of that Astrologer he might have forgiven him and that might be a happy ending.

d&d

•  What do you understand by 'Deconstruction'? 

Deconstruction doesn't actually mean "demolition;" instead it means "breaking down" or analyzing something especially the words in a work of fiction or nonfiction to discover its true significance, which is supposedly almost never exactly what the author intended. A feminist may deconstruct an old novel to show how even an innocent-seeming story somehow depends on the oppression of women. A new western may deconstruct the myths of the old West and show lawmen as vicious and criminals as flawed but decent. Table manners, The Sound of Music, and cosmetics ads have all been the subjects of deconstructionist analysis. Of course, not everyone agrees with deconstructionist interpretations, and some people reject the whole idea of deconstruction, but most of us have run into it by now even if we didn't realize it.
Deconstruction is an approach to understanding the relationship between text and meaning. It was originated by the philosopher Jacques Derrida , who defined the term variously throughout his career. In its simplest form it can be regarded as a criticism of Platonism and the idea of true forms, or essences, which take precedence over appearances.
Deconstruction instead places the emphasis on appearance, or suggests, at least, that essence is to be found in appearance. Derrida would say that the difference is "undecidable", in that it cannot be discerned in everyday experiences. Deconstruction argues that language, especially in ideal concepts such as truth and justice, is irreducibly complex, unstable, or impossible to determine. Many debates in continental philosophy surrounding ontology, epistemology, ethics, aesthetics, hermeneutics, and philosophy of language refer to Derrida's beliefs. Since the 1980s, these beliefs have inspired a range of theoretical enterprises in the humanities, including the disciplines of law, anthropology, historiography, linguistics, sociolinguistics, psychoanalysis, LGBT studies, and feminism. Deconstruction also inspired deconstructivism in architecture and remains important within art, music,and literary criticism.

• 'How to deconstruct a text?

Language bears within itself the necessity of its own critique. Do not naturalize what is not natural. Deconstruction insists not that truth is illusory but that truth is institutional.Deconstruction is a philosophical movement spearheaded by Ermch thinker Jacques Derrida and other critics during the 1960s.
As a literary theory, it focuses on exposing cultural lases in all texts, whether agamage in a popular book or the flashing script of a television ad
• Readers engaged in deconstruction analyse words and sentences to identify inherent buses and call into question amonplace interpretations of the text. While this may sound presumptuces or cymical on the front end, deamstruction im't about destroying mening Rather, it's about undenining ingrained amimptions to view things in a new light Neuffe.
Deconstruction, as applied in the criticism of literature, designates a theory and practice of reading which questions and claims to "subvert" or "undermine" the assumption that the system of language provides grounds that are adequate to establish the boundaries, the coherence or unity, and the determinate meanings of a literary text. Typically, a deconstructive reading sets out to show that conflicting forces within the text itself serve to dimipate the seeming definiteness of its structure and meanings into an indefinite arrey of incompatible and undecidable posibilities "

• Paradox about paradox :-

Deconstructionism, as applied to literary criticism, is a paradox about a paradox: It assumes that all discourse, even all historical narrative, is essentially disguised self-revelatory messages.Being subjective, the text has no fixed meaning, so when we read, we are prone to misread.  Deconstruction transformed everything into social commentary, casely making affinities with sexual and racial politics, two other militant philosophies that challenge the sanctity of text.
It presented itself as a supra ideological mode of analysis, exposing the ideological aberrations of others while seemingly possessing none itself.

• Oppose Prevailing Wisdom :-

The fint thing you'll have to do is question the common meaning or pervalling theories of the text you're deconstructing When deconstructing you need to start from a place of critical opposition The only sumption you can make is that the meaning of the text is unstable and what others have told you about it is based on their own assumptions .In other words, you need to be akeptical from the onset. Unhinge yourself from traditional interpretations and dig into the specifics of the test. Like a scientist on the fringe of discovery, look for evidence to support sea views (Neuffer, "How to Deconstruct a Text.".

• Expose Cultural Bias :-

Practitioners of the deconstructive method refer to cultural bes in texts in a number of lofty ways, calling them "binaries", "hierarchical oppositions" and "violent hierarchical". To understand these interchangeable terms, remember that certain words and the concepts they representa often privileged, or emphasized more than their opposite words and concepts-rich over poor, male over female mlightened over ignorant For instance, if a poct personifies everything in nature the sun, the moon, the sea as being male, you might conclude that the text has a male blas If a novelist portrays white Exupean culture "loral and "aphisticated in contrast to other cultures of the world, you might mapact  Wetem, Euroctric bine in the tat. It's your job to root out the Neuffer, "How to Deconstruct a Text.".

• Analyze Sentence Structure :- 

One way to investigate underlying meaning of a text to alyze sentence structure, specifically the

arrangement of subject and object Ask yourself if a person or thing represented as an object in some way text makes it mabondinat

the subject in For instance, if a novele male protagonist is always the initiator of action rather than the recipient-"He took her to the store he bought her earrings he found some food she would like the recurrent sentence structure may remfiece the protagonist's power over the dependent character.Look for the patterns and determine if the points of view of other characters are limited to favor cultural bias

• Play With Possible Meanings :-

After you've analyzed the text for biases, see if your discoveries support a new interpretation

While many associate deconstruction with destruction of meaning, the opposite is true.

According to the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy Holland, reconstuction internet Exydopedia of moy, by assessing the biases of a given text - the social and historical conventions that helped produce it-you've opened up the words and sentences to an infinite amount of possible, if partial, readings. Neuffer, "How to Deconstruct a Test."

• Waiting for Godot: A Deconstructive Study :-

Samuel Beckett’s play “Waiting for Godot” within Derridean deconstructive perspective for investigating and scrutinizing the different facets of the text interms of Derridean deconstruction .
To open up the techniques of meta-theatre, which enable Samuel Beckett to go beyond the boundaries of the traditional stereotypes and fossilized notions, values and traditions of language, theatre and the literary text, which revolve around messianic logocentrism or phonocentrism in the history of philosophy from Plato to the present times. To scrutinize the text from Derrida’s deconstructive hermeneutics for dismantling the fixity, singularity and unified meaning of the text of the thought raging play under discussion.To retrace the zigzag and complicated philosophical pathways of West Europeantradition of the metaphysics of presence and its compelling influences and repercussions,which have proved to be the inhibiting and fossilizing deadlocks of aporia of meaning andauthoritative centralized structures of human thought to explore the new horizons.
The complex structure of “Waiting for Godot’’ is based upon symbols andideological content, in which the vertical repression and layering or sedimentation is dominant structure of the text of the play. For this reason, it has been always a focal target for world’s researchers. Most of the researchers interpreted its different elements from different angles.Therefore, the complex and entangled structure of the play has drawn multifarious researchattentions. There are so many books and dissertations composed on this play.
Finally, the tramps are unable to act, even to commit suicide. For example, the following dialogue makes the point clear:
“Vladimir: We will hang ourselves tomorrow. (Pause.) Unless Godot comes.Estragon: And if he comes?
Vladimir: We’ll be saved”
(Beckett, Samuel, 1956, Act Two, p. 94).

We can mostly notice their incapability and undecidability to do anything through out the whole play:
“Estragon: “Why don’t we hang ourselves?
 Vladimir: With what?
Estragon: you haven’t got a bit of rope?
 Vladimir: No.
Estragon: Then we can’t.
Vladimir: Let’s go.
 Estragon: Oh wait, there is my belt.
Vladimir: It’s too short.
 Estragon: You could hang on to my legs.Vladimir: And who would hang onto mine?Estragon: True”
We find the characters of the play entangled within an illusory web of logocentricillusions of thought that they want to grasp the ultimate truth of life and the universe in a wayas logocentric Western tradition of the metaphysics of presence confines their mind to thinkabout the authoritative universal truth, meaning and origin. Nevertheless, they are unable tofind it and on the contrary, they confront uncertainty and absurdity as illustrated in theconversations between Estragon and Vladimir about the Holy Scripture, the memories of thepast or identity of Godot. Suspecting all the messianic logocentric authorities of founding thetexts of Western culture, Samuel Beckett studs Godot and Endgame with references to thesevery texts in order to make us “think  and participate in his anxious oscillation betweencertainty about what is untrue and uncertainty about what may be true”

Conclusion :- 

The present study tried to interpret Samuel Beckett’s play “Waiting for Godot”from a new and innovative perspective through Derridean deconstruction. It showed how the metaphysics of presence and messianic logocentrism imprint preventive effects on mentalstructure of human beings, and fall them in the aporetic trap of omnipresent and omnipotentlogi. Therefore, they slavishly accept the authority of the messianic theocentric and anthropocentric logi. The study tries to prove that the techniques of meta-theatre used in Samuel Beckett’s play, reject the conventional dramatic realism, make the text of the play delogocentric text, and brings it very close to Derridean deconstruction, which rejects and deconstructs the semantic singularity and fixity of meaning or hidden transcendental meaning of the text.

Future of Postcolonial Studies: Globalization and Environmentalism

Future of Postcolonial Studies: Globalization and Environmentalism     

  Postcolonialism’s deep alliance with poststructuralism that “focuses on textual issues instead of historical issues” and reads colonialism through the paradigm of representation rather than any other form of socio-economic exploitation. Postcolonialism’s conceptualization of the migrant as the “archetype of a postcolonial identity” that prioritizes the notions of hybridity, ambivalence and in-betweenness, and is essentially based on the postcolonial elite. The temporal ambiguity of postcolonialism that celebrates the contemporary world as an emancipatory space for the free flow of culture and borderless-ness, whereas the materialist critics interpret current globalization through their concerns for neocolonialism.

Postcolonialism’s anti-colonial stand, primarily reached through the binaries between the colonizer and the colonized and evident in the early work of Fanon, Memmi and Mannoni, became redundant in later postcolonialism that was deeply influenced by the interrogations of binaries in poststructuralistm. Postcolonialism’s post-structural turn is epitomized by Bhaba’s concept of the hybridity, “‘hybridity' which is commonly defined as “the creation of new transcultural forms within the contact zone produced by colonization” . Thus the binaries of the Self and the Other, the colonizer and the colonized, the oppressor and the oppressed were overshadowed by the concepts of in-betweenness, contact zones, cultural amalgamation, multiculturalism, which distinctly aim more at paradigms of synthesis and exchange rather than polarities.  Consequently, this also marks the alienation of postcolonialism from political concerns of anti-colonialism to a cultural concerns of identity and cultural diversity colonialism through “neocolonial” economic globalization and military occupations of the contemporary day and age.

Most of the criticism against postcolonialism as an ineffective tool to understand globalization stems from this critique of postcolonialism as too deeply entrenched in postmodernism. The crux of the issue lies in postcolonialism’s emphasis on ‘hybridity,’ which is identified as an essentially postmodern concept and celebrated as a condition of globalization. One of the most vocal voices against hybridity has been that of Aijaz Ahmad, who in his famous essay “The Politics Of Literary Postcoloniality” critiques postcolonialism for its insistence on postmodernism—a paradigm he describes as nothing but “apocalyptic anti-Marxism”(110). Ahmad’s objection to the postmodern leanings of postcolonial studies concerns its three major thematic concerns: 

a) “the theme of ’hybridity’, ’ambivalence’ and ’contingency’, as it surfaces especially in Bhabha’s writing but also much beyond; 

(b) the theme of the collapse of the nation-state as a horizon of politics; and 

(c) the theme of globalised, postmodern electronic culture, which is seen at times as a form of global entrapment and at other times as yielding the very pleasures of global hybridity”.

 Thus, for Ahmad, while the nation state increasingly gains in importance and continues to play a significant role especially in the context of state control over transnational finance, the celebration of globalization of culture through global electronic media is to foreground the “structural offensive of capital,” or “imperialist ideology” the when substantial proportions of the global population” are deprived of “conditions of bare survival, let alone electronic literacy and gadgetry” . For Ahmad thus, the postcolonial critic claiming cultural hybridity, which he terms as “carnivalesque” , assumes an essentially elite position. Thus, the privileged migrant who can “live a life of constant mobility and surplus pleasure” is totally dissociated from the class struggles and local resistances . Ahmad not only declares postcolonialism as incapable of addressing the crisis of contemporary global capitalism, he also echoes in Dirlik’s line of argument, that the postcolonial cultural critics are themselves consumers and producers of interchangeable, commodified cultures that represent the “depthlessness and whimsicality of postmodernism - the cultural logic of Late Capitalism”in Jameson’s superb phrase”

As long as globalization is conceived as a cultural rather than a structural experience, it functions as what Roland Robertson has called ‘‘a site of social theoretical interests, interpretative indulgence, or the display of world-ideological preferences’’; considered as an aggregate of local experiences in displacement rather than a structure patterned by causal relationships, the culture of globalization cannot account for ‘‘the global-human condition.

One of the ways through which the new postcolonial readings of contemporary literature can address the material conditions of globalization is through an understanding of the politics of production, dissemination and reception of the postcolonial texts as cultural commodities in the global literary market. Taking cues from the enquiries of the new historicists, it is important that postcolonialism also explores the historical context of the production of the text and its role as an ideological artifact in the way it responds to the tenets of neoliberal globalization. Thus, the new interventions in postcolonial literary studies, Milz argues, should not merely focus on texts that thematize the socio-economic-political realities of globalization but must go beyond the content of the text and rather understand “the relationship between literature and globalization within the larger context of contemporary power relations between nation-states, institutions, corporations, global markets, international trade and policy instruments  and so on.

The future of postcolonial studies :-

The field of Postcolonial Studies has been gaining prominence since the 1970s. Some would date its rise in the Western academy from the publication of Edward Said’s influential critique of Western constructions of the Orient in his 1978 book, Orientalism. The growing currency within the academy of the term “postcolonial” (sometimes hyphenated) was consolidated by the appearance in 1989 of The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post-Colonial Literatures by Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin. Since then, the use of cognate terms “Commonwealth” and “Third World” that were used to describe the literature of Europe’s former colonies has become rarer. Although there is considerable debate over the precise parameters of the field and the definition of the term “postcolonial,” in a very general sense, it is the study of the interactions between European nations and the societies they colonized in the modern period. The European empire is said to have held sway over more than 85% of the rest of the globe by the time of the First World War, having consolidated its control over several centuries. The sheer extent and duration of the European empire and its disintegration after the Second World War have led to widespread interest in postcolonial literature and criticism in our own times.

[there is] a prevailing version of postcolonial studies in the United States that so embraces its aura of ‘new work’ and its dual allegiances to high theory and a rather reified, distanced, and monolithic ‘Third World literature’ that it largely estranges itself from the individual and collective histories of several important allied traditions such as American studies, Native-American studies, African-American studies, Asian-American studies, Latino studies, and Gay and Lesbian studies.(Cooppan 1999: 7)

Despite the fact that there are pressing political overlaps between disenfranchised peoples and groups across the world , there are also important differentials between them: Native Americans or African-Americans, however disenfranchised, are citizens of the most powerful nation-state in the world; on the other hand, at least within the United States, many immigrants from the third world are either from relatively well-off sections of society, or even when not, have participated in what Toni Morrison has called a ‘most enduring and efficient rite of passage into American culture: negative appraisals of the native-born black population’, an ugly process that makes solidarities as difficult as they are necessary.

The list of former colonies of European powers is a long one. They are divided into settler (eg. Australia, Canada) and non-settler countries (India, Jamaica, Nigeria, Senegal, Sri Lanka). Countries such as South Africa and Zimbabwe which were partially settled by colonial populations complicate even this simple division between settler and non-settler. The widely divergent experiences of these countries suggest that “postcolonial” is a very loose term. In strictly definitional terms, for instance, the United States might also be described as a postcolonial country, but it is not perceived as such because of its position of power in world politics in the present, its displacement of native American populations, and its annexation of other parts of the world in what may be seen as a form of colonization. For that matter, other settler countries such as Canada and Australia are sometimes omitted from the category “postcolonial” because of their relatively shorter struggle for independence, their loyalist tendencies toward the mother country which colonized them, and the absence of problems of racism or of the imposition of a foreign language. It could, however, be argued that the relationship between these countries to the mother country is often one of margin to center, making their experience relevant to a better understanding of colonialism.
The debate surrounding the status of settler countries as postcolonial suggests that issues in Postcolonial Studies often transcend the boundaries of strict definition. In a literal sense, “postcolonial” is that which has been preceded by colonization. The second college edition of The American Heritage Dictionary defines it as “of, relating to, or being the time following the establishment of independence in a colony.” In practice, however, the term is used much more loosely. While the denotative definition suggests otherwise, it is not only the period after the departure of the imperial powers that concerns those in the field, but that before independence as well.
The formation of the colony through various mechanisms of control and the various stages in the development of anti-colonial nationalism interest many scholars in the field. By extension, sometimes temporal considerations give way to spatial ones (i.e. in an interest in the postcolony as a geographical space with a history prior or even external to the experience of colonization rather than in the postcolonial as a particular period) in that the cultural productions and social formations of the colony long before colonization are used to better understand the experience of colonization. Moreover, the “postcolonial” sometimes includes countries that have yet to achieve independence, or people in First World countries who are minorities, or even independent colonies that now contend with “neocolonial” forms of subjugation through expanding capitalism and globalization. In all of these senses, the “postcolonial,” rather than indicating only a specific and materially historical event, seems to describe the second half of the twentieth-century in general as a period in the aftermath of the heyday of colonialism. Even more generically, the “postcolonial” is used to signify a position against imperialism and Eurocentrism. Western ways of knowledge production and dissemination in the past and present then become objects of study for those seeking alternative means of expression. As the foregoing discussion suggests, the term thus yokes a diverse range of experiences, cultures, and problems; the resultant confusion is perhaps predictable.
The expansiveness of the “postcolonial” has given rise to lively debates. Even as some deplore its imprecision and lack of historical and material particularity, others argue that most former colonies are far from free of colonial influence or domination and so cannot be postcolonial in any genuine sense. In other words, the overhasty celebration of independence masks the march of neocolonialism in the guise of modernization and development in an age of increasing globalization and transnationalism; meanwhile, there are colonized countries that are still under foreign control. The emphasis on colonizer/colonized relations, moreover, obscures the operation of internal oppression within the colonies. Still others berate the tendency in the Western academy to be more receptive to postcolonial literature and theory that is compatible with postmodern formulations of hybridity, syncretization, and pastiche while ignoring the critical realism of writers more interested in the specifics of social and racial oppression. The lionization of diasporic writers like Salman Rushdie, for instance, might be seen as a privileging of the transnational, migrant sensibility at the expense of more local struggles in the postcolony. Further, the rise of Postcolonial Studies at a time of growing transnational movements of capital, labor, and culture is viewed by some with suspicion in that it is thought to deflect attention away from the material realities of exploitation both in the First and the Third World.

Midnight children

Salman Rushdie :-

Salman Rushdie is undoubtly one of the most famous novelists in presenttime. His second novel Midnight's Children received greater critical acclaimand made Rushdie a famous literary figure in English speaking world. The novelwon for him Booker of Bookers prize in 1993. In the novel Rushdie introduces aninnovator narrative technique which is different from the contemporary writers.He uses the first person narrative through Saleem Sinai, the protagonist of thenovel. Rushdie also makes good use of the device of Magic Realism in Midnight'sChildren. Further Rushdie's use of cinematic elements can clearly be seen inthe novel.

All this shows Bombay Cinema's influence on Rushdie and Rushdie'suse of Indianized English is his biggest achievement. His use of Indian worldlike ekdum, angrez, firangee etc. give Indian flavor to the novel. Above all,Rushdie can be considered the master of narrative techniques at present time.

The narrative techniques in Midnight's children :-

Rushdie's Midnight's Children introduces a new narrative technique which is totally different from the traditional narrative techniques. Also Rushdie sets the trend for experimentation with narrative technique and usage of English language. In this way, he gave a new direction to Indian writing in English. William Walsh Rightly praised the technique by saying that, "combining the elements of magic and Fantasy, the grimmest realism, extravagant force, multi-mirrored analogy, and a potent symbolic structure, Salman Rushdie has captured the astonishing energy of the novel unprecedented in scope, manner and achievement in the hundred and fifty-years-old tradition of the India novel in English".

The novel covers a period of seventy five years of the history of the Indian subcontinent. The protagonist, Saleem Sinai, narrates the story of his birth and the birth of Indian subcontinent. The narrative blurs the chronological boundaries. As, Rushdies counterpart, Saleem Sinai narrates his story from a distance of time, and place. Like the narrator of Mahabharta, Sanjay who is endowed with special power to see things from a distance, and narrates the events of the Kurukshetra war, Saleen is endowed with magic power so that he can see from a distance and read the mind of readers.

Rushdie used the device of magic realism for the framework of the novel. When we go through the novel, we find that Saleem Sinai, the protagonist, has the gift of having an incredible sense of smell which allows him to determine other's thoughts and emotions. This gift of Saleem is same to that of his grandfather Adam Ajiz who also had the same large nose and magical gift. In the novel we see that how Adam's incredible sense of smell and his magical nose saved him from being killed in the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre.

Character :-

Adaptation is an integral part of literature in which one genre is transformed into the same or the another. The person who adapts any literary product generally adds or deletes, maybe something or maybe many things, from the original and recreates a new original proving Linda Serger’s statement, “…adaptation is a new

original”, right.

The concept of the transfer of a novel into a feature film is known as ‘Novel into Film’. It is considered in modern western culture as a type of derivative work. Popular novels are frequently adapted into films to take advantage of the popularity of the written literature. The reason is to reach the audience easily in order to make

commercial benefit. Obviously, the more successful the source novel is, the more likely it is to attract a larger

audience. By now many novels have already been converted into films but there is still no definitive theory of adaptation, thus the critics and scholars ponder over adaptation, yet cannot seem to agree on what makes an adaptation a success or a failure. On successfully observing both the genres without any prejudices, the observer can realise that the change is a new creativity that also helps in better understanding of the texts.

 Themes and symbols :-

A mixture of fiction and history, verisimilar and imaginary, Midnight’s Children is narrated in the first person by Saleem Sinai, one of the 1000 children born right at or soon after midnight on 15th August 1947, India’s Independence Day from the British Empire. Each child holds some kind of supernatural, magical power.

The perfect balance, so typical in Rushdie’s works, is denoted even chronologically here, with the Indian Independence Day being the perfect centre of the novel’s timeline. While the present time of the story is set at the end of the 1970s – 32 years after Saleem’s birthday – the first events he tells are about his grandfather, Aadam Aziz, in 1915 – 32 years before. Its central position makes that eventful night even more important: everything revolves around it.

Throughout the whole novel, pairs of characters are presented more or less in direct opposition to each other. As Saleem’s story serves as an allegory of India’s history, as we will see further on, these clashes also assume a specific metaphorical meaning: tradition versus opposition (Tai the boatman and Aadam Aziz, Salem’s grandfather); Muslims and Hindus (Saleem and Shiva); different visions of Islam (Aziz again and his wife Naseem). In a way, contrast is most frequent relationship between characters and, where events in Saleem’s life reflect historical events of India, these frictions represent clashes in the country’s society – a never-ending flow of conflicts between different ethnic groups, faiths, or political parties.

Texture :-

In the journey from the novel to the movie, Midnight’s Children bypasses many plots and remains faithful to many. At the very beginning, the episode of Padma being a faithful audience to Saleem’s story is

replaced by direct narration but the episode of the famous perforated sheet remains faithful to a good deal.

Aadam and Naseem have comparatively become smaller characters in the movie. Thus, Tai turns into a character of an unrecognisable youth in the movie and the episode of Naseem’s breaking of silence after a gap of three long years is omitted.

As Ahmed and Amina directly shift to Bombay, the part in which Amina saves Lifafa from being killed by the mob and Lafifa’s cousin Shri Ramram Seth making mystic prophesies about Amina's son fail to get a place in the movie.

Even Saleem’s prowess in digging deep into people's minds evades in the motion format. In the movie,Saleem has the power to get connected to the midnight's children only, and his power to get into anyone’s mind is missing. Thus, Saleem’s one-sided love with Evie Burns as well as his attempt to push into Evie’s mind is lost. Similarly, the episode of using his mental abilities to follow Amina around the town to discover her affair with Nadir is replaced by a monotonous observation through overhearing.

The movie tries to keep Saleem’s image clear enough and therefore the scene in which Saleem sees his mom, Amina, masturbating; while reciting the name of a man who is not Saleem’s father, and Saleem having a glance of his mother’s butt while she is about to pee; is reduced to a scene where Saleem watches his mother being passionate and taking the name of her former lover.

Unlike the text where Saleem is hospitalised for a cut in his fingers, Saleem in the motion genre is

hospitalised soon after a teacher badly punishes him. Then after, in both the formats, Saleem’s parents discover

that Saleem is not their biological son.

The entire episode of Saleem being sent to live with his filmmaker uncle and movie-star aunt is replaced by the episode where Saleem is sent to his aunt, Emerald, whose husband, Zulfikar, is Pakistani Army’s one of the supreme officers. And unlike the text, Saleem becomes youth in Pakistan in the movie. Thus,Instead of travelling to Pakistan with his family, Saleem reunites with them in Karachi. But, from his journey

from childhood till youth, Saleem was alone, with no friends, except the friends of his mind – the midnight’s children. The irony remains that in the text, Saleem fails to connect with the midnight’s children while he was in Pakistan.

In Pakistan, Jamila becomes famous as a singer as in the original genre, but Ahmed fails to enjoy moderate success making bath linens in the movie.

The movie doesn’t agree to emancipate the feeling of incest in Saleem, like in the novel. Therefore, his love for Jamila and his unnecessary justification towards a love relationship between both of is erased from the motion format.

In the movie, Saleem undergoes a nasal surgery not because he gets a severe sinus infection, like in the novel, but just because Ahmed forcibly makes that happen. But similar to the text, Saleem realises that he has lost his power of telepathy, but in its place, he is endowed with a powerful sense of smell where he can even smell the perfume of new love.

The text shows the revolt of the midnight’s children against Saleem . 

 Aesthetic :-

Midnight’s Children has been adapted three times so far, first for television (MCS) in 1998 by Rushdie, then for theatre (MCT) in 2002, again by Rushdie with dramaturg Simon Reade and director Tim Supple,5 and lastly for film (MCF) in 2012.6 Both of the earlier adaptations have also been published as books: The Screenplay of Midnight’s children (Rushdie, 1999b), and Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children: Adapted for the Theatre (Rushdie, Reade, and Supple, 2002). The film screenplay, the most recent of these, was written by Rushdie and the Indian-Canadian director Deepa Mehta; in the film Rushdie also appears as the narratorial voiceover, and Satya Bhabha (who plays Saleem)Is the son of Rushdie’s friend, the postcolonial theorist Homi K. Bhabha.

that the film adaptation is a protracted creative project that has taken into consideration, more than previous adaptations of the novel, not only new forms of representation and

new ways of reading, but also new ways of engaging its constructed audiences.

Comparisons with the novel are not made in order to calibrate its success but as variations on a theme with two foci: the question of beginning, and the question of address. We con-clude that the adaptation by the author of the “original” presents different types of adjust-ment, and that the questions of audience and media are more relevant.

As with the 2012 film adaptation, Rushdie was involved in the other adaptations as

both author of the source text and screenplay writer and co-adaptor, thus “authorizing”these dramatizations. This direct involvement prompts such questions as: What is at

stake when the author of the “source” text participates in the adaptation, co-creates it,and thus wishes to retain prolonged authorial control over the text? What implications do the merging of author and voiceover narrator have for the reception? What is involved when the author breaks “the fourth wall”, speaking directly to the audience through the imaginary barrier that, by convention, separates viewers from the characters (and the author)? What happens when the typically central issues in adaptation theory (author-ship, authenticity, fidelity, and intertextuality) become marginal? To offer tentative

answers to these questions here, we will first consider critical considerations and

Rushdie’s own views on adaptation, before analysing the adaptations especially through audience construction.