NUML journal of critical inquiry

Twelve theses on decolonizing history

Boaventura de Souza Santos — 2024-08-30

In a novel historical context, as in the case of a revolution, the weight of history tends to be light on the generations that are there at the onset; they may be called “the inaugural generations”. On the other hand, it tends to be heavy on the generations that follow; let us call them “the after generations”. These two types of generations correspond to two different conceptions of the past, respectively: the past as a mission or a task, and the past as a treasure or a trophy. For the inaugural generations, the past is open and unfinished; for the after generations, it is closed and accomplished. The relative prevalence of these two types of generations determines the relative weight of history. History is as much about the past as it is about the present. The present is nothing more than the past in the process of presenting itself to us. Modern Eurocentric view of the world led to a global separation between two bodies of people: those who do not want to remember and those who cannot afford to forget. The latter are the people whose past and present was violently interrupted by Western domination. In consonance with the epistemologies of the South, this paper is written from the perspective of the people who cannot afford to forget.

The Individual and the Political are ONE: A Parallactical Reading of Milan Kundera’s The Joke

Shehryar Khan — 2024-06-30

Milan Kundera believes that science and reason understand what we call ‘being’ through the binarism of subject/object and, in the process, have reduced the world into pure instrumentality. To him, novel is the genre that strives to explore ‘being’ beyond this binarism. His fiction investigates different modes of being like the personal and the political, body and soul, and the particular and the universal. This article analyses the antagonism of the personal and the political in his novel The Joke using Slavoj Zizek’s idea of parallax view. Parallax is the change of the position of the observed with the change in the position of the observer. Zizek applies this concept on the social and political field to prove that these two antagonistic positions might seem two but, actually, are ONE. Zizek has used Hegelian/Marxist theoretical framework to prove this ONENESS. The article, using Zizekian insight, argues that the perceived difference between the personal and the political is parallactical and both are, in fact, ONE. But this ONENESS should not be understood as an imposition or coercion but a necessary condition for the social field to function. Moreover, the article posits that the one-sidedness on the part of the individual when it comes to antagonistic modes of being, gives birth to extremist positions that ought to be avoided. A Parallactical reading of the selected text offers a critique of social and political polarization that has gripped the world in recent decades.

Consilience Chronicle A Big-History Perspective on Ejaz Rahim’s Garden of Secrets Revisited

Sonia Bokhari — 2024-06-30

This research analyses Ejaz Rahim’s historiographical epic poem Garden of Secrets Revisited (2020) to explore the synergy between the overarching concept of “Big History” (regarded as good knowledge) and the integrative nature of “Consilience.” Building on the idea of William H. McNeil, David Christian further expostulates the concept of “big history” in his essay “What is Big History?” where he draws on and elaborates the term “consilience” coined by E.O. Wilson, who initially envisioned it as “a return to the goal of a unified understanding of reality.” The in-depth analysis of Rahim’s epic seeks parallels between Christian’s idea of big history by using the consilience of multiple disciplines of knowledge to understand the common themes that shape the world. Marnie Hughes-Warrington’s deliberations on the concept of philosophical and universal history in poetic form, expressed in her book History as Wonder (2019), are triangulated with the ideas of Christian and Jacques Derrida to pursue the argument through a bricolage of theoretical positions. This paper finally develops the thesis that the concept of consilience underpins the methodology of long history by emphasizing an interdisciplinary approach to human history. A critical study of Garden of Secrets Revisited, therefore, provides a nuanced understanding of the ethical implications of the experience of reading big history along with an engagement with Derrida’s propositions in Specters of Marx (1994), where he regards the experience of history as an ethical understanding of things. The study intervenes critical scholarship on the strength of its argument that historiographical poetry as a powerful and transformative sub-genre has the potential to reconnect history, ranging from humanities to natural sciences, with a universalist vision underlying the concept of big history that may help reach the objective historical truth.

Navigating Space, Place, and Society: A GeoHumanities Perspective on Transgression in Geetanjali Shree’s Tomb of Sand

Musfira Tayyab — 2024-06-30

This research explores the social dynamics of space in Geetanjali Shree’s Tomb of Sand (2021), originally published as Ret Samadhi, and translated into English by Daisy Rockwell. Tomb of Sand revolves around Ma, an eighty year old woman, who rises from a deep trance as new and develops a taste for transgression. The objective of this research essay is to evaluate the social implications of animation of places like doors, thresholds, boundaries, and walls in the novel, and to analyse the role of spatial dimension in the transgressive activities of characters. The research is significant in that it highlights the treatment of space as a physical entity that has a cognition of its own. The paper argues that the places in the novel are alive due to their social soul, and they put forth the ideologies and thoughts of the prominent actors who inhabit them. Places, therefore, become indicators of characters’ transgression since they represent the social expectations with regards to gender, age or class. For instance, the door of Bade’s home (in the text under scrutiny) “knows that it must remain open” as he has a responsibility towards every social class as a civil servant. However, the case is different for Beti whose departure from Bade’s home is viewed as a sign of transgression. This research employs the concept of place by Tim Cresswell in his book In Place/ Out of Place: Geography, Ideology and transgression (1996). Appropriating the tools of interpretive phenomenological analysis of the text, the research contributes to the interdisciplinary domain of GeoHumanities.

Leaping with Duende: Triangulating Dionysian Aesthetic and Spanish Surrealism in the Selected Poems of Federico Garcia Lorca

Hamza Mudassir — 2024-06-30

This paper explores selected poems from Federico Garcia Lorca's two poetry volumes, A Poet in New York and Lament for Ignacio Sanchez Mejias, from the perspective of his poetic thesis expounded in the lecture titled Theory and Play of Duende. The available scholarship on Lorca fundamentally focuses on the socio-politico-cultural undertones in his poetry. By bringing a fresh perspective to his poetry through the technique of Duende, this research challenges pre-existing notions popular in the available critical scholarship. A robust creative force that artists’ work exudes without their control on it, Duende leaves a trance-like effect on the spectators/audience (and readers in case of poetry). Understood by many cultural critics and writers as an artistic inspiration deeply rooted in Spanish soil, Duende has long been riddled with mystical abstractions and subject to scholarly misconceptions. The current study makes it accessible through Friedrich Nietzsche's concept of Dionysian Aesthetic from his book Birth of Tragedy. Inspired by the Greek god Dionysus that stands for orgiastic energies, dance, and transgression, Dionysian Aesthetic is the manifestation of creative energies in art. This investigation also employs a Spanish concept called “Leaping” that bridges the gap between Duende and Dionysian Aesthetic, as this paper illustrates by reading Lorca's selected poems. Having its origin in Spanish poetry, Leaping is a technique characterized by associative jumps from subject matter to the unconscious mind keeping in perspective the emotions emanating from the poem. This essay triangulates Duende and Dionysian Aesthetic as theoretical props with Leaping technique in order to analyse Lorca’s poetry, and this is how it intervenes in contemporary scholarship on Lorca.