M. A. Part-II English Paper 6 Critical Theory All

H
SHIVAJI UNIVERSITY, KOLHAPUR

CENTRE FOR DISTANCE EDUCATION
(Compulsory Paper-6)
Critical Theories
For
M. A. Part-II
Copyright
Registrar,
Shivaji University,
Kolhapur. (Maharashtra)
First Edition 2012
Prescribed for M. A. Part-II

All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced in any form by mimeography
or any other means without permission in writing from the Shivaji University, Kolhapur
(MS)
Copies : 3,000
Published by:
Dr. D. V. Muley
Registrar,
Shivaji University,
Kolhapur-416 004.
Printed by :
Shri. Mandar Bhostekar,
Superintendent,
Shivaji University Press,
Kolhapur-416 004
Kolhapur.
ISBN- 978-81-8486-423-6
Further information about the Centre for Distance Education & Shivaji University may be
obtained from the University Office at Vidyanagar, Kolhapur-416 004, India.
This material has been produced with the Developmental Grant from DEC-IGNOU, New
Delhi.
(ii)
Centre for Distance Education

Shivaji University, Kolhapur
n ADVISORY COMMITTEE n
Prof. (Dr.) N. J. Pawar
Vice-Chancellor,
Prof. (Dr.) K. S. Rangappa

Hon. Vice-Chancellor, Karnataka State Open
University, Mansagangotri, Mysore
Prof. (Dr.) R. Krishna Kumar

Hon. Vice-Chancellor, Yashwantrao Chavan
Maharashtra Open University, Dnyangangotri,
Near Gangapur Dam, Nasik
Prof. V. Venkaih
Director, Academic Dr. B. R. Ambedkar
Open University Rd. No. 46, Jubilee Hill,
Hyderabad-33 Andhrapradesh
Dr. A. P. Gavali
Dean, Faculty of Arts,
Dr. J. S. Patil
Dean, Faculty of Social Sciences,
Dr. C. J. Khilare
Dean, Faculty of Science,
Dr. R. G. Phadatare
Dean, Faculty of Commerce,
Prof. (Dr.) A. B. Rajge

Director, B.C.U.D.,
Prof. (Dr.) D. V. Muley

Registrar,
Dr. B. M. Hirdekar
Controller of Examination
Shri. B. S. Patil,
Finance and Accounts Officer,
Prof. (Dr.) A. N. Joshi

Vaishnavi Appartments, Flat No. 8, Shrirang
nagar, Near Pumping Station,
Near Gangapur Dam, Nasik
Prof. Dr. (Smt.) Cima Yeole

(Member Secretary)
Director, Centre for Distance Education,

Shivaji University, Kolhapur.
n B. O. S. MEMBERS OF ENGLISH n
Chairman- Dr. M. G. Kadam
Sadguru Gadge Maharaj College, Karad, Dist. Satara
l
Prof. (Dr.) P. A. Attar
Head, Dept. of English,

l
Dr. S. B. Bhambar
Arts, Commerce & Science College,

Palus, Dist. Sangli
l
'Yashodhan', 2nd Lane, Ayodhya Nagar,

Gadhinglaj, Dist. Kolhapur
l
Dr. S. R. Sawant
Kisanveer Mahavidyalaya, Wai,
Dist. Satara
Dr. S. I. Noorani
Dattajirao Kadam Arts, Commerce &
Science College, Shivajinagar,
Ichalkaranji, Dist. Kolhapur
Dr. N. R. Sawant
Shivraj College of Arts, Commerce &
D. S. Kadam Science College,
Gadhinglaj, Dist. Kolhapur.
Dr. S. R. Ghatge
Kakasaheb Chavan College, Talmavale,
Tal. Patan, Dist. Satara
Dr. P. M. Patil
Dr. R. P. Lokhande
Rajarshi Shahu College, Kolhapur.
(iii)
Centre for Distance Education

Shivaji University,
Kolhapur.
Critical Theories
M. A. Part-II English Compulsory Paper-6
Writing Team
Authors Name
Unit No
Prof. Akhalaq Ziaahmed Tade

Willingdon College, Sangli.
Dr. S. Y. Hongekar
Vivekanand College, Kolhapur
Prof. U. R. Patil
Raj. Shahu Arts & Commerce College, Rukdi
Dr. A. M. Jadhav
Yashwantrao Chavan Arts & Commerce College, Islampur
Prof. S. R. Ghatage
Kakasaheb Chavan Mahavidyalaya, Talmavale
Dr. A. Y. Shinde
Mudhoji College, Phaltan
Prof. A. M. Sarwade
English Department, Shivaji University, Kolhapur.
Dr. M. L. Jadhav
Smt. Dr. R. G. Barvekar

Editors n
Prof. S. R. Ghatage
Kakasaheb Chavan Mahavidyalaya,
Talmavale
Dr. A. Y. Shinde
Mudhoji College, Phaltan
Dr. M. G. Kadam
Sadguru Gadge Maharaj College, Karad, Dist. Satara
(iv)
Preface
Dear Student,
This book contains Self-Instructional Material on the core paper VI Critical
Theories. You must have seen the detailed syllabus prescribed for this paper. The
syllabus contains four general topics namely i) Structuralism and Post Structuralism
ii) Feminism iii) Marxism iv) Ecocriticism. The general topics provide the
background for the essays prescribed as texts. The literary terms, and literary
theory make you aware of the philosophical background and contribution of the
thinkers and critics in their respective fields. The reference books given at the end
of the unit will help you to pursue your study of these topics further. Eight texts
prescribed in the syllabus are included in this book but they are in the form of study
material not the original texts. The unit writers have tried to make them simple and
brief. So it is your responsibility to go to the original texts to get the feel of the
original and seek more information and understand them in the right spirit. So
these units are notes for your guidance. You ought to refer to the original materials
in the books prescribed. The units in this book are simplified for your guidance.
You should supplement this material from your own reading of the original texts
and supplementary texts.
There are objective type questions such as one word/sentence/phrase answer
questions, fill in the blanks and multiple choice questions with their answers. The
exercises are for the sake of practice.
It is hoped that the study material gone in the making of this book will prove
to be of great use for the learners.
The editors take the opportunity to thank those people who helped in
accomplishing the great task of preparing this book for students of Distance
Education.
Editors
(v)
Critical Theories
M. A. Part-II English Compulsory Paper-6
CONTENTS
1.
General Topics
2.
Dhvani : Structure of Poetic Meaning by Anandwardhan
33
3.
Nature of Linguistic Sign by Ferdinand de Saussure
47
4.
Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of
66
Human Sciences by Jacques Derrida

5.
The Death of the Author by Roland Barthes
86
6.
Feminist Criticism in the Wilderness by Elaine Showalter
97
7.
The Politics of Theory: Ideological Position in
131
Postmodern Debate by Fredric Jameson

8.
Literary Studies in an Age of Environmental Crisis
167
by Cheryll Glotfelty
9.
A Literary Representation of the Subaltern:

Mahasweta Devi's Standayini by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak
(vii)
198
Each Unit begins with the section Objectives Objectives are directive and indicative of :
1. What has been presented in the Unit and
2. What is expected from you
3. What you are expected to know pertaining to the specific
Unit once you have completed working on the Unit.
The self check exercises with possible answers will help you to
understand the Unit in the right perspective. Go through the possible
answer only after you write your answers. These exercises are not
to be submitted to us for evaluation. They have been provided to
you as Study Tools to help keep you in the right track as you study
the Unit.
(viii)
Unit-1
General Topics
There are four General Topics prescribed. They are as follows:

1)
Structuralism and Post-Structuralism
2)
Marxism
3)
Feminism
4)
Ecocriticism
Contents:
1.1.1
Structuralism and Post-Structuralism
1.1.2
Check Your Progress
1.2.1
Marxism
1.2.2
Check Your Progress
1.3.1
Feminism
1.3.2
Check Your Progress
1.4.1
Ecocriticism
1.4.2
Check Your Progress
1.5.1
Keys to Check Your Progress No.1.1.3
1.5.2
1.5.3
1.5.4
1.6
Exercises
1.7
Reference for Further Study
1.1.1 STRUCTURALISM AND POST-STRUCTURALISM

STRUCTURALISM:
It is a well known fact that the New Criticism was a reaction against the older
philological, historical and biographical approach to literary work of art in the sense
that it compelled the reader to pay closer attention to the text instead of collecting
information about the text and its author. Though it started in a radical way, it
became mechanical, objective and more dehumanized in the hands of the New
Critics. The New critics felt that the reader and his response to the text should be
given more priority and importance than the intention of the writer. The result of the
logic was that it caused the disappearance of the author as well as of his intention,
ultimately causing the exaltation of the text.
The first reaction to the New Criticism came in 1940s. Northrop Frye suggested
a transition from the New Criticism to Structuralism and Post-Structuralist Criticism
through what he called the Archetypal Criticism. While the interest of the New
Critics was in semantics and verbal complexity, the curiosity of the structuralist was
more in the system of conventions underlying the works of art.
Structuralism is a movement by a group of French writers and their American
counterparts who used the linguistic concepts provided by the Swiss linguist,
Ferdinand de Saussure in his Course in General Linguistics (1915). It is believed that
the fundamental insights of Structuralism have been supplied by Ferdinand de
Saussure and Claude Levi-Strauss. Structuralism is a certain mode of analysis of
cultural artifacts based on the methods of contemporary linguistics; and it is being
followed by the scholars in other disciplines such as philosophy, history,
psychoanalysis, anthropology, etc.
Word structure has been used in many different contexts and disciplines of
science and humanities. There is a structure of a word, a sentence, a phrase, a
paragraph, a chapter, a book etc. The process of discovering relationships is called
structuring. As far as literary criticism is concerned, the word structure has a
special significance and it has been derived from linguistics. Almost all literary
theories since ancient times emphasize the importance of structure of a work of art
in the process of evaluating literature. Structure has elements that can be arranged or
rearranged in order to modify the structure. According to Dorothy Seiz, structure is a
set of terms in relationship constantly defined whatever the transformations.
2
The Structuralist criticism is a part of the French Structuralism which was

initiated in 1950s by the renowned cultural anthropologist, Claude Levi-Strauss who
with other writers showed that Structuralism cuts across the traditional disciplinary
areas of humanities and social sciences by providing an objective account of all
social and cultural practices. The special significance of Structuralism lies in the fact
that it marks a revolt against a particular type of scholarship which dominated the
French universities; and secondly, it believed in a return to the text. The aim of
Structuralism was not to provide interpretation, unlike the New Criticism, but to
arrive at a poetics that studies the conditions of meaning, the formal structures that
organize a text, and to create possibility for variety of meanings.
Structuralist believes that a system of conventions is the matrix in which
individual signs (are embedded, which acquire meaning and significance within a
total structure). Structuralist presumes that meaning is made possible because of the
existence of underlying systems of conventions which enable elements to function
individually as signs.
Saussures description of language and its elements provided basis for
signifier and signified. He analyzed the sign into two components: a sound or
acoustic component which he called as signifier, and the mental or conceptual
component as signified. Saussure also introduced two other significant contrast terms
which are very essential in the understanding of Structuralism: langue and
parole. Langue is a theoretical structure of a language which the speaker of that
language must obey if he or she needs to communicate; whereas parole is actual use
made of that system by the individual speaker. Structuralist is concerned with
signifier rather than signified for structuralism gives primacy to langue over
parole. According to M.H. Abrams, Structuralist Criticism views literature as a
second-order signifying system that uses the first-order structural system of language
as its medium. When a proficient reader tries to make sense of a particular literary
work by specifying the underlying system of literary conventions and rules which
has been inadvertently mastered by him, Structuralist Criticism undertakes to explain
this process. The aim of Structuralism, unlike New Criticism, is not to provide
interpretation of any individual text; but to make clear the implicit grammar that
governs the forms and meanings of all literary productions.
Intention of the structuralist is to define the conditions that permit the very
creation of a work of art because he is concerned with the system of beliefs and ideas
3
that make possible such creations. The structuralist works upon a piece of literature
in order to discover the principle that allowed the arrangement of words and phrases
to form that piece. Therefore at the heart of Structuralism there is, thus, the idea of a
system. There is something mystic and indefinable in literature that has to be
discovered; and this urge is scientific. Hence, by discovering that mystic element in
literature, Structuralist criticism tries to make literary criticism a scientific discipline.
Roland Barthes, Gerard Genette, Julia Kristeva, Tzvetan Todorov were some of the
important structuralist critics of literature.
Structuralism is clearly in direct opposition to any form of the critical view
which manifests that literature is a mode of communication between author and
readers. Structuralist criticism is not an analysis of a particular work of art with an
intention of providing its interpretation; but on the contrary it scrutinizes the work of
art in order to find out its structure. Structuralist criticism performs double function:
firstly it analyses a text; and secondly it discovers or defines the underlying structure.
This process may be called as dissection and articulation.
In Structuralist criticism the reader is placed in the position of an author, as the
vital agency, engaged in the impersonal activity of reading. Whatever the reader
reads is not a work of art filled with meaning, but just ecriture, that is, writing.
This proves that the focus of Structuralist criticism is on the impersonal process of
reading which makes possible the literary sense of the words, phrases and sentences
that compose the text by activating the play of essential codes and conventions of
that language. According to a structuralist, a literary work is nothing but a text, a
mode of writing consisting of a play of component elements which belong to
particular literary conventions and codes. These elements, according to M. H.
Abrams, may produce an illusion of reality; but they neither have truth in them nor
refer to any reality existing outside the literary system.
Structuralist tries to show that it is the language that speaks in literature; and
thus, constructs an elaborate metalanguage assuming that literature is itself like
language. Hence for Roland Barthes language becomes literatures Being.
Structuralist examines a work to discover how meaning is shaped or how meaning is
made possible; and thereby discovers the basic structures of literature. Structuralism
gives tremendous insight into the basic process of understanding.
Roland Barthes (1915-80), a French critic, speaks about the parallelism of

homology between language and narrative. According to him, a narrative is like a
long sentence. Barthes makes use of the distinction suggested by Benveniste between
personal and impersonal aspects of language. This notion alienates the traditional
emphasis on psychology and realism which may dwell outside of a narrative.
Therefore in Barthes view language of narrative achieves a self-reflexivity. As per
the assumption of Structuralism, the author is not assigned any intention or initiative
as a producer of a work of art. It is the conscious self of him which is the creator of
a work. Roland Barthes in his famous essay, The Death of the Author, highlights it as
As institution, the author is dead.
Perhaps the most comprehensive contribution in this field is of Gerard Genettes
who, in his Narrative Discourse (1980), incorporates all aspects of narrative.
According to him narrative as a series of events is different from the act of
narrating. Genette refines the term of narrative discourse to great accuracy
suggesting that narrative is governed not by any relation to reality but by its own
internal laws and logic.
According to Tzvetan Todorov, art is not expected to reproduce or imitate
reality; it is, rather, a system by itself and is under no obligation to represent
anything. Todorovs books, The Poetics of Prose (trans; 1977) and Introduction to
Poetics (trans; 1981), have contributed a lot in the field of Structuralism. Another
significant structuralist Jonathan Culler, in his Structuralist Poetics (1975), presents
a wide-ranging survey of the programme and accomplishments of Structuralist
literary criticism.
Structuralism emphasized the view that literary meanings are determined by a
system of invariant conventions and codes. But this scientific claim of Structuralism
was destabilized by Deconstruction and other post-structural theories. Roland
Barthes in his later writing abandoned the scientific aspirations of Structuralism and
gave tremendous emphasis on the role of the reader in reading texts. The absence of
the author (death of the author) in the zenith days of Structuralism heralded Barthes
to look upon the writing of a text as a practice. He remarks that readers are always
free to take pleasures of the text. Barthes denied the scientific aspiration of
Structuralism and distinguished between lisible [readerly e.g. realistic novels] and
scriptable [writerly e.g. metafiction] texts. The lisible is what we already know as a
realistic novel which restricts the variety of interpretation by insisting on specific
5
meaning; whereas the scriptable is that which is unintelligible in terms of our

traditional models; and which encourages the reader to be a producer of his or her
own meaning according to the multiplicity of codes. In this way the reader, according
to Structuralism, contributes in the production and writing of the texts.
POST-STRUCTURALISM :
We have seen that Structuralism incorporated a number of disciplines starting
from the works of Russian Formalists to the early works of Roland Barthes. These
structuralists gave crucial importance to Saussures thesis which formed the base of
their studies. Post-structuralism may be considered as an attempt to challenge some
of the assumptions and methods followed by the structuralists. In this way Poststructuralism indicates a broad variety of critical perspective and procedures that
destabilized the dominance of Structuralism. It was Jacques Derrida whose name is
chiefly associated with post-structuralism.
Derrida, in his paper Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human
Sciences delivered in 1966 at Johns Hopkins University in America, caused the
emergence of the Post-structural theory. Derrida attacked the structuralists view
based on the Saussurean theory of language since it was he who carried out the
extreme logical consequences of structuralism. According to Saussure, a systematic
structure, whether linguistic or other, presupposes a regulating center that controls
the differential play of internal relationships without getting involved into the play.
Derrida shows that this illogical and impractical notion of an ever-active, yet always
absent center is logocentric, that is, typical of Western thinking. Other
contemporary thinkers like Michel Foucault, Jacques Lacan and Roland Barthes also
undertook to decenter or subvert the traditional claims of the existence of selfevident foundations that assure the validity of knowledge and truth. According to
M.H. Abrams, this process of decentering of the self-evident foundations is
designated by the term antifoundationalism which is noticed to some extent in the
current modes of literary studies including Marxism, Feminism, New Historicism.
Postmodern is sometimes used interchangeably with Post-structural. The
salient features of post-structural thought and criticism are as follows.
1) The primacy of theory: In post-structural criticism theory has significant
position. The word theory refers to an account of the general conditions of
signification that determines meaning and interpretation in all spheres of human
6
action, production and intellection. A prominent aspect of post-structural theories is

that they are posed in opposition to inherited ways of thinking in all field of
knowledge.
2) The decentering of the subject: Post-structuralism decenters the subject. Poststructural critics strongly oppose the traditional view in which the author, the human
subject, is considered a rational and competent identity gifted with purpose and
initiative, and whose designs and intentions affect the form and meaning of the
literary product. Derrida abolishes the possibility of a controlling agency in language
by erasing the structural linguistic center and leaves the use of language to become
an unregulated play of purely rational elements, that is, of the signifiers. Thus, for
Derrida the text becomes an uncontrolled and uncontrollable play of signifiers.
According to many deconstructive critics, the subject or author or narrator of a text
becomes itself a purely linguistic product.
Michel Foucault and Roland Barthes both indicated this departure of the
traditional idea of the author by announcing the disappearance of the author- that
is, the death of the author. Roland Barthes published his essay, The Death of the
Author in 1968 whereas Michel Foucault comes out with his essay, What Is an
Author? in 1969. What they intend to mean was that a human individual is an
essential bond in the chain of events that results in a parole or a text; and what they
denied was the validity of the function or role assigned to an author. Barthes and
Foucault discarded the notion that an author is the origin of all knowledge and
determiner of the form and meanings of a text. A number of current forms of
Marxist, Feminist, Psychoanalytic and New Historicist criticism clearly show a
similar tendency of decentering and sometimes deleting the so called agency of
the author. According to Roland Barthes, the death of the author emancipates the
reader by providing him an opportunity to enter the literary text in whatever way he
or she chooses.
3) Reading, texts and writing : The deletion or decentering of the author leaves
the interpreter as the vital figure in post structural criticism. However the interpreter
is too stripped of human attributes like that of the author and is transformed into an
impersonal process called reading. This reading which engages the interpreter is no
more called as a work of literature but a text - that is, a structure of signifiers.
Texts, in this way, in the above process, lose their individual identity, and are
represented as manifestations of ecriture. A text, for a deconstructive critic, is a
7
chain of signifiers whose seeming determinacy of meaning and reference to an extratextual world, are nothing but effects produced by the differential play of
conflicting internal forces.
4) The concept of discourse: In post structural criticism discourse has become a
very important term. It applies not only to conversational passages but also to all
verbal constructions; and implies the superficiality of the boundaries between literary
and non-literary modes of signification. As such, discourse, according to Michel
Foucault, is the central subject of criticism which is to be analyzed anonymously, just
on the level of it is said (on dit).
5) According to post structural view, no text can mean what it seems to say, or
what its writer intends to say. Deconstructive critics attribute the subversion of the
superficial meaning to the unstable and self-conflicting nature of language itself;
whereas the social analysts consider the apparent meaning of a text as a disguise or
substitution for underlying meanings which cannot be expressed frankly, as they are,
sometimes, unutterable. According to post-structuralists, the surface meanings of a
literary or other text serve as a disguise or mask of its real meanings.
Derrida made no distinction between philosophy and literature because he
thinks that all disciplines employ language; and all language shares the quality of
being indeterminate. Derrida holds that there is no reliable or intimate relationship
between words and reality or between words and knowledge. According to him, a
word has variety of meanings and each meaning becomes a signifier ultimately
pointing towards many signifieds. When we try to say something, we may be moving
towards it but we never reach it. Derrida says that there exists no transcendental
signifier or reality principle behind any text or word; hence our quest for meaning is
only a wild goose chase.
1.1.2 Check Your Progress:

A) Choose the correct alternative from the ones given below each sentence.
1)
Structuralism is based on the linguistic concepts provided by ________.

a) Saussure
2)
b) Chomsky
c) Strauss
Structuralism gives primacy to __________.

a) parole
b) langue
c) signified
8
d) Frye
d) syntax
3)
According to a structuralist, a literary work is nothing but a ______.

a) art
4)
5)
b) masterpiece
c) classic
d) text
_____________ is a writer of the essay The Death of the Author.

a) Claude Levi-Strauss
b) Gerard Genette
c) Roland Barthes
c) Michel Foucault
It was ______ whose name is chiefly associated with post-structuralism.

a) Jacques Lacan
b) Julia Kristeva
c) Tzvetan Todorov
d) Jacques Derrida
B) Answer the following questions in one word/phrase/sentence.

1. Who is the author of the book Course in General Linguistics?
2. Who did initiate the French structuralism in the 1950s?
3. What, according to Michel Foucault is the central subject of criticism?
1.2.1
MARXISM
It was Karl Marx (1818-83) whose philosophical thinking caused the emergence
of Marxism. He was a German political thinker, philosopher, economist and
revolutionist. His well-known work, Das Capital (1867) is considered as the Bible of
the worlds communist movement. It incorporates his principles regarding the
economic structure of the society which is the core of Marxism. Karl Marx made
analysis of society from economic point of view and his theory left permanent impact
on the world of thought encompassing sociology, philosophy and culture. According
to him, the economic structure gives birth to culture, religion, philosophy, arts and
literature. Marxism helped in generating rich tradition of cultural as well as literary
criticism. The fundamental principles of Marxist Criticism are formulated by
Marxism making it an internationally acclaimed discipline of realistic criticism.
Marxism can be understood as a philosophy of history, as an attempt to formulate the
systematic theory of human societies. Its aim is to initiate political action in order to
bring about intended changes in the society; especially liberating it from exploitation
and suppression.
Marxist Criticism is based on the economic and cultural theory of Karl Marx
and his fellow thinker Friedrich Engels, and on the following claims:
1)
The history of mankind, its social groups and inter-relations; and its ways of
thinking are extensively determined by the changing mode of its material
production.
2)
The historical changes in the fundamental mode of material production cause

changes in the class structure of a society, giving rise to two classes in each
milieu-dominant class and subordinate class, that engage in economic, political
and social struggle.
3)
An ideology beliefs, values, ways of thinking, feeling, perceiving etc.-helps to

form human consciousness of that particular period.
Early Marxists denoted the term base to refer to the economic system of the
given period at a given time; and the term superstructure to indicate its politics,
religion, art and philosophy. The concept was basically materialistic and the intention
was to shift everything from the individual to society.
10
According to Marx, ideology is a superstructure and relevant socio- economic

system is the base; whereas Engels described ideology as a false consciousness.
An ideology is a product of the position and interests of a particular class; and in any
historical period, the prevailing ideology serves to legitimize and perpetuate the
interests of the dominant class, the bourgeoisie, the owners of the means of
material production, as against the working class, the proletariat.
Karl Marx adopted Hegels idea of dialectic; but differs in the basic
understanding that religious and philosophical ideas influence the social structure.
Marx maintains that economic structure constitutes the social structure. Dialectical
Materialism, a term used in Marxist Criticism, refers to the forces that bring about
historical change. Karl Marx borrowed the term from Hegel. Dialectical Materialism
gives preference to the economic and social base in any given society and relegated
beliefs, customs and ideas of a cultural unit to the realm of superstructure. Literature
and culture are supposed to be determined by and reflect the relations at the base of
the society.
The German Ideology (1845-46), which Marx and Engels jointly wrote, became
a key concept in Marxist Criticism of literature and other arts; but it was not much
discussed by both of them in later period. An ideology helps in examining,
explaining and dealing with the surrounding world including religion, morality,
philosophy, politics, law as well as literature and other arts. In reality it helps in
legitimizing the status, power and economic interest of the ruling class.
The orthodox Marxist as a literary critic often tries to see how far any work of
art reflects the interests and aspirations of the class; and how far any work of art may
be considered as a guide to the understanding of the goals of a particular society. A
revolutionary Marxist may use art as a weapon to expose the falsities of bourgeois
culture. In short, Marxist critic tries to explain the literature of any given period not
merely as a work created in accordance with artistic criteria; but as a product of the
economic and ideological trends of that period.
There are some liberal Marxist critics who demand that social realism should
replace the bourgeois literary work in order to expose true reality of the particular
period. It is known as Vulgar Marxism. However liberal and flexible Marxist
critics grant that traditional works of literature often transcend the prevailing
bourgeoisie ideology in order to reflect the objective reality of their time.
11
Franz Mehring from Germany and Georgy Plekhanov from Russia were the first
practitioners of Marxist Criticism. The development of Marxist Criticism, in real
sense, as a coherent theory took place only after the Great Revolution in Russia.
It was Georgy Lukacs, a Hungarian critic, who popularized Marxist Criticism in
Germany. His enthusiasm was fired by the revolution of 1917. He was in Russia
during the regime of Stalin. In his essay Ideology of Modernism (1963), Lukacs
suggests us to consider the ideology underlying the work of art irrespective of
whether the work of art is for arts sake or for societys sake. According to him, it
must be seen whether the work of art is created keeping the man at its focal point or
no. His views about the role of ideology in Marxist Criticism are flexible. He is
totally against the view of evaluating works of art merely on the basis of politics or
social values. Lukacs thinks that no literature is created keeping in mind any
particular ideology; though, sometimes, it expresses some of the ideological concepts
of that particular period. Lukacs strongly feel that, every great work of art creates its
own unique world quite different from common ordinary reality.
Georgy Lukacs believes in totality of art; and thinks that publicizing cannot be
the only function of literature. His stress is on realism, i.e. wholesome presentation of
total human personality with all its contradictions. According to him, environment
has powerful impact on personality; and this objective reality is not adequately
represented by the modernist writers. Lukacs criticizes modernist experimentalists
for highlighting social fragmentation and the subjectivity of alienated characters
under capitalism. But other Marxist critics from Frankfurt School, Theodor Adorno
and Max Horkheimer, appreciated the efforts of modernist writers like James Joyce,
Marcel Proust and Samuel Beckett for exposing dark aspects of capitalist society.
Lukacs comments on Scott, Tolstoy and Balzac focus on real issues, the inner
tensions of the capitalist society. Lucien Goldmann develops Lukacs ideas further
by examining the structure of a literary text by finding out the world it encompasses.
Marxist Critics like Bertolt Brecht and Walter Benjamin had considerable
impact on the contemporary criticism. Their opposition to the anti-modernism and
realistic art was but natural because they feel that revolutionary art should divorce
from the traditional thinking. Brecht discarded Aristotelian theory of art, that art is
an imitation of reality. According to him, illusion of reality should be purposefully
broken to produce an alienation effect in order to shock the sensibilities of the
12
readers. Brecht feels that it will help in enlightening readers about the shortcomings
of capitalism and further involving them with the forces of change.
Walter Benjamin was an admirer of Brecht. His keen interest in the effects of
changing material conditions in the production of the art is well-known. According to
him, modern technology like photography, radio, cinema, etc. have transformed the
basic concept and status of the arts.
There has been a revival of Marxist Criticism, marked by frankness and
flexibility, since 1950s. It has been acknowledged since then that Marxist critical
theory is, to some extent, an evolving historical process, a process diluting the
concept of ideology; and at the same time a sort of tendency giving more importance
to non-ideological determinants in process of literary criticism.
The two critics, Louis Althusser and Pierre Macherey, have been very influential
in developing theoretical Marxist view about literature. Louis Althusser, a French
Marxist critic, incorporated the Structuralism to devise his views about the structure
of society constituted by various elements like religion, law, politics and literature.
He says that each element is interrelated with the other in a complex manner; and in
the end comes the ideology of a particular institution determined by the material base
of its era.
Althusser examines more closely the relationship between the art and ideology;
and further says that art, by giving the experience of a particular situation which is
equivalent to a particular ideology can help us to understand it completely. Althusser
challenges the very definition of the nature of ideology as false consciousness; and
says that ideologies vary according to the form and practices of each mode of state
machinery. He further claims that the ideology of each mode operates as per the
position of an individual in a given society with certain pre-established views and
values which serve his ultimate interests.
Pierre Macherey, in his A Theory of Literary Production (1966), claims that a
literary text divorces itself from its ideology with the help of its fiction and form; and
also discovers the inherited contradictions that are present in the ideology. These
contradictions represented in the form of silences or gaps are nothing but
symptoms of ideological repressions. According to him, it is the duty of Marxist
Criticism to make these silences speak; and to expose the unconscious content of
the text, that is to reveal the conscious intention of the author.
13
In Italy, Marxist Criticism flourished because of the contribution of Antonio

Gramsci (1891-1937), who, during his imprisonment by the fascist government,
wrote immensely on social and political issues. Though Gramsci admits the primary
Marxist distinction between economic base and cultural superstructure, discards the
older concept of considering culture as a disguised reflection of the material base. He
speaks most highly about the concept of hegemony- a particular social class
establishes its own power and influence over subordinate class, not directly but
through its ideological view of society in such a way that, the subordinate class
unconsciously accepts and participates in its own suppression and exploitation.
Gramsci, through his Prison Note-books, has influenced great literary critics like
Terry Eagleton, Fredric Jameson and Edward Said.
Raymond Williams, Terry Eagleton, Christopher Caudwell and Fredric Jameson
are important Marxist critics of the recent period. Raymond Williams (1928-88), an
important Marxist critic from England, links literature with the lives of the people.
He thinks that all significant human quality is communal and it is nothing but a
Marxist derivation. His books, Culture and Society 1780-1850 (1958), and The
Long Revolution (1961) became famous in England. Williams in his critical essay,
Realism and the Contemporary Novel, uses his concept of Marxist Criticism to
define realism. According to him socialistic realism differs from bourgeois realism in
its ideology and affiliation.
Williams thinks that Marxist Critics have delinked economics from culture; and
have ignored individualism. Therefore Williams prefers culture to ideology and coins
the term Cultural Materialism; and thus modified Marxist thinking. According to
him, different cultural forces are always in action with the dominant forces unable to
gain complete power because of the resistance by reactionary or progressive forces.
Williams suggests that the complex nature of the social formation should be taken
into account while analyzing materialistically the relation between literature and its
relevant social elements. In his Marxism and Literature (1977), Williams stresses the
need of an amendment in the determinism of Marxism that literature reflects reality.
In England Christopher Caudwell created his major work of Marxist criticism,
Illusion and Reality (1937). His book deals with anthropology and psychoanalysis.
He thinks that literature, especially poetry, has a function to perform-that is of
adapting mens fixed instincts to societys welfare by changing their ways of
thinking. But he didnt express his concern for extremism of the nineteenth century
14
English left-wing poets. According to him, form is an attempt to impose order on the
content which is formless and turbulent. But Marxist criticism always looked upon
the relationship of form and content as dialectical, though it gave preference to
content.
Terry Eagleton, another powerful theorist of Marxist criticism in England, has
elaborated the concepts put forth by Althusser and Macherey. Eagleton explains his
notion about the relation between literary text and ideology in his book Criticism and
Ideology: A Study in Marxist Theory (1976). He thinks that a literary text is a
creative product of an ideology in the form of a literary discourse but definitely not
an expression of it. Moreover ideology of the text is not which antedates the texts;
instead it is identical with the text. Eagletons Criticism and Ideology is a response to
the works of Raymond Williams. Eagleton is of the view that history enters texts in
different forms-general, authorial and aesthetic ideology.
Another modern American Marxist critic, Fredric Jameson writes about his
notions related to Marxism in his book, Marxism and Form (1971). Jameson
comments on the complexities of structuralism and post-structuralism in his work,
The Political Unconsciousness: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act (1981) with the
help of dialectical criticism. According to him, Achetypal Criticism,
Psychoanalytical Criticism, Structuralist Criticism, Semiotics and Deconstruction are
various modes of criticism which are applicable at various stages of the critical
interpretation of a literary work; but Marxist criticism integrates all of them by
retaining their positive findings within a political interpretation of literary texts.
This political interpretation, Jameson feels, exposes the concealed role of the
political unconsciousness.
The theory of deconstruction has been attacked by Marxist critics for ignoring
the social and historical aspects of texts. But Frederic Jameson, Raymond Williams
and Terry Eagleton deal with it in their own manner. Marxist criticism has split into
several other schools of criticism. Marxism is also linked with post-colonialism.
Aijaz Ahmads In Theory (1992) is a systematic study of post-colonialism from
Marxist point of view. According to Bart Moor-Gilbert, Marxism is already inside
post-colonialism, even ingrained in post-colonial theory to a much greater degree
than has been thought. The early Marxist critics took greater interest in the term
ideology; whereas the neo-Marxist critics are showing more interest in the term
cultural materialism. Marxist Criticism has now adopted an interdisciplinary
15
approach to literary studies. The insights of Marxism, which often originated in the
philosophy of Hegel, have inspired many branches of modern criticismincluding
historicism, feminism, deconstruction, post-colonial and cultural criticism.
1.2.2 Check Your Progress :

1)
Karl Marx adopted _________ idea of dialectic.

a) Platos
2)
b) Karl Marx
c) Hegel
d) Brecht
b) Lukacs
c) Benjamin d) Althusser
________ discarded Aristotelian theory of art, that art is an imitation of

reality.
a) Gramsci
5)
d) Descartes
____________ popularized Marxist Criticism in Germany.

a) Mehring
4)
c) Hegels
Das Capital is a well known work by ________.

a) Engels
3)
b) Aristotles
b) Benjamin
c) Caudwell
d) Brecht
Raymond Williams prefers culture to ideology and coins the term

_____________.
a) Cultural Materialism
b) Dialectic Materialism
c) Economic Realism
d) Ideological Socialism

1)
What does the term base refer to according to early Marxists?
2)
Who are the authors of the book The German Ideology?
3)
Who is a well-known modern American Marxist Critic?

16
1.3.1 F E M I N I S M
In many different religions, women have been victims of male-domination.
Basically every society is male-dominated and several restrictions have been
imposed on women by such societies. Many philosophers have expressed these
thoughts alike along with several writers like Rousseau who suggested that women
should be educated in order to be useful to men. Even at the turn of the twentieth
century, the situation was not much different and women had little or almost no say
outside their respective homes. In course of time women became conscious of their
injustice, exploitation and suppression which caused into the rise of Womens
Liberation Movement in the beginning of the twentieth century.
A political movement was started by women in England in 1903 and its main
objective was to get voting rights for women. It was purely a political movement and
the foremost amongst the suffragettes were Emmeline Pankhurst (1857-1928) and
her daughters, Christabel (1880-1958) and Sylvia (1882-1960). As all Womens
Suffrage Bills were rejected, the Womens Social and Political Union came into
existence in the same year. The members of the union protested against the
government and resorted to increasing militancy like cutting telephone lines,
damaging public property, organizing huge meetings and processions, etc. Emily
Davidson, one of the protestors, in 1913, committed suicide by throwing herself
under the Kings horse at Derby. However, all protests were crushed mercilessly by
the government; militants were sent to prison; their hunger strikes were dealt with by
crude forced feeding that nearly killed some of them.
The First World War provided an opportunity for women for the first time to
work in the areas reserved for men only. This helped in changing the public attitude
towards womens capabilities, and after the end of the war the British Government
sanctioned the Bill reserving votes for certain categories of women. Surprisingly, the
French women did not receive the voting right until 1944 and the Swiss women
obtained it in 1971. Today, in most of the countries, including India, women have all
the rights which are enjoyed by men. They have full voting rights; they can contest
any election, study any subject, choose any career, apply for any job or do almost
anything they please.
17
Womens Liberation Movement affected social, political, economic as well as

literary fields in most of the countries. It had its powerful impact on literature which
helped in the emergence of Feminist literature along with Feminist Literary
Criticism. Though Feminist literature and Feminist Literary Criticism came into
existence in the middle of the twentieth century, the seeds were sown in the
eighteenth century. It was Mary Wollstonecraft who wrote a book A Vindication of
the Rights of Women in 1792 which is regarded as the manifesto of Feminism. In her
article Wollstonecraft demanded that women should be treated as human beings.
According to her, delicacy is not womens virtue. There were few learned men who
supported this view. John Stuart Mill was one of the supporters who, in his article
The Subjection of Women (1869), condemned the domestic slavery of women and
further suggested that power of earning is essential for the dignity of women.
Margaret Fuller, an American writer, in her book- Woman in the Nineteenth Century
(1845), expressed views alike.
It is to be noted that Womens Liberation Movement made women conscious
of their rights. It made them aware of their predicament and injustice. Women
became educated and education made them conscious of their selves. Some of them
began to fight to bring about reforms in marriages and divorce laws. Feminist
Literary Criticism is closely interrelated with the movement for social, cultural,
economic freedom of women. Reading as a woman, writing as a woman and
responding to the way woman is presented in literature is the prime objective of
Feminist Literary Criticism.
An important precursor in Feminist Literary Criticism was Virginia Woolf who
wrote A Room of Ones Own (1929); and numerous other essays on women authors.
She has written on the cultural, economic and educational disabilities within what
she calls a patriarchal society which has prevented women from realizing their
productive skills and creative abilities. Virginias work expresses antagonism against
the denial of the opportunities of education and lucrative employment to women. She
focuses on the issues relating to feminism in the material conditions that prevailed in
her times.
The foundation for feminist studies was laid in France by Simone de Beauvoir.
An intensively critical mode was launched by her in the book, The Second Sex
published in 1949. She pointed out that women constitute half of human race and still
have to occupy subordinate position in the society. According to her, women are
18
identified as merely negative objects; and men wrote about women in literature in a
stereo-typed derogatory manner. Simone de Beauvoir being radical feminist
suggested that women should avoid marriages and stop begetting children; instead,
first, they should obtain financial independence.
In America modern Feminist Criticism was inaugurated by
Mary Ellmans
Thinking about Women (1968). Kate Millet published her relentless book Sexual
Politics in 1969, in which she makes scornful attack on patriarchy, that is, the rule of
the father. She thinks that patriarchy has distorted the status, dignity and role of
women in society. Millet distinguishes sex from gender clarifying that sex is
biological whereas gender is a cultural construct. In her book-Sexual Politics, by
politics she means the mechanisms which express and enforce the relations of power
in society. According to her, society everywhere manipulates in such a way that the
supremacy of man and the subordination of woman is maintained in every field.
Another book which sensationalized the movement was written by Betty
Friedon who was also an American feminist. The book is titled as Feminine Mystique
in which Betty states that many women who are married and play important roles of
devoted wives and loving mothers do look happy; but in reality they are not, because
they do not have independent identities of their own. Betty Friedon, in her second
book, The Second Stage (1981), emphasizes her view that humanity can survive only
if women make certain compromises.
Since 1969 there has been an explosion of feminist writing. Socialist feminists
asserted that womens inferior status is due to the unequal distribution of wealth. The
underestimating of womens position aligns feminism with that of Marxism which
defends the underprivileged. Feminism even recalls to the mind the ideology of the
Black who criticized the White women. Thus there were different groups of feminists
but their objective was one and the same.
One of the famous feminist critics, Elaine Showalter remarks that the modern
feminist movement displays the urgency of religious awakening. It is widely held
that ones sex is determined by an anatomy; whereas terms like masculine and
feminine are largely decided by patriarchal bias. According to Simone de Beauvoir,
One is not born but rather becomes a woman. It is a signification as a whole that
produces a woman. The masculine is identified as active, dominating, adventurous,
19
rational and creative; whereas the feminine is identified as passive, acquiescent,

timid, emotional and conventional.
The masculine ideology prevails throughout great literature which has been
written up till now by men for men. Typically highly regarded classics focus on male
protagonists. For instance, Oedipus, Ulysses, Hamlet, Othello, Tom Jones, Huck
Finn, etc. These classics embody masculine traits and express manly feelings. The
role of women in such books is marginal and subordinate; and they are represented
as complementary to men. Such works lack independent female role models and are
greatly occupied with masculine interests. Even critical comments of such works of
literature are gender-biased. Modern feminists want to justify to female point of
view. They want to avoid sexual bias and identify and focus on recurrent images of
women in literature especially created by men. Modern feminists nowadays
concentrate on what Elaine Showalter calls Gynocriticism-criticism which
exclusively concerns itself with production, motivation and analysis of writing by
women on women; and developing a specifically female framework for dealing with
such works.
Gynocritics are chiefly concerned with feminine subject matters in literature
written by women like the world of domestic life, special experiences of being
pregnant, giving birth to a child or nurturing a baby, the relationship between mother
and daughter or between woman and woman, etc. Gynocritics believe that women
feel and think in their own peculiar way as their languages, passions, emotions,
feelings, thoughts, ideas, expressions, gestures, etc. are different than that of men.
Feminist writers refuse to accept the images of women as portrayed by male writers
thinking that these images of women lack authenticity. Carlo Christ, one of the
feminists, rightly remarks that women have not experienced their own experiences.
In this way modern feminist critics want to enlarge and reorder the literary canon.
Feminist studies have raised the status of many female writers. Many of them
are engaged in thematic studies of writings by women and about women. Patricia
Meyer Spacks commented upon the English and American women novelists of the
last three centuries in her book The Female Imagination (1975). Ellen Moer, in her
book Literary Women (1976), reviewed major women novelists in England, America
and France. Elaine Showalter published her book A Literature of Their Own (1977)
which is on British writers.
20
Gynocritics seek to formulate a female framework for the analysis of womens

literature and to develop new models based on the study of female experiences rather
than adopting male models and theories. Gynocritics take into account the feminist
research done in the field of anthropology, history, psychology and sociology in
order to formulate their critical principles. The Feminist Literary Criticism involves
the feminist as a reader offering different interpretations of the images of women
projected in the male-created texts. It also involves the feminist as a writer to
challenge the male gaze in literature and at the same time to rewrite, recast and
recreate the male-created texts from the feminist perspective.
By the mid of 1970s, Feminist Literary Criticism was an international
movement with a wide conflicting range of theoretical concerns. Feminist Literary
Criticism has provided an opportunity to look at women in literature from womens
point of view. It is concerned with women as the producer of textual meanings with
the history, themes, genres and structures of literature created by women. Feminism
is said to have links with post-modernism. The French Feminist Criticism has been
largely influenced by Jacques Lacans interpretation of Freud; whereas AngloAmerican Feminist Criticism has been deeply rooted in the socio-cultural setting. All
the schools of Feminism have a common goal of restoring woman to her rightful
place in literature.

1)
2)
________ is the author of the book A Vindication of the Rights of Women.

a) Virginia Woolf
b) Emmeline Pankhurst
c) Mary Wollstonecraft
d) John Stuart Mill
The foundation for feminist studies in France was laid by___________.

a) Kate Millet
b) Simone de Beauvoir.
c) Mary Ellman
3)
d) Betty Friedon
Kate Millet published her hard-hitting book ______________in 1969 .

a) The Second Sex
b) Thinking about Women
c) A Room of Ones Own
d) Sexual Politics
21
4)
Betty Friedon was __________ feminist.

a) American
5)
b) British
c) French
c) German
According to__________, One is not born but rather becomes a woman.

a) Elaine Showalter
b) Ellen Moer
c) Simone de Beauvoir
d) Virginia Woolf
B) Answer the following questions in one word/phrase/sentence:

1)
Who is the author of the book The Subjection of Women?
2)
When did the political movement by women start in England?
3)
Who did influence the French Feminist Literary Criticism?

22
1.4.1 ECO-CRITICISM
Ecocriticism is a term coined out of the combination of two familiar terms
criticism and ecology. Ecocriticism refers to the critical writings that investigate
the relation between literature and environment taking into account the destruction
caused to the biological or physical surrounding by the mankind. Ecocriticism is a
broad approach that is known by a number of other designations, including Green
Studies, Ecopoetics, and Environmental Literary Criticism. Just as Feminist
criticism examines language and literature from a gender-conscious perspective, and
Marxist criticism brings an awareness of modes of production and economic class to
its reading of texts; in the same manner, Ecocriticism, according to Cheryll Glotfelty,
takes an earth-centered approach to literary studies. It is supposed that ecocriticism
was officially heralded by the publication of two seminal works : The Ecocriticism
Reader, edited by Cheryll Glotfelty and Harold Fromm, and The Environmental
Imagination by Lawrence Buell.
Natural environment has always been depicted since ancient time in various
forms of literature. Even the religious scriptures, holy books are full of such
references about natural surroundings. The pastoral form of literature which was
initiated in the third century B.C by Theocritus of Greece reflected the serene rural
life full of simplicity and harmony. This form became very popular as it uplifted the
rustic life against the degraded complex life of urban society. Virgil, the Roman poet,
popularized this form later. This genre expresses ones nostalgia to return to the holy,
tranquil and unadulterated surrounding in order to seek that peacefulness which was
lost in the urban life. This genre, known as nature writing provided realistic details
of the natural surroundings. It was inaugurated in England by Gilbert Whites
Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne (1789). It contains minute and keen
observations of the English wild life and natural surroundings of rural areas. It was
William Bertrams Travels published in 1791 which popularized this genre in
America. Henry David Thoreaus masterpiece Walden (1854) is considered as the
classic of this genre. In this way, many writers wrote in this regard; and their
writings successfully attracted the attention of the world towards the devastation of
environment due to the rapid progress of industrialization and urbanization. The
increasing awareness of the destruction of ecology caused the emergence of the
environmental movement in the nineteenth century in America.
23
Ecologically minded individuals and scholars have been publishing progressive

works of ecotheory and criticism since the explosion of the fervor of
environmentalism in 1960s and 1970s. As there was no organized movement to study
the ecological aspect of literature, all these important writings got scattered under
different headings, such as pastoralism, regionalism etc. Concern for the
environmental crisis, in the twentieth century, became a burning issue because of the
warnings by worlds scientists and conservationists. Two influential books of the
period Aldo Leopolds A Sand County Almanac (1949) and Rachel Carsons Silent
Spring (1962) created sensations. It was proved scientifically that the earth was in an
environmental crisis as its biosphere was getting polluted and forests were being
massacred ultimately causing the extinction of numerous plant and animal species. It
was even proved that the population explosion was aiding the process of earths
deterioration.
Joseph Meekers The Comedy of Survival (1974) proposed a version of an
argument which later dominated the ecocritical theory. According to Meeker, the
chief cause of environmental crisis is the cultural tradition of the West, that is, the
separation of culture from nature. In such a disastrous situation that ecocriticism was
inaugurated and became a rapidly growing recognized field of literature. Cheryll
Glotfelty became the first person to hold an academic position as a professor of
Literature and the Environment at the University of Nevada, Reno in 1990.
The working definition of ecocriticism, according to Glotfelty given in The
Ecocriticism Reader is that ecocriticism is the study of the relationship between
literature and the physical environment. Lawrence Buell defines ecocriticism, as a
study of the relationship between literature and the environment conducted in a spirit
of commitment to environmentalist praxis.
Ecocriticism establishes itself as an independent organization under the name:
Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (ASLE) with its own
academic journal : Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment (ISLE).
It encourages the writers across the globe to pen articles, critical comments; organize
and participate in series of conferences. Their aim is to create awareness, through
ecocritical writings, amongst the world community about the concern for
environment; and also to prompt social and, if possible, political action in this regard.
24
Ecocritics examine human perception of wilderness, and how it has been represented
or even mentioned in popular culture and modern literature. They also study other
disciplines, such as history, philosophy, psychology, etc; as possible contributors to
ecocriticism. Ecocritics seem to be more worried about the survival of the human
race than seeking justice for the deterioration of environment.
According to M.H. Abrams, ecocritics do not share a single theoretical
perspective; instead, their engagements with environmental literature manifest a wide
range of traditional, poststructural and postcolonial ways of thinking and modes of
analysis. Eventhough some of the following issues and concerns are recurrent:
1) Since ancient times the Western religions and philosophies are extremely
anthropocentric; that is, they are oriented to the human interests. According to the
biblical references, man is the top most creation of God; and hence, God gave man
dominion over other creations including animals and nature. This notion prevailed in
almost all ancient religions and philosophies. But at present, the new ecological
movement maintains that the ancient conception of anthropocentrism need to be
replaced by ecocentrism : the view that all creations of God are in no way less than
or inferior to the human species. The stress on need of ecocentrism is one of the chief
concerns of the ecocrtic.
2) Evaluation of binaries is another important feature of Ecocriticism. These
binaries such as man/nature or culture/nature, instead of considering them as
exclusive oppositions, are, in fact, considered as having interconnections and
interdependence. It is thought that culture and place are images of one another; and
our identities refer to our places of living. According to M.H.Abrams, human
experience of the natural environment is a meditation of a particular time and place
in a particular culture; and its representation in a work of literature is undoubtedly
shaped by human feelings and the human imagination. Wendell Berry wrote in his
The Unsettling of America (1977), We and our country create one another, depend
upon one another, are literally part of one anotherour culture and our place are
images of each other, and inseparable from each other.
3) Ecocriticism strongly recommends the extension of green reading to all
literary forms including the writings of the natural and social sciences. Its main
objective is to incorporate the so far undervalued forms of nature writing (local
25
colour or regional fiction by authors like Mark Twain, Thomas Hardy etc.) within the
major canon of literature.
4) The analysis of the differences in attitudes towards the environment that are
attributable to a writers race, ethnicity, social class and gender is one more striking
feature of ecocriticism. Annette Kolodnys writings gave momentum to a
phenomenon called ecofeminism. Ecofeminism deals with the analysis of the role
ascribed to women in fantasies of the natural surroundings by male writers as well as
the study of specifically feminine notions of the environment in the neglected nature
writings of female authors; and in her The Lay of the Land: Metaphor as Experience
and History in American Life and Letters (1975) points out the inclination, in the
male-authored literature, of gendering the land as female; and accordingly the
dominant tendency of resorting to nature for relaxation, delight and recovery. She
has also proposed equivalence between the domination and suppression of women
and the exploitation of the land. Kolodnys views are so convincing because many
epithets are equally applicable to both female and land. According to other critics,
the wilderness romance, one of the prominent forms of American literature,
presents specifically male imaginings of escape to a virgin natural environment, free
of womens dominance, in which the protagonist undergoes a test of his character
and virility. The wilderness romance can be noticed in the major works of James
Cooper, Herman Melville and Mark Twain.
5) Ecocriticism believes that the natural world is a living, sacred thing in which
each individual feels closely attached to a particular physical place; and where every
human being lives in interdependence and reciprocity with every other living thing.
Ecocriticism has created a growing interest in the animistic religions of so-called
primitive cultures, especially Hinduism, Buddhism and other religions that do not
believe in the Western understanding of dominion of man over non-human world.
Environmental crisis has become a universal issue. Some ecocritics think that by
rejecting the Western religions (Judaism and Christianity) and culture with their
anthropocentric view this crisis can be resolved. Instead, ecocritics suggest that there
is a need of ecocentric religion which will have reverence for all forms of life. On the
contrary, there are other environmental critics who insist that there is no need to
accept any such new or alien religion, because they feel that it is possible to protect
environment by identifying and developing the human-centered ethics, tenets and
26
philosophy of the West which will recognize humans not as masters of the natural
world, but as the morally responsible living beings in the ecosystem.
There are so many disagreements with regard to the conservation of ecosystem.
However most of the ecocritics agree that scientific awareness about the alarming
ecological destruction is not sufficient enough to avert the danger. They want it to be
well informed to the world, through literature, so that it will provoke our feelings and
imaginations about it. Despite of the wide scope of inquiry and different levels of
understanding, all ecological criticism shares the fundamental conception that human
culture is connected to the physical world, affecting it and affected by it.
Ecocriticism expands the idea of the world to incorporate the entire ecosphere.
According to Barry Commoner, the first law of ecology is that Everything is
connected to everything else.
The Romantic Period of the early nineteenth century was the turning point in the
long Western tradition of human transcendence and domination over nature.
Jonathan Bate in his Romantic Ecology: Wordsworth and the Environmental
Tradition published in 1991, speaks of the ecological and environmental
consciousness of Wordsworth. But the motif of the modern Romantic literature and
philosophy, both in England and Germany, was that the root cause of modern mans
melancholy is in its alienation from the natural world; and that the sure cure of this
malady lies in the reunion of humanity and nature.
In the view of Cheryll Glotfelty, ecocriticism is a worthy enterprise because it
directs our attention to matters about which we need to be thinking and worrying.
Ecocritics encourage others to think seriously about the relationship between humans
and nature, and about the ethical and aesthetic dilemmas posed by the environmental
crisis. One of the reasons that ecocriticism continues to grow as a discipline is the
continued global environmental crisis. The aim of Ecocriticism is to expose
apprehension about the environment; and also to show how the work of writers can
play important role in solving the real and alarming ecological problems.
There are number of books and anthologies that contributed in the establishment
and development of Ecocriticism. The anthology, The Ecocriticism Reader:
Landmarks in Literary Ecology, published in 1996 and edited by Cheryll Glotfelty
and Harold Fromm contributed a lot in giving thrust to the ecocritical movement.
There are other anthologies of nature writing such as The Norton Book of Nature
27
Writing (1990) edited by Robert Flinch and John Elder; American Nature Writers
(1996) edited by John Elder. The important books on Ecocriticism are Leo Marxs
The Machine in the Garden: Technology and the Pastoral Ideal in America (1964);
Roderick Nashs Wilderness and the American Mind (1967); Donald Worsters
Natures Economy: A History of Ecological Ideas (1977); Robert P. Harrisons
Forests: The Shadow of Civilization (1992) etc.

1)
The pastoral form of literature was initiated in the third century B.C by
___________ of Greece.
a) Virgil
2)
3)
4)
c) Thoreau
d) Wordsworth
_________________ became the first person to hold an academic position

as a professor of Literature and the Environment at the University of
Nevada, Reno in 1990.
a) M.H. Abrams
b) Harold Fromm.
c) Cheryll Glotfelty
d) Joseph Meeker
New ecological movement maintains that the ancient conception of

anthropocentrism need to be replaced by ______________.
a) ecocriticism
b) ecofeminism
c) environmentalism
d) ecocentrism
The working definition of ecocriticism, according to Glotfelty is that

ecocriticism is the study of the relationship between literature and the
___________ environment.
a) physical
5)
b) Theocritus
b) social
c) psychological
d) moral
___________________ writings gave momentum to a phenomenon called

ecofeminism.
a) Elaine Showalters
b) Annette Kolodnys
c) Simone de Beauvoirs
d) Virginia Woolfs
28

1)
What are other terms synonymous to ecocriticism?
2)
Who inaugurated the nature writing in England? When?
3)
Name the work considered as the classic of this genre.
1.5.1 Keys to Check Your Progress: 1.1.3

A) 1) a
B) 1)
2) a
3) d
4) c
5) d
Ferdinand de Saussure.
2)
Claude Levi-Strauss.
3)
discourse.
1.5.2 Keys to Check Your Progress:1.2.3

A) 1) c
B) 1)
2) b
3) b
4) d
5) a
the economic system of the given period at a given time.
2)
Marx and Engels.
3)
Fredric Jameson.

A) 1) c
B) 1)
2) b
3) d
4) a
5) c
John Stuart Mill.
2)
In 1903.
3)
Jacques Lacan.

A) 1) b
B) 1)
2) c
3) d
4) a
5) b
Green studies, Ecopoetics, Environmental Literary Criticism.
2)
Gilbert White in 1789.
3)
Henry David Thoreaus Walden (1854).
29
1.6 Exercise : 1.1.4

1.
Write a detailed note on Structuralism.
2.
Structuralist presumes that meaning is made possible because of the

existence of underlying systems of conventions which enable elements to
function individually as signs. Explain in detail.
3.
Write a detailed note on Post-structuralism.
Exercise : 1.2.4
1.
Write a detailed note on Marxism.
2.
Explain in detail the tenets on which Marxist criticism is based.
3.
Write a detailed note on the chief Marxist critics and their contribution in
the field Marxism.
Exercise: 1.3.4
1.
Write in detail a note on the historical background of Feminism.
2.
What do you understand by Feminist criticism? Write in detail.
3.
Why do feminists feel the need to create an independent feminine

framework to assess the female-created works of art? Explain in detail.
Exercise : 1.4.4
1.
What is ecocriticism ? What is the aim of ecocriticism ?
2.
What are the common issues shared by the worlds ecocritics ?
3.
Write a detailed note on ecocriticism.
1.7 References for Further Study:

1.
Jonathan Cullers, Structuralist Poetics (1975)
2.
Phillip Pettit, The Concept of Structuralism : A Critical Analysis.
3.
Gerald Graff, Literature Against Itself.
4.
Tzvetan Todorov, The Poetics of Prose.
30
5.
Jacques Derrida, Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of Human

Sciences.
6.
Roland Barthes, The Death of the Author.
7.
Michel Foucault, What is An Author?
8.
Richard Harland, Superstructuralism: The Philosophy of Structuralism and

Post-structuralism.
9.
Fredric Jameson, Poststructuralism.
10. John McGowan, Postmodernism and Its Critics.

11. Georgy Lukacs, Ideology of Modernism.
12. Pierre Macherey, A Theory of Literary Production.
13. Raymond Williams, The Long Revolution.
14. Raymond Williams, Realism and the Contemporary Novel.
15. Raymond Williams, Marxism and Literature.
16. Christopher Caudwell, Illusion and Reality.
17. Terry Eagelton, Criticism and Ideology: A Study in Marxist Theory.
18. Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form.
19. Aijaz ahmad, In Theory.
20. Michael Ryan, Marxism and Deconstruction.
21. Virginia Woolf, A Room of Ones Own.
22. Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex.
23. Mary Ellman, Thinking about Women.
24. Kate Millet, Sexual Politics.
25. Betty Friedon, Feminine Mystique.
26. Elaine Showalter, A Literature of Their Own.
27. Patricia Meyer Spacks, The Female Imagination.
28. Ellen Moer, Literary Women.
31
29. Barbara Christian, Black Feminist Criticism.

30. Barbara Johnson, A World of Difference.
31. Rita Felski, Beyond Feminist Aesthetics.
32. Gilbert White, Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne
33. William Bertram, Travels.
34. Henry David Thoreau, Walden.
35. Rachel Carson, Silent Spring.
36. Joseph Meeker, The Comedy of Survival.
37. Jonathan Bate, Romantic Ecology
38. Leo Marx, the Machine in the Garden.
39. Roderick Nash, Wilderness and the American Mind.
40. Donald Worster, Natures Economy.
41. John elder, Imagining the Earth.
42. Robert P. Harrison, Forests: The Shadow of Civilization.
32
Unit-2
Dhvani : Structure of Poetic Meaning
Index:
2.0 Objectives
2.1 Introduction
2.2 Text Analysis
2.3 Check Your Progress
2.4 Summary
2.5 Glossary
2.6 Answers to Check Your Progress
2.7 Exercise
2.8 Reference for Further Study
2.0 Objectives:
After studying this unit you will be able to understand
Anandvardhans critical theory of Dhvani.
Suggestive quality of language.
Practical utility of Dhvani Theory in modern Indian literature.
2.1 Introduction:
Natyasastra of Bharata and The Dvanyaloka of Anandvardhan are the most
central theories of literature in Indian tradition. Dhvanyaloka is a work articulating
the philosophy of aesthetic suggestion. The concept of Dhvani was propounded at
a time when most of the theories were concerned with the empirical and the external
comprehension of poetry. Dhvanyaloka was written in 8th century and was translated
and published by Prof. K. Krishnamoorthy in 1974. It is a huge collection of
information of poetry and poetic texts. The critical theory proposed by
33
Anandvardhan is known by the name Dhvani. Dhvani means the suggestive quality
of poetic language. It is the contribution in terms of turning the focus of critical
discussion from the outward linguistic style and poetic embellishment to the more
complex issue of linguistic structure in poetry.
Rasa Theory and Dhvani Theory are the most important poetic theories of
ancient India. Dhvani theory is basically a semantic theory. Poetry is basically a
verbal structure. There cannot be any poetry without words which means one can
hardly manage without semantics in the discussion of poetry. One must be fully
aware of the potency of words and word structure in order to understand a poetic
structure.
Also as poetry evokes emotions, no linguistic structure without feelings or
emotions is called poetry. Poetry is constituted of emotive language. Dhvani relates
itself to meanings and the suggestive power of words. Rasa is embedded in a
language steeped in emotion. The ancient Sanskrit Acharyas understood poetry as a
verbal complex, profoundly emotive and hence they explained poetry on the basis of
dhvani and rasa sidhanta.
Indian rhetoricians have made a meticulous study of both the meaning and
emotive context of words. Words have at least two meanings. One is literal meaning
and other is suggestive meaning which is described as dhvani. Dhvani is so termed
because it sounds, rings or reverberates because it is sphota (burst out). From
grammarians point of view there is a sequence of the process of gathering meaning
from a word. The sequence is from sound to word, and from word to sphota and from
sphota to meaning. Letter shall not be taken for the word.
Anandvardhana in his Dhvanyaloka takes up three main types of implicit sense
namely - vastu dhvani, alankara dhvani and rasa dhvani. In vastu dhvani some
rare fact or idea is implemented. In alankara dhvani some alankara or figure of
speech is suggested. In rasa dhvani rasa is evoked. Both vastu dhvani and alankara
dhvani can be expressed by direct meaning or by suggestion but rasa dhvani can
never be expressed in the direct meaning of words. It consists in suggesting bhaava,
feelings or sentiments.
34
2.2 Text Analysis:

Anandvardhan discusses that though the learned men of ancient period have
declared time and again that the soul of poetry is suggestion, some would assert its
non-existence, some would regard it as something implied and some others would
speak of its essence as lying beyond the scope of words. He proposes to explain its
nature and bring delight to the hearts of perceptive critics.
In Anandvardhans view, that meaning which wins the admiration of refined
critics is decided to be the soul of poetry. It has two aspects-the explicit and the
implicit. The explicit is commonly known and it has been set forth in many ways
through figures of speech. But the implicit aspect is quite different from this. It
shines supreme and towers above the beauty of striking external constituents in the
words of first-rate poets and it is the soul of poetry. It is not understood by a mere
learning in grammar and in dictionary. It is understood only by those who have an
insight into the true significance of poetry. That meaning and that rare word, which
possesses the power of conveying it, deserve the careful scrutiny of a first-rate poet.
Anandvardhan explains it with giving an example of a man who is interested to
perceive objects in the darkness, first of all attempts to secure a lamp as it is a means
to realize objects. In the same way one who is interested in the suggested meaning of
a poem proceeds by first evincing interest in the conventional meaning. Just as the
general meaning of a statement is perceived through the meaning of individual
words, the knowledge of that sense is got at only through the medium of the explicit
meaning. Though the word import is responsible for conveying the sentence
import by its own power, just as it escapes notice once its purpose is served. In the
same way the suggested meaning flashes suddenly across the truth -perceiving minds
of perceptive critics when they turn away from the literal meaning.
The poetry, wherein the conventional meaning provides itself secondary or the
conventional word provides its meaning secondary and suggests the intended or
implied meaning, is designated by the learned as dhvani or Suggestive Poetry.
Suggestion does not bear identity with indication as there is a difference between
conventional and implied meaning.
Only that word, which conveys a charm that is not possible to communicate by
any other expression and which is pregnant with suggestive force, is rightly called as
Suggestive. Words which signify by common usage meaning other than what they
35
primarily denote do not become instances of suggestion. If we give up the primary

meaning of a word and understand a sense secondarily conveyed by it through its
indicative power, it is because of a purpose. In conveying this purpose, the word does
not move falteringly at all. Actually that indication is based on the primary
denotative force of words.
II
The nature of suggestion with intended literal import is of two kinds- i)
Merged in the other meaning ii) Completely lost. It is also twofold i) of
discernible sequentiality and ii) of undiscernible sequentiality. Sentiment, emotion,
the semblance of sentiment or mood and their rise or pause etc. are of undiscerned
sequentiality. When we have the prominent presence of this variety, we are having
the very soul of suggestion. All the several beautifiers of the expressed sense and the
expression exist with the single purpose of conveying sentiment comes under the
scope of suggestion. According to Anandvardhana if in a poem the main general
meaning of the sentence is related to something else, and if sentiment and so on
come in only as auxiliaries to it, that sentiment and so on are figures of speech in
such a poem. Those which inhere in this main element are regarded as qualities.
Figures which are associated with its parts are to be known as ornaments such as the
bracelet.
Though Erotic, it is the sweetest and the most delightful of all sentiments. The
quality of sweetness is certainly based on poetry which is full of this sentiment. In
sentiments like love-in separation, sweetness will be uppermost because the mind is
moved very much in such instances. The great exciting power in poetry is
characterized by sentiments like the furious. The quality of forcefulness is one which
inheres in sound and sense which produces this effect. That quality in poetry by
which poetry throws itself open to the entry of all sentiments can be taken as clear
perception and its applicability is universal.
Alliteration becomes a source of suggestion in none of the varieties of the
principal erotic sentiment since it involves great effort at achieving similarity. Even
if the poet is an expert in the use of figures like assonance, his use of them in the
erotic sentiment which is of suggestive nature and particularly in that love- in
separation, would amount only to a lapse on his part. Only that figure of suggestion
poetry is admitted whose use is rendered possible just by the emotional suffusion of
36
the poet and which does not require any extra effort on his part. The galaxy of figures
like metaphor becomes truly significant when they are used with great discrimination
in instances of the Erotic Sentiment which is inherent to dhvani. It is only a means to
describe sentiment and not an end in itself. It is the necessity of employing it at the
right time and of abandoning it at the right time. The lack of enthusiasm on the poets
part in pressing it too far and finally, his active watchfulness in making sure that it
remains a secondary element only - these are the various means by which figures like
metaphor become accessories of the suggested sentiment.
The other element of this suggestion displays in the same way as resonance and
the material sequentiality of the two meanings will be perceptible. It is also of two
types: i) that which is based on the power of the word and (ii) that which is based
on the power of sense. Only that instance where figure is present and not expressed
directly by any word but conveyed only by the suggestive power of the word itself,
should be regarded as suggestion based on the power of the word.
The other type of suggestion is based upon the power of sense and it occurs in
places where the second meaning is conveyed only by way of association by the first
meaning and not by the expressed words at all.
A context where an idea suggested by the power of the word and sense is again
expressed directly in so many words by the poet, will instance only a figure far
removed from suggestion. The sense which suggests another sense is also two-fold:
1. Existing only in ornate expression and 2. Naturally existing. Contexts where there
is a new figure of speech to result from the mere power of sense and is suggested in
the form of resonance should be deemed as instances of another variety of
suggestion. It has been shown effectively even by the ancient writers that the
assemblage of figures like metaphor though generally found to be expressed only,
also become suggested. Even if there is a suggested figure and unless there is a
singleness of aim towards it on the expressed, it cannot be considered as a mode of
suggestion.
The figures which do not possess even the capacity of forming the body of
poetry appears in their expressed state, will be found to assume extraordinary beauty
when they become participants of suggestion. When figures are suggested only by
the idea itself, they are certainly participants of suggestion; as the very procedure of
poetry is dependent on it. If other figures are suggested they will become participants
37
of suggestion in case the principal importance of the suggested is noticeable in

respect of extraordinary charm. If an instance of the implied sense can be caught only
with great difficulty or if it is only subordinate to the expressed sense, it will not be
an instance of suggestion.
According to Anandwardhan the usage of a word with faltering denotation
should not be considered as suggestion. Clear cut manifestation and principal
importance of the suggested element can be called as suggestion.
III
Individual words and whole sentences suggest both the variety of suggestion
with unintended literal import and resonance like suggestion. With undiscerned
sequentiality it will flash forth in letter, word, sentence, composition and finally the
work as a whole.
The texture is of three kinds: 1. without compounds 2. with medium sized
compounds, and 3. with long compounds. Correctness of the speaker and the spoken
is the consideration which governs the usage of a texture. Another consideration is its
correctness with regard to the literary medium adopted. Hence in different forms of
literature texture is different. The consideration of correctness will also govern all
prose works which are not governed by the rules of metre.
Texture with correctness in the precise description of sentiments will shine out
whenever it may find. However, it will assume a shade of variation coupled with the
correctness of literary medium. Construction of only traditional or invented plot is
charming with its correctness of stimuli, abiding emotions, emotional response and
passing moods. In a theme taken from a traditional source, the poet faces situations
conflicting with the intended sentiment, his readiness to leave out such incidents and
inventing in their place even imaginary incidents with a view to describe the intended
sentiment. The divisions and sub-divisions of plot construction are only with a view
to describe sentiments and not at all with a desire for mere compliance to rules of
poetics. The poet brings about both the high tide and low ebb of sentiment in the
work by preserving the unity of the principal sentiment from beginning to end. The
poet also uses figures of speech in any number for the suggestiveness of a whole
work of literature in regard to sentiments, etc.
Case terminations, conjugational terminations, number, relation, accidence,
primary affixes, secondary affixes and compounds become conveyers of suggestion
38
with undiscerned sequentiality. A good poet who wishes to incorporate sentiments

etc. in his work should take efforts to avoid hindrances to them. Sketching the
setting etc. of an opposite sentiment, describing something whose connection with
the subject is very remote, stopping the description of sentiment abruptly or
elaborating it when not required; over-elaborating it again and again though it has
already elaborated sufficiently - all these hinder the course of sentiment.
Though it is a tradition that more than one sentiment should find a place in
entire works of literature, one of them alone should be made principal by the poet.
The importance of an intended sentiment cannot be damaged by the inclusion of
other sentiments in a poem just as one plot is made to remain major in a work as a
whole, one sentiment can be made to remain major. When a sentiment is described in
a work as a principal one, no other sentiment, whether unopposed or opposed, should
be treated elaborately. This will ensure that no opposition between them will remain
any more. If a sentiment opposed to the principal one, it happens to occur in the same
substratum. But it should be given a different substratum and once it is done, there
will be no defect even if it is treated in full. A sentiment which has no opposition
because of the sameness of substratum but becomes an opposite of principal
sentiment should be so conveyed by the intelligent poet that a third sentiment will
intervene between the conflicting ones. By the intervention of another sentiment, the
opposition of two sentiments in the same sentence will disappear. The opposition and
non-opposition of sentiments should be clearly noticed in this way especially in
Erotic sentiment because it is the most delicate of all sentiments. A good poet should
be very careful so far as sentiment is concerned. Otherwise, the slightest inattention
on his part will appear glaring.
Either for the sake of winning the attention of people or for the sake of
endowing the work with unique charm, a touch of opposite sentiments may be
brought into the additions of the erotic sentiment. It will not be a fault then.When a
good poet composes his poem having in mind these concepts of non-opposition and
opposition of sentiments, he shall never be wrong. The main task of a good poet lies
in a proper arrangement of all the contents and the expressions in the direction of
sentiments etc.
Vrttis (modes) are supposed to be of two types as they relate to proper use of
senses and sound in keeping with sentiments. We can also see another variety of
poetry viz. poetry of subordinated suggestion, where artistic excellence is greater
39
than the suggested, though suggestion also happens to be present along with the
artistic excellence. In all poetic composition that look delightful by reason of their
lucid and elegant words, only this variety of poetry should be recognized by the
intelligent critic. The good poet uses large number of figures to put on a new charm
to the poem when it is brought into touch with the suggested element. Even for such
expressions of poets as are already adorned by figures, this shade of suggestion will
be the most important ornament. Though we see the communication of a new
meaning by the agency of Ironic Tone, this will come within this variety of poetry so
long as the suggested element happens to remain secondary. Instances of this class of
poetry should not be classed under dhvani by refined critics.
Poetry with subordinated suggestion or with principal suggestion if one views it
from the standpoint of exclusive purport of sentiments etc., will also assume the form
of dhvani. These two classes of poetry are decided thus on the principle of
importance or unimportance of the suggested content. That poetry which is other
than these two classes is given the name of Portrait. Portrait-like poetry is also seen
to be two-fold as it is based either on word or on meaning. The first variety is wordportrait and the second is meaning-portrait.
Poetry shines in different ways with its several varieties of subordinated
suggestion, figures, its own sub-varieties, their inter-mingling and collocation. Such
are some of the different ways of principal suggestion and some of the minor classes
of the major ways. It is very difficult to count them fully.
Principal suggestion which is defined hitherto should be attentively studied not
only by the poets who aspire to write good poetry but also by all the critics who
aspire to understand it well. Those critics, who were unable to explain this essential
principle of poetry property, as they had only a glimmer of it, have brought into
vogue the theory of styles. Once the theory of poetry is fully understood, even the so
called Modes relating the nature of sounds as well as to the nature of meanings will
become clear.
IV
By the ways of principal suggestion as well as subordinated suggestion shown
above, the quality of creative imagination in poets will believe endlessness. By a
mere touch of even a single variety of suggestion, the poets expression will acquire
novelty though it might perhaps embody only an ordinary idea. The sentiments, etc.
40
whose scope is very wide should be followed along the said course. The otherwise
limited range of poetry has become so unlimited only because of their influence.
Even ordinary subjects in poetry will put on a new freshness if they get into touch
with sentiment as the same trees appear totally new with the arrival of spring. There
are several possible varieties of the suggested-suggester relationship, but the poet
should be most intent upon one of them.
There can be no dearth of poetic themes, so long as these varieties of principal
and subordinate suggestion are utilized in a work and so long as the poet has the gift
of creative imagination. Infinitude is achieved by the expressed content also even
when it remains in its pure and natural state by reason of the considerations of
circumstances, place, time, etc. We see in many examples of utilizing the expressed
content with variations of circumstances etc. But it will shine out only in the
association of sentiment if only the real nature of objects is the world, differing as it
does according to place, time, and so on, is used in such a way that it is filled with
sentiment, emotion etc., and that it is in keeping with the demands of correctness.
Even if a million Brhaspatis compose poems with all their strength simultaneously,
the infinite possibilities of poetic themes can never be drained off like the resources
of Nature herself. There can be number of coincidences amongst great minds, but all
of them should not be treated by the wise as being identical in respect of plagiarism.
Coincidence means correspondence with another. It may be like a reflected image or
a painted picture or like two living persons resembling each other. Of these the
reflected image has no separate existence at all of its own; the existence of the
painted picture is no more than a non-entity, while two living persons have a definite
existence of their own. A poet need not reject such similarity in themes.
Anandvardhan explains it further that so long as there is a separate life of its
own, even a poetic theme having a close correspondence to an earlier one will
acquire exceeding beauty; just as the delightful face of a woman will appear
exceedingly charming in spite of its strong resemblance to the moon. Even if the
already existing elements of poetic themes such as arrangement of letters etc. are
utilized by the poet, it will certainly be not wrong so long as the poetic theme as a
whole is shining with novelty. Whatever theme it might be, so long as it produces the
impression in the minds of people, it is lovely and unique flash. Though it might
smack of earlier usages, a theme can be very well utilized by a good poet. He never
becomes an object of strong criticism by doing so. Further Anandvardhan wishes that
41
many words that appear to critics as full of manifold ideas and immortal sentiments
be freely spread out. Poets need not have guilty feelings in the flawless realm of their
own. Even the goddess of speech, Saraswati, herself will provide the desired ideas of
a good poet whose mind is reluctant to borrow the belongings of another.
-Anandavardhana, from the Dhvanyaloka translated by K. Krishnamoorthy.
2.3 Check Your Progress:

I.
Choose the correct alternatives from the following.

1.
The soul of poetry is -a) meaning
2.
5.
d) figures of speech
b) sentences
c) words
d) paragraphs
--------- is the sweetest and the most delightful of all sentiments.

a) Erotic
4.
c) rhythm
The general meaning of a statement is perceived through the meaning of

Individual
a) phrases
3.
b) suggestion
b) Kindness
c) Hatred
d) Jealousy
By the intervention of --------- the opposition of sentiments in the same

sentence
a) another sentiment
b) another sentence
c) another word
d) another statement
The good poet uses large number of --------- to put on a new charm to the
poem.
a) words
b) sentiments
c) figures
d) emotions
II. Answer the following questions in one word / phrase / sentence each.
1.
What are the two aspects of the meaning of poetry?
2.
What is suggestive word?
3.
What are the ornaments of poetry?
4.
Which usage is to be not considered as suggestion?
5.
What are the two varieties of portrait-like poetry?

42
2.4 Summary
According to Anadvardhan Dhvani means the suggestive quality of poetic
language. Suggestion is the soul of poetry. That meaning which wins admiration of
critics is the soul of poetry. It has two aspects-the explicit and the implicit. The
conventional meaning of the poetry is secondary. The poetry suggests the intended or
implied meaning which is designated as dhvani or suggestive poetry. Only that
word which is pregnant with suggestive force is rightly called as suggestive.
The Erotic is the sweetest and the most delightful of all sentiments. The quality
of sweetness is based on poetry which is full of this sentiment. The great exciting
power in poetry is characterised by sentiments like the furious. The figures like
metaphor become truly significant when they are used with great discrimination in
instances of the Erotic sentiment which is inherent to dhvani. It is the suggestion
based on the power of the word where figure is present and not expressed directly by
any word but conveyed only by the suggestive power of the word itself. The other
type of suggestion is based upon the power of sense. The sense which suggests
another sense is twofold 1. Existing only in ornate expression and 2. Naturally
existing. The usage of a word with faltering denotation should not be considered as
suggestion. Clear cut manifestation and principal importance of the suggested
element can be called as suggestion.
Correctness of the speaker and the spoken is the consideration which governs
the usage of a texture. Another consideration is its correctness with regard to the
literary medium adopted. Hence in different forms of literature texture is different.
The poet brings about both the high tide and low ebb of sentiment in the work by
preserving the unity of the principal sentiment from beginning to end. The poet also
uses figures of speech in any number for the suggestiveness of a whole work of
literature in regard to sentiments. A good poet who wishes to incorporate sentiments
etc. in his work should take efforts to avoid hindrances to them.
Though it is a tradition that more than one sentiment should find a place in
entire work of literature, one of them alone should be made principal by the poet.
Either for the sake of winning the attention or for the sake of endowing the work
with unique charm, a touch of opposite sentiments may be brought into the additions
of the erotic sentiment.
43
Vrttis (modes) are of two types as they relate to proper use of senses and sound
in keeping with sentiments. In poetry of subordinated suggestion, artistic excellence
is greater than the suggested, though suggestion is present along with the artistic
excellence. The good poet uses large number of figures to put on a new charm to the
poem when it is brought into touch with suggested element.
Poetry with subordinated suggestion and with principal suggestion is decided on
the principle of importance or unimportance of the suggested content. That poetry
which is other than these two is Portrait. Portrait like poetry is either word-portrait or
meaning-portrait.
There is no dearth of poetic themes so long as principal and subordinated
suggestions are used in poetry and so long as the poet has the gift of creative
imagination. Whatever theme it might be, so long as it produces the impression in the
minds of people, it is lovely and unique flash.
2.5 Glossary:
essence (n): the most important quality, characteristic of something.
perceptive (adj): quick to notice and understand things.
constituent (n): any of the parts that make a whole.
secure (v): to obtain something, to make something safe.
convey (v): to take, carry or transport sb / sth.
indication (v): a remark, gesture or sign that indicates sth.
denote (v): mean
intended (adj): planned or meant.
discern (v): recognize or be aware of.
semblance (n): the way something looks or seems.
assonance (n): rhyming of vowel sounds only or of consonants only.
suffuse (v): gradually spread through or over.
explicit (adj): clear and detailed.
resonant (adj): deep, clear and ringing sound.
implicit (adj): suggested through, not directly expressed.
instance (n): an example or single occurrence of something.

44
assemblage (n): collection or gathering.
falter (v): move or speak hesitantly.
manifestation (n): sign or evidence of something.
stimulus (n): something that causes a reaction or that promotes activity,

interest etc.
conjugate (v): give the different forms of(a verb)
hinder (v): delay or obstruct.
substratum (n): layer of rock or soil beneath the surface of the ground.
endow (v): to provide with a good quality, ability etc.
purport (n): the general meaning or intention of sth.
aspire (v): have ambitions.
embody (v): to express or give visible form to ideas, feelings etc.
intent (n): intention or purpose.
dearth (n): a lack.
flaw (n): a mark or fault that spoils something.
2.6 Answers to Check Your Progress:

I.
1.
b)
suggestion
2.
c)
words
3.
a)
Erotic
4.
a)
another sentiment
5.
c)
figures
II. 1.
explicit and implicit.
2.
The word which conveys a charm that is not possible to communicate by

any other expression and is pregnant with suggestive force.
3.
Figures used in the poetry.
4.
The usage of a word with faltering denotation.
5.
Word-portrait and meaning-portrait.

45
2.7 Exercise:
1.
Suggestion is the soul of poetry. Discuss.
2.
What is the importance of Dhvani in poetry?
3.
What are the different ways in which poetry shines?
4.
Elaborate how figures become accessories of the suggested sentiment.
5.
What are the hindrances of the course of sentiment?
6.
Why does Anandvardhan indicate that there is no dearth of poetic themes?
2.8 Reference for Further Study:
Cleanth Brooks. The Well Wrought Urn: Studies in the Structure of Poetry. New
York, New York: Harcourt Brace & Company, (1947).
William K. Wimsatt, Jr. & Cleanth Brooks. Literary Criticism: A Short History.
New York, New York: Vintage Books, (1957).
T. S. Eliot. The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism. London,

England: Methuen Publishing, Ltd., (1920).
George Gascoigne. Certayne Notes of Instruction Concerning the Making of

English Verse or Ryme Stormloader.com.
Wadysaw Tatarkiewicz. "The Concept of Poetry," translated by Christopher

Kasparek, Dialectics and Humanism: the Polish Philosophical Quarterly, vol.
II, no. 2 (spring 1975), pp. 1324.
46
Unit - 3
Nature of the Linguistic Sign
Index:
3.0 Objectives
3.1 Introduction
3.2 Nature of the Linguistic sign: Interpretation and Explanation
3.3 Chief features of the text
3.4 Check your progress
3.5 Summary
3.6 Terms to remember
3.7 Answers to check your progress
3.8 Exercises
3.9 References for further study
3.0 Objectives:
After studying this unit, you will be in a position to:
know about Ferdinand de Saussure, his contribution to linguistics and

subsequently to structuralism.
understand the nature of the linguistic sign from Ferdinand de Saussures point
of view.
understand the relationship between the linguistic sign, signifier and signified.
know the arbitrary nature of the linguistic sign.

47
3.1 Introduction:
The previous unit, Dhvani: Structure of Poetic Meaning acquaints us with
Anandavardhanas theory of Dhvani, which means the suggestive quality of poetic
language. Anandavardhana has not only introduced the semantics of poetic language
in Sanskrit poetics but also turned the focus of critical discussion from the outward
linguistic style and poetic ornamentation to the more complicated issue of linguistic
structure in poetry. According to Anandavardhana the linguistic structure in poetry is
the total effect of the suggestive quality of language; this structure differentiates
poetry from the ordinary usage of language. He distinguishes the aspects of
suggestion i.e. meaning of poetry, defines the suggestive word, presents the kinds
of textures, varieties of poetry and suggested suggester relationship. He classifies
sentiments and remarks about the projection of sentiments. Through the present unit
we will attempt to know about Ferdinand de Saussures views on nature of the
linguistic sign, its arbitrariness and the relationship between the linguistic sign,
signifier and signified.
Ferdinand de Saussure, a Swiss linguist, was born on November 26, 1857 in
Geneva, Switzerland. His ideas laid a foundation for many significant developments
in linguistics in the 20th Century. He is widely considered as one of the founding
fathers of modern Linguistics. It is believed that his ideas have significantly
influenced the Humanities and Social Sciences.
Ferdinand de Saussure hailed from a family with a long history of contributions
to the sciences. He was a bright and curious student with a keen interest in the area of
languages that resulted into his learning the languages like Sanskrit, Greek, German,
Latin, French and English. The eminent linguist, Adoplhe Pichet who was Ferdinand
de Saussures mentor boosted his passion for languages.
However, Ferdinand de Saussure joined the esteemed University of Geneva in
1875 not to study languages but to study the physical sciences like Chemistry and
Physics as his ancestors did. Surprisingly, in 1876, he had returned to the study of
linguistics. He, then, studied at the University of Berlin from 1878 to 1879 and after
that enrolled at the University of Leipzig to study comparative grammar and Indo
48
European languages. His first full-length book, Thesis on the original system of
vowels in Indo-European languages was published in 1878. The book projected
Saussure as a new expert in the field of comparative linguistics. The book contained
Ferdinand de Saussures laryngeal theory which explained perplexing features of
some of the Worlds oldest Indo-European languages. However, the theory was not
widely accepted until the mid 20th century. In the same year his Comments on
Grammar and Phonetics was published. He completed his doctoral dissertation on
the use of the absolute genitive in Sanskrit in 1880.
Ferdinand de Saussure began his career as a teacher at the Ecole Practique des
Hautes Etudes in Paris, where he taught numerous languages and added the
languages like Lithuanian and Persian to his immense repertoire. Simultaneously, he
became the active member of the Linguistic Society of Paris and in 1882 he became
its secretary. Ferdinand de Saussure taught languages at the Ecole Practique for 10
years. In 1891 he accepted a new position as professor of Indo-European languages
and Comparative Grammar at the University of Geneva.
In 1906 the University of Geneva assigned Ferdinand de Saussure to teach a
course on linguistics which he taught three times between 1906 and 1911. His A
Course in General Linguistics from which the present unit is extracted is actually the
compilation of his class-notes, edited entirely by two of his students, Charles Bally
and Albert Sechebaye. The book was published in 1916 three years after Ferdinand
de Saussures death.
In fact, many of Ferdinand de Saussures works were not published during his
lifetime because, as history indicates, he had a great fear publishing any of his
studies until they were proved absolutely accurate. Consequently many of Ferdinand
de Saussures theories have been explained in books by other authors.
Ferdinand de Saussure died of cancer at the age 56 on February 22, 1913. His
dislike of publishing and early death resulted in the posthumous publication of many
of his works.
49
3.2 Nature of the Linguistic Sing: Interpretation and Explanation:

Ferdinand de Saussures Course in General Linguistics is, according to J.A.
Cuddon, a treatise which forms the basis of 20th century linguistics and which has
ultimately influenced much literary criticism. (Dictionary of Literary Terms and
Literary Theory. P.869) In its part one entitled General Principles, Saussure
elaborates Nature of the Linguistic Sing which is the chapter No.1 of the part. He
has divided the chapter into three parts, viz.
1.
Sign, Signified, Signifier
2.
Principle 1 : The Arbitrary Nature of the Sign.
3.
Principle 2 : The Linear nature of the Signifier.

At the outset of the first part, Sign, Signified, Signifier Ferdinand de Saussure
presents a general misconception about language. He says: Some people regard

language, when reduced to its elements, as a naming-process only a list of words,
each corresponding the thing that it names, for example
This concept is open to criticism at several points. It assumes that ready-made
ideas exist before words; it does not tell us whether the name is vocal or
psychological in nature (arbour, for instance, can be considered from either view
point); it lets us assume that the linking of a name and thing is a very simple
operation an assumption that is anything but true (Course in General Linguistics
P.65)
Hence, for Ferdinand de Saussure, language is not just a naming process. It is
not just a list of words, each corresponding to the thing that it names. Saussure is of
the opinion that ready-made ideas do not exist before words. He observes that the
above quoted general conception is a nave approach. However, he points out that
this approach helps to understand the truth that the linguistic unit is a double entity,
one formed by the associating of two terms (Course in General Linguistics P.65)
By two terms Saussure means a thing and a name. For instance,
50
etc.
etc.
He further adds that both terms involved in the linguistic sign are psychological
and are united in the brain by an associative bond. This point must be emphasized.
The linguistic sign unites, not a thing and a name, but a concept and a sound
image. The latter is not the material sound, a purely physical thing, but the
psychological imprint of the sound, the impression that it makes on our senses
(Course in General Linguistics P.66)
Subsequently, Saussure puts the terms, the sound image and the concept to
contrast. For him the sound image is sensory. He thinks the sound image material
as he contrasts it to the concept which is generally more abstract. However, through
his speakingcircuit which is as below
Ferdinand de Saussures Speaking Circuit.

51
Saussure, through this circuit, tries to justify that both terms (concept and sound
image) are psychological. The mental facts are concepts and linguistic sounds
become sound images. Thus, in the facts of speech, concept is a purely psychological
phenomenon and as a result a physiological process sound image turns out to be a
purely physical process.
According to Ferdinand de Saussure, The psychological character of our
sound-images becomes apparent when we observe our own speech. Without moving
our lips or tongue, we can talk to ourselves or recite mentally a selection of verse.
Because we regard the words of our language as sound images, we must avoid
speaking of the phonemes that make up the words. This term, which suggests vocal
activity, is applicable to the spoken word only, the realization of the inner image in
discourse. We can avoid the misunderstanding (by speaking of the sounds and
syllables of a word provided we remember) that the names refer to the sound-image.
The linguistic sign is then a two-sided psychological entity that can be
represented by drawing:
Concept
Sound Image
The two elements are intimately united, and each recalls the other. Whether we
try to find the meaning of the Latin word arbour or the word that Latin to designate
the concept tree, it is clear that only the associations sanctioned by that language
appear to us to conform to reality, and we disregard whatever others might be
imagined. (Course in General Linguistics P.66-67)
52
However, Ferdinand de Saussure finds it difficult to define the linguistic sign

terminologically. For him a sign is the combination of a concept and sound-image.
Whoever, he says; the term generally designates only a sound image, a word, for
example (arbor, etc.). One tends to forget that arbor is called a sign only because it
carries the concept tree with the result that the idea of the sensory part implies the
idea of the whole (Course in General Linguistics P.67).
Saussure exemplifies this with the help of the following drawing:
tree
arbor
arbor
To vanish ambiguity Saussure designates three names for the three notions, each
suggesting and opposing the other. He proposes to preserve the word sign to show
the whole. Subsequently concept is replaced by signified and sound image by
signifier.
Signifier and signified show opposition. This opposition separates them not only
from each other but also from the whole (i.e. sign) of which they are parts.
According to Ferdinand de Saussure the linguistic sign has two primordical
characteristics. To express them clearly he gives two basic principles:
i)
The Arbitrary Nature of the Sign.

53
ii) The Linear Nature of the Signifier.

Let us see these principles in detail:
i)
Principle I : The Arbitrary Nature of the Sign.

According to Saussure the bond between the signifier and the signified is
arbitrary. Sign, the whole, is the result of the association of the signifier with the
signified. Hence, the linguistic sign is arbitrary. For instance, Water is not linked
by any inner or inbuilt relationship to the succession of sounds /p/-/a:/-/n/-/i:/ which
serves as its signifier in Marathi, /d3/-//-/1/ in Sanskrit, and /n/-/i:/-/r/ in Kannada.
This means signified is represented differently from language to language. The very
different representation results into the very existence of different languages.
Saussure states that the principle of the arbitrary nature of the sign is
indisputable. It dominates all the linguistics of language. Bar its numberless
consequences, it has primordial importance. He posses one remark:
When semiology becomes organized as a science, the question will arise
whether or not it properly includes modes of expression based on completely natural
signs, such as pantomime. Supposing that the new science welcomes them its main
concern will still be the whole group of systems grounded on the arbitrariness of the
sign. In fact, every means of expression used in society is based, in principle, on
collective behaviour or what amounts to the same thing on convention. Polite
formulas, for instance, though often imbued with a certain natural expressiveness (as
in the case of a Chinese who greets his emperor by bowing down to the ground nine
times), are nonetheless fixed by rule; it is this rule and not the intrinsic value of the
gestures that obliges one to use them. Signs that are wholly arbitrary realize better
than the others the ideal of the semiological process; that is why language, the most
complex and universal of all systems of expression is also the most characteristic; in
this sense linguistics can become the master pattern for all the branches of
semiology although language is only one particular semiological system. (Course in
General Linguistics P.68)
54
Ferdinand de Saussure further points out that the word symbol has been used to
designate the sign, to be specific the signifier. However, he remarks that the principle
of the arbitrary nature of sign has the influence on the use of this term. He points out:
One characteristic of the symbol is that it is never wholly arbitrary, it is not empty,
for there is rudiment of a nature bond between the signifier and the signified. The
symbol of justice, a pair of scales, could not be replaced by just any other symbol,
such as a chariot. (Course in General Linguistics P.68)
Saussure also comments on the term arbitrary. He remarks that the term
should not mean that the choice of the signifier is left entirely to the speaker because
the individual does not have the power to change the sign in any way once it has
been established in the linguistic community. When Saussure says the signifier is
arbitrary, he means that it is unmotivated. It actually has no natural connection with
the signified.
However, in the conclusion Saussure forementions and considers two possible
objections that would be taken to the principle of the arbitrary nature of sign. Two
objections that he visualises are: Onomatopoeia and Interjections.
According to Ferdinand de Saussure Onomatopoeia might be used to prove that
the choice of the signifier is not always arbitrary. He classifies the onomatopoetic
words into onomatopoeic formations and authentic onomatopoeic words. However,
he refutes the objection by stating the facts that onomatopoeic formations are never
organic elements of linguistic system. They are very small in number and they are
accidental result of phonetic evolution. Saussure exemplifies this with the help of
words like French fuet whip or glas knell and points out that their Latin forms did
not mean the same. For instance, fouet is derived from fagus beach tree.
Words like glugglug, tick-tock are authentic onomatopoeic words. Saussure
points out that they are limited in number. They are chosen somewhat arbitrarily.
Such words are only approximate and more and less conventional imitations of
certain sounds such as English bow-bow and French ouaoua. Saussure adds, Once
these words have been introduced into the language, they are to a certain extent
55
subjected to the same evolution phonetic, morphological etc that other words
undergo (cf. pigeon, ultimately from Vulgar Latin pipio, derived in turn from an
onomatopoeic formation) : obvious proof that they lose something of their original
character in order to assume that of the linguistic sign in general, which is
unmotivated. (Course in General Linguistics P.69)
Similarly, Saussure refutes the would be objection of interjection to the arbitrary
nature of the sign. Interjections are closely related to onomatopoeia. They might be
seen as spontaneous expressions of reality dictated by natural forces. Interjections
have no fixed bond between their signified and their signifier. They differ from
language to language and many of them had the status of words with certain
meaning.
Hence, Ferdinand de Saussure is of the opinion that onomatopoeic formations
and interjections are less important and they should not be used to prove the nature of
the linguistic is not arbitrary or motivated.
ii)
Principle II : The Linear Nature of the Signifier.

The term signifier is used in the place of sound image. It is auditory. It has
the following features:

a)
It represents a span.
b)
It is a line as the span can be measured in a single dimension.
Saussure points out that the principle of the linear nature of the signifier is
obvious. Hence, the linguists supposed it too simple. And so, Saussure remarks, they
have always neglected to mention it. However, Saussure thinks, It is fundamental,
and its consequences are incalculable. Its importance equals that of principle I; the
whole mechanism of language depends upon it (Course in General Linguistics
P.70). The linguistic signifiers are auditory signifiers that occur only in the
dimension of time and are presented in a series. They form a chain. But in writing the
linguistic signifiers appear in the spatial line of graphic marks instead of succession
of time. On the other hand, visual signifiers like nautical signals can offer
simultaneous groupings in several dimensions. Saussure also points out that the
56
linear nature of the signifier is sometimes not obvious. He suggests that this is an
illusion.
3.3 Chief features of the text:

Ferdinand de Saussures Nature of the Linguistic Sign, which is taken from his
famous book Course in General Linguistics, is divided into three parts. In the first
part Saussure defines the linguistic sign and describes how the linguistic sign results
from the combination of the signifier (sound image) and the signified (concept). It is
also stated that both the signified and the signifier are psychological and are united in
the brain by an associative bond.
In the second part Saussure explains the principle of the arbitrary nature of the
sign. The association between the signifier and the signified is arbitrary. They do not
have any inherent relationship. The linguistic signs are based on collective behaviour
or on convention. The words are unmotivated signs. Here Saussure distinguishes
the word symbol from the linguistic sign. The symbol is never completely
arbitrary. It is not empty and it cannot be replaced by any other symbol. On the other
hand, all linguistic signs are arbitrary. It is pointed out that the onomatopoeic words
and interjections are exceptions, but they are very small in number and they differ
from language to language.
In the third part Saussure throws light upon the principle of the linear nature of
the signifier. Here the distinction is drawn between the linguistic signifier and the
visual signifier.
It can be observed that Nature of the Linguistic Sign exhibits Ferdinand de
Saussures contribution to the development of modern approaches to language study
and to the development of the modern critical theory of structuralism. He
emphasized:
i)
the patterns and functions of language in use today,
ii)
how meanings are maintained and established and
iii) the function of the grammatical structures.
57
What made the later structuralist to consider Saussures linguistic ideas so

interestingly were his three pronouncements:
i)
Words are purely arbitrary and unmotivated signs.
ii) The meanings of the words are rational. A word can be defined in terms of
its relation with other adjoining words and not in isolation.
iii) Language constitutes our world. It doesnt just record or label it.
Saussures distinction between langue and parole offered structuralists, a
way of thinking about the larger structures which were relevant to literature.
Saussure used the term langue to signify language as a system or structure and the
term parole to suggest any given utterance in that language. According to Peter
Barry, A particular remark in French (a sample of Parole) only makes sense to you
if you are already in possession of the whole body of rules and conventions
governing verbal behaviour which we call French (that is the langue) only makes
sense to you if you are already in possession of the whole body of rules and
conventions governing verbal behaviour which we call French (that is the
langue). (Beginning Theory, P.44).
Subsequently, the individual literary work (the play Hamlet) becomes an
example of the parole. It is meaningful only in relation to the notion of the drama as
a genre that become the langue. Hence, Ferdinand de Saussure is revered as a father
of structuralism.
3.4 Check your progress:

I)
Rewrite the following sentences by choosing the correct alternative given

below them:
1)
2)
According to Saussure, the linguistic sign is a .

a) unique identity
b) double entity
c) pure creativity
d) none of these.
The sound image means

a) the physical sound
b) the material sound
c) phonemes
d) the psychological imprint of the sound.

58
3)
4)
5)
6)
7)
8)
9)
The linguistic sign unites

a) a name and a thing
b) an image and a concept
c) a name and an image
d) a concept and a sound image.
Every means of expression used in society is based on

a) language
b) convention
c) concepts
d) signs.
The signifier has .. connection with the signified.

a) natural
b) no natural
c) regular
d) pure.
The signifier is .
a) unmotivated
b) motivated
c) intended
d) purposeful.
The auditory signifiers occur in the dimension of .

a) time
b) place
c) area
d) sound.
Language is spoken as well as written in a .way.

a) special
b) linear
c) natural
d) double.
Symbols are
a) always arbitrary
b) fully arbitrary
c) never wholly arbitrary
d) natural.
10) Acording to Saussure .. and .. should not be used to prove

that the linguistic sign is not arbitrary.
a) concept, image
b) onomatopoeia, interjections
c) sign, symbol
d) natural.
II) Answer the following questions in one word/phrase/sentence each.

1)
Give the name of the book by Saussure from which Nature of the
Linguistic Sign is taken.
2)
Who are the editors of Course in General Linguistics?
3)
What is a general misconception about language?

59
4)
What makes a linguistic sign a double entity?
5)
Why does Saussure refer to the linguistic sign as a double entity?
6)
Why is language the most complex and universal of all systems of

expressions?
7)
State the difference between the sign and the symbol.
8)
What are the objections that Saussure considers would be raised

against the principle of the arbitrary nature of sign?
9)
How does Saussure refute the objection of onomato poeia?
10) How does Saussure refute the objection of interjections?
3.5 Summary:
Ferdinand de Saussure initiates his argument by referring to the general
misconception that language is just a naming process; a list of words, each referring
to the thing that it names. Saussure argues against this notion. He says this is a very
naive or basic view of language. However, this basic approach is useful as it helps to
understand the truth that the linguistic unit is a double entity, made of two parts.
According to Saussure, the concept and the sound image are the two parts of
a linguistic unit. The sound image is not the physical sound (what our mouth
produces and ears hear) but rather the psychological imprint of the sound, the
impression that it makes on our senses. An example of this is a person talking to
himself (he/she doesnt make a sound, but has an impression of what he/she is
saying).
The linguistic sign is the result of the union of a concept and a sound image.
This union is so close that one part immediately evokes the other. Saussure illustrates
the concept, tree. (various languages have various names for tree).
If the word horse is said silently, speaker can feel the way the word is
pronounced with his/her lips, see the spelling of the word in his/her head, as well as
hear the sound that the letters should make. Beyond this physical impact, a sound
image is then connected to a concept. For example, if one sees or hears the word
horse, then he/she might visualize a four legged animal with a mane and a tail,
60
running through the field. When these two cognitive experiences (the sound-image
and the concept) are brought together, the result is a sign. The most significant point
is that a sign cannot exist with just one of these experiences, but both are required as
they are mutually defining as each recalls other. Saussure, then, for the sake of
clarity identifies the cognitive experiences of the sound image and the concept by
other terms: the signifier and the signified. In this way, a more common way to
define a linguistic sign is that a linguistic sign is the combination of a signifier and
signified. Saussure says that sound image is the signifier and the concept, the
signified. Subsequently a word becomes a signifier and the thing it represents
becomes a signified.
The sign has the following two main features:
1.
The sign is arbitrary. Saussure says that the bond between the signifier and the
signified is arbitrary. There is no natural, intrinsic, logical relation between a certain

sound image (signifier) and a concept (signified). This can be exemplified through
the fact that there are different words, in different languages for the thing. Tree is
tree in English, arbor in Latin, ped in Hindi, zad in Marathi, vruksh in
Sanskrit, chettu in Telagu, mara in Kannada, and marram in Tamil and so on.
The principle of arbitrariness dominates all ideas about the structure of
language. It makes it possible to separate the signifier and the signified or change the
relation between them. Hence, the union of the signifier and the signified as a sign is
not universal, even within a language or culture. The meaning of signs differ between
cultures, regions and time periods. The only reason a sign comes to be known, is that
it is accepted by a community as a convention. This means the signs are
conventional.
Language is one semiological system. It is based on collective behaviour or
convention. However, pantomime, sign language, gestures can be the part of
semiology.
Saussure compares sign with the concept of symbol. While a sign is arbitrary, a
symbol is not wholly arbitrary. For example, a pair of scales is a symbol of justice.
The scales cannot be replaced by any other symbol such as a chariot. The
61
relationship between symbol and concept (scale and justice) is self-consciously

chosen metaphor : justice involves a weighing of good against bad.
Saussure considers two possible objections to the idea that signs are arbitrary.
The first objection focuses on the use of onomatopoeia. According to Saussure
onomatopoeic words are supposed to imitate sounds, therefore the signifier would
not seem to be arbitrary. The sound images of the signifiers, though, are only
approximate. They also vary from language to language. The second objection
results from the use of interjections, interjections also differ. In English one says,
ouch! when one bangs ones finger with a hammer. air is the French equivalent
to English ouch.
2.
The signifier is of linear nature. The signifier (the spoken word or auditory
signifier) exists in time. Time can be measured as linear. A speaker cannot speak two
words at one time. He/she has to speak one and them the next, in a linear way. This is
applicable even to the written language. This shows that language operates as a linear
sequence and that all the elements of a particular sequence from a chain. The whole
mechanism of language depends upon the linear nature of the signifier.
3.6 Terms to remember:
conception : an understanding or a belief of what something is or what

something should be.
naive : lacking experience of life.
entity : something that exists separately from other things and has its own
identity.
associative : relating to the association of ideas or things.
physiological : about the scientific study of the development of language.
apparent : obvious, easy to understand.
phoneme : the smallest unit of speech in a language that distinguishes one

word from another.
vocal : of the voice.
syllable : a word or part of a word which contains a vowel sound.

62
designate : to point out or call by a special name.
sensory : of or by bodily senses.
imply : to mean indirectly, suggest.
exemplify : to give an example of.
notion : an idea, belief, or opinion in someones mind.
primordial : existing from or at the beginning.
arbitrary : decided by or based on chance or personal opinion rather facts

or reason.
linear : of or in lines.
succession : the act of following one after other.
indisputable : beyond doubt.
semiology : the study sings and their meaning in the exchange of

information, esp. in language.
pantomime : mime, the practice of using actions without language to show

meaning.
imbue : to fill somebody with a strong feeling or opinion.
intrinsic : inherent.
oblige : to make it necessary for someone to do something.
rudiment : the simplest part of a subject learnt at the very beginning.
fortuitous : happening by chance, accidental.
approximate : almost correct, but not completely so.
refute : deny.
langue : a language considered as communication system of a particular

community, rather than the way individual people speak (a language as a
whole)
parole : language considered as the words individual people use, rather than
as the communication system of a particular community (a particular use of
individual units of langue)
ambiguity : the state of having more than one possible meanings.

63

I)
1) b
2) d
3) d
4) b
5) b
6) a
7) a
8) b
9) c
10) b
II) 1) Course in General Linguistics.

2) Charles Bally and Albert Sechehaye.
3) Language is a naming process only.
4) The union of sound image and concept.
5) because the linguistic sign is made up of the signifier and the signified.
6) because linguistic signs are wholly arbitrary.
7) Sign is wholly arbitrary but symbol is never so and it is not empty like sign.
8) Onomatopoeia and interjections.
9) Onomatopoeic formations are never elements of linguistic system; they are
small in number and accidental result of phonetic evolution.
10) Interjections differ from language to language and are limited in number.
3.8 Exercises:
I)
Answer the following questions in about 250 words each.

1)
Write a detailed note on the nature of the linguistic sign.
2)
How does Saussure describe the relationship between signifier and

signified?
3)
Explain in detail Saussures principle of the arbitrary nature of the linguistic

sign.
4)
What would be objections to the principle of the principle of the arbitrary

nature of the linguistic sign? How does Saussure refute them?
II) Answer the following questions in about 150 words each.

`
1)
the linguistic sign: a double entity.
2)
The arbitrary nature of the linguistic sign.
3)
The linguistic sign and symbol.
4)
The linear nature of the signifier.

64
5)
Ferdinand de Saussure and Structuralism.
3.9 Reference for further study:

1)
Bally, Charles and Sechehaye, Albert (eds), (1964), Course in General

Linguistics, Trans. Wade Baskin, Peter Owen, London.
2)
Berry, Peter, Beginning Theory, (1010), viva, New Delhi.
3)
Cuddon, J.A., Dictionary of Literary terms and Literary Theory, (1998),

Penguin, London.
4)
Culler, J., Structuralist Poetics, (1975), Rutledge, London.
5)
Harris, R. and Taylor, T.J. (1990), Landmarks in Linguistic Thought: the

Western Tradition from Surates to Saussure, Rutledge, London.
6)
Mauro, T. de and Sugeta, S. (eds.) (1995) Saussure and Linguistics Today,

Belzoni, Rome.
65
Unit-4
Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences
- Jacques Derrida
4.0 Objectives:
After studying this unit you will be able to understand:
A new trend in critical theory viz. post structuralism.
Derridas theory of deconstruction.
The difference between structuralism and post structuralism.
The importance of free play.
The logocentrism as a fallacy
4.1 Introduction:
In the previous unit you have studied Ferdinand de Saussures concept of
linguistic sign. According to Saussure language is made up of signs and every
linguistic sign is made up of signifier and signified. Signifier is the actual sound
of the written mark on the paper, and signified is a concept, an idea, a thought. By
uniting the two, Saussure claims of the stability of sign and so is the text. To him the
relation between the signifier and the signified is "arbitrary", i.e. there is no direct
connection between the sound image and the object. He further points out that
speech acts (la parole) are different from the system of a language (la langue).
Parole is the free will of an individual, whereas langue is regulated by the group.
Saussure also postulated that once the convention is established, it is very difficult to
change. This established convention enables languages to remain static. This concept
of stability of the text was later on developed by the structuralists like Claude Levi
Strauss and others. However, Jacques Derrida did not agree with the structuralists. In
the present essay Derrida challenges the ideas of the structuralists and put forth a new
theory which is known as Deconstruction. So the present essay can be regarded as
the manifesto of deconstruction, post-structuralism and post-modernism.
66
Post structuralism is an intellectual movement. It was developed in Europe in

mid-20th century. In fact, Post-stucturalism is a shift from seeing the poem or novel
as a closed entity, equipped with definite meanings. It rejects the idea of a literary
text having a single purpose, a single meaning, or one singular existence. Instead,
every individual reader creates a new and individual purpose, meaning, and existence
for a given text. In Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human
Sciences Derrida attacks all western metaphysics for the logocentrism, the tendency
for seeking centre and presence, and discusses some of his basic notions of poststructuralism and deconstruction. According to him this centre-seeking tendency
began to be questioned from Nietzsche who declared the 'Death of God' and replaced
god with superman. Another figure to challenge the logocentrism is Freud, who
questioned the authority of consciousness and claims that we are guided by
unconscious. Heidegger also challenges the notion of metaphysics of presence.
Compared with other introductory essays by post-structuralist theorists, the present
essay remains one of the key texts of basic post-structuralist thought. So it is
regarded as the manifesto of post-structuralism.
4.1.2 Check your progress:

1.
Whose concept of linguistic sign has been challenged by Derrida?
2.
What is signifier?
3.
What is logocentrism?
4.
Who opposed the notion of metaphysics of presence?
5.
Why did Derrida attack western metaphysics?
4.2 Introduction to Jacques Derrida:

Jacques Derrida is the founder of the most debated critical theory known as
deconstruction, a way of criticizing literary and philosophical texts. His output of
more than 40 published books, together with essays and public speaking has been
labeled as post-structuralism. It has had a significant impact upon the humanities,
particularly on literary theory and philosophy. His most quoted and famous assertion
which appears in his book Of Grammatology (1967), is the statement that "there is
nothing outside the text" meaning that there is nothing outside context. Derrida's
work has had implications across many fields, including literature, architecture,
67
sociology, and cultural studies. Particularly in his later writings, he frequently

addressed ethical and political themes. His works influenced various activists and
other political movements. His widespread influence made him a well-known
cultural figure, while his approach to philosophy and the supposed difficulty of his
work also made him a figure of some controversy. His work has been seen as a
challenge to the unquestioned assumptions of the Western philosophical tradition and
Western culture as a whole.
4.2.1 Life and works:

Jacques Derrida, a French philosopher, was born in a middle class Jewish family
on July 15, 1930 in El-Biar, a suburb of Algeria. From his childhood Derrida was
interested in the philosophical works of Rousseau, Nietzsche, Camus and Sartre.
However, the Jewish laws passed by the Vichy regime expelled him from school
around the age of 12. After being forced out of his Algerian academy, Derrida
attended an informal school for Jewish children but he did not take his studies
seriously and was often absent. He took part in numerous football competitions and
dreamed of becoming a professional player but, when realized that he lacked the
athletic prowess to succeed, he turned to academia and took interest in philosophy.
At the age of 22, he moved to France and began studies at the Ecole Normale
Superieure in Paris, focusing on the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl. On his first
day at the Ecole Normale Superieure, Derrida met Louis Althusser, with whom he
became friend. Derrida is particularly interested in the analysis of criture, the
writing of philosophy itself.
Derrida earned his degree in philosophy in 1956. Before returning to Algeria
Derrida received a grant for studies at Harvard University. In June 1957, he married
the psychoanalyst Marguerite in Boston. During the Algerian War of Independence,
Derrida was asked to teach soldiers' children in lieu of military service, teaching
French and English from 1957 to 1959. Following the war, from 1960 to 1964,
Derrida started his career as a teacher of philosophy at the College de Sorbonne in
France and also started contributing to the leftist magazine Tel Quel. In 1964, on the
recommendation of Althusser and Jean Hyppolite, Derrida got a permanent teaching
position at the cole Normale Suprieure, which he kept until 1984.
Derrida was introduced to America in 1966 when he presented his paper on
"Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences", at Johns
68
Hopkins University. With this presentation his work began to assume international
prominence. In the same year, Derrida published his first three books Writing and
Difference, Speech and Phenomena, and Of Grammatology. In Of Grammatology,
Derrida analyzes and criticizes Western Philosophy beginning with the pre-Socratics
to Heidegger. He challenges the fundamental privileging of "logos" in Western
Philosophy. He also introduced words such as "trace," "presence," "difference,"
"deconstruction," "logos," and "play" to the lexicon of contemporary discourse in
structuralism, post-structuralism, post-modernism and post-colonialism.
Derrida travelled widely and held a series of visiting and permanent positions.
He was the director of studies at the cole des Hautes tudes en Sciences Sociales in
Paris. In 1986 he became Professor of the Humanities at the University of California,
Irvine. He was a regular visiting professor at several other major American and
European universities, including Johns Hopkins University, Yale University, New
York University, Stony Brook University, and The New School for Social Research,
and European Graduate School. He was awarded honorary doctorates by Cambridge
University (1992), Columbia University, The New School for Social Research, the
University of Essex, University of Leuven, Williams College and University of
Silesia. In 2003, Derrida was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, which reduced his
speaking and travelling engagements. He died in a hospital in Paris on the evening of
October 8, 2004. His influence on contemporary philosophy is undeniable and he is
beyond doubt one of the most influential philosophers of the Twenty First Century.

1.
Who is the founder of the deconstruction?
2.
Which is the most quoted assertion of Derrida?
3.
When was Derrida introduced to America?
4.
Where did Derrida present his paper on "Structure, Sign, and Play in the
Discourse of the Human Sciences?
5.
Name the most famous works of Derrida?
69
4.4 The paragraph wise analysis of the text:

1. Derrida begins the essay with a reference to an event. He says, Perhaps
something has occurred in the history of the concept of structure that could be called
an event. The exterior form of this event would be a rupture and redoubling. The
word perhaps with which the essay begins signifies indefinite and unstable nature
of both sign and structure. So no positive or definitive statement can be made of any
text. What Derrida is talking about is a shift or a break in the fundamental structure
of western philosophy. This break is referred here as an event or a rupture. The
event which the essay documents is that of a definitive epistemological break with
structuralist thought, of the ushering in of post-structuralism as a movement. It turns
the logic of structuralism against itself insisting that the structurality of structure
itself had been repressed in structuralism.
2. Derrida here raises a question about the basic metaphysical assumptions of
Western philosophy since Plato which believes in a fixed immutable centre, a static
presence. According to him the concept of structure and even the word "structure"
itself are as old as the western science and western philosophy. However, this
structure or the structurality of structure has been neutralized by the process of giving
it a center, a fixed origin. Derrida terms this desire for a centre as logocentrism.
Derrida argues that the function of this center was not only to orient and balance the
structure but to limit the free play of the structure. By orienting and organizing the
coherence of the system, the center of the structure allows the free play of its
elements inside the total form. The center thus limits the free play of the structure.
3. Derrida views that the concept of centre essential for analysis of the
structure of language. However, while governing the structure it escapes from the socalled centrality. So the center is within the structure and outside of it at one and the
same time. So Derrida points out that the center is at the center of the totality, and yet
it does not belong to totality because the totality has its center elsewhere. So Derrida
asserts that, within classical thought, the center is, paradoxically, within the
structure and outside it the totality has its center elsewhere. In short, the center is
not the center. Hence, the concept of centered structure is in fact the concept of a free
play.
4. This history of the concept of structure is the history of the substitution of
metaphors and metonymies. As a result the center receives different names and forms
70
such as essence, existence, presence, substance, subject, truth, transcendentality,

consciousness, God, man, and so forth. The problem of centers for Derrida is thereby
that they attempt to exclude. In doing so, they ignore, repress or marginalize others
5. In the very beginning of this paper Derrida calls this event of shift or a
break in the fundamental structure of western philosophy as a rupture. Once it was
realized that the center has never been originally present, it becomes necessary to
think it has no natural locus, a sort of non-locus in which an infinite number of signsubstitutions comes into play. In short the center can not be thought in the form of a
present being.
6. In order to explain his decentering of this structurality of structure Derrida
cites the examples of Nietzsche, Freud, and Heidegger. According to him this
decentering of structure, of the transcendental signified and of the sovereign
subject can be found in the Nietzchean critique of metaphysics, and especially of the
concepts of Being and Truth, in the Freudian critique of self-presence, that is, the
critique of consciousness, of the subject, of self-identity and of self-proximity or selfpossession; and more radically in the Heideggerean destruction of metaphysics, of
the determination of being as presence. But all these destructive discourses and all
their analogues are trapped in a sort of circle. This circle is unique. It describes the
form of the relationship between the history of metaphysics and the destruction of the
history of metaphysics.
In order to prove this Derrida takes up the example of Saussures description of
sign. According to Saussure, meaning depends upon the concept of sign and sign is
composed of the signifier and the signified. Signifier is the actual sound or the
written mark on the paper and signified is a concept, an idea or thought. By uniting
the two Saussure claims the stability of the text. However Derrida does not agree
with this. He also states that the meaning of a sign is present to the speaker when he
uses it, in defiance of the fact that meaning is constituted by a system of differences.
That is also why Saussure insists on the primacy of speaking. Derrida however
critiques this phonocentrism and argues that sign has no innate or transcendental
truth. The signified never has any immediate self-present meaning. It is itself only a
sign that derives its meaning from other signs. Hence a signified can be a signifier
and vice versa. While Saussure still sees language as a closed system where every
word has its place and consequently its meaning, Derrida wants to argue for language
as an open system. In denying the metaphysics of presence, the distances between
71
inside and outside are also problematized. There is no place outside of language from
where meaning can be generated. Derrida thus attacks the metaphysics of presence
with the help of the concept of sign.
Derrida, then, explains two heterogenous ways of erasing the difference between
signifier and signified. The first way is the classic way. It consists in reducing or
deriving the signifier, that is to say, ultimately in submitting the sign to thought.
Another way is a Derridean way. It consists in putting into question the system in
which the preceding reduction functions. This second way seeks to move to a new
and entirely different mode of thinking instead of simply moving to new thoughts
within the same old system. It is nothing but the way of deconstruction.
7-8. Derrida next considers the theme of decentering with respect to French
structuralist LeviStrausss ethnology because a certain doctrine has been elaborated
in the work of LeviStrauss in a more or less explicit manner, in relation to this
critique of language and to this critical language in the human sciences as well as for
his criticism of the language used in the social sciences. Ethnology perhaps occupies
a privileged place among the human sciences. It can be assumed that ethnology
could have been emerged as a science only at the moment when a decentering had
come about: at the moment when European culture and, in consequence, the history
of metaphysics and of its concepts had been dislocated, driven from its locus, and
forced to stop considering itself as the culture of reference.
9. In order to follow this movement in the text of Levi-Strauss, Derrida
chooses the classical debate on the opposition between nature and culture. In his
work, Elementary Structures, Strauss starts with the working definition of nature as
the universal and spontaneous, not belonging to any other culture or any determinate
norm. Culture, on the other hand, depends on a system of norms regulating society
and is therefore capable of varying from one social structure to another. But Strauss
encounters a scandal challenging this binary opposition incest prohibition. It is
natural in the sense that it is almost universally present across most communities and
hence is natural. However, it is also a prohibition, which makes it a part of the
system of norms and customs and thereby cultural. Derrida argues that this
disputation of Strausss theory is not really a scandal, as it pre-assumed binary
opposition that makes it a scandal, the system which sanctions the difference
between nature and culture. To quote him, It could perhaps be said that the whole of
philosophical conceptualization, systematically relating itself to the nature/culture
72
opposition, is designed to leave in the domain of the unthinkable the very thing that
makes this conceptualization possible: the origin of the prohibition of incest.
10. The above example nevertheless reveals that language bears within itself
the necessity of its own critique. This critique may be undertaken along in two
manners: one, of questioning systematically and rigorously the history of these
concepts, and the other, the most daring way of making the beginnings of a step
outside philosophy. Such study deconstituting the founding concepts of the history of
philosophy exceeds facile attempts to go beyond philosophy. Derrida here thinks that
the step "outside philosophy" is much more difficult to conceive than is generally
imagined by those who think they made it long ago with cavalier ease
11-14 Derrida feels that to avoid the possibly sterilizing effect of the first way,
the other choice is useful because it corresponds more nearly to the way chosen by
Levi-Strauss consists in conserving in the field of empirical discovery. In his work,
Elementary Structures, Strauss starts with the working definition of nature as the
universal and spontaneous, not belonging to any other culture or any determinate
norm. Culture, on the other hand, depends on a system of norms regulating society
and is therefore capable of varying from one social structure to another. Derrida
further points out that Levi-Strauss will always remain faithful to this double
intention: to preserve as an instrument that whose truth-value he criticizes. On the
one hand, Levi-Strauss continues in effect to contest the value of the nature- culture
opposition. On the other hand, he presents what might be called as the discourse of
this method. Derrida prefers to call this method as "bricolage".
15-19. Inspired from Levi Strauss Derrida leads to his theory of the bricoleur.
He argues that it is very difficult to arrive at a conceptual position outside of
philosophy, not to be absorbed to some extent into the very theory that one seeks to
critique. He therefore insists on Strausss idea of a bricolage, the necessity of
borrowing ones concept from the text of a heritage which is more or less coherent or
ruined, it must be said that every discourse is bricoleur. Strauss discusses bricolage
not only as an intellectual exercise, but also as mythopoetic activity. He attempts to
work out a structured study of myths, but realizes this is not a possibility, and instead
creates what he calls his own myth of the mythologies, a third order code. Derrida
points out how his reference myth of the Bororo myth, does not hold in terms of its
functionality as a reference, as this choice becomes arbitrary and also instead of
being dependent on typical character, it derives from irregularity
73
20-21. According to Derrida there is no unity or absolute source of the myth.

The focus or the source of the myth is always shadows and virtualities which are
elusive and nonexistent in the first place. Myth is not centered nor sourced. So
mythology must not betray it by a centered discourse. Mythology "intended to
ensure the reciprocal translatability of several myths." The science here has no
center, subject, and author. Myths are anonymous; the audience becomes silent
performers. In order to prove this Derrida quotes a long and remarkable passage from
Levi-Strauss The Raw and the Cooked. According to him, "Since myths themselves
rest on second-order codes (the first-order codes being those in which language
consists), this book thus offers the rough draft of a third-order code, destined to
insure the reciprocal possibility of translation of several myths. This is why it would
not be wrong to consider it a myth: the myth of mythology, as it was." It is by this
absence of any real and fixed center of the mythical or mythological discourse that
the musical model chosen by Levi Strauss for the composition of his book is
apparently justified. The absence of a center is here the absence of a subject and the
absence of an author: "The myth and the musical work thus appear as orchestra
conductors whose listeners are the silent performers. If it be asked where the real
focus of the work is to be found, it must be replied that its determination is
impossible. Music and mythology bring man face to face with virtual objects whose
shadow alone is actual. . . . Myths have no authors." Thus ethnographic bricolage as
explicitly mythopoetic makes the need for a center appear mythological, that is to
say, as a historical illusion.
22-24. Derridas discussion on the views of Levi Strauss now brings us to the
concept of totalization. Totalization is therefore defined at one time as useless, at
another time as impossible. In traditional conceptualization, totalization cannot
happen as there is always too much one can say and even more that exists which
needs to be talked or written about. However, Derrida argues that non-totalization
needs to conceptualized not the basis of finitude of discourse incapable of mastering
an infinite richness, but along the concept of freeplay If totalization no longer has
any meaning, it is not because the infinity of a field cannot be covered by a finite
glance or a finite discourse, but because the nature of the field that is, language and
a finite language excludes totalization. Totalization, as language, is made up of
infinite signifier and signified functioning inter-changeably and arbitrarily, thereby
74
opening up possibilities for infinite play and substitution. The field of language is
limiting, however, there cannot be a finite discourse limiting that field.
Derrida explains the possibility of this freeplay through the concept of
supplementarity. This movement of the freeplay, permitted by the lack, the absence
of a center or origin, is the movement of supplementarity. One cannot determine the
center, the sign which supplements it, which takes its place in its absence because
this sign adds itself, occurs in addition, over and above, comes as a supplement.
Supplementarity thus involves infinite substitutions of the centre which leads to the
movement of play. This becomes possible because of the lack in the signified. There
is always an overabundance of the signifier to the signified. So a supplement would
hence be an addition to what the signified means for already. Derrida also introduces
the concept of how this meaning is always deferred (difference), how signifier and
signified are inter-changeable in a complex network of freeplay.
25-31. Derrida believes there is also a tension between play and other entities
like centre. Although history was thought as a critique of the philosophy of presence,
as a kind of shift; it has paradoxically become complicitous with a teleological and
eschatological metaphysics. Freeplay also stands in conflict with presence. Play is
disruption of presence. Freeplay is always interplay of presence and absence.
However, Derrida argues that a radical approach would not be the taking of presence
or absence as ground for play. Instead the possibility of play should be the premise
for presence or absence.
Derrida concludes this seminal work which is often regarded as the poststructuralist manifesto with the hope that we proceed towards an interpretation of
interpretation where one is no longer turned towards the origin, affirms freeplay
and tries to pass beyond man and humanism. In other words, there are two
interpretations of interpretation: (1) deciphering a truth; (2) affirming play beyond
man and humanism. These interpretations share the field of the social sciences.
Finally Derrida suggests that we need to borrow Nietzsches idea of affirmation to
stop seeing play as limiting and negative. Nietzsche pronouncement God is dead
need not be read as a destruction of a cohesive structure, but can be seen as a chance
that opens up a possibility of diverse plurality and multiplicity.
75

1.
Who are the major exponents of the event of the rupture before Derrida?
Nietzsche, Freud and Heidegger
2.
Who uses the language of metaphysics to criticize metaphysics?
3.
What do two interpretations of interpretation mean?
4.
What is ethnology?
5.
What is bricolage?
6.
Mention the school of criticism Derrida is associated with.
7.
What is Derridas slogan in Of Grammatology?
8.
What is the meaning of freeplay in Derridas essay?
4.5. A Brief Note on Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of Human
Sciences:
The essay Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of Human Sciences is a
paper read by Jacques Derrida at the John Hopkins International Colloquium on
The Language of Criticism and the Sciences of Man in October 1966. In it he
attacked and challenged the fundamental notions of structuralism as well as western
metaphysics. In his A Course in General Linguistics (1916) Ferdinand de Saussure
claims that the meaning of the text depends upon the sign and sign is composed of
signifier and signified. Signifier is the actual sound of the written mark on the paper
and signified is a concept, an idea, a thought. By uniting the two Saussure claims of
the stability of sign and so is the text. Derrida challenges the very concept of stability
of sign and say that all texts are unstable. In order to support his view he puts forth
his theory of deconstruction and proves the importance of freeplay and logocentrism
as a fallacy. As the present essay heralded the dawn of a new trend in the history of
critical theory which came to be known as deconstruction, it is regarded as the
manifesto of deconstruction and poststructuralism.
The essay begins with Derridas ideas about structure. According to him the
concept of structure and even the word "structure" itself is as old as the western
science and western philosophy. However, this structure or the structurality of
structure has been neutralized by the process of giving it a center, a fixed origin.
76
Derrida terms this desire for a centre as logocentrism. Derrida argues that the
function of this center was not only to orient and balance the structure but to limit the
freeplay of the structure. By orienting and organizing the coherence of the system,
the center of the structure allows the freeplay of its elements inside the total form.
The center thus limits the freeplay of the structure. Derrida here claims that the
structure or text is only a freeplay of signifiers without a center. So he rejects the
concept of center to structure and says, classical thought concerning structure could
say that the center is, paradoxically, within the structure and outside it. The center is
at the center of the totality, and yet, since the center does not belong to the totality (is
not part of the totality), the totality has its center elsewhere. In short, the center is
not the center. Hence, the concept of centered structure is in fact the concept of a
freeplay. So instead of giving importance to center he gives importance to rupture.
Derrida explains his concept of the structurality of structure by citing the
examples of Nietzchean critique of metaphysics, the Freudian critique of selfpresence, and Heideggerean destruction of metaphysics. Derrida here points out that
all these discourses describe the form of the relationship between the history of
metaphysics and the destruction of the history of metaphysics. Derrida, then,
criticizes concept of sign. According to Saussure sign is composed of the signifier
and the signified. Signifier is the actual sound or the written mark on the paper and
signified is a concept, an idea or thought. By uniting the two Saussure claims the
stability of the text. However Derrida does not agree with this Saussurian concept of
sign. He argues that sign has no innate or transcendental truth. The signified never
has any immediate self-present meaning. It is itself only a sign that derives its
meaning from other signs. Derrida here points out that signifier does not yield up a
signified directly. Hence a signified can be a signifier and vice versa. Signifiers and
signifieds continuously break apart and retracted in new combinations. Signifiers
transform into signifieds and the other way round. This process is infinite and
circular. As a result, we can never arrive at a final conclusion regarding a signifier
and a signified. The same happens when we try to attack the concept of metaphysics
of presence. So Derrida says that if we try to erase the difference between a signifier
and a signified, it is the word signifier itself which ought to be abandoned and we
cannot do so.
After discussing the theme of decentering with respect to Levi Strausss
ethnology, Derrida leads towards his theory of the bricolage. Bricolage is the art of
77
patching together odds and ends in an unsystematic, adhoc way, without clear way,
tools and aims. Thus the concept of bricolage is the opposite of or an alternative to
science. Levi Strauss describes bricolage not only as an intellectual faculty but as a
mythopoetic faculty. Derridas insistence on Strausss idea of a bricolage brings us to
his concept of totalization.
Totalization is defined at one time as useless and at another time as
impossible. It is useless not because the infinity of a field cannot be covered by a
finite glance or a finite discourse, but because the nature of the field that is,
language and a finite languageexcludes totalization. Finally he discusses his concept
of freeplay and comes to the conclusion that the prime objective of deconstruction is
not to destroy the meaning of text but is to show how the text deconstructs itself.
Derrida's idea of no-center, under erasure, indeterminacy, no final meaning, no
binary opposition, no truth heavily influenced subsequent thinkers and their theories
such as psychoanalysis, new historicism, cultural studies, postcolonialism,
feminism and so on.
The basic theme of the present essay is that there is no determinate signified,
that the signifier and signified are constantly in a process of freeplay. His argument
of freeplay counters the structuralists argument of centralized relationship between
signifier and signified. Thus Derrida is seen here opposing the concepts of Saussure
and LeviStrauss forwarded through their writing and proposing his concepts of
freeplay, deference and deconstruction. He believes in the absence of center and we
can apply this thought of Derrida to any text. For example, the poem like Coleridges
Kubla Khan is interpreted diversely and it is also open to new interpretations
because of the absence of center and the freeplay of signifiers and signifieds in it.
The conclusion of Derridas essay is that a signified suggested by a signifier has no
determinate meaning due to its freeplay. So Derrida says that the center is not the
center, it is, paradoxically, within the structure and outside it.
4.6 Derridas concept of Structure, Sign and Play:

Jacques Derrida, a French philosopher and the founder of the school of
deconstruction, begins his essay Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of
Human Sciences with the discussion of the concept of structure. He states that the
concept of structure and even the word "structure" itself are as old as the episteme that is to say, as old as western science and western philosophy. However, this
78
structure or the structurality of structure has been neutralized by the process of giving
it a center, a fixed origin. Derrida terms this desire for a center as logocentrism.
Derrida argues that the function of this center was not only to orient and balance the
structure but to limit the freeplay of the structure. By orienting and organizing the
coherence of the system, the center of the structure allows the freeplay of its
elements inside the total form. The center thus limits the freeplay of the structure. To
Derrida this is a strange process because the center is at the same time within the
structure and outside it.
Derridas concept needs a bit of explanation. Literally the word structure means
organization, the way in which something is put together. A word or a sentence in
any language has a structure. For example, the word table in English is
systematically structured by five letters to get a definite meaning. So these five
letters have made up the structure of this word. The sentences are formed by the
systematic arrangements of word to get definite meaning or center. However, Derrida
says that it is not right to give some center to a structure and to limit its freeplay.
Such a thing is unnatural and impossible. According to him the concept of structure
is in reality is a freeplay. Here we find that Derrida is against the stability of the
structure.
In fact, Derridas concept of freeplay is a challenge to structuralists. According
to structuralists a word is a sign and it is made up of the combination of signifier
and signified. Signifier is the actual sound of the written mark on the paper and
signified is a concept, an idea, a thought. By uniting the two Saussure claims of the
stability of sign and so is the text. However, Derrida does not agree with this. He
argues that sign has no innate or transcendental truth. The signified never has any
immediate self-present meaning. It is itself only a sign that derives its meaning from
other signs. Hence a signified can be a signifier and viceversa. While structuralists
see language as a closed system where every word has its place and consequently its
meaning, Derrida wants to argue for language as an open system and signified is not
fixed. Signified also seeks meaning. When it seeks meaning it becomes signifier. So,
there is chain of signifiers, there is no constant existence of signified. It means, there
is no centre, no margin, and no totality. As a result, meaning is not determined in the
text. In fact, meaning is like jellyfish and knowledge is a matter of perpetual shifting.
There is no single stable meaning. Since signifiers do not refer to thing but to
themselves, a text does not give any fixed meaning. In such situation, multi79
meanings are possible. So, a sign is only a chain of signifiers. Saussure views that
signifier and signified are inseparable but Derrida attacks Saussure saying that he
himself separated the signifier and signified
Saussure says that meaning comes in terms of difference. But Derrida says that
such hierarchy is constructed, and the idea to understand one in reference to other is
purely haphazard, inhuman and unnecessary. One signifier has no completeness and,
therefore, we need other signifiers to understand it. It is endless process and there is
only a chain of signifiers other than signified. Derrida says that center and margin are
equally important for one depends on another. So, there is no center and no margin.
Without female the concept of male can't exist. Structuralists believe that from much
binary opposition, single meaning comes but Derrida says each pair of binary
oppositions produces separate meanings. So, in a text, there are multi-meanings.
Since the center lacks locus, center is not the center. Therefore, the idea of
decentering for Derrida is erasing the voice and, therefore, avoiding the possibility of
logocentrism.
Structuralists believe that speech is primary and superior to writing but Derrida
opposes and says that the vagueness of speech is clarified by the writing. Since, the
writing has the pictorial quality of the speech, both are equally important, there is no
hierarchy. To prove this he talks about 'Differance'. Derrida himself coins this very
word. It comes from the French verb' differer'- meaning both to ' differ' and 'defer'.
But the word ' differance' itself is meaningless for it does not give any concept.
Meaning is a matter of difference. It is a continuous postponement. It is moving from
one signifier to another and it endlessly continues. Since meaning is infinite, we
never get absolute meaning of any word. As we can't be satisfied with meaning, we
have to go further and further to search the meaning. As a result, we don't have final
knowledge. We don't get fixed meaning rather we undergo chain of signifiers and as
soon as we get signified it slides.
Similarly, Derrida subverts the concept of hierarchy of binary opposition
created by Levi-Strauss. He (Levi) creates hierarchy of nature/ culture and says that
nature is superior to culture. For him, speech is natural and writing is cultural. So
Speech is superior to writing. But Derrida breaks this hierarchy bringing the example
of incest prohibition. Strauss says that ' Incest Prohibition' is natural and at the same
time it is cultural construction or the outcome of culture; hence it is a norm.
80
Therefore, it belongs to culture. So, incest prohibition can belong both to natural and
culture. In this way both nature and culture go side by side, so we can't claim nature
as superior to culture, both are interrelated and something can occupy the nature and
culture at the same time.
Similarly, Levi-Strauss has made the hierarchy between artist and critic. He
claims artist is originator but critic comes later. Likewise artist uses firsthand raw
materials as engineer does but critics use secondhand raw materials. Contrary to
him Derrida argues that neither artists nor critic works on firsthand materials, rather
both of them use the materials that already existed and used. In this sense, there is no
hierarchy between them.
In short, Derrida means to say that meaning is just like peeling the onion and
never getting a kernel. Likewise, the binary opposition between literary and nonliterary language is an illusion. But the prime objective of deconstruction is not to
destroy the meaning of text but is to show how the text deconstructs itself. Derrida's
idea of no-center, under erasure, indeterminacy, no final meaning, no binary
opposition, no truth, heavily influenced subsequent thinkers and their theories. These
theories are: psychoanalysis, new historicism, cultural studies, post-colonialism,
feminism, and so on.
4.9 Derridas concept of Logocentrism:

The present essay can be regarded as the manifesto of post-modernism,
deconstruction and post-structuralism. No philosopher has recently such great
influence on critical theory as Derrida, with whom the concept of deconstruction is
primarily associated. Deconstruction attacks all notions of center, origin and totality.
Derrida attacks all western metaphysics for the logocentrism and hierarchy in
speech/writing, nature/culture, etc. Logocentrism is the tendency for seeking centre
and presence. Derrida says that centre-seeking tendency began to be questioned from
Nietzsche who declared the 'Death of God' and replaced god with superman. Another
figure to challenge the logocentrism is Freud, who questions the authority of
consciousness and claims that we are guided by unconscious. Heidegger also
challenges the notion of metaphysics of presence
Derrida, therefore, primarily attacks structuralism. He views that the concept of
centre does work but it is not essential; hence center is under eraser. Center is needed
81
to form a structure but immediately it escapes from the so-called centrality. Derrida,
in fact, is not suggesting on the abandonment of the idea of center, but rather he
acknowledges that it is illusory and constructed. He talks about the binaries of
structuralism which are in hierarchical order, in which the first term is privilege over
the other. These binaries are not true representations of external reality, rather are
simple constructions. Any signified is not fixed. Signified also seeks meaning. When
it seeks meaning it becomes signifier. So, there is a chain of signifiers, there is no
constant existence of signified. It means, there are no centre, no margin, and no
totality. As a result, meaning is not determined in the text. In fact, meaning is like
jellyfish and knowledge is a matter of perpetual shifting. There is no single stable
meaning. Since signifiers do not refer to thing but to themselves, a text does not give
any fixed meaning. In such situation, multi-meanings are possible. Saussure views
that signifier and signified are inseparable but Derrida attacks Saussure that he
himself has separated the signifier and signified.
4.9 Terms to remember:

Center: a part of a structure which focuses and organizes the entire system.
Play: is simply any shift in the structure, any unplanned, unordered event.
Deviance, alteration, contingency, arbitrariness, perversion, spontaneity,
mutationall these are synonyms for play.
Episteme: knowledge/system of thought
Arche: origin/beginning/foundation/source
Telos: end/ goal/destiny
Metonomy: substitution
Eidos: Plato's term: "form," essence
Transcendentality: the realm of (for Kant) the conditions of possible

experience and knowing
Physis: nature
Nomos: law [culture]
Techne: technique, skill, art, craft
Factum: fact
82
Bricolage: using whatever means is linguistically at hand, regardless of

their truth
Bricoleur: one who engages in bricolage?
Poesis: making/poetizing
Mana: in the anthropology of religion, this is a term used for a magical sort
of "substance" or quality, etc. held in special regard as sacred.
Mythomorphic: having the form of myth
Ratio: reason, ratio
Phoneme: unit of sound, the minimum perceivable unit that can be

associated with a difference of meaning in spoken language.
Signifier: a word that signifies or refers to something
Signified: a concept, an idea, or a thought which a signifier refers.
Derridas idea is that the signified is supposed to be, but never is, an anchor
for reference, a solid Reality; in fact, it is simply another signifier, point on
endlessly in the circling chain of signifiers. The meaning of each "thing" is
in terms of its reference to others in a linguistic web.
Diffrance: a term Derrida coined in 1968 in response to structuralist
theories of language such as Saussure's structuralist linguistics. While
Saussure managed to demonstrate that language can be shown to be a
system of differences without positive terms, it was Derrida who opened
the full implications of such a conception.
4.10 Answers to check your progress:

4.1.2 Key to check your progress:
1.
Ferdinand de Saussure
2.
The actual sound of the written mark on the paper
3.
The tendency for seeking centre and presence
4.
Heidegger
5.
for logocentrism
83

1.
Jacques Derrida
2.
There is nothing outside the text
3.
In 1966 when he presented his paper on "Structure, Sign, and Play in the
Discourse of the Human Sciences" at Johns Hopkins University.
4.
At Johns Hopkins University
5.
Writing and Difference, Speech and Phenomena, and Of Grammatology.
6.
Deconstruction
7.
There is nothing outside the text
8.
The signifier and signified are involved in a process of breaking apart and
recombining differently
4.6.1 Key to objective questions:

1.
the center
2.
sign
3.
Levi-Strauss
4.
Derrida
4.11 Exercise:
A) Complete the following sentences by choosing the correct option.
1.
2.
3.
According to Derrida -------- limits the freeplay of structure?

a) human science
b) the center
c) sign
d) signified
Derrida attacks the metaphysics of presence with the help of the concept
of------a) human science
b) structure
c) sign
d) episteme
Which of the following critics defined mythical thought as a kind of

intellectual Bricolage?
84
a) Lacan
c) Roland Barthes
4.
b) Levi-Strauss
d) Stanley Fish
---------is regarded as the father of deconstruction theory.

a) Derrida
c) Roland Barthes
b) Levi-Strauss
d) Saussure
B) Answer the following questions in about 300 words.

1.
Write a note on Derridas concept of freeplay.
2.
Explain the concept structure as used by Derrida.
3.
Discuss Derridas views on the law of central presence.
4.
Account for Derridas contribution to the post-structuralist school of

Criticism as a critic of deconstruction.
5.
Write a note on Derridas objection to a centralized structure.
6.
Derridas views about sign

1)
Lodge, David (1988) Modern Criticism and Theory : A Reader, Longman,

London & New York.
2)
Berry, Peter : Beginning Theory.
3)
Seldon, Raman : A Readers Guide to Contemporary Literary Theory, Peter

Brooker.
85
Unit - 5
The Death of the Author
Roland Barthes
Index:
5.0 Objectives
5.1 Introduction
5.2 The Death of the Author
5.2.1 The Historical Position of the Author
Check Your Progress I
5.2.1.1 Terms to Remember
5.2.2 The Author and Writing
Check Your Progress II
5.2.3 Text, its Meaning and the Reader
Check Your Progress III
5.3 Summary
5.5 Exercises
5.6 Further Readings
5.0 Objectives:
After the study of this unit, you will be able to:
understand Barthess argument about the role of the author in the text.
learn how the role of the author disappears as the text comes in the hands of
the reader.
know about the relation between the text and the author.
understand how the text is born at the cost of the death of the author.
86
5.1 Introduction:
Roland Barthes is the French literary critic. He was a renowned teacher. He was
Professor of Literary Semiology at College de France. He belonged to the group of
the critics who opposed the traditional literary criticism and literary history. He is
mainly known as the sturcturalist critic who, according to some critics, paved a way
for the deconstruction theory of Jacques Derrida. He wrote a number of fictional and
non-fictional works like The Pleasure of the Text (1975), Roland Barthes by Roland
Barthes (1977), A Lovers Discourse: Fragments (1978), S/Z (1970), etc. As David
Lodge says: He was a writer who disconcerted his disciples as well as his opponents
by continually rejecting one kind of discourse in favour of another, and to this extent
lived the assertion in The Death of the Author, that the modern scriptor is born
simultaneously with the text . . . and every text is eternally written here and now.
5.2 The Death of the Author

[This is not a complete text of the original article. The text is summarised in
detail and divided into three parts for the convenience of students. Students can use
the original text for specific references, if required.]
5.2.1 The Historical Position of the Author:

Writing is the destruction of every voice, of every point of origin. Writing is
that neutral, composite, oblique space where our subject slips away. It is the
negatives where all identity is lost, starting with the very identity of the body writing.
This always happens, as soon as a fact is narrated, the voice loses its origin, the
author enters into his own death, and writing begins. There are various meanings of
this phenomenon. In ethnographic societies the responsibility for a narrative is never
assumed by a person but by a mediator, shaman or relator whose performance is
admired but never his genius. So the author is a modern figure emerging from the
Middle Ages with English empiricism, French rationalism and the personal faith of
the Reformation. It discovered the prestige of the individual, of the human person.
It is thus logical that in literature it should be this positivism, the epitome and
culmination of capitalist ideology, which has attached the greatest importance to the
person of the author. The author still has importance in literature, biographies,
interview, magazines, as the men of letters unite their person and their work through
diaries and memoirs. Literature is centred on the author, his person, his life, his
tastes, his passions, while criticism also identifies the works with the authors
87
concerned. The explanation is always sought in the man or woman who produced it,
as if, it were always in the end, the voice of a single person, the author confiding in
us.
Check Your Progress I:
A) Choose the correct alternative:
i)
According to Barthes, writing is the destruction of ______________.

a) position
b) action
c) voice
d) narration
ii) In ethnographic societies _____________ will narrate stories.

a) an actor
b) a speaker
c) a thinker
d) a mediator
B) Fill in the blanks:

i)
Writing is the negatives where all ______________ is lost.
ii) In _________________ ideology, importance to the author is attached.

C) Answer in a word/phrase/sentence:
i)
When does writing begin?
ii) Where is the explanation to the works sought since the Middle Ages?
5.2.1.1 Terms to Remember:
ethnographic: concerning with the scientific description of different races

and cultures.
shaman: a person in some religions and societies who is believed to be

able to contact good and evil spirits and cure people of illnesses.
the Reformation: the period of time when new ideas in 16th century
Europe that led to attempts to reform the Roman Catholic Church and to the
forming of the Protestant Churches took place.
epitome: a perfect example.
memoirs: an account written by somebody about their life and experiences.
88
5.2.2 The Author and Writing:

But there are certain writers who do not attempt to relate a work with the author.
In France, Mallarme who first tried to substitute language itself for the person, who,
until then, had been supposed to be the owner of the work. For him, it is language
which speaks, not the author. To write is to reach that point where only language
acts, performs and not me. Mallarmes poetics consists in suppressing the author
in the interests of writing. Valery, though diluted Mallarmes theory, stressed
linguistic aspect and throughout his prose works he advocated verbal condition of
literature. For him, all recourse to the writers interiority seemed pure superstition.
Proust also blurred the relationship between the writer and his work. He made the
narrator not he who has seen and felt nor even he who is writing, but he who is going
to write. Surrealism, though could not accord language a supreme place, contributed
to the desacrilization of the image of the Author. Leaving aside literature itself,
linguists provided the destruction of the Author with a valuable analytical tool by
showing that the whole of the enunciation is an empty process, as there is no need for
it to be filled with the person of the interlocutors. Linguistically, the author is never
more than the instance writing, just as I is nothing other than the instance saying I.
For, language knows a subject, not a person, and this subject, empty outside of
the very enunciation which defines it, suffices to make language hold together,
suffices to exhaust it.
The removal of the Author is not merely a historical fact or an act of writing; it
utterly transforms the modern text. The author is always conceived of as the past of
his own book, so book and author stand automatically on a single line divided into a
before and after. The author is thought to nourish the book. He exists before it,
thinks, suffers, lives for it. It is, as if, a father to his child. Contrary to it, the modern
scriptor is born simultaneously with the text. He is no way equipped with a being
preceding or exceeding the writing. He is not the subject with the book as predicate.
There is no other time than that of the enunciation and every text is eternally written
here and now. Thus, writing can no longer designate an operation of recording,
notation, representation, depiction; rather, it designates exactly what linguists call a
performative, a rare verbal form in which the enunciation has no other content than
the act by which it is uttered. Having buried the Author, the modern scriptor can
thus no longer believe that this hand is too slow for his thought or passion and that
consequently, making a law of necessity, he must emphasize this delay and
89
indefinitely polish his form. For him, on the contrary, the hand, cut off from any
voice, borne by a pure gesture of inscription, traces a field without origin or which,
at least, has no other origin than language itself, language which ceaselessly calls
into question all origins.
Check Your Progress II:
i)
Mallarme substituted _______________ for the person.

a) author
b) reason
c) language
d) acting
ii) _____________ desacrilized the image of the Author.

a) Realism
b) Surrealism
c) Rationalism
d) Emperialism
iii) The author is considered as the ____________ of his own book.

a) past
b) future
c) reality
d) present

i)
____________ , first, discarded an attempt to relate a work with the author.
ii) Linguistically, the author is never more than the ______________ writing.
iii) _____________ is the origin of writing.
C) Answer in a word/phrase/sentence each:
i)
Who considered the writers interiority as superstition?
ii) What is the relationship between the author and the text?
iii) Who is not the subject with the book as a predicate?
Surrealism: a 20th-century literary and artistic movement that attempts to

express the workings of the subconscious and is characterized by fantastic
imagery and incongruous juxtaposition of subject matter.
desacrilization: to get rid of sacred or religious significance.
enunciation : clear and exact expression of an idea.
90
interlocutor : someone who takes part in a conversation, often formally or

officially.
performative: denoting an utterance that constitutes some act, especially,

the act described by the verb.
5.2.3 Text, its Meaning and the Reader:

A text is not a line of words releasing a single theological meaning but a multidimensional space in which a variety of writings, none of them original, blend and
clash. The text is a tissue of quotations drawn from the innumerable centres of
culture. The writer can only imitate a gesture that is always anterior, never original.
His only power is to mix writings, to counter the ones with the others, in such a way
as never to rest on any one of them. Did he wish to express himself, he ought at least
to know that the inner thing he thinks to translate is itself only a ready-formed
dictionary, its words only explainable through other words, so on indefinitely.
Succeeding the Author, the scriptor no longer bears within him passions, humours,
feelings, impressions, but rather this immense dictionary from which he draws a
writing that can know no half. It means that life never does more than imitate the
book, and the book itself is only a tissue of signs, an imitation that is lost, indefinitely
deferred.
Once the Author is removed, the claim to decipher a text becomes quite futile.
To give a text an Author is to impose a limit on that text, to furnish it with a final
signified, to close the writing. Such a conception suits criticism very well, the latter
then allotting itself the important task of discovering the Author beneath the work.
When the Author has been found, the text is explained and that is victory to the
critic. Hence there is no surprise in the fact that, historically, the reign of the Author
has also been that of the Critic, nor again in the fact that criticism is today
undermined along with the Author. In the multiplicity of writing, everything is to be
disentangled, nothing deciphered. The structure can be followed, run at every point
and at every level, but there is nothing beneath. So the space of writing is to be
ranged over, not pierced, and writing ceaselessly posits meaning ceaselessly to
evaporate it, carrying out a systematic exemption of meaning. In precisely this way
literature (writing), by refusing to assign a secret, an ultimate meaning, to the text,
liberates what may be called as anti-theological activity, an activity that is truly
91
revolutionary since to refuse to fix meaning is, in the end, to refuse God and his
hypostases reason, science and law.
Balzac says: No one, no person, says it. Its source, its voice, is not the true
place of the writing, which is reading. It can make clear as the recent research has
demonstrated the constitutively ambiguous nature of Greek tragedy, its texts being
woven from words with double meanings that each character understands
unilaterally. There is, in addition, hears the very deafness of the characters speaking
in front of him this someone being precisely the reader (or her, the listener). Thus it
reveals the total existence of writing. That is, text is made of multiple writing, drawn
from many cultures and entering into mutual relations of dialogue, parody,
contestation, but there is one place where this multiplicity is focused and that place is
the reader, not, as was hitherto said, the author. The reader is the space on which all
the quotations that make up a writing are inscribed without any of them being lost
because texts unity lies not in its origin but in its destination. Yet this destination
cannot any longer be personal. The reader is without history, biography, psychology;
he is simply that someone who holds together in a single field all the traces by which
the written text is constituted. Which is why it is derisory to condemn the new
writing in the name of humanism, hypocritically, turned champion of the readers
rights. Classic criticism has never paid any attention to the reader; for it, the writer is
the only person in literature. We are now beginning to let ourselves be fooled no
longer by the arrogant antiphrastical recriminations of good society in favour of the
very thing it sets aside, ignores, smothers, or destroys. We know that to give writing
its future, it is necessary to overthrow the myth because the birth of the reader must
be at the cost of the death of the Author.
Check Your Progress III:
i)
The text is a ______________ of quotations drawn from the innumerable

centres of culture.
a) point
b) form
c) piece
d) tissue
ii) Once ____________ is removed, the claim to decipher a text becomes quite
futile.
a) the author b) the critic
c) the painter
92
d) the historian
iii) By refusing an ultimate meaning, writing liberates _______________.

a) writing activity
b) theological activity
c) anti-theological activity
d) theatrical activity

i)
_______________ has never paid attention to the reader.
ii) The reign of the Author has also been that of ____________ .
iii) The recent research has demonstrated the ambiguous nature of _______.
C) Answer in a word/phrase/sentence:
i)
When does the critic get victory?
ii) Where is the multiplicity of writing focused?

iii) What will happen if a text is given an Author?
anterior: occurring before in time; earlier.
defer: to delay or cause to be delayed until a future time; postpone.
decipher: to interpret.
hypostases: the substance, essence, or underlying reality.
contestation: a contentious speech act.
derisory: ridiculous.
antiphrastical: antiphrasis is the rhetorical figure which uses a word in an

opposite sense to its usual meaning.
recriminations: charges made by an accused against his accuser;

countercharge.
smother: to conceal, suppress, or hide.
5.3 Summary:
The article begins with a reference from Balzacs story Sarrasine. In the story
the narrator is unknown so we do not know who is speaking. According to Barthes
93
writing is the destruction of every voice, of every point of origin. When the author
enters into his own death, writing begins. Then Barthes points out that in
ethnographic societies the responsibilities for a narrative is never assumed by a
person but by a mediator, shaman or relator whose performance is admired but never
his genius because he just reproduces the narrative. The concept of the author is a
recent phenomenon emerging from the Middle Ages. Due to capitalistic ideology,
the importance is accorded to the person of the author. So literature is centred on the
author and criticism also identifies the works with the concerned author.
There are some writers like Mallarme who discarded the relation between the
author and his work in order to understand the meaning of the text. He substituted
language for the person because, for him, it is language that speaks, not the author.
Since then writing has been discussed from a linguistic point of view. Linguistically,
the author is never more than the instance of writing. Thus, the removal of the author
is not merely a historical fact or an act of writing; it utterly transforms the modern
text. The author is the past of his work, and he stands on a single divided line into a
before and after. It is as if, a father to his child.
There is no single theological meaning of the text but a multidimensional space
in which a variety of writings, none of them original, blend and clash. Barthes says
that there is nothing original; writing is a tissue of quotations drawn from the
innumerable centres of culture. The words are explained through other words, so on
indefinitely; thus the author is removed. Once the author is removed, the claim to
decipher a text becomes quite futile. To give a text an author is to impose a limit on
that text, to furnish it with a final signified, to close the writing. When the author has
been found, the text is explained and that is victory to the critic. So, the reign of the
author has also been that of the critic. To refuse an ultimate meaning to the text is to
liberate anti-theological activity which is a revolutionary idea. The text is made of
multiple writing, drawn from many cultures but there is one place where this
multiplicity is focused and that place is reader, not the author. The reader is the
space on which all the quotations that make up writing are inscribed without any of
them being lost because texts unity lies not in its origin but in its destination. Yet
this destination cannot be personal. Classic criticism has never paid any attention to
the reader, for it, the writer is the only person in literature. So, Barthes concludes
that, to give writing its future, it is necessary to overthrow the myth because the birth
of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the author.
94

5.2.1 Check Your Progress I:
A) i)
voice
ii) a mediator
i) identity
B)
ii) capitalist
C) i)
Writing begins with the death of the author.
ii) The explanation to the works is sought in author since the Middle Age.
5.2.2 Check Your Progress II:
A) i)
language
ii) Surrealism
iii) past
B) i)
Mallarme
ii) instance
iii) language
C) i)
Valery considered the writers interiority as superstition.
ii) The relationship between the author and the text is father and his child.
iii) The modern scriptor is not the subject with the book as predicator.
5.2.3 Check Your Progress III:
A) i)
tissue
ii) the author

iii) anti-theological activity
B) i)
Classic criticism
ii) the Critic

iii) Greek tragedy
C) i)
When the author is explained, the critic gets victory.

95
ii) The multiplicity of writing is focused on the reader.

iii) If a text is given an Author, it will impose a limit on that text.
5.5 Exercises:
A) Answer the following questions in detail:
1.
What is historical position of the author?
2.
How did the writers like Mallarme argue against to relate a work with the
author?
3.
Why does Barthes say that the birth of the reader must be at the cost of the
death of the author?
B) Write Short Notes:

1.
Linguistic argument against the role of the author
2.
The text and the author
3.
Relationship between the author and the reader.
5.6 Further Readings:

Barry, Peter. Beginning Theory. Manchester: Manchester University Press,
1995.
Das, Bijay Kumar. Twentieth Century Literary Criticism. New Delhi: Atlantic
Publishers, 2005.
Foucoult, Michel. What is an author? Modern Criticism and Theory. ed.
David Lodge. New Delhi: Pearson Education Ltd., 2005.
Lodge, David, ed. Modern Criticism and Theory. New Delhi: Pearson Education
Ltd., 2005.
Seldon, Raman, et. al. A Readers Guide to Contemporary Literary Theory.
New Delhi: Pearson Education Ltd., 2006.
96
Unit-6
Unit 6
Feminist Criticism in the Wilderness

Elaine Showalter
Index:
6.0 Objectives
6.1 Introduction
6.2 Presentation of Subject Matter.
6.2.1 Pluralism and the Feminist Critique.
6.2.2 Defining the Feminine: Gynocritics and the Womans text (Gynocentric
Writing).
6.2.3 Four Models differentiating the qualities of the women writers and the
womens texts from that of the mens texts.
6.3 Summary
6.4 Terms to Remember
6.6 Exercise
6.7 References for Further Study
6.0 Objectives:
After studying this unit you will be able to 1.
understand that feminist criticism is marked by plurality, a variety of standpoints

and strategies rather than a unified entity.
97
2.
know that feminist criticism is more adventurous in assimilating and engaging

with theory.
3.
explain pluralism and feminist critique, the feminine: gynocritics and the
womans text and four models of difference used in theories of womens text
and four models of difference used in theories of womens writing.
4.
find relationship between feminist criticism in general and Showalters essay

Feminist Criticism in the Wilderness in particular.
5.
recognize critical terminology used to explain feminism and feminist criticism.
6.1 Introduction:
Elaine Showalter is one of the leading feminist critics and theorists in the United
States. She has emerged as a dominant voice in American Criticism in post 1960s
period. She was born in 1941 and studied at Bryn Mawr College and the University
of California. Showalter taught English and Womens studies for many years at
Rutgers University, and is now Professor of English at Princeton. She is known for
her book A Literature of Their Own: British Women Novelists from Bronte to
Lessing (1977), her lecture delivered in 1978, entitled Towards a Feminist Poetics
and her present essay Feminist Criticism in the Wilderness.
Feminism is concerned with the marginalization of all women: that is with their
being relegated to a secondary position. Most feminists believe that our culture is a
patriarchal culture, that is, one organized in favour of the interests of men. Feminist
literary critics try to explain how power imbalances due to gender in a given culture
are reflected in or challenged by literary texts. Feminist literary criticism is often a
political attack upon other modes of criticism and theory. Gynocritics attack
andocentric critics, for example Feminist critics expose patriarchal premises and
resulting prejudices, to promote discovery and reevaluation of literature by women
and to examine social, cultural and psychosexual contexts of literature and literary
98
criticism. Feminists examine the experiences of women from all races and classes
and cultures. Annette Kolodny aptly describes this richness as a playful pluralism.
We can look at Feminist Criticism in view of its historical development also.
Although many people believe present day feminists and their accompanying literary
theories and practices find their beginnings in the womens liberation movement of
the 1960s, the true roots of feminist criticism lie in the early decades of the twentieth
century. In 1919 Virginia Woolf laid the foundation for feminist criticism in her
work A Room of Ones Own. Simone de Beauvoirs The Second Sex (1949) deals
with feminist interests. In these two books these critics describe how the Western
patriarchal societies look at women as inferior, the other, insignificant object etc.
With the advent of the 1960s and its political activism and social concerns, feminist
issues found new voices. Moving from the political to the literary arena throughout
the 1960s and 1970s, feminist critics began to examine the traditional literary canon
and discovered abundant evidence of male dominance and prejudice. First,
stereotypes of women abounded in the canon. Second male authors were canonized
but only a few female authors were given the status of recognized authors. Third, for
the most part, the roles of female fictionalized characters were limited to secondary
positions. And fourth, female critics were ignored.
Having chosen the works that comprise the canon, the male professors, scholars
and writers assumed that all readers were males, assert female critics of this era.
Women reading such works could unconsciously then be duped into reading as
males. In addition, since most of the University professors were males, more
frequently than not female students were trained to read literature as if they were
males. But the feminists of the 1960s and 1970s now postulated the existence of a
female reader who was affronted by the male prejudices abounding in the canon.
Questions concerning the male or female qualities of literary form, style, voice and
theme became the rallying points for feminist criticism, and throughout the late
1970s books that defined womens writings in feminine terms proliferated.
99
Having highlighted the importance of gender, feminist critics then discovered a

body of literary works written by female that their male counterparts had decreed
inferior and therefore, unworthy to be part of the canon. In America, Kate Chopins
late nineteenth century novel The Awakening served as the archetypal rediscovered
feminist text of this period. While in England, Doris Lessings The Golden
Notebook (1962) and in France Monique Wittigs Les Guerillers (1969) fulfilled
these roles. Throughout the universities and in the reading populace, readers turned
their attention to historical and current works by women. Simultaneously, works that
attempted to define the feminine imagination, to categorize and explain female
literary history and to define the female aesthetic or concept of beauty became the
focus of feminist critics.
The ongoing debate concerning definitive answers to these key feminist interests
continued throughout the decade of the 1980s as it does today. Coined by the
feminist scholar Elaine Showalter, the term gynocriticism has now become
synonymous with the study of women as writers, and provides critics with four
models concerning the nature of womens writing that help answer some of the chief
concerns of feminist criticism. Each of Showalters models is sequential, subsuming
and developing the preceding model(s) as follows:
1)
the biological model, with its emphasis on how the female body marks itself
upon the text by providing a host of literary images and a personal, intimate
tone;
2)
the linguistic model, concerning itself with the differences between womens
and mens use of language and with the question of whether women can and do
create a language peculiar to their gender and utilize such a language in their
writings;
3)
the psychological model, based on an analysis of the female psyche and how
such an analysis affects the writing process, and
100
4)
the cultural model, investigating how the society in which female authors work
and function, shapes womens goals, responses and points of view.
6.2 Presentation of Subject Matter:

6.2.1 Pluralism and the Feminist Critique:
Carolyn Heilbrun and Catherine Stimpson identified two poles of feminist
literary criticism. The first of these modes was described as righteous, angry and
admonitory (expressing a warning). It was compared to the Old Testament as it was
looking for the sins and errors of the past. The second mode was considered to be
disinterested and seeking the grace of imagination. It was compared to the New
Testament. Both the modes are necessary according to Carolyn Heilbrun and
Catherine Simpson. They stand for ideology which can lead women out of servitude
to the promised land of humanism. Matthew Arnold also thought that literary critics
might perish in the wilderness before they reached the promised land of
disinterestedness. In the 1980s feminist critics are still wandering in the wilderness.
All criticism is in the wilderness. Feminist and non-feminist criticism finds itself in
all kinds of tangles.
Until very recently feminist criticism has not had a theoretical base. It was as if
in the theoretical storm. No theoretical manifesto could give explanation of the
varied mythologies and ideologies which called themselves feminist reading or
writing. Annette Kolondny thought that feminist literary criticism appeared more like
a set of interchangeable strategies than any coherent school or shared goal
orientation. The goals of feminist literary criticism appear not to be unified. Black
critics protest the massive silence of feminist criticism about black and Third
World Women Writers and show the need of a black feminist aesthetic that would
deal with both racial and sexual politics. Marxist feminists wish to focus on class
along with gender as a crucial determinant of literary production. Literary historians
want to uncover a lost tradition. Deconstructionists would synthesize a literary
101
criticism that is both textual and feminist. Freudian and Lacanian critics would
theorize about womens relationship to language and signification.
It was difficult to construct a theoretical framework for feminist criticism
because many women showed the unwillingness to limit or bound an expressive and
dynamic enterprise. The openness of feminist criticism appealed to the feminist
critics. Many feminists wished to escape from the rigid theory of masculine
discourse. Virginia Woolf, Mary Daly, Adrienne Rich and Marguerite are feminist
visionary. They are against the fixed theoretical position. They adopted antitheoretical line. They preferred feminist criticism to be excluded from patriarchal
methodolatry. Thus, for some, feminist criticism was an act of resistance to theory. It
was a confrontation with existing canons and judgements. It was what Josephine
Donovan calls a mode of negation within a fundamental dialectic. In other words
feminist criticism has been characterized by a resistance to codification and refusal
to have its parameters prematurely set. According to Showalter feminist critics have
voiced the suspicion of monoithic systems and the rejection of scientism in literary
study. While scientific criticism struggled to purge itself of the subjective, feminist
criticism reasserted the authority of experience.
It appeared that feminist criticism was facing a theoretical impasse. But it was
looked as positively as a evolutionary phase. Feminist criticism isolated itself from a
critical community increasingly theoretical in its interests and indifferent to womens
writing. Feminist critics were not willing to walk straight into the ready-made
structure of theory and become one of the larger frameworks. On the contrary the
feminists wanted to evolve its own original framework.
This aroused intense debates in both American and European critics about how
to respond to the isolation of feminist criticism from the critical community, on the
one hand and how in comparison with the mainstream criticism it shall define itself,
on the other. In journals like PMLA, Diacritics, Glyph, TelQuel, New Liteary
History, and Critical Inquiry, one can see continuous exchange of ideas and dialogue
between feminists and the mainstream.
102
There are two distinct modes of feminist criticism. The first mode is ideological.
It is concerned with the feminist as reader. It offers feminist readings of texts
(andocentric writing), which consider the images and stereotypes of women in
literature, the omissions and misconceptions about women in criticism and womenas-sign in semiotic systems. This not all feminist reading can do. It can be a
liberating intellectual act. According to Adrienne Rich, A radical critique of
literature, feminist in its impulse, would take the work first of all as a clue to how we
have been led to imaging ourselves, how our language has trapped as well as
liberated us, how the very act of naming has been till now a male prerogative and
how we can begin to see and name and therefore, live afresh. Elaine Showalter
labels the first mode of the feminist as reader, as feminist reading or feminist
critique. This mode is in essence a mode of interpretation. Any complex text will
accommodate and permit it. As a critical practice, feminist reading has certainly been
influential. In the free play of the interpretive field, the feminist critique can only
complete with alternative readings. It is a fact that all the modes of criticism have
their limitations and they are put aside when newer readings take their place.
Kolodny comments in this context; All the feminist is asserting, then, is her own
equivalent right to liberate new and perhaps different significances from these same
texts; and at the same time, her right to choose which features of a text she takes as
relevant because she is, after all, asking new and different questions of it. In the
process, she claims neither definitiveness nor structural completeness for her
different readings and reading systems, but only their usefulness in recognizing the
particular achievements of woman as author and their applicability in conscientiously
decoding woman-as-sign.
Kolodny is aware of the limited objective of this approach. But she looks at
them as the happy cause of the playful pluralism of feminist critical theory. This
pluralism is consistent with the current status of the larger womens movement.
Woman as reader reveals a new angle of interpreting texts and in this sense
provides a valuable dimension. The gaps that have so far remained unnoticed
103
suddenly appear to be replete with meaning. It is these gaps that are significant; a
new narratological construction is imposed in this way by the reader. In the fight for
equality the feminist critics have devised a new theory, feminist critique which has
been accepted by non-feminist critics also. Showalter notices limits of this mode but
says that, this approach constitutes the source of playful freedom.
Showalter is not content with the mode of woman as reader. She is of the view
that feminist criticism must not altogether abandon its hope of establishing some
basic conceptual model. Our job is not merely interpretation and reinterpretation but
to define ourselves to the uninitiated. So we cannot rule out the prospect of a
theoretical model.
Showalter says, We cannot give up all hope of creating a consistent theoretical
framework. She in all her writings appears eager to construct such a thing as the
very title of her essay Toward a Feminist Poetics makes clear in the same way that
Henry James was anxious to formulate a poetics of fiction. Womens task according
to Showalter, need not be limited only to interpretive work which runs the risk of
getting submerged in the larger male critical writings; but on the other hand to
define ourselves, to delve deeper into the basic issues of contexts of writing and the
process that would help womens writing grow as a distinct mode of creative
process. Showalter draws our attention to famous feminist critics like Sandra Gilbert
who has underlined the need to address more seriously the larger issues, namely the
connection between various literary layers and categories such as genres, textuality,
cultural authority and gender. Unfortunately, most of the criticism has been
dependent on the pre-existing critical assumptions and formulations. Showalter sees
a condition of stasis (no movement or change) in feminist criticism which obsessed
with revising and supplementing acts. This is detrimental (harmful) to further
progress. She views it as a great weakness. She says that most of the male critical
theory has emerged over centuries from a male vision of life, relations, and the
world; male experiences has produced concepts of creativity, literary history and
interpretation and have been propagated as universal. It would be unfortunate for
104
feminist critics to base their protest by adopting these standards of male experience.
So long as we look to andocentric models for our most basic principles even if we
revise them by adding the feminist frame of reference we are learning nothing
new. Elaine Showalters dissatisfaction shows quite clearly at this stage in her
critical remarks about the feminist critics anxiously seeking approval from the
White fathers who will not listen or reply.
Showalters words ring with solid protest as she shakes the settling compliance
in feminist critics by requesting them to stop and give a serious thought to what is it
that feminist critics want. It is not a question of symbolic separation from the
established positions, such separatist fantasies will not serve anything useful and
certainly not propose the feminist cause. Showalter here pleads for a feminist
criticism that is genuinely woman centered, independent and intellectually
coherent. Spending time with such male activities such as conferences, seminars,
publications presided over by men will bear no results. Showalter says, I dont think
that feminist criticism can find a usable part in the andocentric tradition. She further
adds feminist critics should learn to rely more on themselves, their experiences, and
seek affinity with international sisterhood in order to build a reliable feminist base.
That in her opinion is the only solution. Here it must be noted that though she begins
with a note of maintaining a balance that is not totally going in complete separation
from what is now called andocentric criticism in the following sentence there
appears a strong note of self exploration; we must choose to have the argument out
at last on our own premises.
Check Your Progress -1.
A) Fill in the blanks with appropriate words.
1.
The righteous, angry and admonitory mode of feminist literary criticism

looking for the sins and errors of the past is compared to
2.
critics want to theorize about womens relationship to

language and signification.
105
3.
Sexual Politics is written by
B) Say whether the following statements are true or false.

1.
The second mode of feminist literary criticism, disinterested and seeking

the grace of imagination is compared to the New Testament.
2.
Simone de Beauvoir says, it is unpleasant to be locked out it is

worse perhaps to be locked in.
3.
For some, feminist criticism was an act of resistance to theory, a

confrontation with existing canons and judgements, what Josephine
Donovan calls, a mode of negation within a fundamental dialectic.
C) Match the items from a with items from b.

a
i)
A Room of Ones Own
b
-
Elizabeth Gaskell
ii) The Second Sex
Margaret Atwood
iii) The Madwoman in the Attic
Helene Cixous
iv) The Laugh of the Medusa
Virginia Woolf
v)
Simone de Beauvoir
vi) Surfacing
Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar
vii) Cranford
Mary Daly
viii) Androcentric models
The feminist as reader
ix) Gynocentric models
The feminist as writer
Cyn / Ecology
D) Answer the following questions in a word/phrase or a sentence each.

1.
Name the two modes of feminist criticism which have gone to the extreme
ends.
2.
What is the objective or goal of Marxist feminists?

106
3.
Who did reassert the authority of experience of subjectivity as against

objectivity or scientism?
4.
What is the base of the andocentric critical tradition?
5.
What do Black critics expect from Feminist criticism?
6.2.2 Defining the Feminine: gynocritics and the Womans text (Gynocentric
Writing):
Feminist criticism has gradually shifted its centre from revisionary readings to a
sustained investigation of literature by women. It has been trying to define what we
mean by feminine. The second mode of feminist criticism engendered by this process
is the study of women as writers and its subjects are the history, styles, themes,
genres, and structures of writing by women, the psychodynamics of female
creativity; the trajectory of the individual or collective female career, and the
evolution and laws of a female literary tradition. Showalter applies the term
gynocritics for this type of study. Gynocritics offer many theoretical opportunities.
Too see Womens writing as our primary subject forces us to make the leap to a new
conceptual vantage point and to redefine the nature of the theoretical problem before
us. It concentrates on the difference of womens writing.
Patricia Meyer Spacks was the first academic critic to notice the shift from an
androcentric (male-centered) to a gynocentric (female-centered) feminist criticism. In
The Female Imagination (1975), she pointed out that few feminist theorists had
concerned themselves with womens writing. Patricia Spacks showed again and
again how womens writing had been different, how womanhood itself shaped
womens creative expression. Simone de Beauvoirs The Second Sex Mary Ell
Manns Thinking About Women and Kate Millets Sexual Politics deal with this
theme but in such books as Ellen Moers Literary Women (1976), Showalters A
Literature of Their Own (1977), Nina Bayons Womans Fiction (1998) Sandra
Gilbert and Susan Gubars The madwoman in the Attic (1979) and Margaret
107
Homans Women Writers and Poetic Identity (1980) and in many papers and essays,
womens writing asserted itself as the central project of feminist literary study.
Ecriture Feminine:
While the American feminist criticism is grounded in empirical methods /
outlook, European, especially French feminism is more theoretical in nature, rooted
in recent critical theories of Jacques Lacan, Michael Foucault and Jacques Derrida.
Towering critics like Helene Cixous have come up with the idea of female body as
the meaningful sign, ecriture feminine to suggest the point of departure for a leap
into the vast area of female difference which is basic distinguishing point from the
male experience. By highlighting the female body she and her followers posit the
essential difference which governs womens treatment in patriarchal literature and its
privileging in feminist critical writings. This is excellently presented in the collection
New French Feminisms, and the works of Julia Kristeva, Cixous, Luce Irigary.
In each country one can see a different emphasis within wider gynocritical
ambit. English feminist criticism incorporates French feminist and Marxist theory.
But it is more traditionally oriented to textual interpretation. It is also moving toward
a focus on womens writing. The emphasis in each country falls somewhat
differently. English feminist criticism, essentially Marxist stresses oppression,
French feminist criticism essentially psychoanalytic stresses repression, American
feminist criticism essentially textual, stresses expression. All, however, have become
gynocentric. All are struggling to find a terminology that can rescue the feminine
from its stereotypical associations with inferiority. By summing up these one can
appreciate the formidable challenge of defining the difference of womens writing.
Showalter calls it a slippery and demanding task. Our task Showalter says, is to
reveal the delicate divergences, the subtle ways of womens responses, and reactions,
the intricate, seemingly elusive feelings, and thoughts. It is a call to original readings
and researches, not seeking to reply on pre-established theses, but an endeavour to
that begins at the beginning, a totally radical start. This is the beauty and strength of
108
Showalter. She is quite clear about it. she with one colossal sweep of vision takes in
all the diversities and deviations, oppositions and contradictions of feminism.
Check Your Progress- 2.
A) Fill in the blanks.

1)
There are two distinct modes of feminist criticism. The first mode is
concerned with the feminist as reader and the second is concerned with the
feminist as
2)
criticism is opposite to the androcentric model of criticism.
3)
According to Elaine Showalter was the first academic critic to

notice the shift from an androcentric to a gynocentric feminist criticism.
B) Match the items from a to the items from b.

a
i)
English feminist criticism - essentially psychoanalytic stresses repression.
ii) French feminist criticism - essentially textual, stresses expression.

iii) American feminist criticism essentially Marxist stresses oppression.
C) Say whether the following statements are true or false.
i)
A womans writing is always feminine.
ii) Kate Millet showed that womanhood itself shaped womens creative
expression.
iii) All feminist criticism has become gynocentric.
iv) Womens writing is not necessarily different from mens writing.
v)
Gynocritics want to find a terminology that can rescue the feminine from its
stereotypical associations with inferiority.
D) Answer the following questions in a word/phrase/sentence each.

109
i)
Define ecriture feminine.
ii) Who wrote Thinking About Women?

iii) Who is the author of A Literature of Their Own (1977)?
]
6.2.2
Four Models differentiating the qualities of the women writers

and the womens texts from those of the mens texts:
It is possible to understand feminist writings with the help of four models that
Showalter establishes indicating the female difference: Biological, linguistic,
psychoanalytic, and cultural, each seeking to define and differentiate the qualities of
the woman writers and the womans text.
1.
Womens writing and Womans body:

Biological difference between man and woman has been the ground on which
differential constructions have been built throughout mans history. Scholars in the
past found an easy way to propound the theories of womens weakness and
inferiority (both physical and mental), need for mans protection and patronage,
segregation of women from certain domains and activities and various other cleverly
devised structures of exploitation. Let us see the prejudices and wrong conclusions of
the Victorians. Victorian physicians believed that womens physiological functions
diverted about twenty percent of their creative energy from brain activity. Victorian
anthropologists believed that the frontal lobes of male brain were heavier and more
developed than female lobes and thus that women were inferior in intelligence.
Feminist criticism rejected the attribution of literal biological inferiority.
Making biological difference a base once again feminists reverse the theories,
rejecting the woman as subordinate construction and use this base for erecting
massive theoretical framework that privileges womens experiences. The crucial
difference is that todays biologically oriented feminists wish to regard female body
as a resource of creativity, extending its range from limitations imposed on them by
110
society. Rejecting all the cultural and psychological assumptions that womans
biological difference handicaps her in her creative writings too, Gilbert Gubar and
Auerbach point out that the difference rather should be considered a special asset
denied to men. Her physical difference enables her to experience, feel and think
differently. In order to live a fully human life, we require not only control of our
bodies we must touch the unity and resonance of our physicality so there is a
kind of celebration of womans body as a source of imagery in writers like Alicia
Ostriker. This wonderful sense of living and feeling has unfortunately remained
mute in mens literature; even women were denied expression to their distinctive
feeling. Gynocritics must bring to light these mute or dark areas and establish them
as no less inferior to those of men. Naturally, such writings make body a source of
imagery, rejecting all prescriptive taboos of the male discourse.
2.
Womens writing and womens language:

Gynocritics are of the view that language as it exists is more suitable and
convenient to men than to women. So it is called the oppressors language. So

women treat mans language as foreign or alien. As a result women critics want to
revise the language to suit women writers. It is admitted that there is no separate
female language and no evidence to suggest that sexes are programmed to develop
structurally different languages. Showalter quotes Nelly Furmann who opines that,
we define and categorize areas of difference and similarity which in turn allow us to
comprehend the world around us through language. In her opinion various
masculine categories have been created through American English working its effect
in a subtle and intricate manner. This aspect has been the subject for the French
feminists who believe that to capture the consciousness; women must capture the
speech; for they have been found to use a language which is foreign in that it is built
by men for projecting their mental-social-cultural categories. Woman can speak
herself into existence through another language her own tongue, her own linguistic
structure. Feminists like Annie Leclere are more revolutionary in their defiance of
111
the dictatorship of patriarchal speech but advocate creation of a language that would
be truly liberating parole de femme.
But this creates a peculiar problem. Wouldnt this isolate women scholars from
the mainstream intellectual world? The fear is expressed by Xaviere Gaunthier in
these words, As long as women remain silent, they will be outside the historical
process. But if they begin to speak and write as men do, they will enter history
subdued and alienated. Women need to create a speech that would disrupt and
deconstruct male discourse. It is a political issue, since male language is determined
by features of political ideology that believes in creating oppressive system aimed at
down-playing womens status and role. From a purely linguistic angle it is somewhat
problematic to elucidate the theme in concrete terms. There are many speech
communities particularly in Africa where dialects are not so clearly gender-marked.
In these communities it is impossible to determine that female use a different
language, which only reinforces the linguistic belief that there is absolutely no
evidence that would suggest that the sexes are programmed to develop structurally
different linguistic systems. Furthermore, the many specific differences in male and
female speech, intonation, and language use that have been identified cannot be
explained in terms of two separate sex-specific languages but need to be considered
instead in terms of styles, strategies and contexts of linguistic performance. Scientific
studies in the field like Mary Hiatts, The Way Women Write (1977) are quite open
to severe criticism for simplifying things. Such approaches tend to overlook the
enormous complexities of language behaviour which indeed is a network of crisscrossing factors and patterns like gender, tradition, memory, context etc.
According to Showalter the appropriate task for feminist criticism is to
concentrate on womens access to language, on the available lexical range from
which words can be selected, on the ideological and cultural determinants of
expression. The problem is not that language is insufficient to express womens
consciousness but that women have been denied the full resources of language and
have been forced into silence, euphetrism or circumlocution. In a series of drafts for
112
a lecture on womens writing (drafts which she discarded or suppressed), Woolf

protested against the censorship which cut off female access to language. Comparing
herself to Joyce, Woolf noted the difference between their verbal territories: Now
men are shocked if a woman says what she feels (as Joyce does). Yet literature which
is always pulling down blinds is not literature. All that we have ought to be
expressed mind and body a process of incredible difficulty and danger.
All that we have ought to be expressed mind and body. Rather than wishing to
limit womens linguistic range, we must fight to open and extend it. The holes in
discourse, the blanks and gaps, and silences, are not the spaces where female
consciousness reveals itself but the blinds of a prison-house of language. Womens
literature is still haunted by the ghosts of repressed language and until we have
exorcised those ghosts, it ought not to be in language that we base our theory of
difference.
3.
Womens writing and womens psyche:

Psychoanalytically oriented feminist criticism locates the difference of womens
writing in the authors psyche and in the relation of gender to the creative process. It
incorporates the biological and linguistic models of gender difference in a theory of
the female psyche or self, shaped by the body, by the development of language and
by sex-role socialization. But difficulties arise here also. Freudianism has long been
the model for many kinds of literary interpretations and its insights created an area of
debate with many ramifications. A class of feminists follows Freuds theories and
their revisions. Scholars like Theodora Reik reveal a striking link between female
body and creative impulse observing that women have fewer writing blocks than
men because their bodies are constructed to facilitate release. For defining writing
among women Freudian coordinates were penis envy, the castration complex and the
oedipal phase. Much focus is placed on phallic symbolization, even with Lacanian
psychoanalysis, as it was Jacques Lacan who propounded that it was in the oedipal
phase that acceptance of gender identity occurs. In this school of thought lack has
been associated with the feminine, making the Freudian or post-freudian psychology
113
come into perpetual struggle with the question of feminine disadvantage or lack. A
monumental work in this field is The Madwoman in the Attic by Susan Gilbert and
Sandra Gubar who accept Harold Blooms Oedipal model that shows woman as
displaced and disinherited in the continual history of fight between fathers and sons.
So a lot of the 19th century womens writings is inscribed by her own sickness her
madness, her anorexia, her agoraphobia and her paralysis in her texts. All this
comes in the ways of her artistic self-definition and differentiates her efforts at
self-creation from those of her male counterpart.
Gilbert and Gubar observe about the woman writer that they suffer from
inferiority complex or what they call the phenomena of inferiorization mark when
they struggle for artistic self definition. The female artists express loneliness, feelings
of alienation from male predecessors, their need for sisterly precursors and
successors, a female audience, fear of the antagonism of male readers, their culturally
conditioned timidity about self-dramatization, their dread of the patriarchal authority
of art, their anxiety about the impropriety of female invention. All these features of
womens writing differentiate their efforts at self-creation from those of their male
counterpart.
Singling out Freuds essay entitled, The Relation of the Poet to Daydreaming
(1908) Miller reveals in Emphasis Added how a masculine psycho-analytic model
has been created to differentiate men and womens writings. In this model Freud
states that the unsatisfied dreams and desires of women are chiefly erotic, these are
the desires that shape the plots of womens fiction. In contrast, the dominant
fantasies behind mens plots are egoistic and ambitious as well as erotic. Miller
shows how womens plots have been granted or denied credibility in terms of their
conformity to this phallocentric model and that a gynocentric reading reveals a
repressed egoistic/ambitious fantasy in womens writings as well as mens. Miller
shows how criticism of womens texts has frequently been unfair because it has been
based on Freudian expectations. The phallocentric Freudian model does not do
114
justice to novels that project women outside of love, a world made impossible by
social boundaries.
Though a majority of womens psychoanalytic criticism is based on Freudian
theories, attempts have been made to break free from them and focus on gender
identities. Among the major critics, names of Anis Pratt, Barbara Rigney, and Ann
Douglas must be mentioned. These critics have revised the Freudian assumptions and
developed an independent feminist theory of gender identity. Nancy Corduroys,
The Reproduction of mothering, Psychoanalysis and the Sociology of Gender
(1978) has had tremendous influence on womens studies. In this work she develops
the theory of gender identity and differentiation which set in at the pre-oedipal.
While a boy has to learn his identity negatively as not female a girl has a particular
easy growth as she can identify herself positively with her mother. It is in the postoedipal phase that cultural and social constructions of differentiation are imposed on
her. She foresees a change in sex-difference perception in a situation where men
share with women the responsibilities or parenting. It is expected that parenting
should be based on equal terms. But in reality where men are primary caretakers of
children, then the child is influenced by his male dominant values and his cultural
hegemony. As a result a different sense of sex difference, gender identity and sexual
preference is formed.
The significance of feminist psychoanalysis for literary criticism is that there
can be seen a bondage among daughters and sisters to show that psychodynamics
of female bonding determine relationship not only among characters but also among
writers. In this connection Elizabeth Abel has done a pioneering work in collecting
literary works of women from different nationalities to emphasize the consistent and
constant development of certain emotional dynamics depicted in diverse cultural
situations. However, psychoanalytic investigations are hemmed in with limitations
and cannot go into such complex areas as cultural, historical, and social structures.
Although psychoanalytically based models of feminist criticism can now offer us
remarkable and persuasive readings of individual texts and can highlight
115
extraordinary similarities between women writing in a variety of cultural

circumstances, they cannot explain historical change, ethnic difference, or the
shaping force of generic and economic factors. to consider these issues, we must go
beyond psycho-analysis to a more flexible and comprehensive model of womans
writing which places it in the maximum context of culture.
4.
Womens Writing and Womens Culture:

Elaine Showalter thinks that a theory based on a model of womens culture can
provide a more complete and satisfying way to talk about the specificity and
difference of womens writing than theories based in biology, linguistics or
psychoanalysis. Without considering the wider and more relevant factors of sociocultural circumstances, creation of the linguistic, psychoanalytic and biological
models would be severely limited. A comprehensive cultural model would
incorporate the significant points of other three models too, in fact it is here that it is
possible to establish links between different domains and see their significances.
Women live in cultural environments which have profound bearings on the way they
conceptualize their bodies and functions. The female psyche can be studied as the
product or construction of cultural forces. Even linguistic constructions are
determined by these largely patriarchal cultural forces. Nevertheless womens
collective identity separately evolves under those very cultural constraints providing
them a unifying relationship in their shared destiny. In spite of women/s collective
identity, a cultural theory acknowledges that there are important differences between
women as writers: class, race, nationality and history are literary determinants as
significant as gender. Thus, a cultural theory foregrounds the separate womens
culture, their social experiences and various ways in which they get expressed. Such
a theory obviously differs from the Marxist theories of cultural hegemony.
The idea of the self-defined nature of female cultural experience has been
supported by the works of anthropologists, sociologists and cultural theorists. These
theorists have tried to prove that womens cultural experiences form domain
116
radically different and separate from that of men. The masculine systems, values,
hierarchies and ides are the product of their cultural milieu which cannot be shared
by women. Since the latter forms a separate system of values and patterns which
have remained unnoticed so far. It is true that there are many areas of experience that
are shared by both sexes together, but what is missed by scholars is that women have
not directed their inquiries from the women-centered position, especially in such
exclusively male area as history that has remained dark to her till now. Gerda Lerner
thinks women have been left out of history. Now we should light up areas of
historical darkness. We must focus on a women centered inquiry, a female culture
within the general culture shared by men and women. History must include an
account of female experience over time and should include the development of
feminist consciousness as an essential aspect of womens past. If history is seen
through the eyes of women and ordered by values they (women) define, history will
be drastically different.
After discussing womens culture, Elaine Showalter turns to womens sphere
(field). What she demonstrates here is that womens ideal as built in England and
the American cult of true womanhood are the creation of men who clearly devise
means to keep women in subordinate position. Women frequently internalized the
precepts laid down in the American cult of true womanhood and the English
feminine ideal. Womens culture, however, redefines womens activities and goals
from a woman-centered point of view. The term womens sphere or activities or
goals implies as assertion of equality, and an awareness of sisterhood, the
communality of women. Womens culture refers to the broad-based communality of
values, institutions, relationships and methods of communication. One can notice the
unifying female experience through them in spite of variants based on class and
ethnic group.
Some feminist historians have seen a linear growth in the stages of political
process from womens sphere stage to a separate womens culture to agitation for
womens rights. But some thinkers like Gerda Lerner feel that it would be wrong to
117
consider womens culture as a sub-culture. Women formm a humerous class and

though they live within historically evolved larger culture, the choice before them is
either to transform the constraining conditions of the larger culture and create
resistance where needed to redefine it or live in a separate exclusivist culture of their
own. Thus women live a duality as members of the general culture and partakers of
womens culture.
Recently it has been increasingly felt that womens culture needs to be properly
understood. Till now such a perception did not exist at all, women were perceived as
subordinate beings. Showalter makes particular mention of two Oxford
anthropologists Shirley and Edwin Ardener whose works Beliefs and Problems of
Women (1972), The problem Revisited (1975) seek to redefine womens reality and
culture and underline their difference from the dominant culture. The womens
culture is called the muted group whose boundaries overlap the dominant (male)
group. In their opinion the dominant cultural model is not complete without giving
female experience its due place. It remains one-sided and inadequate. However, it is
the androcentric models that set the norms and if female experience failed to conform
to it, women are treated as deviants and their experiences aberrations; or were simply
ignored.
By the term muted Ardener suggests problems both of language and of power.
Both muted and dominant groups generate beliefs or ordering ideas of social reality
at the unconscious level, but dominant groups control the forms or structures in
which consciousness can be articulated. Thus muted groups must mediate their
beliefs through the allowable forms of dominant structures. Another way of putting
this would be to say that all language is the language of that dominant order and
women, if they speak at all, must speak through it. How then, Ardener asks, does the
symbolic weight of that other mass of persons express itself? In his view, womens
belief find expression through ritual, and art, expressions which can be deciphered
(understood, made clear) by the ethnographer either female or male, who is willing to
118
make the effort to perceive beyond the screens of the dominant structure. It is here
that we must show utmost caution in analyzing these female codes.
Ardener shows the relationship of the dominant and the muted group through a
diagram as shown below:
MEN
Y
WOMEN
WWO
Ardeners groups are represented by intersecting circles. Much of muted circle

Y falls within the boundaries of dominant circle X; there is also crescent of Y which
is outside the dominant boundary and therefore (in Ardeners terminology) wild.
We can think of the wild zone of womens culture spatially, experientially or
metaphysically. Spatially it stands for an area which is literally no-mans land, a
place forbidden to men which corresponds to the zone in X which is off limits to
women. Experientially it stands for the aspects of the female life-style which are
outside of and unlike those of men; again, there is corresponding zone of male
experience alien to women. But if we think of the wild zone metaphysically, or in
terms of consciousness it has no corresponding male space since all of male
consciousness is within the circle of the dominant structure and thus accessible to or
structured by language. In this sense, the wild is always imaginary from the male
point of view; it may simply be the projection of the unconscious. In terms of
cultural anthropology, women know what the male crescent is like, even if they have
never seen it, because it becomes the subject of legend (like the wilderness). But men
dont know what is in the wild.
According to some feminist critics, the wild zone, or female space, must be the
address of a genuinely women-centered criticism, theory and art whose shared
119
project is to bring into being the symbolic weight of female consciousness, to make
the invisible visible, to make the silent speak. French feminist critics would like to
make the wild zone the theoretical base of womens difference. In their texts, the
wild zone becomes the place for the revolutionary womens language, the language
of every thing that is repressed and for the revolutionary womens writing in white
ink. It is the Dark Continent in which Cixouss laughing Medusa and Wittings
guerilleres reside. Through voluntary entry into the wild zone other feminist critics
tell us, a woman can write her way out of the cramped confines of patriarchal
space. The images of this journey are now familiar in feminist quest fictions and in
essays about them. The model gives scope for womens voice to be presented and
recognized in cultural history. For some feminist critics it is this wild zone the
exclusively female experiences that must be made the subject of investigation
French Feminist critics would like to make the wild zone the theoretical base of
womens difference. It is here that all kinds of linguistic, psychological and cultural
differences are to be found.
Many forms of American radical feminism romantically show that women are
closer to nature, to the environment, to a matriarchal principle at once biological and
ecological. Mary Dalys Gyn / Ecology and Margaret Atwoods novel Surfacing are
the examples of this type. They create the feminist mythology. In English and
American literature, women writers have often imagined Amazon Utopias, cities or
countries situated in the wild zone or on its border. These books depict full
independence from the control and influence of male-dominated institutions the
news media, the health education, and legal systems, the art, theatre and literature
worlds, the banks. Elizabeth Gaskells Cranford, Charlotte Perkins Gilmans
Harland, Joanna Russs Whileaway are the examples of Amazon Utopia.
From this angle and continuing the model one can say that there are two
undercurrents of one large mainstream rather than an inside/outside situation. This is
how Ellen Moers sees it using the metaphor of mainstream and under currents.
Womens territory is a long border and womens freedom an open territory,
120
accessible and like an open sea. Feminist criticism must balance itself on this border
according to Jehlen and see womens writings in relation to the male writing. The
concept of a womans text in the wild zone is a playful abstraction, in the reality,
womens writing is a double voiced discourse that always embodies the social,
literary, and cultural heritages of both the muted and the dominant.
It is not just womens position that is subsumed in Ardeners model, but other
marginalized entities too. The problem is multicultural and multiracial and far from
simple. For instance, a black American woman writer has to wage struggle on two
different fronts, namely, gender discrimination, and racial biases. She would be
affected by both sexual and racial politics in a combination unique to her case.
(P.325).
Periodization is also biased. In literary history we can see that womens writing
is ignored. Thus a Renaissance or a Romantic period is not so for women. Womens
writing in this period is deeply buried in the sands of anonymity. Recent
investigations have unearthed many such women writers of great merit. The dull
period that is regarded as barren between Richardsons death and Sir Walter Scotts
emergence is indeed richly strewn with writings of women. Such gaps tell their own
tales of the muted existence of women and need to be eliminated, restoring the true
voice of women. In this way we can not only understand womens writings but also
know how mens writing has resisted the acknowledgement of female precursors.
Womens writing should be considered as an important part of literary history. Their
writing provides vitality, and another dimension of meaning to the literary history.
Womens writing generates its own experiences and symbols. They add to the male
tradition.
Womens writing contains two voices simultaneously. It is double voiced in
which can be read two discourses, the dominant one representing the male voice and
the muted one representing womens voice. One is enabled to see meaning in, what
has previously been empty space. The conventional structures like plots slip into the
121
background and another invisible one take over hither to submerged in the
anonymity of the background.
To emphasize cultural model does not imply rejection of the significance of
other factors like linguistic, psychoanalytic or biological. No single model is
adequate. Feminist critics are aware of the fact that the field is full of challenges.
Identifying and presenting wilderness is full of challenges. One model is not
appropriate to do this.
A) Answer the following questions in a word/phrase/sentence each.

i)
What did Victorian physicians believe about womens physiology and

intelligence?
ii) Who is the author of The Way Women Write?

iii) Where does psychoanalytically oriented feminist criticism locate the difference
of womens writing?
iv) Ardener shows the relationship of the dominant and the muted group through a
diagram. What does the word muted group stand for?
v)
According to some feminist critics what should a genuinely female centered

criticism address?
B) Fill in the blanks.

i)
Elizabeth Gaskells Crandford, Charlotte Perkinss Gilmans Herland, and

Joanna Russs Whileaway are the examples of Utopia.
ii) Womens writing is a double-voiced discourse. It embodies heritages of both the

and the dominant.
iii) A black American woman writer has to wage struggle on two different fronts,
namely gender discrimination and biases.
122
iv) The dull period that is regarded as barren between Richardsons death and
emergence is indeed richly strewn with writings of women.
v)
Broadly speaking critics use four models of difference biological
linguistic, psychoanalytic and cultural.
6.3 Summary:
Elaine Showalter is a gynocritic. The term Gynocriticism is used to describe
the feminist study of womens writing including readings of womens texts and
analysis of the intertextual relations both between women writers (a female literary
tradition) and between women and men. Elaine Showalter famous paper Feminist
criticism in the Wilderness first published in Critical Inquiry in 1981, lucidly
presents the evolution of feminist criticism. According to her it is not more unified,
but it is more adventurous in assimilating and engaging with theory.
In the beginning feminist criticism was in a state of impasse due to male
supremacy in art and literature. Two poles of feminist criticism can be seen. The first
of these modes appears righteous, angry and admonitory. It can be compared to The
Old Testament looking for the sins and errors of the past. The second mode was
disinterested and seeking the grace of imagination. It was compared to The New
Testament. Thus feminist criticism was in the wilderness. It lacked a theoretical base.
There has been no unified and integrated school of feminine criticism. Feminist
critics think masculine thought allowed no space for women writers and their
ideology. Virginia Woolf fell victim to this male dominance. So Mary Daly,
Andrienne Rich, Marguerite Duras satirized the sterile narcissism of male
scholarship and celebrated womens fortunate exclusions from its patriarchal
methodology. Feminist criticism was based on authority of experience of women
writers and thinkers. Thus it is original and innovative. It is powerful organ for the
expression of feminine aspirations and sensibility in innovative linguistic and
stylistic patterns. Showalter observes that what looked like a theoretic impasse was
actually evolutionary phase. It was a sign of the empowerment of women. Feminist
123
criticism has been in communication with the agencies which had interest in the
empowerment of women. It did not care for main stream criticism which was more
theoretical in its interests.
There are two distinct modes of feminist criticism. The first mode is ideological.
It is concerned with the feminist as reader and it offers feminist readings of text
which consider the images and stereotypes of women in literature, the omissions and
misconceptions about women in criticism and women as sign of semiotic system. It
is a revisionist model of feminist criticism based on existing models. It is interested
in correcting, modifying, supplementing, revising, humanizing and also attacking
male critical theory. The second model is called women as writer. Here feminist
criticism wants to unearth forgotten women talents, bring to light those women
writers of the past who are unheard of. Another function is to create a whole body of
literature by women and of women. Feminist criticism is women experiencecentered, independent and intellectually coherent.
Feminist criticism has shifted its revisionary readings to a sustained
investigation of literature by women. A shift from the androcentric criticism to
gynocentric criticism can be seen here in feminist criticism. In gynocentric feminist
study the subjects are history, styles, themes, genres, and structures of writing by
women, the psychodynamics of female creativity, the trajectory of the individual or
collective female career and the evolution and laws of female literary tradition. Allen
Mores Literary Women (1976), Showalters A Literature of Their Own (1977).
Nina Bayms Womens Fiction (1978), Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubars The
Mad Woman in the Attic (1979) and Margaret Homans Woman Writers and Poetic
Identity (1980) and a large number of papers and essays deal with womens
writings. They are examples of gynocriticism. Of course there is variety in dealing
with various aspects of womanhood. For instance, as Showlater points out feminist
criticism in each country has a different centre, which is undoubtedly related with
one or the other aspect of womanhood. English feminist criticism, essentially
Marxist stresses oppression, French feminism, essentially psycho-analytic stresses
124
repression. American feminist criticism essentially textual, stresses expression. All

have become gynocentric.
Elaine Showalter identifies four models of differences: biological, linguistic,
psychoanalytic and cultural. The biological model is the most extreme. If the text
somehow mirrors the body, this can reduce women merely to bodies. Yet Showalter
praises frankness with regard to the body in female poets and finds in their intimate
and confessional tone a rebuke to those women who continue to write outside the
female body, as though it did not exist.
Showalters linguistic model of difference posits women speaking mens language as
a foreign tongue; purging language of sexism is not going far enough. If women
continue to speak as men do when they enter discourse, whatever they say will be
alienated. Yet advocates of this position admit that there is no separate female
language and no evidence to suggest that the sexes are programmed to develop
structurally different languages. Showalters psychoanalytic model identifies
gender difference as the basis of the psyche, focusing on the relation of gender
difference as the free play of meaning outside the need for closure. Showalters most
important contribution has been to describe the cultural model that places feminist
concerns in social contexts, acknowledging class, racial, national and historical
differences and determinants among women, but offering a collective experience that
unites women over time and space a binding force.
6.4 Terms to Remember:
1.
Pluralism: Variety of approach and assumption. A pluralist approach to

criticism is one that has many indifferent methods and assumptions at its
disposal, rather than an approach that imposes a single model on all texts, no
matter what the circumstances. What is significant about critical pluralism is
that the various positions which any pluralist discourse brings together are not
significantly at adds with one another, and that pluralism often signals an
implicit, if not explicit, consensus.
125
2.
Deconstructionists: Adherents of deconstruction following Jacques Derrida and

believing in the production of differing and deferring in production of meaning.
3.
Canon: The great books or great tradition of texts that everyone should study or
know in order to be considered educated in literature that is works called
canonical. The means, by which the canon has been constructed, however,
have been radically exclusionary leaving out, for example, works written by
those in marginal or excluded groups.
4.
Mainstream Literature: Here literature written by man called dominant

tradition or group.
5.
Androcentric writing: Writing in which patriarchy or the male is put in the

centre.
6.
Gynocentrism: Women-centered. Assumption that the reader and the writer of

a literary work are both female and that the critical act is also aimed towards the
woman reader. Focus on woman as a writer.
7.
Ecriture feminine: The feminine practice of writing. It is a form of writing that

is oriented towards the female: a writing that facilitates a free play of meanings,
and celebrates the female physiology.
8.
Resonance: A text/artifact arouses in us kindred feelings with other cultural

artifacts and by this process it is rendered eternally alive. Resonances sustain a
feeling of wonder.
9.
Patriarchy: The rule of the father the whole complex systems of male
dominance by which most societies are organized. Women are excluded out of
structure of power.
10. Oedipus complex: In Freudian psychoanalysis the Oedipus complex refers to the
whole complex of both loving and hostile feeling experienced by a child
towards in parents in the process of achieving accultured maturity.
126
6.5 Answers to Check Your Progress: (1, 2, 3 )

A) 1)
The Old Testament.
2)
Freudian and Lacanian.
3)
Simone de Beauvoir.
B) 1)
True.
2)
False.
3)
True.
C)
a
i)
A Room of Ones Own
ii) The Second Sex
b
- Virginia Woolf.
- Simone de Beauvoir.
iii) The Madwoman in the Attic - Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar.
iv) The Laugh of the Medusa
- Hlne Cixous
v)
- Mary Daly
Gyn / Ecology
vi) Surfacing
- Margaret Atwood
vii) Cranford
- Elizabeth Caskell
viii) Androcentric models
- The feminist as reader
ix) Gynocentric models
- the feminist as writer
D) 1)
2)
Androcentric and gynocentric

To focus on class along with gender as a crucial determinant of literary
production.
3)
Feminist criticism.
4)
Male experience.
127
5)
It should deal with black and Third World women writers and call for a
black feminist aesthetic that would deal with both racial and sexual politics.
A) 1)
Writer.
2)
Gynocentric.
3)
Patricia Meyer Spacks.
B)
i) English feminist criticism - essentially Marxist stresses oppression.

ii) French feminist criticism - essentially psychoanalytic, stresses
repression.
iii) American feminist criticism - essentially textual stresses expression.
C) i)
True
ii) False
iii) True
iv) False
v)
D) 1)
True.
The inscription of the female body and female difference in language
and text.
2)
Mary Ellmann.
3)
Elaine Showalter.

A) i)
Womens frontal lobe less developed and so inferior in intelligence.
ii) Mary Hiall.

iii) In the authors psyche and in the relation of gender to the creative process.
iv) Women / women writers / readers.
128
v)
The wild zone of female space, make invisible visible, makes the silent
speak.
B) i)
Amazon.
ii) muted.
iii) racial.
iv) Sir Walter Scott.
v)
Gynocritics.
6.6 Exercise:
A) Long answer type questions.
1)
Summarize Showalters views expressed in feminist criticism in the

wilderness.
2)
What are, according to Showalter, the two modes of feminist Literary

criticism? Explain with examples.
3)
Discuss gynocriticism and its four types.
4)
Explain and comment on pluralism and the feminist critique with reference
to Elaine Showalters essay feminist criticism in the wilderness
5)
Discuss the idea of wilderness as expressed in feminist criticism in the

wilderness.
B) Short answer type questions.

1)
Comment on womens writing and womens culture.
2)
Explain womens writing and womens psyche with reference to feminist

criticism in the wilderness.
3)
Write in brief on womens writing and womens language.
129
4)
Critically explain Showalters views on womens writing and womans

body.
5)
Write in short on Gynocritics.

i)
Showalter, Elaine. (1977).

A Literature of Their Own; British women Novelists from Bronte to Lessing;
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
ii) de Beauvoir, Simone. (1949).

The Second Sex; Reprint, Harmondsworth, England, Penguin.
iii) Wolfreys Julian (ed.) (2005).
Introducing Literary Theories; A Guide and Glossary, New Delhi, Atlantic.
iv) Das, Bijay Kumar (ed.) (2005).
Twentieth Century Literary Criticism; New Delhi, Atlantic.
v)
Guerin Wilfred L. et al; (2004).

A Handbook of Critical Approaches to Literature (4th edition); Oxford, Oxford
University Press.
130
Unit-7
Fredric Jameson: The Politics of Theory: Ideological Position in
Postmodern Debate
The Present Unit is divided into the following sections:
7.0 Objectives
7.1 Introduction
7.1.1 Life and Works of Fredric Jameson
7.1.2 Jameson as a Critic
7.1.3 Difficulties in the Study of Jamesons Works
7.2 Subject Matter:
7.2.1 Analysis of the Essay
7.2.2 Structure of the Essay
7.2.3 Summery and Interpretation of the Essay
7.2.4 Conclusion: Jamesons Contribution to the Theory of Postmodernism
7.3 Answers to Check your Progress
7.4 Exercise
7.5 Books for further reading
7.0 Objectives:
By the end of this unit, you will be able to:
Understand the meaning of the term Postmodern and also Jamesons

contribution to the discussion of the theories of Postmodernism
Explain different theories of Postmodern proposed by various scholars
Find relation between the positions of various thinkers on the theory of

Postmodern and the position of Jameson as well.
131
7.1 Introduction:
7.1.1 Fredric Jameson: Life and Works:
Fredric Jameson has been acclaimed as one of the most important culture critics
writing in English today. Jameson is famous for his analysis of diverse entities
belonging to different fields of knowledge. That is to say, his range of analysis has
been very vast. He has shown his interest in and analyzed everything from
architecture to science fiction, from the nineteenth-century novel to cinema, from
philosophy to experimental avant-garde art (Roberts 2000). In fact, not only the
variety of the subjects which he analyzes but also the insights that he shares with us
on this subject make him one of the most important theoreticians today. Generally he
has shown a definite development in his interest of the subjects: from Marxism to
Psychology to Philosophy to Literature to Postmodernism and last but not the least to
Cinema. Jamesons biography also explains his interests in these different fields.
Jameson was born in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1934. He studied French and German
at Haverford College in the early 1950s. He travelled to a great extent across Europe
and studied also at Aix-en-Provence in 19545 and Munich and Berlin in 19567.
The Continental European perspective that he acquired during his visit to Europe
deepened his sense of his own Anglophone heritage and also provided important
contexts to his readings in English and American literature. He completed his MA at
Yale University and worked on the French writer and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre
(190580) in order to complete his PhD. Throughout his life, Sartre has worked with
the ideas of Marx and of the German thinker Martin Heidegger (18891976). The
study of the ideas of these writers has helped Sartre in developing the movement
known as Existentialism. Existentialism is a school of thought which puts great
emphasis on the individuals experience of existence as the only standard of value to
judge it. According to Sartre, individuality of human being carries with it the
essential but difficult freedom to choose. This awareness of the burdens of that
freedom and the commitment to live with them is the criterion of authentic
existence. Very few can achieve such authenticity in their life. The remaining instead
falls in line with insincere, uncreative roles of living.
While considering the academic career of Fredric Jameson, the above argument
is important because he has constantly shown his own determined individuality in
different areas: He adheres to a Marxist philosophy in a country like America which
132
has been at times hostile to such beliefs. Moreover, his unique and particular style of
writing can also be cited as the feature of his commitment to an authenticity even
while interpreting the world and its literature.
In the 1960s Jameson worked as an Instructor and Assistant Professor at
Harvard University. In 1967, he moved to the University of California, San Diego.
He was the Professor of French and Comparative Literature at San Diego from 1971
to 1976. From 1976 to 1983 he was a Professor in the French Department at Yale
University. Since 1983 he has been a Distinguished Professor of Comparative
Literature at Duke University. Looking at these facts related to his career, one may
quite possibly say that Jamesons basic academic interest lies in French literature.
However, we should not forget that during the decades 1960s and 1970s Jameson
was enormously concerned with various topics from Western literature and cultural
studies to philosophy. His first book which helped him achieve wide popularity is
Marxism and Form, published in 1971. The book consists of his detailed readings of
many theorists of Marxist tradition across the continent. It is in this sense that
Jameson is considered to be the first important critic who introduced in America the
new influential critical perspectives of the continental theorists. In addition to the
discussion of the perspectives of the various continental thinkers, the book also
elaborates Jamesons won critical position: that critics need to concentrate on the
form of literature as much as on the content, that form is not a mere trapping of the
work of art but embodies powerful ideological messages (Roberts 2000). It is from
the publication of this book that Jameson has been accepted as the major exponent of
Marxist criticism in America.
During the next year (i.e. 1972), Jameson published another book: The PrisonHouse of Language: a Critical Account of Structuralism and Russian Formalism.
The book embodies another critical account of Jameson of a school of theorists and
thinkers who are associated with his own concerns. The book thus is a critique of
these thinkers from the point of his dialectic materialism. Similarly, during the
decade 1970s, Jameson wrote a number of articles and book length studies of the
thinkers from Marxist perspective. For example, the book Fables of Aggression
(1979) elaborates why Jameson find Wyndham Lewiss and Ezra Pounds writing
interesting and valuable, though many other critics have seen Lewis as concerned
with fascism and misogyny. Thus the book presents a critical position which helps to
read through the surface of the text and interpret it with regard to its hidden depths.
133
The same critical perspective has been more fully and profitably elaborated in
Jamesons another work published in 1981: The Political Unconscious: Narrative as
a Socially Symbolic Act. The book represents Jamesons maturity as the Marxist
thinker and is considered to be his highest contribution to Marxist literary theory.
Moreover, the book is one of the most pervasive and often cited books on theoretical
Marxist literary theory. The book represents the synthesis of different schools:
structuralism, post-structuralism, Freudian psychoanalysis and various schools of
Marxism.
The decade 1980s witnessed a shift in Jamesons concerns: from Marxism to
Postmodernity and its socio-political context of late capitalism. In this new interest,
he published many articles. The first one is published in 1984 in the British leftist
journal New Left Review: Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism.
The article represents Jamesons analytical and interpretative statement on the
phenomenon of postmodernity. In fact, Jameson has brought home his position on
the subject by referring to the works and concerns of many theoreticians involved in
the discussion of the nature of modernism and postmodernism. With the publication
of this paper, many critics were surprised. The reason is that being a Marxist, he is
expected to criticise the elitist modernism and not to indulge in postmodernism and
what it stands for. However, by employing his own critical approach that he
developed in The Political Unconsciousness, and presenting the dialectical mode of
argument, Jameson is able to create a rich Marxist intellectual heritage in the paper.
Thus, during the whole decade, Jameson went on writing widely on the phenomenon
of postmodernism. In his papers on the issue of postmodern, one can perceive that
Jameson has broadened his range of analysis and included the discussion of films and
other modes of cultural production as well.
The other works of Jameson include:
1.
Signatures of the Visible (1990): The book embodies Jamesons reading of

cinema and cinematic texts.
2.
Late Marxism: Adorno, or the Persistence of the Dialectic (1990): It is a critical

study of the Marxist philosopher Adorno whom Jameson has referred to in many
of his earlier works.
3.
Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (1991) is a collection

of his papers (which are slightly revised) that he published during 1980s on the
134
subject. It is from the publication of this book that Jameson has been considered
to be one of the important thinkers on the phenomenon of Postmodern.
4.
The Geopolitical Aesthetic: Cinema and Space in the World System (1992) It
is an account of Jamesons reading of cinema in the postmodern period. In fact,
the book crystallizes Jamesons position that the postmodern films represent the
embodiment of the totalizing world system, i.e. they are the manifestation of
the global capitalism, which he prefers to call late capitalism.
5.
The Seeds of Time (1994) is a book which is concerned with Jamesons

developed reading of postmodernism and his concept of Utopia.
6.
Brecht (1998) - The book deals with the account of one of the most important
Marxist dramatists: Bertolt Brecht.
In addition to these books, Jameson has also written about the Third World
literature and culture.
The present paper: The Politics of Theory: Ideological Positions in the
Postmodernism Debate is one of the three papers that Jameson published on the
phenomenon of postmodernism. The paper is first published in 1984 in the New
German Critique. The other two papers are: Postmodernism and Consumer Society
(published in The Anti-Aesthetic in 1983) and the earlier cited paper:
Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism.
7.1.2 Jameson as a Critic:

As a Marxist literary critic, Jameson is concerned with many literary and
cultural movements from 19th century realism to the present day Postmodernism.
However, in order to understand his interpretation of these movements, one is
expected to know something about his position on the issues involved and the
contexts for his thought. In fact, in this regard, his works are more important than
anything else. For example, his Marxism is different from that of the other Marxist
thinkers (as he makes clear even in the prescribed essay). In order to evolve his own
position on Marxism, he has drawn as much from Lukacs and Adorno as from
Althusser and others. Moreover, his position has been made complicated due to his
borrowings from such psychoanalytical thinkers as Freud and Lacan. However
difficult the position may seem for the beginner, it is essential for the understanding
of his views expressed in his works.
135
In this context, Roberts (2000) refers to a number of central concepts that are
constantly used in his works:
A constant return to history as the key to understanding and working with

texts, such as but not exclusively literary works; for Jameson history is the
Lacanian Real, always approached but which absolutely resists symbolisation.
A fascination with issues of interpretation as an open-ended and inevitable

mediation of experience.
Linked with this last, a belief that texts embody repressed features of historical
anxiety and trauma, and that a critic needs to focus on the pathological
neuroses of writing and culture as a clue to the buried unconscious of
literature.
A linked concern with reification (Representing a human being as a physical

thing deprived of personal qualities or individuality).
An insistence on looking at the form (style, genre, etc.) of a literary work in

addition to, or even in preference to, its apparent content (story, character, and
so on). The particular form that Jameson is most interested in is narrative.
A strong commitment to the dialectical process, to what Jameson calls

stereoscopic thinking.
Many of these concepts are important to comprehend the present essay as well.
7.1.3 Difficulties in the Study of Jamesons Works:
Many critics are seen to criticize Jameson for the difficulty inherent in his
works. In this regard, Roberts (2000) refers to the challenges that the reader has to
face while reading Jamesons works. He says that there are two-fold difficulties
faced by a reader new to Jamesons works. The first and foremost of these
difficulties is the complex and wide-ranging context that Jameson employs in his
work. For example, in the present essay, he refers to different contexts from
philosophy to architecture to music and to culture. Therefore, while understanding
his works, the reader is expected not only to know what these contexts are but also
what Jameson means by their use in the text. In this sense Jamesons works are very
demanding.
136
The second difficulty in reading Jameson is his own peculiar style: his ornate,
elaborate prose style. Since his language is found to be difficult by scholars, the
students reading his original essay might find their problems multiplied. Looking at
the phenomenon from positive point of view, Jamesons works provide the students
an opportunity to sharpen their reading skills. The best way to read Jamesons works
seems to analyze the sentences into ideas they contain and then to understand them.
Another difficulty, as Carolyn Lesjak (2006) points out, is the misreading of his
texts. That is to say, his texts and even his position on the concerned issues are being
misinterpreted by critics. One of such instance is that many critics have tried to
interpret Jamesons stand on Postmodern and still are not sure of it, more particularly
whether he celebrates or criticizes it. In fact, there is no answer to the debate in
literature regarding this issue. However, the fact remains that while analyzing and
interpreting his texts, one should be very careful and should avoid constructing value
judgments.
It is from this perspective that in the next section of this unit paragraph-wise and
sentence-wise analysis of the essay has been provided. However, it is always the best
to analyze such text on ones own.
7.2 Subject Matter

7.2.1 Analysis of the Essay:
As pointed out earlier, this section provides the analysis of the original essay of
Jameson. There are in all 27 paragraphs in the essay. So the analysis follows the
pattern of the paragraphs in the text. While reading the analysis, the students should
also read the original text so that the analysis helps them to read the text in a better
way.
Para 1:
Jameson begins his essay by referring to the following problem of Postmodernism:
1.
Whether Postmodernism exists or is it a mystification?
2.
How its fundamental characteristics are to be described?
3.
Whether the concept is of any use?
He says that the above problems are simultaneously aesthetic and political in
nature. The various positions taken on the above problems of Postmodernism
137
(irrespective of the term used to refer to it) express the perspectives through which
the social history is seen. These perspectives in turn are ultimately based on the
political assessment of a social moment as either affirmation or rejection.
Jameson argues that the very assumption of the debate on the nature and the
characteristics of Postmodernism is a strategic presupposition about the social
system: To grant some historic originality to postmodern culture. That is, it implicitly
seeks to affirm that there is some radical structural difference between the consumer
society (postmodern culture) and the earlier moments of capitalism (Modernism) from which it is said to have emerged.
Para 2: The various possibilities in the debate on the phenomenon of
Postmodernism are associated with the position one takes on the term
postmodernism. That is to say, the possibilities are based on how the high or
classical Modernism is evaluated? Jameson believes that Postmodernism is not a
homogeneous phenomenon in different arts. Therefore, the invention of a varied
cultural artefact (like the postmodern) lead to the temptation of bringing together
such heterogeneous styles and products (though there is no similarity among them)
that stand in reaction to high modernist impulse and aesthetic.
Para 3: Jameson is of the opinion that the irreducible variety of the postmodern
can be observed fully and problematically within the individual medium of art (i.e.
any art): Are there any affinities (similarities) (except that they are reactions to the
earlier forms) present in the elaborate false sentences and syntactic mimesis of John
Ashbery and the simpler talk poetry of early 1960s the latter emerged in protest
against the New Critical aesthetic of complex, ironic style? Jameson contends that
though there is no similarity between the different proponents of Postmodernism,
they are grouped together because they happen to be reactions against the tendencies
of the earlier period.
- The 1960s witnessed the institutionalization of high Modernism. In the same
period both the poetry of Ashbery and the talk poetry were also published. There was
the relation of opposition between the poetry of the high modern and the poetry of
Ashbery and the talk poetry. However, the relation became hegemonic when the
latter was established in the canon. The canonized postmodern poetry attenuated
everything in them which was felt by our grandparents to be shocking, scandalous,
ugly, dissonant, immoral and antisocial.
138
Para 4: The same heterogeneity is also present in visual arts between the
inaugural reaction against the last high modernist school in painting i.e. Abstract
Expressionism present in the works of Andy Warhol and the so called pop art.
Similar heterogeneity is also visible in such aesthetic as those of conceptual art,
photorealism and the current New Figuration or neo Expressionism.
- Heterogeneity in Films is present in both the experimental and commercial
productions. Even in the experimental films, such heterogeneity is available in
Godards break with the classical filmic Modernism when it generates a series of
stylistic reactions against itself in 1970s.
- In Music, the inaugural music of John Cage seems far away from the styles of
new composers like Phil Glass and Terry Riley and also from the punk and New
Wave Rock Music. All of these are significantly distinct from disco or glitter rock.
Para 5: In Narrative- Postmodern narrative is marked by (1) dissolution
(separation) of linear narrative; (2) rejection of representation; and (3) a
revolutionary break with the ideology of storytelling generally.
However these features are not adequate enough to encapsulate such diverse
types as the narrative in the work of Burroughs, of Pynchon and Ishmael Reed, of
Beckett, of French nouveau roman, of non-fiction novel and also the New
Narrative.
Similarly, a new aesthetic has emerged both in commercial film and in the novel
nostalgia art.
Para 6: Architecture is the privileged terrain of Postmodernism, because in this
field the death of modernism has been pronounced more forcefully than anywhere
else. Robert Venturis Learning from Las Vegas (1971), discussions by Christopher
Jencks, and Pier Paolo Portoghesi Biennale presentation - After Modern Architecture
they all illuminate the central issue in the attack on the architectural high
modernism:
1.
The bankruptcy of the monumental
2.
The failure of its protopolitical or Utopian programme
3.
Its elitism
139
4. Its virtual destruction of the older city fabric and change them to urban nomans land
Para 7: However, the architectural Postmodernism is not a unified or monolithic
style and there are allusions to the styles of the past. Therefore, it contains various
manifestations:
1.
A baroque Postmodernism (Michael Graves)
2.
A rococo Postmodernism (Charles Moore or Venturi)
3.
A classical or neoclassical Postmodernism (Rossi and De Porzemparc,

respectively)
4.
A Mannerist and a Romantic variety
5.
A High Modernist Postmodern
Thus, Jameson says that the complacent play of historical allusion and stylistic
pastiche is a central feature of Postmodernism in general.
Para 8: The debate of Postmodernism in architecture has made the aesthetic
issues seem political and created resonance (relationship of mutual understanding
and trust) which is gradually been detected in other arts as well.
On the basis of the above analysis, Jameson says that on the whole there are
four general positions on the debate of postmodernism. However he also argues that
the above conclusion is complicated, because one may argue that the four
possibilities are susceptible of either a politically progressive or a politically
reactionary expression.
Para 9: Antimodernist Standpoint: This is the first position taken on
Postmodernism. In addition to being anti-modern the theorists of this position are
pro-postmodern as well. Theorists like Ihab Hassan are associated with this position.
They dealt with Postmodernist aesthetics in terms of Poststructuralist thematic (i.e. of
Derrida).
- They saluted Postmodernism (1) as coming of a whole new way of thinking
and (2) being in the world.
140
- Since Hassans celebration also includes such extreme monuments of high

modernism (like Joyce & Mallarme), it seems that he celebrates the new information
high technology.
- It connects Hassans stand with the political thesis of post-industrial society.
Para 10: Tom Wolfe is another figure associated with the first position. His
New Journalism is one of the varieties of Postmodernism. His famous book in this
context is From Bauhaus to Our House. The interesting features of the book are (1)
the absence of any Utopian celebration of the postmodern and (2) the absence of the
passionate hatred of the Modern.
- The book rather seems to be the original horror experienced by the first middle
class spectators of the emergence of the Modern itself and the book on the whole
attempts to reawaken archaic sympathy with the protopolitical, Utopian, anti-middle
class impulse of a new extinct high modernism itself.
- Wolfes attack on Modernism thus proves to be an excellent example of the
logical/reasoned and contemporary way in which Modernism is theoretically
rejected.
- Jameson thinks that Wolfes stand is explicitly based on the reactionary
cultural politics.
Para 11: The Anti-modern & Pro-postmodern position is counter-balanced by
the statements from the opposite side. Thus, the second position is Pro-modern and
Anti-postmodern. In this position, statements are made to discredit (to say
something as false) the shoddiness (cheap imitativeness) and irresponsibility of the
Postmodernism in general. These statements, in turn, reaffirm the authentic impulse
of high modernism which is still alive and vital.
- In the inaugural issue of his new journal The New Criterion Hilton Kramer
forcefully articulated the twin manifestoes:
(1) Contrasting the moral responsibility of the masterpieces and monuments of
classical Modernism with the fundamental irresponsibility and superficiality of a
Postmodernism associated with the camp, and
(2) With the facetiousness (playful humours) which abounds in Wolfe style.
141
Para 12: Though politically Wolfe and Kramer have much in common, there are
differences in their stands regarding Modernism.
- There is inconsistency in the way Kramer seeks to eradicate fundamentally
anti-middle class stance and the protopolitical passion of the highly serious classics
of the modern. Their protopolitical passion is responsible for the rejection of
Victorian taboos and family life, of commodification and of Capitalism.
- Kramer has ingeniously attempted to assimilate the anti-bourgeois stance of
the great modernist to a loyal opposition (the critics of bourgeoisie who are
secretly nourished by the foundations and grants by the bourgeoisie itself) it is
made possible due to the contradiction of the cultural politics of Modernism.
- Kramers above attempt can be negated on the basis of what they (the modern
& the loyal oppositions) reject and entertain when they attain a certain political
self-consciousness- a symbolic relationship with capital.
Para 13: Kramers position is easy to understand when his concern in The New
Criterion is seen as a political project i.e. the mission of the journal is to eradicate
the 1960s and its legacy to the extent that the whole period is totally forgotten. The
New Criterion thus seeks to construct a new conservative cultural counter-revolution
which ranges from aesthetics, family and to religion. Since The New Criterion is
essentially a political project, it is paradoxical for it to deplore the omnipresence of
politics in contemporary culture- the infection is spread during 1960s which
Kramer thinks responsible for the stupidity of the postmodern.
Para 14: The problem with the operation of Kramer (problem from the
perspective of the conservatives) is that its paper-money is not backed by the solid
gold of state power. That is, the power of the state does not support the operation.
The failure of Vietnam War has made the exercise of the repressive power
impossible. The 1960s, thus, endowed with the collective memory and experience
regarding the exercise of repressive power. Such an experience and knowledge was
not shared by 1930s or the pre World War I period. Thus, Kramers cultural
revolution is nothing but sentimental nostalgia for the 1950s.
Para 15: Though Postmodernism is explicitly based on the conservative
ideology, as compared to Modernism, it represents far more progressive line of
thought.
142
- It is basically Jurgen Habermas who dramatically reversed and rearticulated

the supreme value of the modern and also the rejection of both the theory and
practice of the postmodern.
- According to Habermas, the fundamental vice of Postmodernism is its
politically reactionary function and its attempt to discredit the modernist impulse
everywhere. For Habermas, the vice is the result of the bourgeois Enlightenment and
also the universalizing and Utopian spirit of Modernism.
- Both Habermas and Adorno have tried to rescue and re-commemorate what
both see as the negative, critical and Utopian power of great high Modernism.
- Habermas has associated these qualities of Modernism with the spirit of 18th
century Enlightenment. However, this stand of Habermas marks a decisive break
between him and other philosophers like Adorno and Horkheimer. For the latter, 18th
century Enlightenment is a misguided will to power and domination over nature,
which later developed in the instrumentalizing world view.
- The difference of opinion between Habermas and Adorno and Horkheimer can
be accounted for by Habermas own vision of history: for him, 18th century
Enlightenment represents promise of liberalism and Utopian content of the first and
universalizing bourgeois ideology equality, civil rights, humanitarianism, free
speech and open media. On the other hand, capitalism represents the failure of all
these qualities.
Para 16: From aesthetic point of view, it is not adequate to accept and respond
to Habermass revival of the modern and his empirical certification that Modernism
is extinct.
- It is quite possible that the situation in which Habermas writes is different from
our own situation: McCarthyism and repression are the realities in the West where
left has been silenced by intellectual intimidation (threats).
- This triumph of a new McCarthyism and repressive power indicate that in the
context of this particular national situation, Habermas may be right. Therefore, for
him, the older forms of high Modernism have retained something of the subversive
(dangerous because it seeks to destroy the established ideas) power which they have
lost everywhere.
143
- Therefore, his assessment of the postmodern (which tries to enfeeble and

undermine the subversive power) is based on the local situation. This makes the
assessment ungeneralizable.
Para 17: Both the earlier positions- Anti-modern/pro-Postmodern and ProModern/Anti-Postmodern agree on one thing: that there is decisive break between
the modern and the postmodern moments.
- There are still two final logical possibilities based on the rejection of any
conception of historical break. These positions therefore, implicitly and explicitly,
call into question the usefulness of the very category of the postmodern.
- Jameson assimilates the work associated with the two latter possibilities into
classical modernism proper. Such assimilation treats postmodern as a form taken
by the authentically modern and as a mere intensification of the old modernist
impulse toward innovation.
Para 18: The two final positions are positive and negative assessment of
Postmodernism (now assimilated back into high modernist tradition):
Positive Position: Jean-Francois Lyotard proposes that his commitment is to the
new and the emergent, a contemporary even a post-contemporary cultural production
i.e. Postmodernism. He proposes that his commitment to postmodern should be
treated as his reaffirmation of the authentic older high Modernism in the spirit of
Adorno.
- This position of Lyotard proposes that postmodernism does not follow high
Modernism (as its waste product) rather it precedes and prepares it. This leads to the
argument that the contemporary Postmodernism is a promise of a return to and the
reappearance of new high Modernism- endowed with all its older power and fresh
life.
- Loytards aesthetic position, however, cannot be adequately evaluated in
aesthetic terms alone because it is informed by the social and political conception of
new social system beyond classical capitalism (in the post-industrial society). Thus
the vision of regenerated Modernism is inseparable from a certain prophetic faith in
the possibilities and promises of the new society.
Para 19: The Negative Position, the last position in the debate, involves the
ideological rejection of Modernism which ranges from Lukacs older analysis of
144
modernist form as the imitation of capitalist degeneration of man to more articulated

critique of high modernism of the present day.
- The difference between this negative position and the already discussed antimodernism is that the negative position does not assume the security of an
affirmative new postmodern culture. Rather it sees postmodern also as a mere
degeneration of the high Modernism proper.
- This is the bleakest (that provides no hope) of all and the most implacably
negative position and is vividly present in the works of the Venetian architecture
historian- Manfredo Tafuri. His analysis is a powerful attack on the protopolitical
impulse in high Modernism.
- Tafuri is also harsh to the negative, demystifying and critical vocation of
various modernisms. That is, the instrumentalizing and desacralizing (secularizing)
tendencies of the capital are present in the works of thinker and artists of the modern
movement.
- The anti-capitalism of thinkers and artists of the modern movement give way
to the total bureaucratic organization and control of late capitalism. Therefore,
Tafuri concludes by arguing the impossibility of any radical transformation of culture
before a radical transformation of social relations themselves.
Para 20: The political opposition present in the two earlier positions is also
present within the positions of both Loytard and Tafuri.
- Both Loytard and Tafuri are explicitly political figures and are committed to
the values of the old revolutionary tradition.
- Loytards assessment of aesthetic innovation as the supreme value seems to
have come out of his revolutionary stance; and Tafuris whole arguments are
consistent with the classical Marxist tradition.
- However, both of them can be rewritten in terms of post-Marxism which is
largely indistinguishable from anti-Marxism proper.
- For example, Loytard has often tried to distinguish between his revolutionary
aesthetics from the other ideals of political revolution. According to Loytard, the
ideals of political revolution are Stalinist, or archaic or incomputable with the
conditions of post-industrial social order. Tafuris notion of the total social
revolution implies a conception of the total system of capitalism. This notion has
145
been destined to discouragement and has led many Marxist to renounce the political
altogether.
Para 21: The diagram: the clubbing together of all the four positions and their
intersection.
- According to Jameson, most of the political positions discussed above for the
aesthetic debate are in reality moralizing judgments. That is, they try to develop a
final judgment on the phenomenon of Postmodernism- either criticising it as corrupt
or celebrating it as a culturally and aesthetically healthy and positive form of
innovation.
- However, the genuine analysis of such a phenomenon cannot depend solely on
such moralizing concepts because its dialectics goes well beyond good and evil and
is dependent on the historical vision.
- Since we are within the culture of the postmodern, it is neither possible to
reject it nor can we celebrate it being complacent and corrupt.
- The ideological judgment on Postmodernism need to take into consideration
ourselves (since we live in it) and the artefacts in question. No historical period can
be understood adequately by means of moralizing judgements.
- From the view of classical Marxism, the seeds of the future already exist
within the present and must be conceptually disengaged from it, both through
analysis and through political praxis.
- Instead of either denouncing or saluting the new culture as the precursor of
technological Utopia, it is more appropriate to assess the culture with the help of the
working hypothesis of a general modification of culture itself within the social
restructuration of late capitalism as a system.
Para 22: Jancks assertion - that postmodern architecture distinguishes itself
from that of high Modernism through its populist priorities (priorities for and of
common people) can be taken as the starting of a general discussion.
- In the context of architecture, it means that the classical high modernist space
(building) seeks to differentiate itself radically from the fallen city fabric in which it
appears. On the other hand, the postmodern buildings celebrate their insertion into
the heterogeneous fabric of the commercial strip, the motel and the fast-food
landscape of the post-superhighway American city.
146
- A play of allusions and formal echoes (historicism) obtains the kinship of these
new art buildings with the surrounding commercial icons and spaces which remove
the claim of the high modernist to radical difference and innovation.
Para 23: The basic question is Can we call the feature of the new architecture
of the postmodern as populist? We need to distinguish between the emergent forms
of a new commercial culture (postmodern) and the older kinds of folk and genuinely
popular culture. The latter was flourished when the older social classes of a
peasantry and an urban artisanal still existed, from the mid 19th century which was
gradually colonized and extinguished due to commodification and the market system.
Para 24: Jameson refers to the universal presence of the above feature in other
arts forms as well. In other arts, this feature appears more unambiguously. The
feature clarifies the older distinction between the high and the so called mass cultureModernism essentially depended on this distinction for its specificity: The Utopian
function of Modernism the securing of a realm of authentic experience over against
the surrounding environment of philistinism, of interior goods and excessively
sentimental art, of commodification, of Readers Digest culture.
Jameson argues that the emergence of high Modernism is contemporaneous with
the first great expansion of a recognizable mass culture (Emile Zola represents
combination of both art novel and the best seller.).
Part 25: This constitutive difference between the high and the mass culture is on
the point of disappearance.
- In Music, after Schunber and Cage, the two antithetical traditions of classical
and the popular begin to merge.
- It seems that the artists of the postmodern are fascinates by the whole new
object world: of Las Vegas strip, of late show and the grade B Hollywood films, of
the so called paraliterature with its categories of the gothic and the romance, the
popular biography, the murder mystery and the science-fiction or fantasy novel.
- In visual arts, the renewal of photography as a significant medium in its own
right and also the plane of substance in pop art or photorealism is a crucial feature
of the same process.
147
- The newer writers no longer quote the earlier material, the fragment and the
motif of a mass popular culture as was done by Joyce and Flaubert. Even if they
quote them, they do not serve any function from our critical or evaluative categories.
Para 26: The above discussion indicates that the populism of the various
postmodern apologies and manifestoes is a mere reflex and symptom of cultural
change in which what used to be condemned in the earlier period has been accepted
and appropriated in the enlarged cultural realm. In that case, anybody will need a
new term to create a basic semantic readjustment. The outcome is the use of the term
postmodernism.
Para 27: Jameson refers to Freuds dream analysis- Freud argued that dream
had hidden sexual meanings, except the sexual dreams which mean something else.
- Freuds arguments are applicable to the postmodern debate and also to the
depoliticized bureaucratic society where all seemingly cultural positions turn out to
be symbolic forms of political moralizing, except the overtly political note which
indicate the slippage from politics back into culture again.
- According to Jameson, the only adequate way out of this vicious circle is a
historical and dialectical view which seeks to grasp the present as History.
7.2.2 Structure of the Essay:

After the analysis of the essay it is easy to understand its structure and the way
Jameson has developed his arguments in the debate of the term and concept
postmodernism. The following can be the rough account of the structure of the
essay:
In the first paragraph, Jameson questions the use of the term postmodernism
from a variety of perspectives- political, cultural, and aesthetic and above all refers to
the very usefulness of the term. From paragraph 2 to 8, Jameson argues that the
positions adopted by different thinkers in the debate of postmodernism are essentially
the attempts of scholars to provide some historical originality to the movement.
Moreover, they try to argue that there is a historical break between what is generally
referred to as modernism and postmodernism. (Note: Jameson uses the terms
modernism, classical modernism and high modernism almost synonymously.)
These thinkers, Jameson further points out, try to present postmodernism as a
homogeneous and integrative movement. However, Jameson in his scholarly analysis
148
of the phenomenon of Postmodernism in different art forms has proved that such
homogeneity is not present. Rather, Postmodernism is marked by heterogeneity not
only from one art to another but also among different manifestations in the same art
form. He dialectically considers the presence of Postmodernism in various arts like
Poetry, Painting, Music, Architecture, Film and Narrative.
From paragraph 9 to paragraph 19, Jameson discusses dialectically the four
positions on the phenomenon of Postmodernism. These four positions constitute the
debate that Jameson refers to in the title of the essay. The first of these positions is
Anti-Modernist/Pro-Postmodernist (Paragraph 9 and 10). The two thinkers he refers
to here are Ihab Hassan and Tom Wolfe. Both the thinkers salute the arrival of
Postmodernism. The first position is courter-balanced by the second position ProModern/ Anti-Postmodern (Paragraph 11 to 16). The theorists he discusses here are
Hilton Kramer and Jurgen Habermas. Whereas Kramers position is closely
associated with that of Wolfe, Habermas articulated the supreme value of modern.
Jameson argues that both the earlier two positions are based on the assumption of a
decisive break between modern and postmodern.
Paragraphs from 17 to 19 elaborately discuss the two remaining positions: the
Positive and the Negative assessment of Postmodernism. The Positive position
(paragraph 18) is associated with Jean-Francois Loytard, whereas the Negative
position (paragraph 19) is associated with Manfredo Tafuri. In paragraph 20,
Jameson assesses the position of both Loytard and Tafuri with reference to each
other. The next paragraph is important, because in it Jameson has presented the way
in which the four positions and the thinkers associated with them can be visualized in
terms of politically progressive spirit.
The final part of the essay is its conclusion, in which Jameson has not only
summed up the dialectic discussion but also analytically indicated that the
ideological judgments like good or bad on the phenomenon of Postmodernism are
not helpful. Rather, the assessment requires the rigorous scrutiny of it. Referring
again to all the arts that he discussed earlier, Jameson here points out that though the
postmodern architecture is said to be populist, the Utopian Modernism is
similarly rooted in the culture in which it is produced. That is to say, Modernism is
associated with parody, whereas Postmodernism is associated with pastiche.
However, by the end of the discussion Jameson bewares us, by referring to Freud,
that though Modernism is said to be Utopian, it is not that and similarly though
149
postmodern is presented as populist, one needs to consider it clearly. This is what

he refers to as the vicious circle and the only way that can lead out is the dialectical
and historical analysis of the present (postmodern) as History.
7.2.3 Summary and Interpretation of the Essay:

Fredric Jameson is commonly regarded as the most important and influential
Marxist cultural critic in the second half of 20th century. Nink Heffernan (2004) says
that the work of Jameson as a critic is three fold:
1.
His work and his presence have helped maintain Marxism as a critical tradition
alive in the United States.
2.
He has successfully adapted the Marxist tradition to suit the new intellectual and
political challenges posed by both European theory and the globalized and
media-based capitalism of post World War II period.
3.
His excellent theorizing of postmodernism which is responsible for the epochdefining debate about the value and significance of contemporary cultural
artefact i.e. Postmodernism.
In fact, the above three fold contribution of Jameson can be seen as his uniform
concern: the dialectical assessment of the contemporary culture as the manifestation
of late capitalism with the methodology of Marxism. In the present essay, Jameson
has quite clearly indicated the way Postmodernism needs to be interpreted. Let us
discuss the ways in which Jameson has interpreted the phenomenon of
Postmodernism in the present essay:
Jameson begins the debate on the term Postmodernism with the following
questions:
1.
Whether Postmodernism exists or is it a mystification?
2.
How its fundamental characteristics are to be described?
3.
Whether the concept is of any use?
As the questions show, Jameson starts the debate right from the bottom: the
existence of Postmodernism; and then goes on to discuss its uses and its specific
characteristics. However, while considering all these issues related to
Postmodernism, one needs to remember that the issues Jameson raises in the above
questions are both aesthetic and political simultaneously. Jameson argues that the
150
debate of Postmodernism in the contemporary theory is based on the assumption of

changed social system. That is to say, in the debate the thinkers want to indicate that
postmodern culture is totally new and that there is a historical break between what is
the modern and the postmodern culture. Moreover, the thinkers argue that the
present postmodern culture is characterized by the consumer society, whereas the
modern culture represents moments of capitalism. That is to say, the very purpose
of the debate is to propose that unlike the modern culture, the postmodern culture is
basically concerned with the consumer and the populace.
Heterogeneity of Style in Different Postmodern Arts:
Jameson is of the view that the invention of the new term like postmodern to
refer to a period, naturally creates a temptation to bring together all the styles and
products which stand in reaction to modernism. That is to say, in order to support
their stand that Postmodernism exists, the scholars combined heterogeneous styles.
Such heterogeneity, says Jameson, is present in different artefacts like poetry,
painting, architecture, etc.
For example, in poetry, there is no similarity between the elaborate false
sentences and syntactic mimesis in the poetry of John Ashbery and the more simple
talk poetry that emerged as a reaction against the complex ironic style of the modern
poetry. In painting as well such heterogeneity is present. The different schools of
painting in the postmodern period are the conceptual art, photorealism and New
Figuration or neo-Expressionism. The only similarity between them is that they all
stand in reaction to Abstract Expressionism, which is the last high modernist school
of painting. In films, Godards break with the classical filmic modernism generated
a variety of stylistic reactions during 1970s. In the field of music also, the
heterogeneity is perceived in the earlier music of John Cage and the later syntheses
of classical and pop music and also in punk and the New Wave rock music. These
styles are significantly different from other manifestations of music in postmodern
period: disco or glitter rock. During the post-modern period, Narrative is
conceptualized as dissolution of liner narrative, a repudiation of representation
and a revolutionary break with the general ideology of story-telling. However,
none of these encapsulate the styles of such writers as Burroughs, of Pynchon and
Ishmael Reed, of Beckett. Neither do they explain the style of French nouveau
roman, the non-fiction novel and the New Narrative. In the recent years another
151
form of Narrative seems to be emerging in commercial films and the novel, i.e. the
nostalgia art.
The field of Architecture is said to be the privileged place where the break
between the modern and the postmodern is highly explicit. The works like Robert
Venturis Learning from Las Vegas (1971), a series of discussions by Christopher
Jencks and the presentation After Modern Architecture by Pier Paolo Portoghesi
Biennale represent the attack on the modernist architecture: the bankruptcy of the
monumental, the failure of its protopolitical or Utopian programme, its elitism
including the authoritarianism, and finally its virtual destruction of the older city
fabric by a proliferation of glass boxes and of high rises. However it is wrong to say
that architectural postmodernism is unified or monolithic style. Rather it represents a
variety of styles like: a baroque postmodernism, a rococo postmodernism, a
classical and a neoclassical post-modernism, a Mannerist and a Romantic variety
in addition to a High Modernist postmodernism.
Jameson argues that there can be different position that can be taken in this
debate and the positions are essentially based on the way one looks at the high or
classical Modernism. Therefore, after discussing the heterogeneity present in the
postmodern styles in different arts, Jameson refers to the four general positions on
the phenomenon of Postmodernism:
Position 1: Anti-Modernism/Pro-Postmodernism:
The earlier generation of postmodernists, like Ihab Hassan, have accepted the
anti-modernist position when they dealt with the postmodernist aesthetics in terms of
poststructuralist thematic. The poststructuralist thematic is based on the ideology of
Heidegger and Derrida, who often talked of the end of Western metaphysics. The
scholars like Hassan salute the arrival of Postmodernism as the coming of a whole
new way of thinking and being in the world. However, Hassan, while celebrating
the arrival of Postmodernism, also includes the writers that represent high
Modernism, like Joyce, Mallarme, in the category of postmodernist writers.
Therefore, Jameson argues that what Hassan celebrates is a new information high
technology rather than Postmodernism proper.
Hassans stand is clarified by the book of Tom Wolfe: From Bauhaus to Our
House. The book is a report on the recent architectural debate. In fact, Wolfes own
New Journalism constitutes one of the varieties of Postmodernism. The most
152
important thing about this book is that it does not represent the Utopian celebration
of the postmodern and the passionate hatred of the Modernism. Rather the book
seeks to criticize Modernism from an ideologically different spirit. On the whole, the
effect of the book is to reawaken in the reader an equally archaic sympathy with the
protopolitical, Utopian, anti-middle-class impulse of high Modernism itself. Thus, it
seems that Wolfes attack on the modern provides a reasoned and contemporary way
of the theoretical rejection of Modernism. Moreover, the book attempts to show how
Modernism can be reappropriated and suited into the contemporary explicitly
reactionary cultural politics. It means that though Wolfe realized the anti-middleclass concerns of Modernism, he thinks such concerns of Modernism to be implicit.
Therefore, he argues that Modernism should be situated in Postmodernism which is
the explicit reaction against the cultural politics of capitalism.
Position 2: Pro-modern/Anti-Postmodern:
The first position finds its opposition in the structural inversion in the counterstatements of a group of theorists. These scholars tried to show the imitative and
irresponsible nature of postmodern and reaffirmed that the authentic impulse of
postmodern is the tradition represented by modern, which they think, is still alive and
vital. The leading scholar of this view is Hilton Kramer who in the twin manifestoes
of his book The New Criterion expressed the view that the monuments of Modernism
reflect the moral responsibility contrasting it with the irresponsibility and
superficiality of the postmodern works represented by those of Wolfe. However, in
his assertion of moral responsibility of the modern, Kramer is depriving the modern
classics of their high-seriousness: their essential anti-middle-class stance and the
protopolitical passion which is responsible for the rejection of Victorian taboos and
family life, of commodification and the secularizing of capitalism, which is present
in the works of writers from Ibsen to Lawrence, from Van Gogh to Jackson Pollock.
With the help of these remarks, Jameson intends to suggest that modern classics
are essentially based on the anti-middle-class stance; therefore, they have rejected the
commodification of man attempted in the Victorian period. Moreover, providing the
moral responsibility to the modern classics Kramer is making the above perception
of modern classics impossible. Therefore, he asks the question, though both Wolfe
and Kramer have much in common, how is it that Kramer is not able to perceive the
anti-middle-class stance of Modernism as it is perceived by Wolfe. Here Jameson
refers to a group of loyal opposites, who tried to oppose the bourgeoisie concern
153
but they were nourished on the funds provided by the bourgeoisie themselves.
Jameson argues that Kramer, in his stand, compares the modern classics with the
production of the loyal oppositions. Jameson, however, accounts for the views of
Kramer by arguing that Kramers basic concern is to eradicate the legacy of the high
modern in the postmodern period. The ultimate purpose of The New Criterion is to
construct a new conservative culture counter-revolution. Jameson therefore wonders
about Kramers lamentation of politics in the postmodern period, because his own
project is essentially political in nature. Therefore, Jameson calls the stand of Kramer
sentimental nostalgia for the 1950s, which will not be fulfilled because the 1960s
has never been forgotten.
Another theorist who has forcefully affirmed the supreme value of Modernism
and has rejected both the theory and the practice of Postmodernism is Jurgen
Habermas. He thinks that the basic vice of Postmodernism is its politically
reactionary function, because it seeks to discredit the modernist impulse of bourgeois
Enlightenment and its universalizing and Utopian spirit. In association with another
Marxist thinker Adorno, Habermas tried to celebrate the negative, critical and the
Utopian power of great Modernism. However, Habermas also associates these
qualities with the 18th century Enlightenment, which marks the difference of opinion
between Habermas and Adorno. This is explicit in Habermass vision of history as a
promise of liberalism and the essentially Utopian content of universalizing
bourgeois ideology. Jameson, however, does not want to be satisfied by Habermass
assertion of the extinction of Modernism. Jameson is of the opinion that what
Habermas has to say about both Modernism and Postmodernism might be based on
his local assessment of the phenomenon. Therefore, his views remain
ungeneralizable.
Jameson says that the earlier two positions (position 1 and 2 discussed above)
are based on the assumption of a decisive break between the modern and the
postmodern. The other two positions, on the other hand, reject this concept of
historical break either implicitly or explicitly. Therefore, the next two positions call
in question the very usefulness of the category of Postmodernism. As for the works
associated with the postmodern period, the next positions group them into the earlier
category, Modernism, as the intensification of the modernist tendency of innovation.
154
Position 3: Positive Assessment of Postmodern:

The last two positions are the positive and the negative assessment of the
phenomenon of postmodern as based in Modernism. The thinker associated with the
third position, Positive Assessment of Postmodern, is Jean-Francois Lyotard. He
proposes that he is committed to the emergent and contemporary phenomenon of
postmodern as the part and parcel of Modernism. Loytard, however, does not want
to see postmodern as the waste product of modern. Rather, for him, the
postmodern both precedes and prepares the modern. As a result, the contemporary
phenomenon of Postmodernism is seen as a promise of the return and reinvention,
the reappearance of the high Modernism with its older power and fresh life. Loytard
says that his position on postmodern is aesthetic one. However, Jameson contends
that Loytards arguments are essentially based on the social and political conception
of new social system beyond classical capitalism. Loytards vision of regenerated
Modernism represents his prophetic faith in the possibilities and promise of the
newly emerging society.
Position 4: Negative Assessment of Postmodern:
The negative assessment of postmodern as the inseparable part of Modernism
involves the rejection of Modernism. Such a position ranges from Lukacs analysis
of modernist forms as dehumanizing and imitative nature of capitalist social life to
more explicitly and elaborately articulated critiques of high Modernism. If this
position criticises modernism, one is likely to find some connections between the
first position, anti-modernist/pro-postmodernist, and the present position. However,
Jameson argues that for the scholars who propose the first position, the postmodern
period provides a hope, whereas for the thinkers associated with the last position the
postmodern is a mere degeneration of the impulses of high Modernism proper. Such
a negative position, which Jameson refers to as the bleakest of all and the most
implacably negative, is present in the works of Manfredo Tafuri, the Venetian
architecture historian. His analysis criticizes the protopolitical impulses of high
Modernism. Tafuri talks of the negative, demystifying and critical vocation of
Modernism. That is to say, the criticism of the instrumentalizing and desacralizing
(secularizing) tendencies of capitalism reflected in the works of Modernism is not
helpful. Rather, the anti-capitalism in these works provides the basis of total
bureaucratic organization and control of capitalism. Therefore, Tafuri concludes that
155
there is impossibility of the radical transformation of culture before such a

transformation of social relations themselves.
Comment on the Four Positions:
Jameson argues that the opposition present in the position 1 and 2 is also present
in position 3 and 4. However, one should not forget that both Loytard and Tafuri are
explicitly political figures and are committed to the values of revolutionary tradition.
Loytards praise of the aesthetic innovations of modern art is derived from his
revolutionary stance, whereas Tafuris stand reflects his position as a classical
Marxist. However, both the theorists, says Jameson, can be rewritten in terms of
post-Marxism. Loytard has often distinguished between his own revolutionary
aesthetic from the ideals of political revolution. For him, political revolution is either
Stalinist or as anarchic and unsuitable to the post-industrial society. On the other
hand, Tafuris argument of total social revolution implies the prevalence of the total
system of capitalism. In fact, it is due to such extreme arguments like these that many
Marxist have stopped discussing political altogether.
The above four positions discussed are presented in the following way:
ANTI-MODERNIST
PRO-MODERNIST
Wolfe -
Loytard
Jencks +
PRO-POSTMODERNIST
ANTI-POSTMODERNIST
Tafuri
Kramer Habermas +
156
The diagram represents the positions of each of these six thinkers on the issues of
Modernism and Postmodernism.
Jamesons Analysis of Postmodernism:
After discussing the four positions of various theorists, Jameson now wants to
analyze each of these positions, more particularly, the view that the postmodern art is
populist and also the absolute pessimism of Tafuri. However, he is of the opinion
that most of the aesthetic positions discussed above are in reality political positions.
Therefore, they are moralizing positions in that they seek to develop a final view on
Postmodernism, as either corrupt or culturally and aesthetically healthy and positive
form of innovation. However, such moralizing judgement as good and evil are not
useful for the genuine historical and dialectical analysis of the phenomenon. Jameson
says that since we are within the culture of the postmodern, its easy rejection or its
equally easy celebration is impossible. Similarly, the ideological judgement on the
phenomenon involves a judgment on us as well. Moreover, an entire period of
history cannot be grasped adequately by means of moral judgements. Therefore,
Jameson wants to go by the maxim of classical Marxism that the seeds of the future
already exist in the present. Such seeds can be located with the help of analysis and
through political praxis. Therefore, instead of evaluating the phenomenon as either
good or evil, it needs to be analyzed and interpreted with the help of the present
culture as representing the logic of late capitalism.
In order to start interpreting the phenomenon, Jameson begins with the views of
Jencks on the emergence of Postmodernism- that postmodern architecture
distinguishes itself from the architecture of high Modernism through its populist
priorities. That is to say, the architecture of the postmodern period is basically
concerned with the populace. The meaning of this assertion is that during the modern
period, classical high modernist buildings tried to show their difference from the
fallen city fabric in which they appear. That is, the modern buildings maintain a
difference from the surrounding city houses. Thus, the identity of the modern
buildings is based on their difference from the remaining buildings. On the other
hand, the postmodern buildings celebrate their insertion into the heterogeneous
buildings like commercial centres, the motel and the fast-food landscape. Moreover,
the new buildings of the postmodern period seek to create a kinship with the
surrounding commercial buildings. Thus, the modern buildings are said to be
radically different and innovative from their surroundings.
157
However, Jameson challenges the above opinion of Jencks by saying that can
the above description of the postmodern buildings help them call populist. Jameson
here wants to distinguish between the commercial culture represented by the
postmodern buildings and the genuinely popular culture represented by the older
social classes of a peasantry and an urban artisan. Thus, Jameson argues that there is
difference between the populist nature of the postmodern architecture and the
populist culture of the older times. The most important difference between the older
populist culture and the postmodern populist feature is that during the older time a
distinction between high and mass culture is maintained. In fact, this is the
distinction on which Modernism depended for its identity; its Utopian function, thus,
separated it from the surrounding environment of philistinism, of commodification
and also of the Readers Digest culture. Jameson argues that the emergence of high
Modernism is contemporaneous with the first great expansion of mass culture.
Jameson asserts that the older distinction between the high and the mass culture
is disappearing in postmodern arts: in music, the popular and the classic have begun
to merge; in visual arts, photography and photorealism are the crucial symptoms of
the same process. It seems that the postmodern artists are more fascinated by the
whole new material world. It is seen that the new writers no longer quote the earlier
materials and motifs of the mass and popular culture, as is done by Joyce and
Flaubert. And when they do incorporate the earlier material, the critical categories do
not seem to be functional. Therefore, Jameson argues that the mask of populism of
the postmodern is merely the indication of cultural mutation (alteration, change) in
which what used to be criticized is accepted wholeheartedly. It thus seems that the
postmodernist have made semantic readjustment with the meaning of the word
people when they refer to the postmodern culture as populist.
Jameson wants to interpret the present situation with respect to Freuds dream
analysis: all dreams have sexual meaning, except the sexual dreams; they mean
something else. The similar is the case in the present context, the seemingly aesthetic
and the cultural positions discussed above are essentially political in nature.
Therefore, Jameson argues that the only way out of this vicious circle is the historical
and dialectical analysis of the present as History. In conclusion, it seems that
Jameson is criticizing postmodernism for it has tried to erase the difference between
the high and the mass culture.
158
7.2.4 Conclusion:
Postmodernism:
Jamesons
Contribution
to
the
Theory
of
After the discussion of Jamesons arguments in the present essay, it is helpful to

understand his essential contribution to the discussion of the phenomenon of
Postmodernism. In this regard, Nick Heffernan (2004) has provided an excellent
discussion about Jamesons views regarding the concept in the following way: In
fact, prior to Jamesons lectures on postmodern during 1980s, the term was used
moderately and without any controversy. It referred to various new styles of thinking
and aesthetic practices that differed considerably from that of Modernism. By
analyzing the developments in the fields of poetry, architecture, films, painting and
narrative, Jameson argues that they all share common formal procedures and
characteristics. The new styles associated with the postmodern art are characterized
by a disregard for generic boundaries, a populist acceptance of low or mass
culture and a tendency toward pastiche. On the other hand, the features of
modernist art from which the new styles broke away are- emphasis on aesthetic
autonomy, difficulty and originality. In fact, the similarities of these tendencies
across all arts prompts Jameson think that there is something more than simply the
developments in stylistic features by arguing that a new representation system has
arrived due to the shift in the capitalist mode of production. Thus, for Jameson,
postmodern is not simply a stylistic label, but represents the cultural logic of late
capitalism.
In order to discuss the postmodern arts, Jameson borrows the term late
capitalism from the books Late Capitalism by Ernest Mandel. Jameson argues that
the capitalism of this phase is the purer form of capitalism than its earlier stages.
During this phase, the twin purpose of capitalism- reification and commodificationare intensified. Moreover, Jameson asserts that the centrality of culture is the
defining characteristics of late capitalism. Therefore, during this period, the
production of cultural objects (i.e. art forms) and media is equally important as the
economic and the ideological positions are. Thus, during this period, culture loses its
autonomy that it had during the earlier periods. Postmodernism is the cultural
dominant through which both the structure and imperatives of late capitalism are
furthered and symbolically expressed. Jameson seems to think that the postmodern
culture does not clearly appear until 1960s and its emergence is connected with the
159
revolutionary ethos of 1960s. In fact, Postmodernism derives its qualities like

playfulness, populism and disrespect for boundaries from the revolutionary ethos.
Heffernan then goes on elaborating the characteristics of Postmodernism as
Jameson conceivers them: The first and the prominent feature of postmodern cultural
products is that they reflect the quality of depthlessness. This quality provides a
meaningful connection with history which the earlier realist and modernist forms
struggled to establish. However, the presentation of history in the earlier forms and in
the postmodern forms differs considerably: the earlier realist and modernist forms
encapsulated the collective history and continuity of a whole way of life. On the
other hand, postmodern forms simply display its objects as glamorous for the
viewers consumption. Thus, the prevalence of pastiche in the postmodern forms is
the symptom of the loss of history. During this period, history is reduced to a
collection of texts, images or periods details. The second feature of postmodern arts
is that, unlike the realist and modernist forms which are concerned with the
presentation of depth, complexity and tragic difficulty of subjective experience, it
seeks to create a peculiar emotional tenor as reflected in Kafkas fictions. In fact, the
postmodern forms are concerned with schizophrenic form of selfhood emptied of
any impulse to struggle for coherence or integrity. The accelerated temporality is
yet another feature of postmodern which is associated with the post-individual model
of subjectivity. We are thus immersed in a perpetual present, dissociated from past
and future alike. It explains the discontinuous syntax of the language of poetry,
television, movies and also the breakdown of narrative sequence. In fact, the
traditional function ascribed to narrative- to bind together past, future and presenthas decayed. The last feature of Postmodernism is associated with architecture.
Postmodern architecture is concerned with presentation of a new kind of space. It
explains the proliferation of immense malls throughout suburbia. However, these
spaces are partial, concrete figures of immense, abstract world system of late
capitalism, which cannot be apprehended completely. Thus, as the four
characteristics of Postmodernism delineated by Jameson in his writings indicate, his
assessment of Postmodernism is largely negative and his evaluation of it is
pessimistic.
160
Check Your Progress

A) Answer the following questions in one word/phrase/sentence each:
1.
According to Jameson, what is the assumption behind the debate of

postmodernism?
2.
What is the purpose of the assumption of the changed social order in the
debate of Postmodernism?
3.
In the presence of heterogeneity in the styles of different art forms and also
within them, which is the only feature, according to Jameson, that brings
together all art forms in the Postmodern period?
4.
According to Jameson, the simpler talk poetry of 1960s emerged as a

protest against ----?
5.
What are, according to Jameson, the three prominent features of

postmodern narrative?
6.
According to Jameson, what is the central feature of Postmodernism in

general?
7.
What is the first position that Jameson discusses in the debate of

Postmodernism?
8.
How do the theorists of Anti-modern/ Pro-Postmodern position salute the

arrival of Postmodernism?
9.
What, according to Jameson, are the interesting features of the book- From
Bauhous to Our House?
10. What is Loyal Opposition?

11. What, according to Jameson, is the mission of Kramers journal The New
Criterion?
12. How does Jameson refer to the cultural revolution of Kramer?
13. Which two positions, according to Jameson, are based on the assumption of
a decisive break between the modern and the postmodern?
14. Which two positions, call into question the very usefulness of the category
of the postmodern?
161
15. How do the scholars associated with the Positive and Negative Assessment
of Postmodernism treat Postmodernism?
16. What, according to Jameson, is the difference between the Negative
position on postmodern and the Anti-modern/Pro-postmodern position?
17. How does Jameson evaluate the four positions in the debate of
Postmodernism?
18. What happened, according to Jameson, to the constitutive difference
between high and mass culture during the postmodern period?
19. What is the adequate way, according to Jameson, to come out of the vicious
circle of the debate of the Postmodernism?
B) Read the following questions and identify the correct alternative:
1.
2.
Which of the following movements, according to Jameson, is said to be

associated with consumer culture?
a. Postmodernism
b. Modernism
c. Realism
d. Post-Structuralism
How many positions does Jameson discuss on the phenomenon of

postmodern?
a. five
3.
b. four
c. seven
d. two
What has Jameson to say about the relation between the poetry of John
Ashbery and the simpler talk poetry of 1960s?
a. They are similar in nature
b. They are based on the similar subject matter
c. Their form is similar
d. They are not similar to each other
4.
Which has been, according to Jameson, the privileged terrain of

Postmodernism?
a. Poetry
5.
b. Narrative
c. Architecture
d. Films
Who wrote the book- Learning from Las Vegas?

a. Jameson
b. Venturi
c. Jencks
162
d. Hassan
6.
Which of the following thinkers is associated with the Anti-Modern/ ProPostmodern position?
a. Tafuri
7.
d. Ihab Hassan
b. Hassans
c. Habermass
d. Tafuris
Who of the following articulated the supreme value of the modern and
rejected both the theory and the practice of postmodern?
a. Wolfe
9.
c. Kramer
Whose stand, according to Jameson, is explicitly based on the

revolutionary cultural politics?
a. Wolfes
8.
b. Derrida
b. Kramer
c. Habermas
d. Loytard
Who of the following scholars is associated with the position: Positive

Assessment of Postmodernism?
a. Loytard
b. Tafuri
c. Wolfe
d. Kramer
10. Who proposes that Postmodernism does not follow high Modernism, rather
it precedes and prepares it?
a. Loytard
b. Tafuri
c. Wolfe
d. Kramer
11. Which of the following positions in the debate of postmodern has been
referred to as the bleakest of all and the most implacably negative
position?
a. Anti-Modern/ Pro-Postmodern
b. Pro-Modern/ Anti-Postmodern
c. Positive Assessment of Postmodern
d. Negative Assessment of Postmodern
12. Who of the following scholars is associated with the position: Negative
Assessment of Postmodernism?
a. Loytard
b. Wolfe
c. Kramer
d. Tafuri
13. According to Tafuri, no radical transformation of culture is possible before

such a transformation in -----?
a. Arts
b. Social System
c. Politics
d. Capitalism
14. Who of the following attributes supreme value to aesthetic innovation?

a. Loytard
b. Tafuri
c. Kramer
163
d. Hassan
15. Who proposes that the postmodern architecture distinguishes itself from
that of high modernism through its populist priorities?
a. Hassan
b. Jencks
c. Jameson
d. Adorno
7.3 Answers to check your progress

A) 1.
A strategic presupposition of changed social system
2.
To grant some historic originality to the concept of Postmodernism
3.
Because they stand in reaction to the high modernist impulse and aesthetic
4.
as a protest against the New Critical aesthetic of complex, ironic style of

modern poetry
5.
(1) Separation of linear narrative, (2) rejection of representation, and (3) a

revolutionary break with the general idea of story-telling
6.
The complacent play of historical allusions and stylistic pastiche
7.
Anti-Modern/ Pro-Postmodern
8.
As (1) coming of a whole new way of thinking and (2) being in the world
9.
(1) the absence of any Utopian celebration of Postmodernism, and (2) the
absence of the passionate hatred of the Modern
10. It refers to the opposition of the critics of bourgeoisie who are secretly
nourished by the foundations and grants of the bourgeoisie.
11. To eradicate the 1960s and its legacy to the extent that the whole period is
totally forgotten.
12. Sentimental nostalgia for the 1950s
13. Anti-Modern/ Pro-Postmodern and Pro-Modern/ Anti-postmodern
14. Positive and Negative Assessment of Postmodern
15. As a form taken by the authentically modern and as a mere intensification
of the old modernist impulse toward innovation
16. The Negative Position does not assume the security of an affirmative new
postmodern culture, as it is done by the other position
17. as moralizing judgments
18. The difference is on the point of disappearance.
164
19. The historical and dialectical understanding of Postmodernism, which seeks

to grasp it as History.
B) 1.
Postmodernism
2.
four
3.
They are not similar to each other
4.
Architecture
5.
Venturi
6.
Ihab Hassan
7.
Wolfes
8.
Habermas
9.
Loytard
10. Loytard
11. Negative Assessment of Postmodern
12. Tafuri
13. Social System
14. Loytard
15. Jencks
7.4 Exercise
A) Broad Questions:
1.
Write a detailed note on Jamesons contribution to the theory of

Postmodernism.
2.
Discuss in detail the four positions Jameson refers to in the debate of

Postmodernism
3.
Bring out the difference between the four positions in the debate of
Postmodernism and also the position of Jameson.
4.
Discuss the view that Postmodernism is the cultural logic of late

capitalism.
5.
Elaborate in detail the dialectical arguments of Jameson regarding the

heterogeneity in postmodern style.
165
B) Short Notes:
1.
Jameson as a Critic
2.
Anti-Modern/ Pro-Postmodern Position
3.
Pro-Modern/ Anti-Postmodern Position
4.
Positive Assessment of Postmodernism
5.
Negative Assessment of Postmodernism
6.
Modern and Postmodern Architecture
7.
Heterogeneity in Postmodern Styles
7.5 Books for further reading:

Anderson, Perry (1998) The Origins of Postmodernity. VERSO: London and
New York.
Haffernan, Nick (2004) Fredric Jameson (1934--). In Jon Simons (Ed.)
Contemporary Critical Theorists: From Lacan to Said. Atlantic: New Delhi.
Helmling, Steven (2001) Success and Failure of Fredric Jameson: Writing, the
Sublime and the Dialectic of Critique. State University of New York Press: New
York.
Homer, Sean & Kellner Douglas (2004) Fredric Jameson: A Critical Reader.
Palgrave, Macmillan: New York.
Irr, Caren and Buchanan, Ian (Eds.) (2006) On Jameson: From Postmodernism
to Globalization. State University of New York Press: New York.
Roberts, Adam (2000) Fredric Jameson. Routledge: London and New York.
Ross, Andrew (Ed.) (1988) Universal Abandon?:
Postmodernism. University of Minnesova Press: Minnesova.
The
Politics
of
Ross, Stephen (ed.) (2004) Modernism and Theory: A Critical Debate.

Routledge: London and New York.
Wolfreys, Julian (Ed.) (2006) Modern North American Criticism and Theory: A
Critical Guide. Edinburgh University Press: Edinburgh.
166
Unit-8
LITERARY STUDIES IN AN AGE OF ENVIRONMENTAL CRISIS
By CHERYLL GLOTFELTY
INDEX
1.1 Objectives:
After completing the study of this unit you will know about/be able to
Life and works of Cheryll Glotfelty
Importance of the topic in the wake of Global environmental crisis.
The concerns, remedies and hopes of the writer as contemplated by her in
order to evolve effective measures through literary scholarship towards the
partial fulfilment of the problem.
Answer the questions asked on the essay Literary Studies in an Age of-----
1.2 Introduction:
Cheryll Glotfelty is the Sanford Distinguished Professor of the Humanities for
2000-2002, at University of Nevada; Reno, U.S. She has developed several courses
that applied a humanistic approach to issues of the age and aging. An associate
professor in the Department of English, she specializes in Western American
literature, Environmental Literature, Ecocriticism, and Women's Literature. During
her childhood, her family lived in many different places, including Montana,
Washington D.C., Colorado, California, Hawaii, and Germany. She did her undergraduation in one of the universities in California, and received her Ph.D. from
Cornell University, New York. Driving a Ryder truck into the blinding sun of Reno
in 1990, Cheryll knew she never wanted to move again and has sunk deep roots into
this desert soil by making Nevada Literature her primary research focus. In her first
decade at University of Nevada; Reno, (UNR), she has offered more than twenty-five
different courses, from "Animals in Literature," to "Ethnicity, Gender, and American
Identity," to "Aging and Identity in America." Her lecture, "From Riches to Rags:
America in the Great Depression," was broadcast in the KNPB series, The Western
Traditions Lectures. Her hobbies include hiking, rock-climbing, reading, craft
projects, and playing with her husband Steve and daughter Rosa. She was the 2003
winner of the Nevada Regents Teaching Award.
167
The present essay is reproduced from the book titled The Ecocritism Reader
Landmarks in Literary Ecology Edited by Cheryll Glotfelty and Harold Fromm,
1006,GUP, Athens. The book consists of several essays on ecocritism, a branch of
discipline which undertakes to investigate into the issues having common grounds
and affiliations in between ecology and literature. Ecocriticm implies the study of
these two disciplines with an interdisciplinary alliance. It calls upon the intellectual
community to pay attention to the adverse effects that are being cast on nature and
environment as a result of an exploitative attitude of man and his insatiable thirst for
material comfort. Cheryll Glotfelty defines it as the study of the relationship
between literature and the physical environment,. (Glotfelty, Fromm: 1996:xviii)
The term ecocriticism was coined in 1978 by William Rueckert in his essay
Literature and Ecology: An Experiment in Ecocriticism. It was with the
publication of this essay that an interest in the study of nature writing was given a
thrust and the focus of literary studies was directed from the stereotype
anthropocentric approach to the green issues posed by utilitarian culture. By the
early 1990s ecocriticism had emerged as a recognizable discipline within literature
departments of American universities. If it can happen in America, why cant it
happen in India is a question. We are not a country to be an exception to the
scientific revolution that has brought every country under its sweeping wave
threatening the ecological and environmental balance. Intellectuals particularly the
nature scientists are struggling to cope with the problem but compared to America
their efforts are not commanding the situation. The demographic and the
geographical contours of our nation are not very far from the dangers posed by the
nihilism of natural resources and an utter lack of awareness of the risks we might
have to run in future in the instance of draining out the stocks of the natural
resources. Although our scholarship claims to have responded to contemporary
pressures it seems to have ignored the global environmental issue, the most
important issue of our time. For the two decades in the past the 1990s and the year
2000 race, class, caste, and gender have remained as the hot topics in literary studies.
While at the other end the leading newspapers and media studies were focusing on
equally significant issues related to the environmental hazards posed by the
consumerist extremism and the neglect of the losses suffered by the earth on account
of exploration and exploitation of natural resources for the sake of industrial,
technological and scientific achievements. The massive oil spills in mid ocean, lead
168
and asbestos poisoning, toxic waste contamination, extinction of species at an

unprecedented rate, battles over the use of public land used for nonagricultural
purposes, protests over nuclear waste dumps, a growing hole in the ozone layer,
predictions of global warming, acid rain, loss of top soil, destruction of the tropical
rain forests, controversy over the spotted Owl in the Pacific Northwest, a wildfire,
nuclear disasters happened in Chernobyl, new auto emission standards, famines,
droughts, floods, hurricanes, all these have been topics for the headlines into the
leading newspapers. Special conferences are held on environmental issues in the U.
S. The president declared the decade 1990 as the decade of environment and
development taking the world population to the top five million. It is interesting to
note that in 1989 Time Magazines person of the year award went to The
Endangered Earth.
Looking at the events and actions posing threat to the environment and the
preoccupation of the literary scholarship, a certain degree of discrepancy is
noticeable. Scholars on literary studies seem to be less aware of the environmental
crisis. As Glotfelty says,
Until very recently there has been no sign that the institution of literary studies
has ever been aware of the environmental crisis. For instance there have been no
journals, no jargon, no jobs, no professional societies or discussion groups, and no
conferences on literature and the environment. (Glotfelty, Fromm XVI ). On the
other hand she agrees that these days disciplines in humanities like history,
philosophy, law, sociology and religion are going green since 1970s but literary
studies in specific except for the civil rights and womens liberation movements,
have not recorded their concern over environmental issues. It is realized that since
the decade of the seventies literary scholars have been recording their ecological
consciousness by undertaking to bring forth these issues by publishing articles and
organizing academic groups, clubs, seminars and conferences at national and
international level. Many scholars have made an attempt to study literature from the
point of view of environmental ethics and tried to make people aware of their
responsibilities to nature and environment but their efforts were not recognized as a
distinct critical school or movement only because of the fact that these critics and
scholars rarely cited one anothers works and they didnt know that a discipline like
ecocriticism or literature could be studied with an environmental approach at all.
169
1.2.1 Check your progress: I

A. Choose the correct alternatives and complete the following statements.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
CheryGlotfelty is one of the renowned scholars working in the Department

of English in
a. Oxford University
b. Nevada University Reno (U. S.)
c. Pennsylvania University
d. Cambridge University
Ecocriticism implies the study of two disciplines together namely--a. ecology and geology
b. ecology and literature
c. ecology and criticism
d. ecology and aesthetics.
The term ecocriticism was coined by -------in 1978.

a. Harold Fromm
b. Glen Love
c. William Rueckert
d. Joseph Meeker
Time Magazines Person of the Year Award of 1989 was conferred on----a. Paula Gun Allen
b. Sue Campbell
c. Thomas Lyon
d. The Endangered Earth.
Ecocriticism had emerged as a recognizable discipline within literature

departments of American universities in-------------a. 1970
b. 1980
c. 1990
d. 2000
B. Fill in the blanks with suitable words:

1.
----------is an interdisciplinary branch of discipline which undertakes to

investigate issues related to ecology and environment.
2.
-----------attitude of man is responsible for environmental degradation.
3.
-----------defines ecocriticism as the study of the relationship between

literature and the physical Environment
4.
Ecocriticism emerged as a recognizable discipline for the first time within

literature departments of ----------Universities.
5.
Basically the green issues are posed by ----------------culture.

170
C. Answer the following in one word/ phrase or a sentence.

1.
Which issue seems to have been ignored by contemporary scholarship?
2.
Which decade was declared by the U.S. President as the decade of

environment and development?
3.
Mention any two disciplines in humanities which have not recorded their
concern over Environmental issues.
4.
From which point of view many scholars have made an attempt to study
literature?
5.
Why environmental approach to literature remained unknown.
Terms to remember: Ecology, ecocriticism, environment, environmental ethics,

anthropocentricism.
1.2.2 Check your progress: I (Answers)

Choose the correct alternatives and complete the following statements.
1.
b.
Nevada University Reno (U. S.)
2.
b.
ecology and literature
3.
c.
William Rueckert
4.
d.
The Endangered Earth.
5.
c.
1990

1.
Ecocriticism
2.
Exploitative
3.
Cheryl Glotfelty
4.
American
5.
Utilitarian

1.
Global environmental
2.
1990s
171
3.
history, philosophy
4.
environmental ethics.
5.
Because scholars on ecocriticism rarely cited one anothers works.
1.3 BIRTH OF ENVIRONMENTAL LITERARY STUDIES:

In the early nineties the seeds of environmental studies were sown with the
publication of O. Waages book Teaching Environmental literature: Materials,
Methods, Resources which included course descriptions from nineteen different
scholars and sought to foster a greater presence of environmental concern and
awareness in literary disciplines. In 1989 Alicia Nitecki founded The American
Nature Writing Newsletter, whose purpose was to publish brief essays, book reviews,
classroom notes, and information pertaining to the study of writing on nature and the
environment. A few groups of environmentalists started literary journals and many
universities in America began to introduce environmental studies in the curricula at
the graduate and post graduate courses through English departments. In 1990 the
University of Nevada, Reno, created the first academic position in Literature and
Environment.
During these years several special sessions on nature writing were conducted
and quite a few annual literary conferences were held. The noticeable of these were
Ecoriticism: The Greening of Literary Studies organized by Harold Fromm, in
1991, a symposium was held under the auspices of American Literature Association
Symposium, and guidance of Glen Love entitled American Nature Writing: New
Contexts, New Approaches (1992). In 1992, at the annual meeting of the Western
Literature Association, a new Association for the study of Literature and
Environment (ASLE) was formed with Scott Slovic as its first president. ASLEs
mission is to promote the exchange of ideas and information pertaining to literature
that considers the relationship between human beings and the natural world and to
encourage new nature writing, traditional and innovative scholarly approaches to
environmental literature and interdisciplinary environmental research. ASLE
sprawled by means of its membership which took to more than 750 groups all over
the continent and culminated in the first conference within a period of three years
after its inception in 1992. In 1993 Patric Murphy established a new journal, ISLE:
Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, to provide a forum for
172
critical studies of the literary and performing arts proceeding from or addressing
environmental issues. This included ecological theory, environmentalism, conception
of nature and their depictions, the human/nature dichotomy and related concerns.
Thus by 1993 ecological literary study emerged as a recognizable critical
school.
1.4 DEFINITION OF ECOCRITICISM

Cheryl Glotfelty defines ecocriticism as the study of the relationship between
literature and the environment. Just like the feminist criticism discusses the gender
consciousness as reflected in literature and Marxist criticism deals with modes of
production and surplus value, ecocriticism takes an earth-centered approach to
literary studies. Ecocritics and theorists question the relevance of literature by raising
questions such as: How is nature represented in the concerned literary piece, i.e. a
sonnet, a novel or a drama. Are the values expressed in it consistent with ecological
wisdom? How do our metaphors of the land influence the course of that work of art?
Does it include the characteristics of nature writing? In addition to race, class and
gender, should place also become a new category? Do men write about nature
differently than women do? In what ways has literacy itself affected humankinds
relationship with the natural world? In what ways and to what effect is the
environmental crisis seeping into contemporary literature and popular culture? What
bearing might the science of ecology have on literary studies? How is science open
to literary analysis? What cross- fertilization is possible between literary studies and
environmental discourse in related discipline such as history, philosophy,
psychology, art and ethics?
Despite the broad scope of enquiry as above one thing is common and
acceptable and that is all ecological criticism shares the fundamental premise that
human culture is connected to the physical world, affecting it and affected by it.
Ecocriticism takes as its subject the interconnections between nature and culture,
specifically the cultural artifacts of language and literature. As a critical stance, it has
one foot in literature and the other on land; as a theoretical discourse, it negotiates
between the human and the nonhuman.
Ecocriticism could further be distinguished from other critical approaches in the
following ways: Literary theory, in general, examines the relations between writers,
texts, and the world. In most literary theory the world is synonymous with
173
societythe social sphere. Ecocriticism expands the notion of the world to

include the entire ecosphere. If we agree with Barry Commoners first law of
ecology, everything is connected to everything else, we must conclude that
literature does not float above the material world in some aesthetic ether, but, rather,
plays a part in an immensely complex global system, in which energy, matter and
ideas interact. It was Joseph Meekker to use the term literary ecology in his book The
Comedy of Survival: Studies in Literary Ecology (1972) to refer to the study of
biological themes and relationships which appear in literary works. He
simultaneously made an attempt to discover what roles have been played by
literature in the ecology of human species. The term ecocriticism was first coined
in 1978 by Willliam Rueckert in his essay Literatute and Ecology: An Experiment
in Ecocriticism. By ecocriticism Rueckert meant the application of ecology and
ecological concepts to the study of literature. Rueckerts definition lays emphasis on
the science of ecology whereas Barry Commoners all possible relations between
literature and the physical world. Other terms used in ecoritical discourses include
ecopoetics, environmental literary criticism, and green cultural studies. Many
scholars prefer the term ecocriticism or ecocritic to environmental or enviro because
eco is analogous to the science of ecology. Ecocriticism implies the study of
relationships between human culture and the physical world. Moreover enviro
appears to be anthropocentric and dualistic. It implies that we humans are at the
centre, surrounded by everything that is not us, the environment. Eco in contrast,
implies interdependent communities, integrated systems, and strong connections
among constituent parts.
1.4.1 Check your progress: II

A . Choose the correct alternatives and complete the following statements.
1.
The seeds of environmental studies were sown with the publication of a

book by
a.
a. Waages
b.
b. William Rueckert
c.
c. Barry Commoner
d.
d. Cheryl Glotfelty
174
2.
3.
4.
Who of the following founded The American Nature Writing Newsletter, in

1989
a. John Muir
b.Wallace Stanger
c. Joseph Meekker
d. Alicia Nitecki
Which of the following Universities created the first academic position in

Literature and Environment.
a. Oxford University
b. California University
c. Nevada University Reno
d. Nevada State University
Feminist criticism discusses the gender--------- as reflected in literature.

a. consciousness b. phenomenon
5.
c. discourse d. relationship
------ was elected to be the first president of ASLE(Association for the

study of Literature and Environment)
a. Scott Slovic
b. O. Waage
c. Meeker
d. Greg

1.
ASLEs mission is to promote the relationship between human beings and

the------------
2.
The first conference of Association for the study of Literature and

Environment was held in the year--------
3.
By the year ------ ecological literary studies emerged as a recognizable

critical school.
4.
In 1993 established a new journal, ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in

Literature and Environment.
5.
The major purpose was to encourage ------- research in literature and

environment.

1.
Who defined the application of ecology and ecological concepts to the

study of literature?
2.
When was the term ecocriticism first coined by William Rueckert?

175
3.
What does the term literary ecology imply?
4.
Which term appears to signify anthropocentric?
5.
What is the synonym of the world in literary theory?
1.4.2 Check your progress: II (Answers)

1.
a. O. Waage
2.
d. Alicia Nitecki
3.
c. Nevada University Reno
4.
a. consciousness
5.
a. Scott Slovic

1.
natural world
2.
1992
3.
1993
4.
Patric Murphy
5.
interdisciplinary

1.
Rueckert
2.
1978.
3.
The study of biological themes.
4.
Enviro
5.
Societythe social sphere.
176
1.5 THE HUMANITIES AND THE ENVIRONMENTAL CRISIS

All of us share a common belief that we have reached the age of environmental
crisis as a consequence of our acts against nature damaging it to such an extent that
the planets basic life support systems have come under tremendous pressure causing
global catastrophe, destroying much beauty and extermination of countless species.
We study Literatures and languages but lack in dealing with environmental problems
through this endeavor. Its time for us to think as to how could we contribute within
our capacity as professors of literature to restore environmental crisis? The answer
lies in recognizing that current environmental problems are largely of our making.
They are the by-products our culture. Donald Worster is of the view that we are
facing a global crisis today, not because of how ecosystems function but rather
because of how our ethical systems function. Getting through the crisis requires
understanding our impact on nature as precisely as possible, but even more, it
requires understanding those ethical systems and using that understanding to reform
them. Historians, along with literary scholars, anthropologists, and philosophers,
cannot do the reforming, of course, but they can help with the understanding.
With the understanding as envisaged by Donald, scholars throughout the
humanities are trying to add environmental dimension to their respective disciplines.
Connections are being explored between nature, culture and history, between
geography and culture particularly the primal cultures that survived in the close
vicinity of nature by adapting to the value system and rituals from nature itself.
Similarly psychologists are also trying to explore the linkages between
environmental conditions and their impact on mental health. In philosophy, various
subfields like environmental ethics, deep ecology, ecofeminism, and social ecology
have emerged in an effort to understand and critique the root cause of environmental
degradation and to formulate an alternative view of existence that will provide an
ethical and conceptual foundation for right relations with the earth. Theologians too
are recognizing the sanctity of earth and worshiping it as Earth Goddess. Eastern
religious traditions and Native American teachings contain much wisdom about
nature and spirituality. Literary scholars specialize in questions of value, meaning,
tradition, point of view and language. In these areas they are making a substantial
contribution to environmental thinking.
177
1.6 SURVEY OF ECOCRITICISM IN AMERICA

Many kinds of studies huddle under the spreading tree of ecological literary
criticism. Literature and the environment is a big topic. According to Wallace
Stegner, a novelist, historian and a critic this topic is suggestive and open to almost
every discipline. Literature and environment have always been interlinked and have
so many things to share. He employs Elaine Showalters model of three
developmental stages of feminist criticism to describe the development of
ecocriticism.
The first stage in feminist criticism, the images of women stage, is concerned
with representations, concentrating on how women are portrayed in canonical
literature. These studies contribute to the vital process of consciousness raising by
exposing sexiest stereotypes- witches, bitches, broads and spinsters pointing
towards as to how the aesthetic value of literature was distorted by targeting them
(women as they were depicted) who covered almost half of the human race.
Analogous to this ecocriticism makes an attempt to study the representations of
nature such as Eden, Arcadia, Virgin land, miasmal swamp etc. as they appear in
literature just for the sake of temporal ends. The other topics it includes are the
frontier, animals, cities, specific geographical regions, rivers, mountains, deserts,
Indians, technology, garbage and the body.
Showalters second stage in feminist criticism deals with womens literature and
the way their feminist consciousness was represented, re-discovered, reissued and
reconsidered through their own writings. In ecocriticism, similar efforts are being
made to recuperate the hitherto neglected genre of nature writing that began in
England with Gilbert Whites A Natural History of Selbourne (1789) and extended to
America through Henry Thoreau, John Borough, John Muir, Mary Austin, Also
Leopold, Rachel Carson, Edward Abbey, Annie Dillard, Barry Lopez and many
others. Nature writing boasts a rich past, a vibrant present and a promising future and
ecocritics draw from any number of existing critical theoriespsychoanalytic, new
critical, feminist, Bakhtinian, deconstructive--- in the interest of understanding and
promoting this body of literature. It is realized that nature writing is gaining ground
and coming into prominence in the literary marketplace. Looking at the growing
number of anthologies that have been published in the recent years, it could be said
that we are growing in our ecological consciousness. In the wake of an ever
178
expanding urban space and societal values, nature writing would certainly play a
vital role in teaching us to value the natural world. Nature writing boasts a rich past,
a vibrant present, and a promising future. Writers like Willa Cather, Robinson
Jeffers, Merwin, Addrine Rich, Wallace Stegner, Gary Snider, Mary Oliver, Alice
Walker and many other Native American writers have contributed a lot by recording
their concerns and consciousness of nature through their writings. Writers
preoccupied with mainstream genres such as prose, poetry and fiction are engaging
their talents to promote environmental awareness through their works.
Corresponding to the feminist interest in the lives of women ecocritics strive to study
the environmental conditions of an authors lifethe influence of place on his/ her
imagination demonstrating where the author grew up, travelled and wrote his/her
works. Some critics find it worthwhile to visit the places an author lived and wrote
about.
In the Third Stage Showalter identifies the theoretical framework of feminist
criticism. That is why it is known as the theoretical phase. This phase is far reaching
and complex drawing on wide range of theories to raise fundamental questions about
the symbolic construction of gender and sexuality in a literary discourse. Analogous
to this ecocriticism also strives to examine the symbolic construction of species. It
tries to question the dualism prevalent in Western thought which separates meaning
from matter, mind from body, divide men from women and wrench humanity from
nature. A related endeavor is also being carried out under a newly coined discipline,
a combination of the ecological and the feminist issues known as ecofeminism, a
theoretical discourse whose theme is the link between the oppression of women and
the domination of nature. Yet another theoretical project attempts to develop an
ecologilcal poetics, taking the science of ecology, with its concept of the ecosystem
and its emphasis on interconnections and energy flow, as a metaphor for the way
poetry functions in society. Ecocritics are also considering the philosophy currently
known as deep ecology, exploring the implications that its radical critique of
anthropocentricism might have for literary study.
1.7 THE FUTURE OF ECOCRITICISM:

An ecologically focussed criticism is a worthy enterprise because it directs our
attention to matters about which we need to be thinking. Eco-consciousness raising
is its most important task. It is not possible for us to solve the environmental
179
problems without thinking seriously about them. Cheryl Glotfefly is hopeful about
the future of ecocritical studies. In future every department where literature is taught
would have special wing to study the relationship between literature and
environment. She is hopeful to see green scholars being elected to the highest offices
in our professional and corporate organizations. In her words,
We have witnessed the feminist and multi-ethnic critical movements radically
transform the profession, the job market, and the canon. And because they have
transformed the profession, they are helping to transform the world.
There is a need of strong will-power and voice in the teaching profession to
uphold the green cause and cast its influence on the existing body of literary and
critical canon, the curriculum and university policy. There are books line Aldo
Leopalds A Sand County Almanac and Edward Abbeys Dessert Solitaire which
have been recognised as standard texts courses in American literature.Students taking
lliterature and compostion course will be encouraged to think seriously about the
relationship of humans to nature, about the ethical and aesthetic dilemmas posed by
the environmental crisis., and about how language and literature transmit values with
profound ecological implications. Colleges and Universities of the twenty-first
century will require that all students complete at least one interdisciplinary course in
environmental studies. Institutes of higher learning will one day do business on
recycled content paper. Some institutes have already started doing this. In the future
we can expect to see ecocritical scholarship becoming ever more interdisciplinary,
multicultural and international. The interdisciplinary work is well underway and
could be further facilitated by inviting experts from a wide range of disciplines to be
guest speakers at literary conferences and by hosting more interdisciplinary
conferences on environmental topics. Ecoriticism has been predominantly a white
movement. It will become a multiethnic movement when stronger connections are
made between the environment and issues of social justice and when a diversity of
voices is encouraged to contribute to the discussion. Environmental problems are
globally recognised and are being addressed on various levels by nations all over the
world with different scales and capacities sometimes by seeking international
collaborations.
Loren Acton, a ranch boy who turned a solar astronomer and a crew member
(payload specialist) of Challenger Eight space-shuttle in 1985, commented on the
future of ecocritical studies in a global contest thus,
180
Looking outward to the blackness of space, sprinkled with the glory of a

universe of lights, I saw majesty- but no welcome. Bellow was a welcoming planet.
There, contained in the thin, moving incredibly fragile shell of the biosphere is
everything that is dear to you, all the human drama and comedy. Thats where life is;
thats where all the good stuff is.
1.7.1. Check your progress: III

A. Choose the correct alternatives and complete the following statements.
1.
2.
3.
All of us share a common belief that we have reached the age of

environmental crisis as a consequence of our acts
a.
against nature
b. curious attitude to it
c.
ignorance
d. of anonymity
The major focus of ecologically focussed criticism is to------a.
teach about nature
b. generate ecological consciousness
c.
evaluate nature writing
d. define natural phenomena.
Who among the following employs Elaine Showalters model of three

developmental stages of feminist criticism to describe the development of
ecocriticism.
a.
4.
5.
Earn Naess
b. Joseph Meeker c. Wallace Stegner d. Loren Acton
The first stage in Alain Showalters feminist criticism is concerned with---a.
Portrayal of women in canonical literature
b.
women as they are described in ancient literature
c.
women described in Indian literature
d.
women depicted in British literature.
Ecofeminsism, a theoretical discourse which deals with------a.
ecology and women
b.
ecosophy and feminism
c.
oppression of women and the domination of nature.
d.
economics and women

181

1.
We are facing a global crisis today, because of our ----------.
2.
Contemporary scholarship seems to have ignored the ------------issue.
The U. S. President declared the decade -------- as the the decade of

environment and development.
4.
Mention any two ----------disciplines in humanities which have not recorded

their concern over environmental issues.
5.
Environmental approach to literature remained unknown because the

scholars on ecocriticism---------- one anothers works.

1.
Who says that the environmental problems are largely of our making?
2.
Who are trying to explore the impact of environment on mental health?
3.
Who is hopeful about the future of ecocritical studies?
4.
What does Showalters second stage in feminist criticism deal with?
5.
What does Elian Showalter identify in the third phase of Feminist

Criticism?
1.7.2 Check your progress: III (Answers)

1.
a.
against nature
2.
b.
generate ecological consciousness
3 . c.
Wallace Stegner
4.
a.
Portrayal of women in canonical literature
5.
c.
oppression of women and the domination of nature.

1.
ethical systems
2.
global environmental
3.
1990s
182
4.
history, philosoph
5.
rarely cited

1.
Donald Worster
2.
Psychologists
3.
Cheryl Glotfefly
4.
Feminist consciousness
5.
Theoretical framework.
1.7.3 Exercises:
1.
Bring out the central idea of the essay Literary Studies in an Age Of
Environmental Crisis
2.
In what way do you think humanities and literary studies can help minimising
the Environmental threats and creating ecological awareness?
3.
Define ecocriticism and comment on its importance and relevance as an

interdisciplinary school of literary criticism.
4. Wrie a detailed note on the future of environmental studies in India in the wake
of globalization and privatization.
5.
What measures do you think we should take in order to check environmental

pollution and save our planet earth from the crisis it is likely to face in near
future?
1.7.3.
FIELD WORK/EXTRA-CURRICULAR ACTIVITIES:
STUDENTS COULD TRY ON THEIR OWN FOR THE BETTER

UNDERSTANDING OF THE CURRENT ECOLOGICAL PROBLEMS.
Study this essay from the point of view of our ecological consciousness.
Visit any one of the Schools, Colleges, institutes or a non- governmental
organization where special efforts are being taken to preserve our nature and
environment.
183
Suggest the Principal of your college to establish an Enviro- Club for an

effective implementation of the policies you would like to adopt for the
preservation of nature, the flora and the fauna.
Prepare an intensive programme for generating ecological awareness among the
people by using effective means like digital signboards,, hoardings with
celebrities from fields like media entertainment, leading newspapers,
Advertising agencies in multimedia etc. in order to enhance the social outreach
of ecological wisdom.
1.7.4.
SUPLIMENTARY READING:
The abstract given bellow is retained from a Minor Research Project on

Literature and Ecology titled LITERATURE AND ENVIRONMENT:
PERSPECTIVES ON STUDIES IN ECOCRITICISM IN INDIA completed and
submitted to the U. G. C by Dr. M. L. Jadhav, Associate Professor, Department
of English, Shivaji University, Kolhapur.
Different critics have defined Ecocriticism in various ways by concentrating on
the aspects that are to be highlighted depending on their perceptions particularly on
the issues related to the phenomenon of ecological crises. There is no difference of
opinion on the fact that Ecocriticism is the study of the relationship between
literature and the natural environment. The beginning of it as a critical discipline
was heralded by the publication of two seminal works that were published in 1996,
The Ecocriticism Reader, edited by Cheryl Glotfelty and Harold Fromm, and The
Environmental Imagination by Lawrence Buell. Cheryl Glotfelty in her
Introduction to The Ecocriticism Reader says,
What then is ecocriticism? Simply put, ecocriticism is the study of the
relationship between literature and the physical environment. Just as feminist
criticism examines language and literature from a gender conscious perspective and
Marxist criticism brings an awareness of modes of production and economic class to
its reading of texts, ecocriticism takes an earth centred approach to literary
studies.(Glotfelty1996: xix)
Glotfelty has posed some questions from ecological point of view and made an
attempt to make science open to literary analysis. Her intention through this book is
to make us aware of the possible cross fertilization and collaboration between literary
studies and environmental discourses in related disciplines such as history,
184
philosophy, psychology, art, history and ethics. Richard in his Writing the
Environment (1998) while writing about ecocritic says,
The ecocritic wants to track environmental ideas and representations wherever
they appear, to see more clearly a debate which seems to be taking place, often partconcealed, in a great many cultural spaces. Most of all ecocriticism seeks to evaluate
texts and ideas in terms of their coherence and usefulness as responses to
environmental crisis.(Richard:1998:05)
The genre Ecocriticism is also known by many other names such as Green
Cultural Studies, Ecopoetics and Environmental Literary Criticism etc. The term
ecocriticism is coined out of two different disciplines i.e. Ecology and Criticism
which is related to literature. One is purely scientific and the other metaphoric. If
examined in the light of the subject matter they deal with it is very clear that it is
very difficult to yoke them together in order to achieve a common objective. Ecology
is concerned with the study of the relationships between living organisms in their
natural environment whereas ecocriticism is concerned with the reflection of the
impact of environment on the creativity of man. It also undertakes to examine mans
sense of gratitude and the way it is reflected through literature. There are two
legitimate reasons for undertaking an endeavour like this. Man always exists within
some natural environment. Not only does he woo his physical being to nature but
also his spiritual being since it is influenced by the morale of nature. In fact this
realization is implicit within us but our immense passion for development under the
pretension of scientific advancement we forgot our affinity with nature and created
an illusion before us. On the contrary the tribal man in his innocence and pure love
understands this truth of being one with the spirit of nature and feels that he owes all
that he possesses i.e. the very texture of his instinctive, emotional and intellectual
being to Nature. To what extent man can love his land could be realised from one of
the anecdotes happened in the regime of Franklin Pearce, the President of America.
He wanted to purchase a piece of land which belonged to one of the tribes whose
leader was Mr. Seatle. While declining the proposal of the President he said,
Every part of this land is sacred to my people. Every shining pine needle sandy
shore, mist in the dark woods and humming insect is holy in the memory and
experience of my people. While commenting on the sanctity of the objects in Nature
he said, the rivers are our brothers, they quench our thirst. The rivers carry our
185
canoes and feed our children(Mishra: 1992:19) Commenting on the so called

scientific culture he said,
There is no quiet place in the white mans cities. No place to hear the unfurling
of leaves in spring or the rustle of an insects wings. The air is precious to the red
man for all things share the same breath if we sell our land, we will make one
condition. The white man must treat the beasts of this land as his brothers. Speaking
about the necessity of beasts he said, What is man without the beasts? If all the
beasts were gone, man would die from a great loneliness of spirit. For whatever
happens to the beasts, soon happens to man. All things are connected. (Ibid:19)
In the West, Rivers are treated as brothers. We treat them as our mothers feeding
us with their bountiful waters that help yield plentiful of grains. In ancient scriptures
rivers have been associated with various gods and goddesses. Each of the rivers that
flow in and through Indian Territory is connected with a myth of creation which
reminds us of the sanctity of our origin and the sense of gratitude we must cherish
and express the same towards our Creator. It is necessary that we preserve this
tradition and ancient heritage and pass it on to our children telling them that if you
treat our earth as your mother, you should not spit on her. We must tell them that the
earth does not belong to you; you belong to her and that you have to maintain the
sanctity of this relationship. You have to remain connected to her and thereby
everything that belongs to her. During the last decade of the twentieth century
ecological imbalance pertaining to the excessive exploitation of the natural resources
was one of the major global issues. It was doubted that if it continues in the same
quantum and momentum perhaps the survival of the Earth will be endangered. Mans
spiritual affinity with Earth instilled in him such a sense of gratitude for her that he
started treating her as his Mother, the Mother-Earth. That is why man is known as a
life-long wanderer having a very close affinity with his physical and cultural
environment. Although he had to wander in search of his livelihood, wherever he
went, he tried to identify himself with the nature and the environment around him
and tried to strike a chord of affinity with that place which he compared with his
mother to realise the grace of a mother-child relationship on metaphorical plane. It
was this concern on his part which was responsible to create an anxiety within him
and today he feels vitally threatened on the ecological degradation that had been
caused by himself to his own Mother-Earth. A terrible fear has overtaken him and he
is overhauled to realise the pathetic plight of the Earth. Overexploitation of natural
186
recourses and mans disregard to air, water and soil has made the total survival
difficult. It is not just the living world that has come under this threat to the existence
but also the nonliving, the whole ecosphere is on the verge of extinction. In the wake
of this ecological crisis the end of the twentieth century recorded the heartiest
concern on the part of intellectual community including even the business tycoons by
showing their consent to do something from their own position. Ecocriticism,
considered in the light of the human preoccupation as above is one of the ways in
which humanists fight for the world in which they live. Among the contemporary
literary and cultural theories Ecocriticism occupies a unique position because of its
close relationship with the science of ecology. It may not be possible for the
Ecocritics to challenge the debates based on the scientific aspects of ecology but
they can think of transgressing the boundaries of the discipline and develop an
ecological literacy by exposing the environmental issues to the community at large.
Literature and Ecology belong to two distinct aspects of humanity. Literature studies
human relationships with regard to the specific cultural context within which it is
created. It deals with the complex issues related to the entire phenomenon known as
human existence. Creative imagination happens to be its principal source. It studies
from utilitarian point of view; it is multifarious in its impact on human sense and
sensibility. It entertains and enlightens, inspires and encourages, imbibes and
inculcates values which are necessary for community development and its moral
welfare.
INTERDISCIPLINARY SIGNIFICANCE:
Although the combination of physical (ecology) and Literature (spiritual)
appears to be unusual, it is seen that both of them aim at finding the solutions for the
survival of man. They are relevant disciplines when studied from the point of view of
the environmental issues the world is facing today. Ecology is the science that
studies the relationships between living organisms and their physical environment. It
is concerned with the living organisms and their natural environment. As a branch of
science it has got its own relevance in the field of science in general and the natural
sciences in particular. It is studied for the sake of better understanding of our
environment. The lessons included are a sort of anthropocentric orientations where
emphasis is given on research that would help grow commercial consumerism in a
competitive spirit. Looking at its scope and concerns today in the current scenario
ecology doesnt remain under the domain of the study of organisms and their
187
environment because of the fact that the environment they need for their healthy
growth is invariably shared by the other living world including human beings. It is
this connectedness of Ecology which was responsible for the emergence of another
area of interest known as deep ecology. Deep ecology originates from the endeavour
to promote life other than the life of humans, its approach is bio centric and lays
emphasis on the fact that man is only a part in the huge and complex web of life in
nature in which everything has a certain value of its own. This gives us a sense of
awareness that we are not allowed and entitled to exploit nature to such an extent that
it is reduced in its beauty, richness and biodiversity. We should adhere to our basic
needs and learn to respect the other life forms. We should not destroy them for the
satisfaction of our unreasonable desires. The term deep ecology was coined by Arne
Naess, Norwegian philosopher in 1973. Naess wanted to go beyond the factual
notion of ecology as a science. He wanted to study ecology to a deeper level so that it
would be possible to create self awareness and Earth wisdom. Deep as an adjective
stands for the concern, which arrives from the very depth of ones heart. It involves
our concern for both living and non living world. Deep ecology calls upon us to
bring about a change in the assumptions and the traditional cultural values we have
cherished, particularly those contributing in our materialist gains. The premises of
Deep Ecology Movement and Ecocriticsm are identical. These movements are
holistic and envisage the unity of man and all the creatures and the environment
around him. The following are the premises formulated by Arne Naess and George
Sessions on Deep Ecology as a movement in Environmental justice and activism.
The connotations implied by the term Deep are as follows.
1.
The well being and flourishing of non-human life on Earth have value in
themselves, independent of the usefulness of the non-human world for human
purposes.
2.
Richness and diversity of life forms contribute to the realization of these values
and are also values in themselves.
3.
Humans have no right to reduce this richness and diversity except to satisfy vital
needs.
4.
The flourishing of human life and cultures is compatible with a substantial

decrease of the human population. The flourishing of non-human life requires
such a decrease.
188
5.
The present human interference with the non-human world is excessive, and the
situation is rapidly worsening.
6.
Policies must therefore be changed. These policies affect basic economic,

technological and ideological structures. The resulting state of affairs would be
deeply different from the present.
7.
The ideological change is mainly that of appreciating life quality rather than
adhering to and increasingly higher standard of living.
8.
Those who subscribe to the foregoing points have an obligation either directly or
indirectly to try to implement the necessary changes.
Of the eight premises above, premises 6 and 8 are particularly important because
they call upon us for an immediate action. It is time for us to change our
anthropocentric attitude into biocentric and learn to respect the world which is other
than the world of ours which is preoccupied with the affairs which appear to be
beneficial to us. Premise No. 5 is what we are supposed to do something so that the
situation remains under control. We are likely to run short of the natural resources
and stand on the verge of apocalypse. The most urgent action we are supposed to
take is to stop our excessive interference with the non-human world.
In the light of the above premises the importance of ecocritical studies as an
interdisciplinary genre becomes explicit. As stated above it is our immediate
responsibility to take necessary action and prepare an agenda to stop our interference
with the non-human world so that the excessive exploitation of the natural resources
is brought down to the minimal and maximum emphasis is laid on ecofreiendly
energy resources in order to satisfy our needs. The genre ecocriticism has assumed
an international relevance and importance. The degeneration of the resources
resulting in calamities like draught and deforestation further endangers the quality of
life altogether. The threat is global and therefore needs to be addressed on global
level. The reckless exploitation of the natural resources could be stopped only when
such an agenda are created in which sufficient environmental awareness and a sense
of respect to the natural surrounding is created. It could be done by promoting and
building an emotional attachment of the youth to the land, its flora and the fauna. It is
realised that a certain degree of negligence towards our duties to our own earth has
assumed serious dimensions in almost every country and land occupied by the socalled being known as man, who claims to be civilised in his ways of living and
189
thinking. Living under the burden of the values of civilised culture and the false
claims for scientific revolution he has created an illusion around him that keeps him
away from the apocalypse he is destined to meet in near future. According to Buell
Apocalypse is the single most powerful master metaphor that the contemporary
imaginations has at its disposal(1995:285).
The term Ecology refers to the other than the human, the physical environment.
Laurence Buell describes Space as the where. According to him it is this (the where
or the Physical environment) which happens to be a precondition for is, the presence,
the whole phenomenon known as existence. The Collins Dictionary of
Environmental Science defines it as the combination of external conditions that
influence the life of individual organism or more specifically, it comprises the
non-living aboitic components (physical and chemical) and the interrelationships
with other living, biotic components (Collins: ) Allen Gilpin is even more specific
in defining the physical environment as including the built environment, the natural
environment and all natural resources including air, land and water. He also quotes
a section of the European Union definition of the environment as the combi-nation
of elements whose complex interrelationships make up the settings, the surroundings
and the conditions of life of the individual and of society, as they are or as they are
left This definition is important because it pinpoints three things. First, it puts an
emphasis on inter-relationships, on mutual interdependence of all the elements
comprising human life. Second, it is an invitation to the individual to stop ignoring
the things and beings that are not of immediate concern to him because modern times
continually deny that misconception. And finally, the third important dimension of
this definition is subjectivity in assessing ones environment. Where someone lives is
not only an objective fact. How one feels about that environment is an equally
important fact. The impact of environment on man spirituality must be taken into
account because it is this spirituality which happens to be the source of his
imagination. Laurence Buell has coined the phrase environmental imagination
explaining how the physical environment shapes mans imagination. While studying
the literary culture of New England in the USA he has pointed out that the physical
environment has its own share in shaping the attitude and the cultural geography of
the region.
As branch of literary criticism ecocriticism raises questions such as:
190
How is nature represented in different literary artifices like poetry, drama and
novel? What role does the metaphors of land play by means of their influence on the
mind and imagination of the creative writers in the process of creation of the literary
masterpieces? In addition to race, class, caste, gender, religion and politics, should
nation in terms of its ecocultural ethos become a new critical category? Do men write
about nature differently? In what way literacy has affected humankinds relationship
to the natural world? In what manner and to what extent is the environmental crisis is
being treated in contemporary literatures, popular culture, media, academia and
various other capacities particularly the environment awareness programmes,
campaigns on a massive scale. What kind of collaboration is possible between
ecology, environmental sciences and literary studies? Would it be possible to have a
open dialogue between science and literary criticism on environmental issues? What
cross-fertilization is possible between literary studies and environmental discourses
in related disciplines such as history, philosophy, politics, sociology, anthropology,
arts and ethics? Ecocritical texts could be described under the following criteria.
Despite the broad scope of inquiry all ecological criticism shares a fundamental
premise that human culture is connected with the physical world. Both of them are
necessarily affected by each other. It is Joseph Meeker who is said to have
introduced for the first time the term literary ecology as a green branch of literary
study. In his The Comedy of Survival: Studies in Literary Ecology (1972) he defines
it as the study of biological themes and relationships which appear in literary
works. It is simultaneously an attempt to discover what roles have been played by
literature in the ecology of the human species. The term ecocriticism was possibly
first coined in 1978 by William Rueckert in his essay Ltrerature and Ecology : An
Experiment in Ecocriticism ,(1978:72). Ecocritism is defined by many critics in
different ways. Whatever the terminology they might have used for the cause, one
point is but sure and that is the goal they envision is common. Simon C. Estok lays
much emphasis on the environmental ethics or the ethical aspect of Nature should be
valued more than any other thing. An ecocritical approach envisages and values its
commitment to the natural world, its commitment to making connections
(2001:220). Like other critical schools such as the feminist school of criticism, which
examines language and literature from a gender consciousness point of view and the
Marxist school which deals with the modes of production and the problems of the
distribution of capital for the creation of classless society, Ecocriticism as a school of
thought aims to take an earth-oriented approach to literary studies. It aims to explore
191
whether the values expressed in various literary forms i. e. poetry, drams, novel etc.
are consistent with ecological wisdom. It calls upon us to study these literary forms
not only from the cultural point of view but also from the ecological and the
environmental point of view. A study of this kind implies the extension of the
meaning of the terms ecology and environment. In a sense it is not only the
cultural aspect of a text matters but also the inspiration of the writer which is
essentially shaped by the natural surroundings in which he or she is born and brought
up. The very aim of the environmental approach is to probe into this aspect and
evaluate the concerned work in the light of the natural forces responsible for shaping
the sensibility of the particular author and the way it is reflected in that text. Apart
from the books, it could also be applied to any text or texts including literature, film,
visual arts and popular media from any critical perspective ranging from scientific
ecology to the language and the terminology of environmental justice scholarship. A
study of this kind implies the relationship between the human and the more than
human worlds even the non-human. In the light of the definitions as above the
following could be realized as the major premises of Ecocriticism. It determines how
we think about the world and how we think in terms of the values we go by and the
beliefs we cherish. Our actions are determined by our thoughts. Physical
environment plays a major role in the formation of our language habits and the way
we use it. The great masterpieces in world literature reflect upon the everlasting
values that can sustain the human civilization by minimizing the antagonism between
the culture of nature and the culture of man. One of the great massages we can derive
from these great works of art is that we cannot ignore the influence of natural
environment upon human behaviour. The contribution of environment in our
physical survival should invoke a sense of reverence for nature within us. This will
help us to become ourselves amicable to nature as a whole and to the humanity as a
whole. Joseph W. Meeker regards the intellectual faculty of man as a gift of nature
and attaches a great importance to his ability to think what is good and what is bad.
His ability to create literature is even greater than the efforts he has guided to
discover, invent and explore this planet and the way he is striving to make it a place
worth to live comfortably. What Mr. Meeker praises more is his (mans) power of
imagination because it is analogous with a flight of a bird that stands for freedom.
Language is the only reliable source with the help of which he can extend his
imagination and can produce literature. In his pioneering work Meeker regards this
192
faculty of man as the greatest gift man has ever had from Nature. He is of the opinion
that
Literature should be examined carefully and honestly to discover its influence
upon human behaviour and the natural environmentto determine what role, if any,
it plays in the welfare and survival of mankind and what insight it offers into human
relationships with other species and with the world around us.(1972:3-4) What
becomes clear from the above excerpt is that the impact of natural environment on
the creative impulse of an individual and the constitution of his nature decide the use
of language. And it is language with which he responds to his immediate social
surrounding. Naturally therefore, it is language and its use that needs be
conceptualized not only for the facility of the creative writers but also for the
scientists, economists, legal scholars, politicians and policy makers. The personality
of a man embodies certain expressions imbibing his or her sense and sensibility. The
great Nature poets like Wordsworth, Byron, Shelley and Keats have come up with
their sentiments through the best of their songs. Wordsworth through his poetry
depicts the act of creation as the outcome of the reciprocal relationship between an
active self and an active nature, a relationship which he describes as interchange
in The Prelude (1996; 132). Whatever may be assumptions of the intellectuals, it
must be remembered that ecological connotations should be given preference to the
environmental issues because environment implies human beings at its centre
whereas eco implies interdependent and integrated systems having strong integrity
between its constituent parts.
Ecocritical texts record their concern over extremist consumerism and desire
expressed in various forms such as exploitation and exploration of natural resources,
profit oriented entrepreneurs, illegal possession of land and atrocities on flora and
fauna etc. Apart from the aspects related to deep ecology, they also undertake to
address these attrocities in terms of ecofeminist, ecopolitical, ecoreligious,
ecoeducational perspectives. On the positive front a few of them also deal with
mans relationship with his place, his home, his country, his motherland particularly
as it is depicted in relation to various problems around which the particular text is
woven for its thematic unity.
These texts dealing with environmental issues could be from various genres
such as drama, novel, poetry, prose etc. Ecocriticism from literary point of view
undertakes to examine the role of literary scholarship in realising its responsibility to
193
combat the challenges that have been posed by the current global practices which are
necessarily antagonistic to the principle of co-survival. It poses questions like How
should our knowledge of environmental crisis change our reading and evaluation of
certain texts? Ecocritical analysis has been applied to a wide range of texts, from the
works of Milton, Wordsworth, Hardy, Lawrence and Virginia Woolf to films such as
The Silence of the Lambs and Deliverance and television wildlife documentaries.
Many novels and poems published since the beginnings of the contemporary
environmental movement have received ecocritical interpretation (Plath, Hughes,
Heaney, Prynne, Les A. Murray, John Fowles, John Berger, Margaret Atwood,
Thomas Pynchon, Don DeLillo, J.M. Coetzee, Julia Leigh etc). Non-fiction nature
writing in the US tradition (Thoreau, Edward Albey, Annie Dillard, Barry Lopez,
Terry Tempest Williams etc) and the British tradition (Gilbert White, Richard
Jefferies, Edward Thomas, Richard Mabey) has been given extensive ecocritical
discussion.
Ecocritics analyse the history of concepts such as nature, human, animal,
rationality and civilisation, in an attempt to understand the cultural developments
that have led to the present global ecological crisis. Literary, artistic and
philosophical movements such as Romanticism and Modernism, and genres such as
Pastoral are studied for the proto-ecological or anti-ecological ideas to be found in
them.
New literary studies have identified that nature, or certain features of
landscape, for example, have in the light of the current ecological crisis their own
significance. Nature as it is an eternal phenomenon is compared with the transience
of human works, for example all modern developments are identified as
indispensable in order to foster change as an inevitable entity. A new
environmentalist aesthetic is proposed, for the evaluation of contemporary and
historical texts. Teaching literature is partly a matter of passing on a tradition.
Ecocriticism, like feminism, demands a revaluation of some texts and conventions in
that tradition.
Non-fiction nature writing previously was seen by seen by the literary critic as a
minor genre of literature. It is hightime now to reposition it as a major genre. It
deserves the same sort of critical attention as the novel, poetry and drama.
194
The canon of comparative literary studies needs to be revived in the light of the
changing perspectives that are being experimented by various academic disciplines
with environmental awareness. It is the need of the present moment that comparative
studies are undertaken on a larger scale between the literature of indigenous, nonindustrial cultures, and the literature of industrial and colonial cultures and the
literature of postcolonial cultures, to evaluate the relevance of the kind of value
systems we all are proceeding and boasting upon. We must reset our values and
beliefs and try to come to terms with these in ecocritical terms and produce a new
ecocritical literary canon.
The concept of sustainable development needs to be redefined by striking a
chord of relationship between ecosystem and scientific concepts relevant to
sustainability. Scientific and philosophical concepts such as anthropocentrism and
ecocentrism, should be defined for students and brought into the vocabulary of
literary criticism. Habitual assumptions in literary discourse about the balance or
harmony of nature, for example should be questioned in the light of the scientific
concepts.
The emphasis in many types of literary criticism is laid on the text as a selfcontained signifying system. In the wake of new value system it should be
counteracted by an insistence on the relationship between the text and the world, the
latter being understood in ecological terms. Landscape in literature, for example,
should not be regarded only as setting for the actions of human characters, or as
symbolising their emotions or fates. It should also be there for its own sake, and as a
set of ecological relations represented with accuracy. The significance of the
ecoliterary and ecocritical studies has been realised on national and international
level. The international status of the problem could be attributed to the extreme
materialist urge dominating the world today. The cultural interventions, and
invasions, have become rampant and are being accepted by the group of communities
as a fashion under the name of globalization and liberalisation. The cultural
transformations and gigantic aspirations in technological advances particularly in the
field of biotechnology, power generation and the generation of food and agricultural
products have escalated the calculations. There seems to be no proper balance
between the materialist and the socialist commitments. More importance is given to
cultural consumerism and the artificial humanism based on the principal of mutual
understanding and coexistence. Nature and the nonliving world is being neglected to
195
such an extent that we have become oblivious of our religion, the very origin of
which is in the culture of Nature. This come back to Nature would be a blissful
event worth to be celebrated not only in India but also in every other country in the
globe. The theme has gained an international status and importance. It is being
studied in almost every country.
The importance and relevance of this theme at a global level compels us to think
from our own point of view. We are known for being a nation of diverse interests in
almost all walks of life. The plurality of our ethos is well expressed not only through
the cultural, religious and ethical multiplicity but also through the biospheric and
bioregional differences. Indian nation has its own identity which could hardly be
taken for granted as at par with any other nation not for one but for many other
reasons. These reasons need to be provided with new perspectives and dimensions.
One of the unique dimensions is its faith in the doctrine of co-existence and
reverence for the world other than the human. No other nation perhaps could have
had such a tremendous respect as we do have for this other world, characterizing
the whole being of nature. The strength and beauty of Indian culture lies in its
capacity for inclusion, tolerance, endurance and respect for others. India deserves to
be called as a global family, Vsudheiv Kutumbakam. It has got a distinct identity so
long as its ancient, cultural, political, religious and ethical traditions are concerned.
Indian people are known for their patriotism, integrity of thought, behaviour and
character.
Several non governmental organizations and movements like Chipko Movement
and Lokayat are engaged in raising the environmental issues and educating people on
environmental problems.
We, the teachers and creative writers should undertake ourselves to share this
great responsibility of making our planet worth living. We need to change the
attitude of our generation to Nature. This could be done by producing literature
which would inculcate in our youngsters a sense of respect towards Nature and every
phenomenon related to it i. e. living and non-living. Our Vedas and Upanishdas are
the authentic scriptures telling us about the significance of the affinity we must
cherish for our surrounding; perhaps no other country is there in the world having
this kind of an awareness and affinity with nature as we do.
196
Literature is a major tool of education and activism. The creative impulse of our
nation needs a slant in the direction of ecological awareness that would create a sense
of gratitude towards the earth, which is the sole source of our survival. A pursuit of
this kind would be higher than any other. It would excel in its quality and engage us
in our endeavour by making us aware of the meaning of our existence in the scheme
of the universe, constant flux of creation, and render us with a blissful living with a
perfect harmony with nature.
Creativity and environment are closely related with each other. Without environment
there cannot be creative expression. In other words it is environment which shapes
your mind and attitude to your life and the life from various other perspectives. It has
been granted by many thinkers that man is essentially so by his creative expression
which is shaped by his environment.
The Basic Text:
Cheryll Glotfelty, Introduction,
The Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in Literary Ecology, University of Georgia
Press. (1996)
Books Articles for further reading:
1.
John Elder, quoted in Karla Armbruster and Kathleen R. Wallace, Beyond

Nature Writing: Expanding the Boundaries of Ecocriticism. Charlottes Ville,
University of Virginia. (2001)
2.
Peter hay The Literature of Place , Main Currents in Western Environmental

Thought. Sydney, Australia; University of New South Wales (2002)
3.
Scott Russell Sanders, Speaking a word for Nature , Secrets of Universe,

Boston: Beacon. 1991.
4.
Love, Glen A. Reevaluating Nature: Toward an Ecological Criticism ,

Western American Literature (Nov. 1990), 201-15.
5.
6.
White Lynn Jr. The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis. Science (1967)
An abstract from a Minor Research Project on LITERATURE AND
ENVIRONMENT: PERSPECTIVES ON STUDIES IN ECOCRITICISM IN
INDIA completed and submitted to the U. G. C by Dr. M. L. Jadhav, Associate
Professor, Department of English, Shivaji University, Kolhapur.
197
Unit-9
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak
A Literary Representation of the Subaltern:
Mahasweta Devis Standayini
Contents
9.0 Objectives
9.1 Introduction
9.2 Life & Works
9.3 Contribution as a critic
9.4 Summary
9.5 Detailed analysis of the essay
9.6 Glossary and Notes
9.7 Check your progress
9.8 Exercises
9.9 Key to check your progress
9.10 Books for further reading
9.0 Objectives:
After studying this unit you will be
familiar with the life and works of Indian critic Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak
able to understand Spivaks contribution as a critic
able to read, interprete, appraise the critical thoughts of Spivak in the light
of contemporary issues in the post-colonial studies
able to analyse and apply the critical theoretical framework to the literary
texts.
198
9.1 Introduction:
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak has done good in pioneering feminist and postcolonial studies within global academia. Spivaks heavy
theoretical pot
encompassing Foucault, Derrida, Barthes, Lacan, Marx, Gramsci and many others,
engages in a reconstructivist literary representation of work, Stanadayini (BreastGiver) written by Bengal woman writer Mahasweta Devi. Stanadayini is a poignant
account of Jashoda, the Professional mother who, having succoured some fifty
children, died of breast cancer. In Mahaswetas original story Stanadayini is a
parable of decolonized India. It is an allegory of India exploited and abused by
various classes who sworn to protect their motherland, India. Spivak interpret the
story not as an allegorical tale but as story of a subaltern. In her narrative Jashoda is
the subaltern constituted as gendered subject. In this reconstructed account postcolonial analysis is interpolated by Marxist distinction between use value / exchange
and children /the milk produced for exchange and labour/ surplus labour i.e.
production for children of masters family. Thus Spivak believes that Marxism and
feminism must become persistent interruptions of each other.
9.2 Life and works:

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, born in Calcutta (1942), into a middle class family
is one of the best known Indian literary and cultural critics and theorists. She has
completed her degree in English at the University of Calcutta, in 1959. In 1967, she
has submitted her Ph.D. to the Cornell University on W.B. Yeats entitled as Myself
Must I Remake: the Life and Poetry of W.B. Yeats. The autobiographical novel
written by her husband Talaboot Spivak, entitled The Bridge Wore the Traditional
Gold delineates their early years of the marriage. Spivaks writings often focus on
the cultural texts of the new immigrants, the working class, women and other
postcolonial subjects.
9.2.1 Works:
1)
Of Grammatology (1967 ):
Among her publications, the translation of Jacques Derridas Of

Grammatology from French to English is the landmark in the recent years. It is one
of the major works in the development of contemporary criticism and philosophy.
Derridas revolutionary theories about deconstruction, phenomenology,
199
psychoanalysis & structuralism which forever changed the face of European &
American criticism are translated by Spivak. This translation captures the richness &
complexity of the original.
2)
Can the Subaltern Speak? (1987):
This collection of essays is considered as one of the key texts in

postcolonialism. These are phenomenal essays related to the development of
subaltern and postcolonial studies and the quest for human rights. This is the analysis
of colonialism through the contemporary relevance of Marxicism to explore the
international division of labour and capitalism.
3)
In Other Worlds:Essays in Cultural Politics(1987):
In this work Spivak debates general questions of theory with the political
philosophers like Habermas and Althusser, psychoanalysts such as Kristeva and legal
theorist like Dworkin.
4)
The Post-colonial Critic (1990):
It is a selection of interviews and discussions on contemporary critical theories

in third world literature. She speaks on questions of representation, the politicization
of deconstruction, the situations of post-colonial critics, pedagogical responsibility
and political strategies.
5)
Outside in the Teaching Machine (1993):
These essays are important in literary criticism today with its rigorous
investments in cultural critique. These are about the difference and the relationship
between academic and revolutionary practices in the interest of social change.
6)
A Critic of Post-colonial Reason: Towards a History of the Vanishing Present

(1999):
It discusses the cultural wars and their causes and effects and their relationship
to gender struggle and the dynamics of class. The book addresses feminists,
philosophers, and critics, intellectual interventionists as they unite and divide.
Publication of this book leads her through transnational cultural studies into
considerations of global level.
200
7)
Death of a Discipline (2003):
It is a visionary text which can be considered as one of the most cutting edge
theoretical works today. She declares the death of comparative literature as we
know it,calling for new comparative literature in which discipline is given new life
appropriated and by the market in the era of globalization. She provides new insights
for the study of third world literatures in translation.
8)
Other Asias (2005):
It is a major work which intervenes the issues generated by ideas of Asia. She
challenges the reader to re-think Asia in its political and cultural complexity through
this work.
9.3 Contribution as a Critic:

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, one of the most influential theorists in the U.S. and
India, who is related to the issue of third world identity. Her overt political use of
contemporary cultural and critical theories to challenge the legacy of colonialism is
remarkable. She is also known for feminist, deconstructionist and subaltern criticism
in cultural text, literature and her own radical writings .Following are some of the
major contributions of Spivak in the contemporary critical discourses.
a)
Post-colonial studies:
Spivak identifies herself as a post-colonial intellectual caught between the

socialist ideas of the national independence movement in India and legacy of a
colonial education system. Spivaks critique of post-colonial nationalism makes
more sensible if it is situated in relation to the specific social and historical
circumstances of Indian independence.
b) Subaltern Studies:
Gayatri Spivak emphasizes the works of the subaltern studies. Historians have
sought to correct the class and gender blindness of elite bourgeois national
independence in India by rewriting history. Spivak has developed the idea that the
western model of social change, the complex histories of subaltern insurgency and
resistances should be rethought.
201
c)
Feminist:
Spivak argues that the everyday lives of many Third World Women are so
complex and unsystematic that they can not be known or represent any
straightforward way of western critical theories.
Gayatri Spivak has coined the term strategic essentialism which refers to a
sort of temporary solidarity for the purpose of social action. Strategic essentialism
refers to a strategy that nationalities, ethnic groups or minority groups can use to
present themselves. Spivaks critique of post-colonialism is articulated on the
writings of Bengali fiction writer Mahasweta Devi, who has persistently addressed
the plight of socially and politically marginalized groups in Indian society. She has
been writing about feminism in context of the Indian culture and literature and
translating the writings of Mahasweta Devi.
In her writing on Mahasweta Devis fiction, Spivak has engaged with singular
histories and lives of Third World, subaltern women in order to disrupt the codes
and conventions of western knowledge and maintenance of imperial power.
9.4 Summary
A Literary Representation of the Subaltern: Mahasweta Devis Stanadayini,
presents Gayatri Spivaks deconstructive analysis of Breast-Giver, translation of
Mahaswetas story, Stanadayini.
Breast-Giver is a story of Jashoda, a Bengali wet-nurse, living in a 1960s India.
She is compelled to take up professional motherhood when her Brahmin husband,
Kangalicharan, loses both his feet. With her only ability held in her always full
breasts and her economic starvation she is used as a milk giver. She is mother of her
20 children living or dead. She is utilized and praised for her expert weaning of
wealthy offspring which she does for 24 years before losing her usefulness and
consequentially dying from breast cancer. She is betrayed alike by the breast that for
years became her chief identity and the dozens of sons she suckled.
Jashodas only usefulness in the male dominated cultural setting is her maternal
plentitude, her duty of raising children. The usefulness is the responsibility of all
mothers of patriarchy. As she extends her task to countless children, other than her
own, Jashoda becomes Martyr- a role that suggests both significance and sub-
202
ordinance and even worship, while she simultaneously secures her never ending
lack of milk and nourishment.
Gayatri Spivaks works are significant contribution to the subaltern studies in
postcolonial period. She has been writing about womens problematique in the
context of Indian culture and translating of Mahasweta Devi. Devis story
Stanadayini is translated by Gayatri Spivak under the title Breast-giver. The
present critical is based on this story and tries to establish the subaltern perspective
of a woman in Bangala society. The subltern studies provides a new historical
perspective and this essay forms one of the part of subaltern volumes edited by
Ranjit Guha. This essay illustrates the employment of recent western theory for
discussing non-western position and its limitations.
Breast-giver is a fine example of literary representation of the subaltern. This is
the story that builds itself on the cruel ironies of caste, class and patriarchy in Indian
society. Spivak discusses seven positions from which this can be interpreted, studied
and taught in the language and literature classrooms.
At the beginning she distinguishes between the approaches of the historian and
the teacher of literature. What is called history will always seem more real to us than
what is called literature. This difference is in terms of what is called the effect of
real. In present story Mahaswetas own relationship to historical discourse seems
clear. She has always been gripped by the individual in history. The division between
fact (historical event) and fiction (literary event) is operative in all her works. Her
repeated claim to legitimacy is that she researches thoroughly everything she
represents in fiction. For example, character of Jashoda (Stanadayini) could have
existed as subaltern in a specific historical moment imagined and tasted by orthodox
assumptions. She acknowledges that her fiction is historical and claims history is
only literature.
By Mahasweta Devis own account Stanadayini is a parable of India after
decolonization. Like the protagonist Jashoda, Mother India is by hire. This metaphor
of Mother India has its roots in the nationalist ideology of 19th century India. All
classes of people, the post-war rich, the bureaucratics, the diasporics who are sworn
to protect India their motherland on the contrary abuse and exploit her.
According to Spivak as long as there is hegemonic cultural self representation of
India as a goddess mother, she will collapse under the burden of the immense
203
expectations that such a self-representation permits. Here the representation of India

is by way of subaltern as metaphor. Here Mahasweta Devi after the reading her own
story; entailing her subject position as writer and signifies
that narrative of
nationalism which is perceived as a product of culture of imperialism.
Further the teacher(s) and reader(s) more subject positions shows that
Mahaswetas texts can be interpreted in many ways how the narratives of
nationalism have been remained irrelevant to the life of the sub-ordinate. Stanadayini
can be used as a teaching tool and as gendered subject than class subject. It would
become more prestigious than the so called radical teaching of literary criticism and
literature in the U.S. and also in Britan.
A literary text exists between writer and reader that makes literature susceptible
to didactic use. It can be seen as a site for deployment of themes.
Spivak further argues that the reading of this story can be uncovered in terms of a socalled Marxist Feminist thematics. Drawing on the critical vocabulary of Marxist
Feminism, Spivak Demonstrates how Jashodas reproductive body becomes a site of
economic exploitation in the text: The protagonist subaltern Jashoda whose husband
crippled by the youngest son of a wealthy household), becomes a wet-nurse for them.
Her repeated gestation and location support her husband and family. By the logic of
the production of value, they are both means of production.
By invoking the themes of Marxist feminism, Spivak argues that Jashoda
problematizes the male-centred definition of the working-class subject that
underwrites classic European Maxism. In the European Marxist theory of labour
there is unequal division of sexual labour.
Spivak feels the texts own relationship to the thematic of liberal feminism. The
translations of third world womens writing are developing within different racial
and ethnic communities as an attempt to solve the social crises occurring across
racial and ethnic boundries. The libral feminist position chooses the postcolonial,
diasporic, an indigenous considerations. If Mahaswetas story displaces the analysis
of domestic labour in terms of Marxist feminist terms it also questions the liberal
feminist choice. The reader cannot find stable reference for ill-treated mother India,
Jashodas story is not of the development of a feminine subjectivity which is the
ideal of liberal feminist literary criticism. Within liberal feminism there is a struggle
204
for womans reproductive rights. In the story having children is also accession to free
labour and the surplus production can be appropriated.
Reading of Stanadayini calls into question the body politics also. Spivak
focuses on womens body and explains the term Jouissance as orgasmic pleasure.
Womans orgasmic pleasure taking place in excess of copulation or reproduction can
be seen as a way out of such reductive identifications. Jouissance is not orgasmic
pleasure genitally defined but the excess of being in the circle of reproduction. In the
story, Mahasweta describe the deteoriating condition of Jashodas body. She suffers
from breast cancer. The sores on her breast keep mocking her with a hundred
mouths, a hundred eyes.The disease has not been diagnosed or named yet. The other
inhabits a hundred eyes and mouths, a transformation of the bodys inscription into a
disembodied yet anthropomorphic agency which makes of the breast the definitive
female organ within this circle of reproduction.
At the end of the essay Spivak discusses specific considerations of gendering. A
basic technique of representing the subaltern as a subject can be interpreted on the
basis of gender subjectivities. The story uses a sort of living icon of the mythic
Jashoda, the Foster Mother. Mother suckling the holy child. Mahasweta presents
Jashoda as constituted by patriarchal ideology. The text shows the distinction
between rape and consenting intercourse. Jashoda is typical Indian wife says, You
are husband, you are guru. If I forget and say no, correct me. Where after all is the
pain?...Does it hurt a tree to bear fruit? Here Mahasweta uses the same metaphor of
the naturalness of womans reproductive function - one ideological cornerstone of
gendering when she reproaches the granddaughters-in-law for causing the Old
Mistresss death through their refusal to bear children. She also accepts the
traditional sexual division of labour. Mahasweta uses Jashoda the subaltern as a
measure of the dominant sexual ideology of India. Jashoda is fully an Indian woman,
whose unreasonable, unreasoning and unintelligent devotion to her husband and love
for her children, whose unnatural renunciation and forgiveness have been kept alive
in the popular consciousness by all Indian women. Mahaswetas rendering of the
truth of gendering in realism is so deliberately mysterious.
The breast is not a symbol in this story. It is a survival object transformed into a
commodity, making visible the indeterminacy between filial piety and genderviolence, house and temple, between domination and exploitation.
205
It is the story that builds itself on the cruel ironies of caste, class, patriarchy. The
underclass Hindu-female (Breast-giver) as long as she credits Hindu materialism and
family values, is unable to save herself. Even in her lonely death, she remains
Jashoda Devi-literally, the goddess Jashoda, honorary goddess by caste.
Mahasweta is altogether uninterested in fragmenting India along language line.
Her extraordinary command of dalit North Indian heteroglossia is proof of how far
she has expanded her own Bengali language base.
To preserve the breast as aesthetic object by photography or implant is to
overlook its value-coding within patriarchal social relationship: it is natural that
men should be men. It is therefore Natural that women should be modest and not
provoke, by making the breast dance.
9.5 Detailed Analysis of the Essay:

In the beginning of the essay Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak differentiates the role
of historian from the role of a teacher of literature. If a historian confronts a text of
gendering, representing the subaltern and unravels the text to assign a new subject
position to the subaltern; while a teacher of literature confronts a sympathetic text,
representing the gendered subaltern and unravels the text to make visible the
assignment of subject positions.
In the present essay, Spivak has used teaching strategy of Mahasweta Devis
Standayini (Breast Giver) to focus on the aim of entertaining the reader for following
propositions.
a)
The task of a historian and of a teacher of literature must critically interrupt

each other; bring each other to crisis, in order to serve their constituencies,
especially when each seems to claim for its own.
b)
The teacher of literature must re-constellate the text to draw out its use and
must wrench out of its proper context and put it within alien arguments.
c)
If Mahasweta Devis Stanadayini is placed in the (alien) arguments from

western Marxism, Feminism, Western liberal Feminism and French high theory
of the female body, it shows us some of the limits and limitations of these
western theories.
206
d)
This might have implications for the current and continued subalterization of so
called third-world literatures.
The present essay also touches the question of elite methodology and subaltern
material, that what to do? about the gendered subaltern, which can not be solved in
any interpretative essay, rather it gives an idea of the extent and politics of the
problems and need for social justice or the ineluctability of womans domain.
Spivaks seven positions focusing the role of each element in the production of
literary meanings are essential to discuss.
9.5.1 The Historian and the Teacher of literature:

In the point of view of Spivak, the production of historical accounts is the
discursive narration of the events, but historiography is non-theoretical that sees its
task in the historical accounts of some period as what really happened? But the
events are never discursively constituted. But the fact is that every object is
constituted as an object and has nothing to do with external world, thought, realism,
and idealism. e.g. An earthquake or the falling of a brick is an event, whose existence
is specified as an object, constructed in terms of natural phenomena or expressions
of the wrath of God depends upon the structure of a discursive field. Instead of
searching how events exist anyone has to concentrate to the active relationship
between historical and literary representation as discursive formulations.
To elaborate an active relationship between historical and literary representation
for discursive formations Spivak discusses Foucauldian concept of sentence or
statement as the function of existence of language. But the understanding of a
statement can ignore the report or tell of sentence; rather it is the precondition for the
analysis of the discursive formation of object, of enunciative modalities, of concept,
of strategies. According to Foucault what is told is also reported or told and thus
entails a position of subject. Thus a historian or teacher of literature can occupy a
subject I-slot, which is sign, which may signify a socio-political, psycho-sexual,
disciplinary-institutional or ethno-economic provenance. Foucault has used the word
assigned for the position of the subject and Spivak has used I-slot (subject) as
author, reader, teacher, subaltern, and historian. In the opinion of Spivak the
subalternist historian are working under the wider implication of archival or
archaeological work of historiography. It is related to the literary representation
207
when it detaches from the psychological or character logical orthodoxy. Thus, the
narrativization of history are structured or textured like literature.
The history deals with real events, while literature with imagined. The
difference between both is seen in terms of the effect of real, as history always
seems real than literature. For the historian, history and literature stands for social
connotations. Historiography and literary pedagogy are disciplines.
Mahasweta Devis own relationship to historical discourse seems to be clear, as
she has been gripped by the individual history. Her prose belonged to the generally
sentimental style of the mainstream Bengali novel of the fifties and the sixties, Thus,
the vision of Hajar Chaurasir Ma leads Mahasweta Devi from literary or
subjective into the historical. e.g. Aranyer Adhikar (1977) is historical fiction. In
these prose the historical event and literary event are blended together, and it
creates an effect of the real e.g. the plausibility of Jashoda in Standayini represents/
existed as subalterns in a specific historical moment, tested by orthodox assumptions.
The division between fact (historical event) andfiction(literary event)is operative in
all her moves. Her repeated claim to legitimacy is that she researches thoroughly
everything she represents in fiction .The subaltern historian always imagines of a
historian moment, in which a shadowy character dominated by gendered textual
material. The subaltern as an object is considered to be both real, as well as,
imagined, as the writer acknowledges it as a fiction, while the historian looks it as
mechanics of representation of history is also fictive.
9.5.2 The Authors Own Reading: A Subject Position:

By Mahasweta Devis own account Stanadayini is a parable of India after the
decolonization. India is a mother-by-hire, like the protagonist Jashoda, to whom all
the classes of people, who abuse and exploit her, if nothing done for her she will die
of consuming cancer. The end of this parable (story) comes to mean that the
ideological construct India is too deeply informed by the goddess infested reverse
sexism of the Hindu majority, the hegemonic cultural self-representation of India as
goddess-mother is a slave, and has collapsed under the burden of the immense
expectations.
In respect to the study of the subaltern, the representation of India is metaphor
and there is logical connection between the tenor and the vehicle of the metaphor.
The effect of the real of the vehicle must be underplayed, and the subaltern must be
208
seen to be the vehicle of a meaning. It leads to the study of the subaltern in context of
decolonization in the story of the rise of nationalist resistance to imperialism is
disclosed, and then the role of the indigenous subaltern must be excluded. But in the
initial stages of the consolidation of territorial imperialism, there was not a single
political resistance forthcoming. The colonized countries gained the sentiments of
nationhood through the cultural aspects of imperialism, and anti-imperialist
resistance developed.
In the opposition between fact and fiction, there is a Para theoretical sense,
which has two fold. The first, if nationalism is the only discourse credited in the
imperialist theatre, where subaltern examples should be ignored, who are suppressed
by the forces of nationalist, from imperialism to neo-colonialism. Secondly, the
culture of imperialism are taken into an account, the distortions of the ideas of a
national culture is seen when they imported into a colonial theatre are remains
unnoticed. The citizens should give to the nation rather that takes from the nation. If
the story of the rise of nationalist resistance is to be disclosed coherentely, it is the
role of the indigenous subaltern that must be strategically excluded. Mahasweta
Devis own reading of Standayini is an example of one of many slogans of militant
nationalism, and it can accommodate sentiments from fond mother, you have kept
your seven million children, Bengalis but havent made them human-Tagore. The
reading of Mahasweta Devis story provides her own story, entailing her subject
position as writer and signifies the narrative of nationalism is provided as a product
of the culture of imperialism.
9.5.3 The teacher and Reader(s): More Subject Positions:

Mahaswetas text might show in many ways how the narrative of nationalism
has been remaining irrelevant to the sub-ordinate people. The elite culture of
nationalism participates with the colonizers in various ways and in Mahasweta
Devis story the detritus of this participation can be seen.
The ruins of the ideas of parliamentary democracy and of the nation can be seen,
when is bequeathed (to leave by will) to the elite of a colonized people, outside the
soil of the production of those ideas. Thus these stories, as a teaching tool from the
subject position of the teacher in a certain discursive formation can deconstruct these
ideas in their natural habitat. In Stanadayini, those ideas are considered as the
209
subaltern gendered subject position, which is different from the subaltern class
subject.
Spivak discusses about his focus on the subaltern as gendered subject rather than
as an allegorical same for Mother India. If the study is of the subaltern classes, the
subject of their own history, themes, then it provides a critical area to the recent
writing on modern Indian history and society. Her aim is to discuss the im of
impossible, of making of the subaltern gender the subject of its own story.
The pedagogy (function of teaching) of history and literature reports and tale
approximately, disseminatelly in two ways of mind set. The reading of Stanadayini
presents the subject position to the reader or teacher which is helpful in combating
the tendency of the literary pedagogy, of the elites of Indian educational institutions
which are studied in literary criticism and literature in United States, Britain.
To the radical reader of Anglo-US the Third World seems in context of
nationalism and ethnicity. The dominant reader in India is distinguished from the
student of reading theory. The Indian reader is influenced by the post-colonial
humanistic education takes the orthodox position of the reading as a natural way to
read literature. The position is authors account of her original vision, that would
forbid the fulfillment of another assumption of the orthodox position e.g.
Psychological or character logical assumption. Spivak discusses the perceptions of
groups (historian, anthropologist, etc.) that is the natural meaning of the thing is
their own presuppositions about the natural way to read the literature. Instead of
discussing about reading and true feeling Spivak considers literature as a use of
language where the transnational quality of reading is socially guaranteed. A literary
text exists between writer and reader, which make it susceptible to didactic use,
deploying the themes of undoing of thematicity, of unredibility, etc. It is not elite
approach, rather unnatural Marxist literary criticism, remarks of Chinu Achebe all
art is propaganda, though not all propaganda is art can be considered as cases of
thematic approach. On the other hand elite approaches, like deconstruction, can also
be accommodated.
9.5.4 (Elite) Approaches: Stanadayini in Marxist Feminism:

An allegorical or parabolic reading of Stanadayini, like Mahasweta Devis own
reading can reduce the complexity put up by the text. Another parabolic or reductive
allegorical reading can be uncovered in terms of Marxist-feminist thematics, in the
210
orthodox pre-Althusserian way. The generalization by the men of means of substance

is that, womens subordination in class society is not because of the sex division of
labour, but due to the child-bearing period. In the teaching of Stanadayini, above
generalization is assumed by the point of view of Marxist-feminist thematics.
The protagonist Joshoda, a Hindu-Brahmin subaltern woman, whose husband
Kangalicharan crippled by the youngest son of wealthy household becomes wetnurse for them. By the logic of the production of value, both Jashoda and her
husband are means of production. According to the view of feminist understanding
and Roman distinction by Marx, Jashoda (the speaking tool) is the woman-wifemother, while Kangali (the working beast) is man- husband-father.
The political economy of the sexual division of labours is changed due to
Jashodas sale of gendered (female) labour power. It is a moment of transition from
one mode of social reproduction to another, or the emergence of value and its
immediate extraction and appropriation, taken place in the domestic economy.
Standadayini stalls the classic Engelsian-feminist narrative, to which family is the
agent of transition from domestic to civil, private to public, sex to class. It also
displaces the new Marxist-feminist critique of such position by focusing on the
mothering female.
The emergence of (exchange) value and its immediate appropriation in
Stanadayini can be thematized as the milk, produced in ones own body for own
children in a use-value. But when there is superfluity of use value, exchange value
arises, which can not be exchanged. The (exchange) value of Joshodas milk when
emerges, it seems to be appropriate as good food and sexual servicing are provided to
keep her in prime condition for optimum lactation. Her milk necessary labour,
which she produces for the children of her masters family, is through surplus labour
and it is the origin of transition. To keep the surplus level of labour, her husband is
relegated to housework; the surplus milk is fully consumed by the owners of her
labour-power and leads to no capital accumulation. Rearing the children is indirectly
an investment in the future, like the economy of the temple, this domestic
transition survives as comprador capitalism, indicated in Mahaswetas story. Within
the pre-capitalist surplus appropriation, Jashodas milk stands for the universal
equivalent in the restricted domestic sphere as a simple reproduction.
211
The presupposition of the Marxist-feminist themes is that womens work is

non-productive of value. Spivak does not consider womans insertion into the labourprocess. Rather she considers the area, in which womans body products have been
historically susceptible to idealization, e.g. in the classical Marxian argument male
labourer becomes a proletarian, a word or state without nothing but carries the
mark of sexuality. Hence, Spivak considers female activity of professional mothering
as a part of the study of the subaltern.
Here the aim of Spivak is not to curtail the usefulness of classical Marxist
analysis but to provide indigenous situations. According to her Marxism and
feminism should be persist in the interruptions of each other. The mode of
existence of literature, like language, is to understand the novelty, not to understand
the form used or its identity. The person of the same language community can adjust
himself to the linguistic form as a changeable and adaptable sign and absorption (the
ideal of mastering of a language) of singnality by pure semioticity.
The user occupies different positions of I- slots and understands self-identical
signals, indicating the same thing and distances from monumentalized self-identity,
the power of meaning. Stanadayini can be considered as a discursive literary
production in Marxist-feminist thematics perspective and distances the reader from
two-self-identical propositions and which ground subalternist analysis implicity.
a)
That the free worker is male (hence the narrative of value-emergence and
appropriation of the labour power to the female body is susceptible to the
production of value in the strict sense.)
b)
That the nature of woman is physical, nurturing and affective (hence the
professional mother)
The feminist painstaking scholarship causes gender into existing paradigms,

while pedagogy, by contrast, emphasizes the literariness of literature and invites to
acquire a distance from the continuing project of reason, without this distancing, a
position or counter position will keep legitimizing each other. Thus feminism and
masculism will then faces oppositions to each other.
Then, considering the fabulation with Marxist-feminist thematics to the
Standayini is consideration of alienation of breasts from Jashoda. For her, breasts
become precious objects filled with milk. The question of sanctity of motherhood has
been called when there is no distinction necessary and surplus labour, the gendered
212
proletarian. Jashodas final sentient judgment, the universalization of fostermotherhood, is the mistake. At the end of life the doctor, untouchable,etc. seems to
her milk sons.
The Marxian transition from domestic to domestic mode of social reproduction
is a strained plausibility, constructed by a grounding assumptions of the originary
state of necessary labour lacting mother produces use value. Her (Jashodas)
subject- position is a situation of exchange with the child for psycho-social affect.
E.g. India is the failure of exchange. The failure is the absence of the child.
Stanadayini differentiates from the axiomatic of Marxist feminism that
ignores the subaltern woman as subject by dismantling professional motherhood.
The generalization about mother, is mothers will give more than they get, if it
is broadened, then the difference between domestic as natural mother and domestic
as waged wet-nurse can be disappeared, but it can misrepresent important details.
Stanadayini teaches as sociological evidence of lower class representation as
inferior male and female, the class-subalternity of the Brahmin, Jashoda is complete
victim of these factor, the relationship between class, racial,ethnic, sex [gender] is
dialectical and in the theory of decolonization the relationship between individual
and imperialist systems of domain are also dialectical, discontinuous, interruptive.
The basic issues of the Marxist system have been trivialized by the socialist
feminism. Spivaks theory is opposite to classic Marxist theory that does not
privilege the economic realm. The story of the emergence value from Jashodas
labour power infiltrates Marxism and questions gender- specific presuppositions. On
the other hand, mother presupposes not as female human but only as mother
belonging to properly speaking to the sphere of politics and ideology of exploitation,
value, alienation.
In Marxist theory of labour, there is a sexual division of lobour between
productive labour of male and reproductive labour of female. It is based on an
essentialist notion of sexual difference. This division of labour is ignored and
devalued the material specificity of womens domestic work including child birth
and mothering because these kinds of works do not direct produce exchange value or
money.
But in Stanadayini the protagonist, Jashoda illustrates how subaltern womens
reproductive body is employed to produce economic value. According to Spivak,
213
Jashodas sale of her maternal body to the household of a wealthy Brahmin family to
support her own family reverses the traditional division of labour between men and
women. Jashodas husband learns to cook when Jashoda is playing the role of breadwinner at Brahmins family. In that way, Devis story poetically resolves some of the
theoretical contradictions that have vexed Western Marxist Feminism for more than
three decades. Spivak argues that Jashodas employment as a professional mother
crucially, invokes the singularity of the gendered subaltern. Stanadayini questions
the aspect of Western Marxist Feminism. It views mothering as work and ignores her
as subject.
Furguson ignores mothers body which obliges to ignore woman as a subject of
production of value. In Stanadayini the economic of womens body is shown in the
form of mother which can be divided, exploited, but it can not dominate. Anna
Davins Imperialism and Motherhood shows development of sex/affective control
in context of class-struggle. In Daviss essay central reference point is class.
The lack of fit between neat narrative and bewildering cacophony of Stanadayini
asks questions about globalization, cross-cultural, gender mobilization about sex, etc.
9.5.5 Elite Approaches: Stanadayini in Liberal Feminism

The reactive critical descriptions and homogenizing of the Third World
literatures is the first tendency in US. Second tendency is pedagogic and curricular
appropriation of Third world womens texts in translation by feminist teacher and
reader, who are aware of race bias within the mainstream feminism. Black and Third
World feminist organizations are developing within different racial and ethnic
communities to resolve intra-community, the social crisis of family and personal
intimacy present in racial ethnic lines. The influencing members within the white
womens movements are seeking to make coalitions with black feminists by dealing
with racism.
Spivak tries to notice the relationship between English translation of the Third
World literary texts and the thematic of liberal feminism. She tries to touch the
questions of elite approaches to subaltern material. It involves an epistemological or
ontological confusion; it is not elite ontology, so that historian does not know. The
second group subalterns started in the participation of the production of knowledge
about them and shares it in some forms that are contaminated by the first group.
Forms that common to all social modes of production causes into thinking of
214
assumption that subalterns own idiom does not allow him to know his struggle, so
that he can present himself as a subject.
The subaltern position as opposite to elite position exercises/seems to be the
self- marginalized purism and participation of elite or elite position in
marginalization leads to the caricature of correct politics and proceeds to the
subalternization, which is the loneliness of the gendered subaltern shown in
Stanadayini.
The position that only the subaltern can know the subaltern can not be
considered as a theoretical presupposition, because it predicated the possibility of
knowledge on identity. But knowledge is sustained by difference not by identity and
is never adequate to its object. The theoretical model of ideal knower of knowledge
is a person identical with her predicament. The relationship between practical and
theoretical can suppose or consider identity as origin, which is an interruption that
brings each other in crisis.
Spivak attempts to capture the subalternization of Third world material by
focusing on complicity between US/ western elite readings and Indian readings, that
draws opposition between elite and subaltern positions , in the form of liberal
feminism. The liberal feminism uses indigenous postcolonial elite, diasporic, etc.
Mahasweta Devis text, like Marxist-feminist term, also examines the liberalfeminism. It discusses the formation of indigenous class under the imperialism and
connects it to the movement of womens social emancipation. Mahasweta Devis
authorial comment explores the Haldarbabu (familys) mentality. The east and
West meant a global division for the imperialist and in the area of post-colonial
space; it indicates East and West Bengal. East Bengal (Bangladesh) has phantasmatic
status as a proper name that alludes imperial and pre-imperial past. For Haldarkrta,
India has no part outside Bengal. He does not trust anyone-not a Punjabi- OriyaBihari-Gujarati-Marathi-Muslim.
This sentence is an echo of line from the Indian national anthem, a regulative
metonym for the identity of a nation. Mahasweta Devis mocking measures the
distance between regulation and constitution, which reflects the declarative sentence
about secular India that does not make distinctions among people kingdom,
language. The reader cannot find a stable referent for the ill-treated Mother India in
Mahswetas story.
215
The archaic East Bengal seems to, the national identity of Haldarkarta and
Harisal the mans (Haldarkarta) birthplace, is claimed as the fountainhead of
cultural heritage of ancient India. The appropriation of a national identity is not
carried. This self-situations marked by contradiction of a failure of the desire for
essence. First it seeks to usurp the origin of Brahminism, the Vedas, the Upanishads,
and then it declares itself dissolved by a Brahmin. This two step identity is a cover
for the brutalizing the Brahmin, when the elite in caste is subaltern in class.
According to Spivak, Haladarkartas description is patriot that leads to
absurdity, because though patriarch, he has made his cash in the British era i.e. his
political, economic, and ideological production. The role of Jashoda is important as a
proletarian at the first stage, it rears the Haldkar children on her milk.
The transition from domestic to domestic has no place in the narrative, if
womens ideological liberation has a fixed class. e.g. the daughter-in-laws-of
Haldear family defy the tongue of old lady, their children suckle on Jashodas milk.
The critical deployment of liberal feminist thematics in Mahasweta Devis text
obliges us to remember that we in the passage (from Hadleys The Betrayal
Superwoman) are parasitical upon imperialism and gendered subaltern (Jashoda).
The pedagogy of the story can perform the ideological antecedents of the speaker.
The structures of logical and legal model cannot bring ideological production. The
left fringe of liberal feminism tries to correct Marxism by defining woman as a
sexual class. In this context Mahaswetas own reading can be extended into
plausibility. The grand-daughter-in-law leaves the household (a relic of imperialism)
and deprives Jashoda from her livelihood which can be decoded as the postindependence Indian Diaspora. There is no direct logical or scientific connection
exists between this departure (Jashodas deprive from livelihood) and Jashodas
disease and death. The pre-history and peculiar nature of her disease involves
unequal gendering. Her story is not about the feminine subjectivity, female
bildungsroman, which is ideal of liberal feminism. It does not mean that Jashoda is
not static character; its development is beride the parable or representation of the
subaltern. Jashoda expands the thematics of the womans political body, which can
be defined as the struggle for reproductive rights.
216
Jashoda, as subaltern, is representation rather character and as parabolic sign,

signifies, the crucial struggle situated within the area of feminist. According to Lacan
exclusive identification of woman thinks of jouissance of woman.
If a person thinks of a presumption without thinking of the identity of male
gendered position and subjects the singularity and asymmetry of womans joaissance
is still undeniable in the heterosexually organized world. The theatrical fiction of
reproduction as use-value can be placed where unexchangeable excess can be
imagined, which womans jouissance is.
Spivak disagree with Lacan, that womans jouissance in narrow sense, the
opposition between vaginal satisfaction and clitoral orgasm is trivial taming.
Jouissance is translated as bliss to retain its erotic sense. Womens liberation,
autobiography, thought remains implicated in this taming. Mahaswets preoccupation
in Stanadayini with jouissance is writing like a man to reduce the complex
position to trivializing simplicity of hegemonic gendering.
Jouissance in general is Jashodas body in Stanadayini rather than
consciousness of self or subjectivity, which is a place of knowledge. The role of
Joshodas body is the knowledge of decolonization as failure of foster-mothering is
figured as cancer. The other speaks about the other hundred mouths and hundred
eyes that are kept mocking. The Bengalis colloquial usage of pluralized almost
face can be translated literary as in a hundred mouths. The other disagrees with the
Jashodas judgment about the identity of the mother, and about mocking that tells
nothing. In the consideration of phrase kept mocking, there is lack of
synchronization between Jashodas judgment and response. The phrase kept
mocking interrupts Jashodas remark. Thus, the cancer, figuring the jouissance of
the subaltern female body as thought in decolonization. The word byongo is
mockery and the word ango is body with organs as opposed to deho-the body as
whole. The Sanskrit word vyangya meant deformed, and mockery, indication a
contortion of the body by deforming ones form. When language deforms itself and
gesture, it is byango/mockery, which is mark of jouissance of the female body.
The disease cancer can be considered as the metaphor of sexually
undifferentiated/ unidentified body politic, which is explained in Susan Sontags
Illness and Metaphor. The disease is a speak through body, a language for
dramatizing the mental, which is called demetaphorizaition of disease, it discusses
217
two major issues such as philosophical and political. The theatre of decolonization
can be considered in such demetaphorized area of reality, as identification of women.
When womans body is used as metaphor for nation, it is materiality of body. In the
story Stanadayini, Jashoda is a signifier of subalternity and metaphor for the
predicament of the decolonized nation, India. Thus, we are again forced to make
distance from the identity of woman with female reproductive body.
In the story, having children is also accession to free labour, the production of
surplus. All the rights to Jashoda are denied by elite men as well as women, which is
paradox of population control in the Third World. Thus, the laws like, right to live,
right to work are not relevant here, because the subject is female and of gender.
9.5.6 Elite Approaches: Stanadayini in a Theory of Womans Body

Mahasweta Devis Stanadayini claims to the western feminism that it ignores
the mother as a subject. It also claims to the western liberal feminism that it
perceived as unrealistic and elitist.
Spivak discusses the question of jouissance as orgasmic pleasure to identify
woman with her copulative (reproductive) body. The excess of copulation
(reproduction) seems to be the way out of reductive identifications. According
Spivak Mahsweta Devis writing is masculine (writes like a man) so she considers
mans text about womans silence: A Love Letter by Jacques Lacan. In the essay A
Love Letter Lacan discusses the formulation of a point of view that he has
developed. The unconscious means the subject (speaking being) is like a map or
graph of knowledge that an individual self that knows, a limit to the claim to power
of knowledge. Fredrik Jameson has developed it as political unconscious act.
According to Lacan, the position of knowing, writing itself and writing us, other
self is a map of speaking beyond the grasps other, which exceeds/ stays in the
unconsciousness.
Jouissance is not orgasmic pleasure, but rather it escapes from the circle of
reproduction of the subject. In psychoanalysis the mechanics of signification can be
illustrated, as such the phallus means the law by considering castration as
punishment. But still it is a gendered position. The political aspect of such words
corresponds to the development e.g. the doctor judges Jashoda by an absolute
standard.
218
Mahsweta Devis Stanadayini in respect to the thematics of the jouissance of

the female body, shows race and class specified gendering at work in Lacanian
theory and it also shows the limits of the structured psychoanalytic strategy of
reading.
According to Lacan a person who speaks is the signifier and he is his own
subject. If the subject is sovereign, then it leads him to the level of fantasy. But the
fact is that the person knows more than he thinks. The knowledge is maped on
speaking and thought is jouissance. Jashodas body is the place of knowing mother to
take fantasy apart from the text we have to think of psychoanalytic scenario.
The narrative of sanctioned suicide may begin to limn a Hindu phantasmic
order rather than the stories of Oedipus (Salvation). The multiple narratives of
suicide regulate Hindu sense of the progress of life, which are regulative and
psychobiograhies. While considering the perfect analysis it is necessary to analyze
the subaltern nation of indigenous psychoanalysis, and its imposition upon the
colonies. In feminist theory, the critics are caught in only the gendering than
imperialist politics of psychoanalysis. The distance between connection of womans
jouissance and name of God and the end of Stanadayini can be measured, as Lacan
questions about the womans sharing of jouissance with men. On the other hand
Jashoda herself is to said to be God Manifest which is inconsistent to the rest of the
narrative. Jashoda is clearly played the household of Haldar family. The
philosophical discourse of it is seen in the form of use of satire of ideological use of
goddess (Lion-seated) and mythic god-women Jashoda of Hindu mythology, in
which conclusion of gender is unspecified. Mahasweta Devi does not present this
conclusion from male-gendered position. The death of Jashoda is death of God and is
considered sanctioned suicide within the Hindu regulative psychobiography. The
knowledge of the it-ness of the subject is arised by the question of suicide. The
question of gendering is not psychoanalytic, rather it gives access to the paradox of
limits of knowledge. Stanadayini affirms it through (dis) figuring of the other in the
(womens) body. In contest of Iccharmrityu (willed death) the last statement
becomes undecidable.
When a mortal plays god here, she is forsaken by all and she must always die
alone.
219
In relation to the thematics of womans jouissance, Stanadayini opens with

Jashoda as a professional mother, but for her, motherhood is not profession. Like
Jashoda the cook is also marginalized, who is removed from her job due to the
youngest Haldar son, while considering terms of narrative value in the voice of
marginal which disappears from the story. Mahsweta Devi marks the irreducible
inscrutability of the pleasure of womans body. It is not artistic language of elite
feminist literary experimentation. The reducible logic, including authorial reading
and pedagogic interventions of story is exchange in the form of slang. It is
unfreezable dynamic of slang of subaltern semiosis.
The story of Jashoda is the result of an obstinate misunderstanding of the
rhetorical questioning that transforms the condition of the (im)possibility of
answering, of the telling the story into the conditioning of possibility. The
representation of the subaltern in history or literature has double bind at its origin.
Julia Kresteva has rewritten the Freudian version of the Oedipal Family
Romance. She theorizes an abject mother who unequally couples with imaginary
father offers a primary narcissistic model that allows the infant to speak. The focus is
on child as she is an apologist for Christianity upon the Holy child. If we think of
placing Jashoda in the place of abject mother, the coherent reading can be done by
strategic excluding the entire political burden of the text. There can be no sameness
between Kristevas positioning of a pre-originary space, in which sexual difference is
annulled (to see the Christian agape).
Kristevas discussions of the virgin with cultural subject representation and
constitution are close to isomorphic generalizations that contrasted to the Mahsweta
Devis critique of nation wide patriarchal mobilization of the Hindu Divine Mother
and Holy child. According to Kristeva, there are many accesses to the mother-childscene. The story plays between two cultural uses of it. The figure of lion-seated,
whose official icon of motherhood triumphant is framed by her many adult divine
children, democratically, is reflected in the temple quarter of Calcutta. All the
nurturing of Jashoda is principle of patriarchal sexual ideology. In Draupadi
Mahaswta Devi mobilizes the figure of mythic female as opposed to goddess.
Kristeva points at the Virgins status as the mother of God by constructing the father
and the abject mother. Mahsweta Devi introduces exploitation, domination in the
mythic story, which signifies that Jashoda is foster-mother. Jashodas turning
fostering into a profession is seen by her as turning mothering in its materiality
220
beyond its social affect, beyond psychologization as abjection, or

trascendentalization as the vehicle of the divine.
yet
9.5.7 Considerations Specifically of Gendering:

A basic technique of representing the subaltern (as sex) is as the object of the
gaze from above. In the representation of Jashoda, eye-object situation is deflected
into a specific religious discourse. In Hindu polytheism the God or Goddess is also
an object of the gaze, from below. Through these two types of gaze goddess can be
used to dissimulate womens oppression. The transformation of the final cause of the
entire chain of events of narrative of Lion-seated in part first is the example of
Jashodas exploitation. The youngest Haldar son is subject and object is suckling of
Jashoda as if Jashoda is divine (foster) mother suckling the Holy child. Haldar son
masquerades, so that subaltern can dissimulate into an icon, the role of dominant
female i.e. the Goddess will.
Mahaswta presents Jashoda as constituted by patriarchal ideology. Jashoda as
subaltern does not participate in the questioning. She is considered to be the
metaphor of the naturalness of womans reproductive function. Mahasweta uses
Jashoda the subaltern a metaphor of the dominant sexual ideology of India.
In Mahasweta Devis writing the authority of the author-function is claimed, as
the story is no more than authors construction. It places an allusion to the literary
school of literary history than the stream of reality. Jashodas name is also aninterpellation into patriarchal ideology is thus overt authorial sanction through the
narrative. In terms of ideology, result Jashodas fostering is Krishna whose fluteplaying is phallocentic eroticism and charioteering is logocentric subaltern into
model of Karma, is the 19th century Bengali nationalism.
The end of the story make distance between author form and gender-ideological
interpellation of the protagonist by identifying protagonist as Jashoda Devi, Hindu
female which is a narrative irony that strengthens the author function. The language
and terminology of propositions (author functions) reminds us about the high Hindu
scriptures as shift of narrative religion, through theology into philosophy.
The argument that the subaltern as historical subject translates the discourse of
religion into the discourse of militancy in case of the subaltern as gendered subject,
Stanadayini recounts the failure of such translation. It undoes the hierarchical
221
opposition between the Hinduism of philosophical monotheism and that of

polytheism. The arrogance of the former is complications with the ideological
victimage of later, which is managed through distinction between the author-function
and protagonists predicament. Thus, if the story tells about the failure of discursive
displacement from religion to militancy the text participates in such translation from
the discourse of religion into that of political critique.
Stanadayini as a statement performs this by comprising between authors truth
as distinct from the authors ideology. It is the powerful title that hold reading, not
as wet-nurse, or the suckler, rather the breast-giver of the alienated means of
production distinguish organ of female as mother. The violence of this neologism is
in form of cancer that signifies oppression of gendered subaltern.
Much Third World fiction is still caught in realism is predicament, is because
of lack of acquaintance with the language of original. The deliberate awkward syntax
conveys through the mixture of an effect of far from realistic. The structural
conduct of story has fabulistic cast from domestic to domestic, a narrative of the
thirty years of decolonization. Mahasweta Devis text comments on realism in terms
of gendering which is deliberately mysterious and absurd, even to the speaker.
David Hardiman, in his account of the subaltern conference (Jan.1986) has
given some conclusions making women as an object of the gaze. Subaltern, being
against elite have to resist for their position. In the mise-en-scene the text rehearses
itself and reader and writer are both upstaged. If the teacher carves out a piece of
action by using the text as a tool it is celebration of text apartness paradoxically,
makes the text susceptible to the history than writer, reader, and teacher. In this scene
of writing the authority of author must be content to stand.
9.6 Glossary & Notes:
Subaltern subaltern refers to persons socially, politically and geographically

outside of the hegemonic power structure.
Diaspora the dispersion or spread of any people from their original

homeland
Archaeology - the scientific study of human remains and artifacts
222
Indigenous Original habitants of the territory originating from a place, native

to a region
Jouissance it is the French word for enjoyment often used in a sexual sense.
It is translated as bliss to retain its erotic sense
Hegemonic it is an indirect form of imperial dominance
Imperialism The creation and or maintenance of an unequal economic,

cultural and territorial relationship usually between states and after in the form
of an Empire based on domination & subordination
Decolonization the action of changing from colonial to independent
Post-colonialism it is an intellectual discourse that consists of reaction to and

analysis of, the cultural legacy of colonialism and imperialism
Elite - A group or class of persons or a member of such a group or class,

enjoying superior intellectual, social, or economic status
Heteroglossia - The term heteroglossia describes the coexistence of distinct

varieties within a single "linguistic code". In Greek hetero = different + glssa =
tongue, language
Proletarian - is a term used to identify a lower social class usually the working
class; a member of such a class is proletarian.
Fabulation a term used by some modern critics for a mode of modern fiction
that openly delights in its self-conscious verbal artifice, thus departing from the
conventions of realism.
9.7 Check your progress:

A) Choose the correct alternative
1)
The term discursive formation is coined by______.

a.
Gayatri Chakravoty Spivak
b.
Jaques Derrida
c.
Michael Foucault
d.
Julia Kristeva
223
2)
3)
4)
5)
The meaning of Pedagogy is ______

a.
function of learning
b.
function of statement
c.
function of language
d.
function of teaching
According to Spivak a literary text exists between_____

a.
reader and writer
b.
writer and critic
c.
reader and critic
d.
teacher and historian
Imperialism and Motherhood is written by _____

a.
Julia Kristeva
b.
Anna Davin
c.
Jacques Lacan
d.
Jacques Derrida
Illness as Metaphor is written by

a.
Susan Sontag
b.
Lise Vogel
c.
Anna Davin
d.
Gayatri Spivak
B) Answer in one word/phrase/sentence each.

1)
When was Spivaks essay A literary representation of Subaltern:

Mahasweta Devis Stanadayini published?
2)
What is Foucaults concept of statement?
3)
Who has rewritten the Freudian version of Oedipal Family Romance?
4)
Who has coined the term Strategic Essentialism?
224
5)
What is the meaning of Sanskrit word vyangya?
6)
What does the disease Cancer signify?
7)
How does Spivak, define the production of historical accounts?
8)
What is the name of Jashodas husband?
9)
Who wrote The Bridge Wore the Traditional Gold?
10) What does Jashoda signify Metaphorically?
9.8 Exercises:
A) Answer the following questions in 250 words
1.
Discuss briefly the seven approaches suggested by Spivak for reading

Mahaswetas Breast-Giver?
2.
Comment on womans body politics reflected in Mahaswetas BreastGiver?
3.
Enumarate the limitations of the classic European Marxist Theory pointed

out by Spivak.
4.
Critically analyze Breast-Giver as a parable of decolonization.
5.
Attempt a brief essay on the oppression of gendered subaltern pointed out

by Spivak.
B) Short Notes
1.
Historians approach to Stanadayini.
2.
Stanadayini in liberal feminism
3.
Metaphor of breast
9.9 Key to check your progress:

A) 1.
Michael Foucault
2.
function of teaching
3.
reader and writer
4.
Anna Devin
5.
Susan Sontag
225
B) 1.
1984
2.
Function existence of language
3.
Julia Kresteva
4.
Gayatri Spivak
5.
Vyangya means deformed and mockery
6.
The disease Cancer signifies sexually undifferentiated/ unidentified body

politic
7.
Production of historical accounts is defined as the discursive narration of

the events
8.
Kangalicharan
9.
Talaboot Spivak
10. Jashoda is a signifier of subalternity
9.10 Books for further reading:

Breast Stories trans.Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Calcutta,Seagull Books 2002
Schwarz Henry, Postcolonial Performance Text and Contexts of Mahasweta
Devi, Sharp 2002
Guha Ranjit, Selected Subaltern Studies (1988)
Nelson Cary, Lawrence Grossberg, Marxism and The Interpretation of Culture,
University of Illinois Press, Urbana & Chicago, 1988
Spivak, Donna Landry & Gerald M.McLean, The Spivak Reader,Routledge
1996
226

M. A. Part-II English Paper 6 Critical Theory All

Hochgeladen von

Dokumentinformationen

Originaltitel

Copyright

Verfügbare Formate

Dieses Dokument teilen

Dokument teilen oder einbetten

Freigabeoptionen

Stufen Sie dieses Dokument als nützlich ein?

Sind diese Inhalte unangemessen?

Copyright:

Verfügbare Formate

M. A. Part-II English Paper 6 Critical Theory All

Hochgeladen von

Copyright:

Verfügbare Formate

H

SHIVAJI UNIVERSITY, KOLHAPUR

Prescribed for M. A. Part-II

Centre for Distance Education

Prof. (Dr.) K. S. Rangappa

Prof. (Dr.) R. Krishna Kumar

Prof. (Dr.) A. B. Rajge

Prof. (Dr.) D. V. Muley

Prof. (Dr.) A. N. Joshi

Prof. Dr. (Smt.) Cima Yeole

Director, Centre for Distance Education,

Prof. (Dr.) P. A. Attar

Head, Dept. of English,

Arts, Commerce & Science College,

'Yashodhan', 2nd Lane, Ayodhya Nagar,

Centre for Distance Education

Prof. Akhalaq Ziaahmed Tade

Smt. Dr. R. G. Barvekar

Dhvani : Structure of Poetic Meaning by Anandwardhan

Nature of Linguistic Sign by Ferdinand de Saussure

Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of

Human Sciences by Jacques Derrida

The Death of the Author by Roland Barthes

Feminist Criticism in the Wilderness by Elaine Showalter

The Politics of Theory: Ideological Position in

Postmodern Debate by Fredric Jameson

Literary Studies in an Age of Environmental Crisis

A Literary Representation of the Subaltern:

There are four General Topics prescribed. They are as follows:

Structuralism and Post-Structuralism

Structuralism and Post-Structuralism

Check Your Progress

Check Your Progress

Check Your Progress

Check Your Progress

Keys to Check Your Progress No.1.1.3

Keys to Check Your Progress No.1.2.3

Keys to Check Your Progress No.1.3.3

Keys to Check Your Progress No.1.4.3

Reference for Further Study

1.1.1 STRUCTURALISM AND POST-STRUCTURALISM

The Structuralist criticism is a part of the French Structuralism which was

Roland Barthes (1915-80), a French critic, speaks about the parallelism of

meaning; whereas the scriptable is that which is unintelligible in terms of our

action, production and intellection. A prominent aspect of post-structural theories is

1.1.2 Check Your Progress:

Structuralism is based on the linguistic concepts provided by ________.

Structuralism gives primacy to __________.

According to a structuralist, a literary work is nothing but a ______.

_____________ is a writer of the essay The Death of the Author.

It was ______ whose name is chiefly associated with post-structuralism.

B) Answer the following questions in one word/phrase/sentence.

The historical changes in the fundamental mode of material production cause

An ideology beliefs, values, ways of thinking, feeling, perceiving etc.-helps to

According to Marx, ideology is a superstructure and relevant socio- economic

In Italy, Marxist Criticism flourished because of the contribution of Antonio

1.2.2 Check Your Progress :

Karl Marx adopted _________ idea of dialectic.

________ discarded Aristotelian theory of art, that art is an imitation of

____________ popularized Marxist Criticism in Germany.

Das Capital is a well known work by ________.

Raymond Williams prefers culture to ideology and coins the term

B) Answer the following questions in one word/phrase/sentence.