Bon Voyage

Editorial Vol.4(1)

2023-04-17T13:09:48+00:00

No abstract available.

Myth as Structural Component: A Study of W. B. Yeats' “Sailing to Byzantium” from Mythical Structuralism

2023-04-17T13:21:22+00:00

Structuralism commonly deals with signs and signification process to produce meaning of any text based on structures tied in signifier and signified. It is theoretical concept developed by Ferdinand de Saussure which, later on, became conversant in art and literature known as structuralism and is applied in literary texts. From the structural sense, myth is one of the prominent components to connect both visible and implicit signification attuned to a language.

Mythical structuralism tends to embody a system of communication where mythical references and allusions indicate message. That is, myth cannot be simply categorized as an object or image. Rather, it is a mode of significations liked in the chain, both apparent and non apparent. Specifically, myth is structural sign of the past whose signification process can be traced into the language in use as in second order. Considering this, myth as structural analysis is applied to see undercurrent mythical allusions and references in W.B. Yeats' "Sailing to Byzantium". I focus on the ideas and theoretical concepts employed by Ferdinand de Saussure, Roland Barthes, and Julia Kristeva. These scholars try to see language as an embodiment of structure: both the visible and invisible within certain linguistic entity incorporated with signs, signifiers, signified and signification process. Myth as the signification process is discussed as latent and visible structures exposed in language.

Brain Drain among the Gurung Community: A Diaspora Case Study

2023-04-17T13:30:23+00:00

From the ancient time, Nepal is a multi-ethnic, multi-lingual, multi–religious, and multi-cultural country. This Himalayan country offers the world communities rich cultural heritage, natural beauty and legendary images with historical significance. It has always already been proven that the brave Nepali people sacrificed their lives for national unity, territorial integrity and the world peace. Despite its size, Nepal is rich with geographical, social, religious, and cultural diversities let alone ethnic variety with the perfect harmony. People observe various festivals and jatras (carnivals) during different seasons. The people from various castes and ethnic communities with various feasts and festivals, rites and rituals, and myths and ethnicity have made immense contribution to the nation building. Gurung is one of the rich indigenous ethnic communities in Nepal which in recent decades has suffered severe problem of brain drain because of an increasing trend of globalization as well as their recruitment in foreign armies. Descending from hills of Nepal, Gurungs as mercenary soldiers in foreign armies, including the British, Singapore and Indian have made immense contribution to the formation of Nepali Diaspora in Asia and beyond. Such an increasing trend of formation and expansion of the diaspora has adversely resulted in the brain drain from Nepal, a severe challenge to Nepal’s plan of progress and prosperity

Holi Dance as a Performance for New Beginning in Rimal's Silu

2023-04-17T13:35:31+00:00

This paper analyzes holi dance entitled Abiraya holi in Pradeep Rimal directed Newari movie Silu (1987), the first ever ethnic movie made in Nepal, as a seasonal folklore that signifies the arrival of the New Year. Holi provides a context of social interaction for young men and to present themselves in front of the elders in among Newar community in Kathmandu Valley. My inquiry into the Newari culture through the movie is how holi celebration marks the beginning of new life for a newly married couple. As holi is a harbinger of New Year a giving them chance to familiarize with new ones. Not only that, it further examines that celebration of holi at the dawn of New Year bring families, relatives and young people from different clans together. Thus, holi becomes a basis for strengthening the relationship between protagonists in the movie and people in the society. In order to highlight holi dance as popular folklore among Newar community and it as an enactment of sharing a cultural tradition of Newars in Silu, this paper brings cultural studies on board to study the intersection of holi, New Year and newly married couples.

Ethnography: A Research Paradigm in Cultural Studies

2023-04-17T13:43:51+00:00

Ethnography is a new discipline in humanities and social sciences mainly in cultural studies that befits with the politics of identity. Generally people are stereotyped while they become the subjects of etic perspective. But on the other hand emic perspective of ethnography helps to establish the independent identity of the people that valorizes social recognition also. Positivism is a method in thick description under cultural studies that anchors the logical deduction in research that has affinity with quantitative reading of ethnography. While doing so this article has deployed Clifford Geertz’s notion of thick description because it ensures the accuracy in research findings when the researcher is engaged to study ethnicity and identity.

Abjection of Body: Quest for Identity, Freedom and Maturity in Robert Cormier’s The Chocolate War

2023-04-17T14:08:43+00:00

This paper analyzes abjection of body in Robert Cormier’s The Chocolate War. The young adult protagonist of The Chocolate War, Jerry Renault encounters social and psychological abjections. In addition this paper discusses how social and psychological abjections work in The Chocolate War. By and large this paper argues that abjection of body supports to quest identity and freedom. It also discusses how the young adult protagonist employs his body to obtain identity and freedom. Therefore, this paper contends that abjection is necessary condition each individual passes through before reaching into maturity, the condition in which they realize the need for conforming to the society. For the analytical purpose, it draws the insights of abjection from Julia Kristeva and Karen Coats. This paper provides an opportunity to know the young adult body and the conditions of abjection. Moreover this paper facilitates to know the ways of triumphing over abjection and results the young adult obtains after overpowering abjection.

Compounded Oppressions and Intersections of Identities in Nottage's Sweat

2023-04-17T14:21:37+00:00

Intersectionality has become the primary analytic tool in feminist and anti-racist scholarship to understand identity and oppression. This article critically interrogates the assumptions of intersectionality while underpinning white man's supremacy and privilege in order to focus on the oppressed position of immigrant, African-American, and menial workers. In Lynn Nottage's Sweat the white people enjoy the privileged position by belittling the underdogs. The social components like class, gender, race, and their discursive techniques work together to form and consolidate such an oppressed position. While looking from the perspective of feminism, this article encapsulates the equation mediated by multiple identity locations intersecting each other. The result of such an intersection of class, race and gender produces compound oppression which is the stigma of American democracy.

An Epitome of Nonviolent Resistance: A Study of Gandhi’s The Story of My Experiments with Truth

2023-04-17T14:28:21+00:00

Truth and non-violence are the twin pillars on which rest the entire framework of the magnificent edifice of Mahatma Gandhi's glorious life and work. Gandhi names the protest satyagraha, which means the “force contained in truth and love,” or “nonviolent resistance.” The philosophy of satyagraha requires that a person who decides to break a law considered unjust must accept the consequences of that decision. Mahatma Gandhi, a determinant and an all committed human soul, ascends this material world and reigns in the hearts of billions and billions of people all around the world. The ideas of Mahatma Gandhi have had a lasting impact on crusades for rights and freedom: from the civil rights movement of the 1960s through the movements against corporate greed and racism that are developing today. This paper serves to locate some nonviolent resistances in reference to Mahatma Gandhi’s The Story of My Experiments with Truth.

Representation of the Poor’s Plight in Vaikom’s “Birthday”: A Social Realistic Approach

2023-04-17T14:32:45+00:00

This paper explores the plight of a poor student who doesn’t have a penny to celebrate his birthday. “Janmadinaa” (Birthday) is a story originally written in Malayalam, narrated from the autobiographical perspective. Vaikom Muhammad Basheer, the narrator, makes the readers observe pathetically different encounters with his friends and neighbours. His friends and neighbours look at him with strange gaze and deny lending him even an ‘anna’ (rupee) to have a morsel of food and a cup of tea on his birthday. Vaikom has varieties of groups of characters: the poor, the students, and the helpless and rich people through the perspective of social realism. Social realism by George Lucks describes socio-economic reality that rejects the deterministic relationship between the reality and its underlying meaning. Largely this article deploys Lucks’s concept to explicate Vaikom’s story and reflects upon the issue of pretty misery of the protagonist. The story encapsulates an optimistic remark that the poor people always remain active and raise voice against the socio-economical domination from the elites.

Breaking the Illusion of Disembeddedness in Science Fiction Movies Interstellar and The Martian

2023-04-17T14:50:47+00:00

This paper critically examines two Hollywood science fictions movies Interstellar and The Martian from the notion of environmental crisis and human’s desperate effort to protect its serenity. Particularly, I am interested in exploring the issue of illusionistic anthropocentrism. I am interested in knowing why the feelings of superiority and self-sufficiency in human beings make them live with illusion of disembeddedness from nature. The major objective of this paper is to pinpoint the ecological crisis in future world and the invention of artificial habs or digital earth for survival through Hollywood films. The birth of the digital Earth ensures the doom of green earth and warns us to contemplate on our own earth instead lurking after space mission ignoring the nature’s exploitation. For this, I have used ecocritical perspective. Especially, I have drawn upon Lynn Townsend White Jr. and Val Plumwood’s notion of ecocriticsm and environmental crisis. This study is going to be important because it will answer the roots of our current ecological crisis and environmental pollution.

Paradox between Religion and Biotechnology in Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go

2023-04-17T14:55:19+00:00

In the modern world, biotechnology plays a vital role to help improve human lives and the health of the planet; and, similarly, we cannot deny the significance of religion that helps to shape the human’s mind and spiritual growth. Both are equally important even though many secularists and nonbelievers tend to regard religion and science (technology) as vitally incompatible. This incompatibility is also imagined to extend the relationship between religion and biotechnology. We cannot envisage the present world without technology, which is often rooted, sometimes unknowingly in religious myths and ancient dreams and it is unfortunate sometimes technology has proven itself capable of causing terrible problems in the name of humanity and one of the reasons for this may be the religious impulses people are ignoring. This research article tries to analyze the paradox between religion and biotechnology based on humanity raised by Kazuo Ishuguro in the novel Never Let Me Go. It tries to examine the scientific credibility and the religious values for humanity in the futuristic world.

Race, Beauty and Resistance: A Historical Perspective

2023-04-17T14:59:43+00:00

This article surveys of the various forms of racism and their impact upon the notion of beauty in the US. After the abolition of the slavery and racially segregated legal provisions, the African- American people suffer from various forms of racial discriminations. Such racist attitudes based on Whiteman supremacy also shape the discourse and standard of women’s beauty in the US. The biological features of the white women are considered as standard of beauty and the black women are stereotyped in terms of their beauty. As a result, the black women suffer emotionally and socially, and feel pressure of changing their biological features to confirm and accommodate with the whites’ notion of beauty. However, some black women gradually resist such racist notion of beauty by exploring their cultural root and proposing a counter discourse of beauty.

The Navigation of Afrocentricism in Countee Cullen’s “Heritage” and Incident”: The Poetics of Identity

2023-04-17T15:17:25+00:00

This paper brings forward the course and determination of Afro-American people toward their origin as experienced by African Americans. It remarkably remaps the poetics of identity amid the racial segregation as projected in Countee Cullen’s “Heritage” and “Incident.” Further, it deals with the color line discrimination over enslaved community and fabricated knowledge about their history as problematic of research. Because the slavery system has belittled Afro-Americans and alienated them from their atavistic culture so that they fail to enjoy human dignity and identity. My purpose, here, is to delve into the issue of color discrimination that not only hems the Afro- American community but also dislocates them from their heritage. Largely, this paper navigates their alienated position amid the vast opportunities of material progress in America. Moreover, this paper intends to go through the genealogical studies of the race as envisioned by Paul Gilroy and W.E.B. Du Bois who advocate for enslaved community’s dignity and identity. Admittedly, genealogical history of the race takes the Afro-American people back to the time before ‘the slave trade’ era when they were happy and free enjoying their culture and language with human dignity in their atavistic land, Africa.

Rhetoric of Equating Nature and Native in Henry Rider Haggard's King Solomon's Mines

2023-04-17T15:20:36+00:00

The article has selected Henry Rider Haggard's adventure fiction, King Solomon's Mines, for its eco-feminist critical scrutiny. In so doing, it usurps the working definition of the term "ecofeminism" as a tool of inquiry. Then it demonstrates how the rhetoric of empire constructs and mirrors the African continent in general and people and animals in particular. The article primarily exposes the sinister colonial rhetoric of equating nature - land and animals - with women, thus site for exploration and exploitation opens up. The rhetoric becomes an instrument in defining and understanding them for achieving its political ends which leads to unbridled exploitation of both. The analysis further understands the discursive technique of equating nature and natives to establish the European legitimacy for exploitation of native people and nature.

Spiritualism in Ghãtu

2023-04-17T15:26:56+00:00

Ghãtu is fully based on spiritual practices. The ethnic group, Gurung observes this Ghãtu for good harvesting and faith healing. The performers believe that some of the diseases are healed after taking part in the dance performance. There are several benefits of observing the performance. When Ghãtu god is happy the villagers are protected from various kinds of bad luck. The villagers also believe that there will be good harvest after the performance. One most surprising thing is that the protagonist, Yempahawati self immolates for spiritual unification with her husband in the heaven. She believes that she will surely meet her husband in the spiritual world. She does not care of the throne, neither does she care her breast feeding two and half years old boy, Bala Krishna. She is no more interested in such material things. Therefore, this performance is full of spiritual practices.

Celebration of Meaninglessness in Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five

2023-04-17T15:32:34+00:00

This is an exploratory inquiry on Slaughterhouse-Five of Kurt Vonnegut. The inquiry uses insights from the postmodernist art to investigate how the novel celebrates the meaninglessness employing various techniques and how the protagonist Billy Pilgrim comes to terms with his meaningless existence. It was found that the novel uses the postmodernist novelistic technic and theme such as the use of the subversion of narration, pastiche, parody, intertextuality, adaptation, alienation, paradox, fragmented character and narrative structure as the devices for diminishing painful experiences of Second World War.