Talks by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

This blog is a response to the task given to us by our professor, Dr. Dilip Barad. In this blog, I will describe what Adichie has said in her talks as well as my learning outcomes from her talks. Let us begin with her discussion on "The Danger of Single Story."

 

In her TEDTalk, "The Danger of a Single Story," Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie discusses the harmful effects of hearing only one story about a person, place, or thing. She argues that when we only know one story about something, we tend to make assumptions and judgments about it that are not always accurate.

 

Adichie tells the story of her own experience growing up in Nigeria. She was raised on a diet of Western stories, which led her to believe that all white people were rich and all black people were poor. It was not until she came to the United States for college that she realized that this was not the whole story. She met people of all races and socioeconomic backgrounds, and she realized that the stories she had been told were not accurate.

The Danger of a Single Story: Why We Need to Understand Different Perspectives

 

In her now-famous TED Talk, author and researcher Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie tells a story about how she once went to watch a new film with her friend. Her friend was excited because this was the first time they had seen a movie together. The two of them sat in the theater and watched a man fall in love with an island and sacrifice everything to save it. On their way home, Adiche’s friend asked her: “Why is it that in every movie they sell us these white men going native?” This moment changed her perspective on world literature forever—from that day on, she understood how different stories create different realities. In her own words: “We read Upton Sinclair and think ugh, those awful factory conditions; we read Bret Easton Ellis and think yuck, those vapid yuppies; we read Chinua Achebe and think eek, those savage Africans... We see one story again and again — or rather see the same story over and over again. And we cannot see anything else... If you believe only What You Know, you will understand the world only one way — your way.”

 

 

How We Build a Single Story About Other People

The first step towards a more empathetic world is understanding how our brains work—why, when it comes to other people, we all start from the same place. There are many reasons why we default to a single story about others. The first is that the human brain is programmed to notice differences and ignore similarities. We’ve evolved to survive in groups by building our own tribes—and the best way to do that is to spot what’s different about someone and use that to build a social barrier around ourselves. We call this process “othering” and it’s the reason we stereotype. We’re not doing it to be malicious; we’re doing it because it makes it easier for us to process information.

 

The Danger of Understanding the World Through a Single Story

If we’re not careful, we can end up with thousands of single stories about thousands of people — and we can only truly understand the world if we start to piece together these individual stories into one big story. Every time you walk into a room, you’re meeting dozens of people who all have different backgrounds, different experiences, and different ideas. When you walk out, you’re walking out with a single story about each of them — and if you don’t recognize that this is a biased process, you’ll miss out on the awesome potential of having friends from all walks of life. The more you understand about the single stories that shape someone’s life, the more you can empathize with them.

 

The Importance of Recognizing Different Perspectives

The more you understand about someone’s single story, the more empathy you’ll be able to show for their actions. You might not agree with everything they do, but you’ll be able to look at their world through their eyes and understand why they do what they do. And this level of understanding doesn’t just enrich other people’s lives — it also helps you to grow as a person. Your perspective on life will change as you expose yourself to new ideas, new cultures, and new ways of thinking. And the more you understand about yourself, the more you’ll be able to make positive changes in your life.

 

3 Ways to Bridge the Gap Between Your World and Someone Else’s

There are many ways to make our single stories more inclusive. You can: - Seek out Controversial Voices - The more you read, the more you’ll be able to understand the different perspectives that shape our world. Start by reading articles that challenge your opinions and expand your horizons — from there, you can start reading books from different cultures and different backgrounds. - Ask Questions - The best way to learn about someone’s perspective is to ask questions. Ask your friends about the struggles they’ve faced, ask your family about their culture, and ask experts about their specialized field of knowledge. The more questions you ask, the more you’ll learn. - Expand Your Social Circle - This is the most important step if you want to live in a more inclusive world. We are naturally inclined to spend time with people who are like us — but the moment we try to change this, we discover a whole new world. From this point on, you’ll always be able to look at your life through a new perspective.

Key Takeaways:

- The danger of a single story is that it leads to misunderstanding and misrepresentation.

- When we only know one story about something, we make assumptions and judgments that may not be accurate.

- It is important to be curious and to seek out multiple stories in order to get a more complete understanding of the world around us.

 Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's "We should all be feminist"

 

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's "We should all be feminist" is a powerful and thought-provoking talk that makes a strong case for why everyone, not just women, should strive for gender equality. Adichie begins by discussing how she was raised to think of herself as equal to men, even though she lived in a society that was far from equal. She goes on to talk about how, as a young woman, she realized that the world was not as fair to women as it was to men and that she needed to fight for gender equality. Adichie's essay is both an empowering call to action and a reminder that feminism is for everyone.

 

It is impossible to overstate how important it is for everyone, not just women, to fight for gender equality. Adichie's essay makes it clear that the world is not a fair or just place for women, and that we need to do something about it. Her words are especially powerful because she is not just talking about the pay gap or glass ceiling; she is talking about the everyday ways in which women are treated as inferior to men. She talks about how women are expected to be polite and accommodating, even when they are being harassed or treated unfairly. Adichie's essay is a call to arms for everyone, regardless of gender, to stand up for what is right and to fight for a more just and equal world.

 

Adichie's talk is important not just for what it says, but also for how it says it. She is unapologetic and unafraid to speak her truth. She speaks from her own experiences and from a place of deep conviction. This is an essay that will make you think, and it is one that you will want to come back to again and again.

Learning outcomes from this talk:

1.Why we should all be feminists:

2.How feminism is for everyone

3.How to be an unapologetic feminist

4.How to fight for gender equality.

 

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's "We should all be feminist" makes a strong case for the importance of feminism for everyone, not just women. She discusses how the world is not a fair or just place for women, and how we need to fight for gender equality. Adichie's essay is important for what it says, and for how it says it. She is unapologetic and unafraid to speak her truth. This is an essay that will make you think, and it is one that you will want to come back to again and again.

 

What Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie means when she says "the problem with gender is that it prescribes how we should be rather than recognizing how we are":

 

Adichie is saying that the way we think about gender is harmful because it tells us how we should act and behave, rather than allowing us to be who we are. This is an important point that helps to explain why feminism is so important. We need to stop prescribing how people should behave based on their gender, and instead allow everyone to be their true selves.

Talk on the Importance of Truth in Post-Truth Era

We are living in a post-truth era. In this era, it is more important than ever to stand up for the truth. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is a Nigerian writer who has spoken out about the importance of truth in this era. In her talk, she says that we must not allow the lies of the post-truth era to drown out the truth. Adichie says that the post-truth era is defined by lies and misinformation. In this era, it is easy to spread lies and misinformation. We must be careful not to believe everything we see and hear. We must be critical thinkers. We must question everything. Adichie says that the post-truth era is dangerous for democracy. In a democracy, it is important that we have an informed citizenry. But in the post-truth era, people are more likely to believe lies and misinformation. This can lead to people making bad decisions about who to vote for. Adichie says that we must fight back against the post-truth era. We must stand up for the truth. We must speak out against lies and misinformation. We must be careful about what we believe. We must think for ourselves.

Key takeaways from this talk:

-The post-truth era is defined by lies and misinformation.

-In the post-truth era, it is important to be a critical thinker.

-The post-truth era is dangerous for democracy.

-We must fight back against the post-truth era by speaking out against lies and misinformation.

-The importance of truth in the post-truth era.

-The danger of lies and misinformation in the post-truth era.

-The importance of being a critical thinker in the post-truth era.

-The importance of speaking out against lies and misinformation in the post-truth era.

Conclusion

The best way to build a better future is to understand the past. And the best way to understand the past is to listen to the people who lived through it. The only way to solve any of the problems that divide us is by listening to each other. If you want to see change, you have to start by understanding people’s stories. If you want to create a better future, you have to understand the past.I found this talk to be very eye-opening and thought-provoking. It made me realize the importance of hearing multiple perspectives and avoiding the trap of a single story. Adichie's story is a reminder that we should never assume that we know the whole story.

Future of Post-Colonial Studies

 

Future of Postcolonialism: Thinking Activity

This blog is a response to the thinking activity assigned by Dr. Dilip Barad sir. In this blog,, I will discuss my point of view on two articles from Aania Loomba's Colonialism/Postcolonialism (2nd and 3rd edition).

What is Postcolonialism:

Postcolonialism is a field of study that emerged in the wake of decolonization or the process by which colonies gain independence from their colonizers. It is an interdisciplinary field that examines the effects of colonization on both the colonized and the colonizer. Postcolonialism also looks at the ways in which the colonized people resist and subvert the colonial system.

There is no one definition of postcolonialism, but the field is generally concerned with the power dynamics between the colonizer and the colonized, and the impact of colonization on both groups. Postcolonialism is often critical of the Eurocentric perspective that dominated much of academia prior to the field's emergence.

Postcolonialism is a relatively new field, and as such, it is still evolving and changing. It is an important field of study that has the potential to change the way we think about the world and our place in it.

"Postcolonialism... involves a studied engagement with the experience of colonialism and its past and present effects"

According to the glossary of literary terms by M.H. Abrams,

The critical analysis of the history, culture, literature, and modes of discourse that are specific to the former colonies of England, Spain, France, and other European imperial powers. These studies have focused especially on the Third World countries in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean islands, and South America. Some scholars, however, extend the scope of such analyses also to the discourse and cultural productions of countries such as Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, which achieved independence much earlier than the Third World countries. Postcolonial studies sometimes also encompass aspects of British literature in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, viewed through a perspective that reveals the ways in which the social and economic life represented in that literature was tacitly underwritten by colonial exploitation.

Postcolonial literature often addresses the problems and consequences of the decolonization of a country. It addresses the role of literature in perpetuating and challenging what postcolonial critic Edward Said refers to as cultural imperialism. Not all migration takes place in a colonial setting, and not all postcolonial literature deals with migration. (Postcolonial Literature)

Postcolonial Criticism:

According to Peter Barry, there are three phases Adopt, Adapt, and Adept gives a lens through which to view postcolonial literature.

In its earliest phase, which is to say before it was known as such, postcolonial criticism took as its main subject matter white representations of colonial countries and criticised these for their limitations and their bias: thus, critics would discuss the representation of Africa in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness or of India in E. M. Forster's A Passage to India, or of Algeria in Albert Camus's The Outsider.

The second phase of postcolonial criticism involved a turn toward explorations of themselves and their society by postcolonial writers. At this stage the celebration and exploration of diversity, hybridity, and difference become central. This corresponds to the 'gynotext' phase of feminist criticism (Gynocriticism) when there is a turn towards the exploration of female experience and identities in books by women.

Third PhaseThe analogy between these two types of criticism might be pushed a little further so that a parallel might also be perceived with the split in feminist criticism between 'theoretical' and 'empirical' versions, as suggested above.

Thus, in postcolonial criticism we might see a split between variants very directly influenced by deconstruction and post-structuralism - such as the work of Homi Bhabha - and work like Said's which accepts a good deal from liberal humanism, is written in a more accessible way, and seems perhaps to lend itself more directly to political engagement.

Postcolonial criticism emphasises cultural differences in literary works and is one of the numerous critical methods we have explored that focus on specific problems such as gender (feminist criticism), class (Marxist critique), and sexual orientation (lesbian/gay criticism). This opens the idea of a'super-reader,' who can respond to a text in all of these ways equally and appropriately. In practice, one of these factors tends to trump the others for most readers. For example, the feminist critique example from Gilbert and Gubar's The Madwoman in the Attic does not remark on features in Wuthering Heights that would attract postcolonial critics, such as Heathcliff being identified by Emily Bronte as a racial 'Other.' (Barry)

Future of Postcolonialism:

The future of postcolonialism is shrouded in uncertainty. On the one hand, it could be argued that the rise of globalisation and the increased flow of people, ideas and culture across borders will lead to the further erosion of traditional boundaries and the further hybridisation of cultures. This could lead to a situation where the concept of postcolonialism becomes increasingly irrelevant. On the other hand, it could be argued that the increased awareness of and interest in the histories and experiences of colonised peoples will lead to a resurgence of postcolonialism as a critical framework for understanding the world. Only time will tell which of these two trajectories will come to dominate.

Future of Postcolonial studies (3rd Edition):

Some of the most well-known postcolonial scholars, such as Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, claim to 'no longer have a postcolonial worldview.' Some postcolonialists, both inside and outside of literary studies, have rethought their positions in response to new problems, such as those provided by environmental studies. Dipesh Chakrabarty believes that his "readings in globalisation theories, Marxist capital analysis, subaltern studies, and postcolonial critique" have not qualified him to analyse the "planetary problem of climate change". According to Ramachandra Guha and Juan Martnez-Alier (1997), this gap is visible in American environmentalism and its fascination with the wilderness. Postcolonial criticism has been sceptical of earth-first 'green critique,' and hence has avoided dealing with issues concerning the environment.

According to Jodi A. Byrd and Michael Rothberg, this is prior to postcolonial studies' over-reliance on colonial models from South Asia and Africa that do not speak to settler colonies from the Americas, Australia, and New Zealand. Rothberg and Byrd: Postcolonial Studies in the United States is a reified, distanced, and monolithic 'Third World literature' that largely ignores the individual and collective histories of several important allied traditions, including American studies, Native American studies, African American studies, Latino studies, and Gay and Lesbian studies. While there are significant political commonalities amongst disenfranchised peoples and organisations throughout the world (some of which I will discuss momentarily), there are also significant differences between them. Native Americans and African-Americans, however, marginalised, are citizens of the United States. Native Americans and African-Americans, however disenfranchised, are citizens of the world's most powerful nation-state; on the other hand, many third-world immigrants are quite well-off portions of society. Indigenous community relocation and land theft are also distinguishing elements of many areas that have been privileged in postcolonial studies of South Asia and Africa. Finally, as evidenced by environmental battles in South Asia and Africa, displacement of indigenous groups and land theft are distinguishing elements of many regions emphasised in postcolonial studies, such as South Asia and Africa. Chittaroopa Palit, one of the leaders of the NBA, says that she and her comrades ‘ learned a lot about the structures and processes of globalization through these struggles. Especially valuable was the lesson that

though international political factors, such as the character of the governments involved, and the existence of able support groups in the North play an important part, they cannot supplant the role of a mass movement struggling on the ground. Soon after the SPD government in Berlin refused a guarantee to Siemens, the German multinational, for building the dam in Maheshwar, it agreed to underwrite the company’s involvement in the Tehri dam in the Himalayas and the catastrophic Three Gorges Dam in China—both just as destructive as the Narmada project, but in neither instance was there strong mass struggles on the ground.

(Palit)

Palit examines how the NBA created new means of resistance by drawing on the vast experience and wisdom of the local people. Arundhati Roy, a writer, reminds us that tribal people in Central India has a long history of resistance dating back centuries. However, its self-conception and tactics were inspired by Gandhian anti-colonialist approaches, and it drew significant support from women's groups, labor unions, and left parties in the country, as well as links with other people's movements globally.

Prose Writers

This blog is a response to the flipped learning task assigned by Yesha Bhatt Ma'am. In this blog, I'd like to offer my thoughts on prose authors, emerging poets, and Indians writing in English.

Write a note on S. Radhakrishnan's perspective on Hinduism.

Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (5 September 1888 – 17 April 1975), natively Radhakrishnayya. Born in 1888 at Tiruttani, Radhakrishnan had his education at Tirupati, Vellore and the Madras Christian College. Best known of the three, is a philosopher-states-man with an international reputation, a scholar with a phenomenal memory, a resourceful and eloquent and effective speaker, and a voluminous writer with an uncanny flair for lucidity and epigrammatic strength. As a teacher of philosophy and as a writer, Professor Radhakrishnan held on with tenacity and a sense of dedication to a course chosen sixty years ago.

He has taught at the Madras, Mysore, Calcutta and Oxford Universities; he has been Vice-Chancellor of the Andhra and the Banaras Hindu Universities; he has presided over, the UNESCO General Conference and the All India Writers’ Conference; he has been President of the Sahitya Akademi. He has delivered the Kamala, Bampton, Haskell, Miller, Upton and Hibbert Lectures; he has addressed the World Congress of Faiths and most of the university convocations in India. After Independence, he became Chairman of the Universities Commission, India’s ambassador to Soviet Russia, Vice-President, and finally President of India.

He completed his masters' thesis on ‘The Ethics of the Vedanta and its Metaphysical Presuppositions’ in his twentieth year, and since then his pen in the service of his mind has not been idle. Two of his professors, Rev. William Meston and Dr. Alfred George Hogg, commended Radhakrishnan's dissertation.

According to Radhakrishnan himself, the criticism of Hogg and other Christian teachers of Indian culture "disturbed my faith and shook the traditional props on which I leaned."

Radhakrishnan himself describes how, as a student, The challenge of Christian critics impelled me to make a study of Hinduism and find out what is living and what is dead in it. My pride as a Hindu, roused by the enterprise and eloquence of Swami Vivekananda, was deeply hurt by the treatment accorded to Hinduism in missionary institutions. This criticism led him to study of Indian philosophy and religion. At the same time Radhakrishnan commended Professor Hogg as 'My distinguished teacher,’ and as "one of the greatest Christian thinkers we had in India.'

Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, an academic, philosopher, and statesman, was one of the most well-known and prominent Indian philosophers of the twentieth century. Throughout his life and vast literary career, Radhakrishnan worked to define, defend, and spread his religion, which he referred to variably as Hinduism, Vedanta, and the religion of the Spirit. He aimed to show that his Hinduism was intellectually sound as well as ethically feasible. Radhakrishnan's concern for experience, as well as his broad grasp of Western philosophical and literary traditions, have given him the title of "bridge-builder" between India and the West. He appears to be at comfort in both Indian and Western intellectual environments, and he relies on both Western and Indian sources throughout his writing. As a result, Radhakrishnan has been seen as a representation of Hinduism to the West in academic circles. His long literary career and several published books have influenced the West's perception of Hinduism, India, and the East.

Radhakrishnan's perspective on Hinduism is one that is deeply informed by his own personal religious beliefs and experience. He sees Hinduism as a religion that is fundamentally oriented towards the spiritual goal of human liberation. Radhakrishnan believes that Hinduism contains a rich store of spiritual and philosophical truths that can guide individuals on their own path to self-realization. He also emphasizes the importance of tolerance and open-mindedness in understanding and practicing Hinduism.

Radhakrishnan's writings on Hinduism offer a unique and valuable perspective on this complex and ancient religious tradition. His insights into the nature of the religion and its central tenets can be of great assistance to those who are seeking to deepen their understanding of Hinduism. His emphasis on the importance of personal experience and growth in the practice of Hinduism is particularly noteworthy. Radhakrishnan's perspective on Hinduism provides a valuable addition to the existing body of scholarship on this important religious tradition.

2) Write a note on Raghunathan's views of Indian Culture.

Raghunathan is a highly respected anthropologist who has studied Indian culture extensively. He has a deep understanding of the various aspects of Indian culture, and his views are highly regarded by many in the academic community. He has a strong belief in the importance of tradition and cultural continuity, and he feels that Indian culture has a great deal to offer the world. He is also a strong advocate of the need to preserve and protect traditional Indian culture from the forces of modernization.

Raghunathan's views on Indian culture are highly respected by many in the academic community. His deep understanding of the various aspects of Indian culture makes his views highly valuable in the field of anthropology.

He argues that the culture of the people—the complex of swabhava, swadharma, swatantra, and swarajya that is the actual index of this culture—has been the gradual building of the ages and may not now be crudely interfered with save at our entire discomfiture. Indian'spirituality' is not antithetical to life and world affirmation. Spirituality is an awakening to the inner or genuine Reality of our being, and once we put our feet on the Ground of Reality, our daily motions will be solid and purposeful. But how can one make contact with the Earth? Reason is a fantastic analytical tool, but the Base eludes it. resulting from it.He contends that people's culture—the complex of swabhava, swadharma, swatantra, and swarajya that is the genuine indicator of this culture—has been gradually built over the years and may not now be bluntly messed with except to our great discomfiture. Indian "spirituality" is not incompatible with life and world affirmation. Spirituality is an awakening to our inner or actual Reality, and once we plant our feet on the Ground of Reality, our everyday motions will be stable and meaningful. But how can one communicate with the Earth? The Base eludes Reason, which is a superb analytical tool. as a result of it

Write a critical note on the poems by Nissim Ezekiel

Nissim Ezekiel's poetry is noted for its ironic and often sarcastic treatment of Indian middle-class at its worst. In his early poems, such as "The Professor" and "The Patriot", Ezekiel pokes fun at the pretensions and materialism of the Indian middle-class. In his later poems, such as "The Night of the Scorpion" and "The Community", Ezekiel addresses more serious themes, such as death, suffering, and the human condition. While Ezekiel's poetry is not always easy to understand, it is always thought-provoking and well worth the effort.

Ezekiel is a master of irony and satire, and his poems are often witty and biting criticisms of the Indian middle-class. In "The Professor", for example, Ezekiel mocks the intellectual pretensions of a middle-class man who is more concerned with appearances than with substance. In "The Patriot", Ezekiel takesaim at the materialism and self-absorption of the middle-class, satirizing the way in which they use patriotic rhetoric to justify their own selfish interests.

While Ezekiel's early poems are primarily concerned with poking fun at the foibles of the middle-class, his later poems address more serious themes. "The Night of the Scorpion", for instance, is a dark and harrowing poem about a woman who suffers a scorpion bite and is saved by the selfless act of her husband. "The Community" is a poignant poem about the isolation and loneliness of the human condition, in which Ezekiel compares the human race to a "community of ghosts".

Ezekiel's poetry is not always easy to understand, but it is always thought-provoking and well worth the effort. His use of irony and satire is often biting, but it is also effective in highlighting the absurdity of the human condition. Ezekiel is a master of language, and his poems are beautiful and haunting explorations of the human condition.

Write a note on the changing trends in Post Independence Indian Writing in English.

As the years have gone by, the trends in post-independence Indian writing in English have changed quite dramatically. In the early years after independence, the focus was very much on developing a distinctly Indian voice in English literature. This meant that a lot of the writing of this period was quite experimental and sought to break away from the colonial past. Over time, however, Indian writers have become more confident in their use of the English language and have begun to produce fiction that is more accessible to a global audience. In recent years, there has been a growing interest in Indian writing that deal with issues of social injustice and caste discrimination. This has led to a wave of novels and short stories that tackle these important topics head-on.

Looking ahead, it seems likely that the trends in post-independence Indian writing in English will continue to evolve. As more and more writers gain confidence in their craft, we can expect to see even more bold and innovative works that push the boundaries of what is possible in this genre.

One thing is for sure – Indian writing in English is an exciting and ever-changing field, and one that is certainly worth paying attention to in the years to come.

The post-independence Indian English author had to appeal to a varied audience, including people from various ethnic-religious and cultural backgrounds. He picked topics and circumstances that had about the same applicability across the country for this reason. These themes coalesced into recurring patterns and important developments that were more visible in post-independence Indian society than in pre-independence Indian society. As a result, the novel's scope expanded, and it comprehensively addressed the different aspects of Indian civilization, including economic, political, religious, and cultural aspects. Contemporary novels are reflections of the age, but a very specific type of mirror, a mirror that reflects not only the visible qualities of the age, but also its inner face, nervous system, blood coursing, and the unconscious promptings and conflicts that sway it."

Cyberfeminism

What is cyber-feminism?

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

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

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

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

What do cyber-feminists do?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Article on black people identifies as gorillas.

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

1. Be aware of our own biases

2. Make sure that diverse team is making technology

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

TED TALK by Robin Hauser

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

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

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

Origin of Cyberfeminism: The Internet

Cyberfeminism began in the late 1990s when many women were drawn to the internet due to its gender-neutral design and lack of censorship. The term cyberfeminism was coined by feminist activists and activist groups such as the Feminist Web, a collective of women who use the web to advocate for gender equality. Cyberfeminism is meant to be an online discourse that addresses both cultural issues related to gender and concerns about digital technology. Cyberfeminists argue that digital technology has feminized our lives and have marginalized women as users and producers of information technology. The prefix cyber- is derived from cyberspace, meaning "wired," "networked," or "connected." It is often associated with concepts such as control and regulation.

The Internet has created new opportunities for women in media production, including video game journalism; a trend that is paralleled by other social media sites like Tumblr and Twitter. The feminist blogs at Jezebel have been credited with contributing to this trend. Currently, there are more than 2 million blogs on Tumblr alone. In general, it has been argued that growing numbers of people are accessing online content through various forms of media—including video games. Online communities formed around these technologies have been credited with increasing access for women in traditional circles.

In addition to these online communities, there are also a number of public forums on social media platforms such as Facebook or Twitter where people can express their opinions on issues related to feminism

How Is Cyberfeminism Different from Feminism?

While cyberfeminism and feminism are related, there are key differences between the two ideologies. First, cyberfeminism is a subset of feminism. This means that cyberfeminism uses the same theoretical framework as feminism, but focuses on the role of technology in society. Second, cyberfeminism analyzes the impact that technology has on women's lives, whereas feminism is concerned with all genders. Finally, cyberfeminism is focused on the Internet and other digital technologies, whereas feminism is more general and broad in scope. Cyberfeminism is not a new form of feminism, and the two terms should not be used interchangeably. Cyberfeminism is related to feminism, but it differs in important ways.

Conclusion

Cyberfeminism is a school of thought that combines the ideas of feminism and cybernetics. It emerged in the 1990s as an online discourse on the intersection of technology, gender, and society. Cyberfeminist thinkers believe that digital technology has transformed our lives in ways that are inherently gendered. They argue that new media technologies such as computers, video games, and the internet have masculinized digital culture while marginalizing women as users and producers of information technology. Cyberfeminism is both a school of thought and an online discourse on the intersection of technology, gender, and society. Cyberfeminist thinkers believe that digital technology has transformed our lives in ways that are inherently gendered. They argue that new media technologies such as computers, video games, and the internet have been designed in ways that are inherently gendered and have actively marginalized women as users and producers of information technology.

22410: Paper 205A: Cultural Studies

 22410: Paper 205A: Cultural Studies 

Smt.S.B.Gardi Department of English, M.K.Bhavanagar University.

Vachchhalata Joshi

Vachchhalatajoshi.14@gmail.com

Roll no – 20  

Words: 2054

Paragraphs: 15

Topic: Cultural Studies

Cultural Studies

Cultural Studies trace the relationships among aesthetic, anthropological, and political-economic aspects of cultural production and reproduction.  Cultural studies scholars and practitioners often begin their inquiries by questioning the common understandings, beliefs, and histories that shape our world.  This type of inquiry assumes that culture is not a fact to be understood and explained.  What demands attention is how culture constitutes diverse worlds and how it can be mobilized to change those worlds?

Cultural Studies rely on interdisciplinary research on the formation of knowledge, power, and difference.  Cultural Studies scholars and practitioners explore constructions of race, class, ability, citizenship, gender, and sexuality in their effort to understand the structures and practices of domination and resistance that shape contemporary societies. Many different topics surface as part of this exploration: everyday practices that structure the creation and reception of cultural artifacts; relations between producers and consumers in the circulation of global commodities; claims to membership in particular communities as they undergo transformation.

 

“Yesterday's deconstructions are often tomorrow's orthodox clichés.”

 

Our Master of Arts in Cultural Studies at the University of Washington Bothell stresses the local and global locations of the field and seeks to cultivate the capacities needed to work either within or outside the university.  Students in the program pursue academic research and community-based projects that engage critically with the arts and humanities, the social and natural sciences, and the cultural practices that shape power relations across local and global communities.  We understand this approach to Cultural Studies as providing the field with a new formation, one that is responsive to the work culture does and can do in the world today.

 

We would be remiss if we ended this response to the query “What is Cultural Studies?” without pointing to a problem in the question itself.  Cultural Studies is many different things and the shape of the field necessarily shifts in response to diverse institutional locations, pressures, and opportunities.  As a result, we think that the original question ought to be reformulated.  Given its pasts, presents, and possible futures, what should Cultural Studies become and what can we do with it?  This is the question we have designed our Master of Arts in Cultural Studies to address.

 

Edgar and Sedgwick write:

 

The theory of hegemony was of central importance to the development of British cultural studies, particularly The Birmingham School. It facilitated the analysis of the ways subordinate groups actively resist and respond to political and economic domination. The subordinate groups needed not to be seen merely as the passive dupes of the dominant class and its ideology.

 

Stuart Hall's directorship of CCCS at Birmingham

 

Beginning in 1964, after the initial appearance of the founding works of British Cultural Studies in the late 1950s, Stuart Hall's pioneering work at CCCS, along with that of his colleagues and postgraduate students gave shape and substance to the field of cultural studies. This would include such people as Paul Willis, Dick Hebdige, David Morley, Charlotte Brunsdon, John Clarke, Richard Dyer, Judith Williamson, Richard Johnson, Iain Chambers, Dorothy Hobson, Chris Weedon, Tony Jefferson, Michael Green, and Angela McRobbie.

“There is no understanding Englishness without understanding its imperial and colonial dimensions.”

Many cultural studies scholars employed Marxist methods of analysis, exploring the relationships between cultural forms (i.e., the superstructure) and of the political economy. By the 1970s, the work of Louis Althusser radically rethought the Marxist account of base and superstructure in ways that had a significant influence on the "Birmingham School." Much of the work done at CCCS studied youth-subcultural expressions of antagonism toward "respectable" middle-class British culture in the post-WWII period. Also during the 1970s, the politically formidable British working classes were in decline. Britain's manufacturing industries while continuing to grow in output and value were decreasing in the share of GDP and numbers employed, and union rolls were shrinking. Millions of working-class Britons backed the rise of Margaret Thatcher, through labour losses. For Stuart Hall and his colleagues, this shift in loyalty from the Labour Party to the Conservative Party had to be explained in terms of cultural politics, which they had been tracking even before Thatcher's first victory. Some of this work was presented in the cultural studies classic, Policing the Crisis, and in other later texts such as Hall's The Hard Road to Renewal: Thatcherism and the Crisis of the Left, and New Times: The Changing Face of Politics in the 1990s.

 

Gramsci and hegemony

To understand the changing political circumstances of class, politics, and culture in the United Kingdom, scholars at The Birmingham School turned to the work of Antonio Gramsci, an Italian thinker, writer, and Communist Party leader. Gramsci had been concerned with similar issues: why would Italian laborers and peasants vote for fascists? What strategic approach is necessary to mobilize popular support in more progressive directions? Gramsci modified classical Marxism and argued that culture must be understood as a key site of political and social struggle. In his view, capitalists used not only brute force  to maintain control, but also penetrated the everyday culture of working people in a variety of ways in their efforts to win popular "consent."

It is important to recognize that for Gramsci, historical leadership, or hegemony, involves the formation of alliances between class factions, and struggles within the cultural realm of everyday common sense. Hegemony was always, for Gramsci, an interminable, unstable, and contested process.

 

 

Scott Lash writes:

In the work of Hall, Hebdige, and McRobbie, popular culture came to the fore... What Gramsci gave to this was the importance of consent and culture. If the fundamental Marxists saw the power in terms of class-versus-class, then Gramsci gave to us a question of the class alliance. The rise of cultural studies itself was based on the decline of the prominence of fundamental class-versus-class politics.

 

Structure and agency

The development of hegemony theory in cultural studies was in some ways consonant with work in other fields exploring agency, a theoretical concept that insists on the active, critical capacities of subordinated people As Stuart Hall famously argued in his 1981 essay, "Notes on Deconstructing 'the Popular'": "ordinary people are not cultural dopes. “Insistence on accounting for the agency of subordinated people run counter to the work of traditional structuralists. Some analysts have however been critical of some work in cultural studies that they feel overstates the significance of or even romanticizes some forms of popular cultural agency.

Globalization

In recent decades, as capitalism has spread throughout the world via contemporary forms of globalization, cultural studies have generated important analyses of local sites and practices of negotiation with and resistance to Western hegemony.

Cultural consumption

 

Cultural Studies criticize the traditional view of the passive consumer, particularly by underlining the different ways people read, receive, and interpret cultural texts, or appropriate other kinds of cultural products, or otherwise participate in the production and circulation of meanings. On this view, a consumer can appropriate, actively rework, or challenge the meanings circulated through cultural texts. In some of its variants, cultural studies have shifted the analytical focus from traditional understandings of production to consumption - viewed as a form of production in its own right. Stuart Hall, John Fiske, and others have been influential in these developments.

A special 2008 issue of the field's flagship journal, Cultural Studies, examined "anti-consumerism" from a variety of cultural studies angles. Jeremy Gilbert noted in the issue, cultural studies must grapple with the fact that "we now live in an era when, throughout the capitalist world, the overriding aim of government economic policy is to maintain consumer spending levels. This is an era when 'consumer confidence' is treated as the key indicator and cause of economic effectiveness."

 

Cultural studies often concern itself with the agency at the level of the practices of everyday life and approach such research from a standpoint of radical contextualism. In other words, cultural studies reject universal accounts of cultural practices, meanings, and identities.

Judith Butler, an American feminist theorist whose work is often associated with cultural studies, wrote that:

The move from a structuralist account in which capital is understood to structure social relations in relatively homologous ways to a view of hegemony in which power relations are subject to repetition, convergence, and rearticulating brought the question of temporality into the thinking of structure. It has marked a shift from a form of Althusserian theory that takes structural totalities as theoretical objects to one in which the insights into the contingent possibility of structure inaugurate a renewed conception of hegemony as bound up with the contingent sites and strategies of the rearticulation of power.

 

The concept of "text"

 

Cultural studies, drawing upon and developing semiotics, uses the concept of text to designate not only written language, but also television programs, films, photographs, fashion, hairstyles, and so forth; the texts of cultural studies comprise all the meaningful artifacts of culture. This conception of textuality derives especially from the work of the pioneering and influential semiotician, Roland Barthes, but also owes debts to other sources, such as Juri Lotman and his colleagues from Tartu–Moscow School. Similarly, the field widens the concept of culture. Cultural studies approach the sites and spaces of everyday life, such as pubs, living rooms, gardens, and beaches, as "texts."

Culture, in this context, includes not only high culture but also everyday meanings and practices, a central focus of cultural studies.

Jeff Lewis summarized much of the work on textuality and textual analysis in his cultural studies textbook and a post-9/11 monograph on media and terrorism. According to Lewis, textual studies use complex and difficult heuristic methods and require both powerful interpretive skills and a subtle conception of politics and contexts. The task of the cultural analyst, for Lewis, is to engage with both knowledge systems and texts and observe and analyze the ways the two interact with one another. This engagement represents the critical dimensions of the analysis, and its capacity to illuminate the hierarchies within and surrounding the given text and its discourse.

Literary scholars

 

Many cultural studies practitioners work in departments of English or comparative literature. Nevertheless, some traditional literary scholars such as Yale professor Harold Bloom have been outspoken critics of cultural studies. On the level of methodology, these scholars dispute the theoretical underpinning of the movement's critical framework.

“I have never worked on race and ethnicity as a kind of subcategory; I have always worked on the whole social formation which is racialized”

Bloom stated his position during the 3 September 2000 episode of C-SPAN's Book notes, while discussing his book How to Read and why:

There are two enemies of reading now in the world, not just in the English-speaking world. One is the lunatic destruction of literary studies...and its replacement by what is called cultural studies in all of the universities and colleges in the English-speaking world, and everyone knows what that phenomenon is. I mean, the...now-weary phrase 'political correctness remains a perfectly good descriptive phrase for what has gone on and is, alas, still going on almost everywhere and which dominates, I would say, rather more than three-fifths of the tenured faculties in the English-speaking world, who really do represent treason of the intellectuals, I think, a 'betrayal of the clerks'.

Marxist literary critic Terry Eagleton is not wholly opposed to cultural studies but has criticized aspects of it and highlighted what he sees as its strengths and weaknesses in books such as After Theory. For Eagleton, literary and cultural theory have the potential to say important things about the "fundamental questions" in life, but theorists have rarely realized this potential.

English departments also host cultural rhetorics scholars. This academic field defines cultural rhetorics as "the study and practice of making meaning and knowledge with the belief that all cultures are rhetorical and all rhetorics are cultural." Cultural rhetorics scholars are interested in investigating topics like climate change, autism, Asian American rhetoric, and more.

 References : 

Work Cited

“Cultural hegemony.” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_hegemony. Accessed 6 November 2022.