SCHOOL
OF LETTERS
MAHATMA
GANDHI UNIVERSITY
Kottayam
Kerala 686 560 India
4-5
December 2002
Lecture
: Ayyappa Paniker
Release
of Haritham 14
Vote
of thanks
: K M Krishnan
11.45
am – 1.30 pm
Chair: Meena Alexander
Papers:
R Shashidhar (“Genesis and Amnesia: The Politics of Orientalism”)
Rajan Gurukkal (“The Politics of Postcoloniality”)
AK Ramakrishnan (“Orientalism and Globalization”)
Discussion
2.30
pm – 4.30 pm
Academic
Session 2: The Cultural Politics of Resistance
Chair: P Balachandran
Papers:
Nissar Ahmad (“Theorizing the Modernity in Kerala”)
Meena Alexander (“Rights of Passage”)
CB
Sudhakaran (“The Social Collective: Cultural Text as
Counter-hegemonic Discourse”)
Sherine Upot (“Colonizing Genres: Subversive Antics in ‘In an
Antique Land’”)
Discussion
10
am – 11.45 am
Academic
Session 3: Questions of Representation
Papers:
Ajayakumar (“Re-presentation of the Visual)
CS Jayaram ((“The Fall of Icarus: Sense and Censorship in
Postcolonial Indian Art”)
CS Venkiteswaran (“Representation in Malayalam Cinema”)
AM Geevarghese (“Digital Remediation: The Case of the Afghan Girl”)
Discussion
11.45
am – 12.45 pm
Poetry
Reading
Chair: KM Krishnan
Poets: OV Usha, Meena Alexander, D Vinayachandran
12.15
pm – 1.30 pm
Chair: Ummer Tharammel
Papers:
TM
Yesudasan (“The Grotesque in Contemporary Malayalam Cinema”)
D
Vinayacahndran (“The Folk Culture in Kerala”)
KM
Krishnan (“Whose English Is It, Anyway?”)
P
P Raveendran (“Genealogies of Indian Literature”)
Discussion
2.30
pm –4.30 pm
Moderator: P P Raveendran
Discussants:
R Shashidhar
Jancy James
N Madhavan Kutty
Meena Alexander
Nissar
Ahmed
Rajan Gurukal
4-5
December 2002
The National Seminar on “Texts and Contexts:
Literature and Culture in Postcolonial India” was organized by School of
Letters, Mahatma Gandhi University, at the University campus on 4 and 5 December
2002 with the support of the University Grants Commission and the United States
Educational Foundation in India. Fifteen papers on aspects of literature and
culture in India by scholars from South India were presented in the Seminar. The
Seminar was attended by about eighty participants who included the MA, M Phil
and Ph D students of School of Letters as well as teachers of English from
colleges in Kerala.
The
Seminar was formally inaugurated at 10.30 am on Wednesday, December 4, 2002 by
the distinguished poet and critic Professor K Ayyappa Paniker in a meeting that
was presided over by Professor Cyriac Thomas, Vice Chancellor, Mahatma Gandhi
University. Professor Paniker in his inaugural lecture elaborated the
postcolonial perspective in the analysis of literature and culture in
contemporary India. Dr P P Raveendran and Dr Meena Alexander, Co-coordinators of
the Seminar, welcomed the invitees and others attending the inaugural session,
and Dr KM Krishnan, Lecturer, School of Letters proposed a vote of thanks.
The
inaugural session was followed by four academic sessions and a poetry reading
session. The papers read at the academic sessions were discussed threadbare by
the participants. A detailed report on each session is given below:
Session
1: Theoretical Contexts: This
session was held between 11.30 am
and 1.30 pm on December 4. Three papers were presented in this session that was
chaired by Dr Meena Alexander. The paper readers were Dr R Shashidhar (Chairman,
Department of English, Mangalore University), Dr Rajan Gurukkal (Professor and
Director, School of Social Sciences, Mahatma Gandhi University), and Dr AK
Ramakrishnan (Director, School of International Relations, Mahatma Gandhi
University). This was a truly interdisciplinary session in that in addition to
the fact of each speaker belonging to a different subject discipline in the
humanities, each had brought a cross-disciplinary approach to bear on his topic.
While Dr Shashidhar in his paper entitled “Genesis and Amnesia: The Politics
of Orientalism” focussed on the relations of power animating the orientalist
discourse, Dr Gurukkal’s paper “The Politics of Postcoloniality” sought to
unravel the political positions implicit in the postcolonialism debate. Dr
Ramakrishnan in his presentation on “Orientalism and Globalization” focussed
on the continued relevance of the questions raised by Said and others in the
contemporary cultural context. Dr P P Raveendran, Dr Nissar Ahmed and Dr KM
Seethi participated in the discussions.
Session
2: The Cultural Politics of Resistance: This session was held between 2.30 pm and 4.30 pm on December 4. Sri P
Balachandran, theatre activist and Lecturer, School of Letters, chaired the
session in which four papers were presented. Dr Nissar Ahmed (Professor and
Head, Department of Philosophy, Sree Sankara University of Sanskrit, Kalady)
read a paper on the problems of theorizing the modernity in Kerala (Title:
“Problems of Theorizing the Modernity in Kerala”). Dr Meena Alexander’s
paper entitled “Rights of Passage” focussed on her subjective experiences as
a creative writer in a postcolonial world. Dr CB Sudhakaran (Department of
English, Cochin College, Kochi), in his paper “The Social Collective: Cultural
Text as Counter-hegemonic Discourse,” spoke on the element of resistance in
the decentralized planning process initiated in Kerala. Dr Sherine Upot (Reader
in English, School of Distance Education, Mahatma Gandhi University) in her
presentation “Colonizing Genres: Subversive Antics in In an Antique Land” spoke on the element of resistance implied by
the disruption of form in Amitav Ghosh’s In
an Antique Land. Dr Rajan Gurukkal, Dr R Shashidhar, Dr K M Krishnan and Dr
AK Ramakrishnan participated in the discussions.
Session
3: Questions of Representation:
This session held in the forenoon of December 5 was chaired by Dr Ummer
Tharammel, Reader, School of Letters. There were four presentations on various
aspects of non-literary representation in the session. In his presentation,
accompanied by slideshow of paintings, Sri Ajayakumar (Principal, College
of Fine Arts, Trivandrum), discussed various aspects of visual representation
with a special focus on installation. Prof. CS Jayaram (Sacred Heart College,
Thevara), in his paper, “The Fall of Icarus: Sense and Censorship in
Postcolonial Art” analyzed the politics of gallery exhibitions and the extent
of state intervention with reference to the
paintings of the renowned artist Surendran Nair. Dr CS Venkiteswaran,
film critic, spoke of the various thematic and representational tendencies of
contemporary Malayalam cinema. Prof. AM Geevarghese presented a postcolonial
re-reading of the manipulative techniques of digitalized photography used in
“rediscovering” an Afghan girl by the National
Geographic magazine. The presentations were followed by active discussions
that were led by Dr R Shashidhar and Dr Meena Alexander.
This
was followed by a poetry session in which two poets, Sri D Vinayachandran and Dr
Meena Alexander, read their poems.
Session
4: Texts and Co-texts:
This session, which was chaired by Dr R Shashidhar, was held in the afternoon of
December 5. Three papers were presented in this session. In his paper entitled
“The Grotesque in Malayalam Cinema,” Prof. TM Yesudasan (Department of
Englsih, CMS College, Kottayam) raised some pertinent questions on the growing
tendency in recent Malayalam cinema to portray grotesque figures and tried to
relate it to other issues like the star system prevailing in the cinematic
culture. Dr KM Krishnan in his presentation “Whose English Is It, Anyway?”
identified the presence of three distinct varieties and perspectives on Indian
English fiction. Dr PP Raveendran in his paper on “The Genealogies of Indian
literature” discussed some of the methodological problems involved in the
conceptualization of Indian literature as a theoretical category by pointing to
its constructed and historically contingent nature. The session was followed by
lively discussions on issues pertaining to Indianness and Indian modernity, in
which Sri Ajayakumar, Prof. CS Jayram, Dr Rajan Gurukkal, Sri Cijo Joseph and Dr
Meena Alexander took part. The session came to a close at 4.30 pm.
Since
several of the issues that were to be taken up in the scheduled panel discussion
on “Rethinking Indian Modernity” came up for scrutiny in the session on
“Texts and Co-Texts,” it was decided to abandon the panel discussion.
The seminar was wrapped up at 5 pm on December 5 with the concluding remarks of Dr P P Raveendran, who also proposed a formal vote of thanks to all those who had lent a helping hand in bringing the seminar to its successful conclusion.