Mapping the Shifting Paradigms of Post-Modern Society

By Manu Mangattu

Postmodernism has become the Holy Grail that charts ‘living’ in the present world through speculations, deliberations and negotiations. This collection of scholarly research articles map our dialogues with the intersections that twenty-first century society offers to individuals. Mapping the changing landscape of the Post-modern world is essential as man will not be talked out of finding meaning within meaninglessness. It aims to understand man's predicament of being the perceived and the perceiver at the same time.
Chief Editor: Abhilash Kaushik
Articles & Authors
1.A Postmodernist Study of Green Mars: Aditya Raj & Dr Stuti Prasad
2.Postmodern Elements in Manjula Padmanabhan: Dr Anchal Dahiya
3.Juxtaposing Norwegian Wood and Select Songs by The Beatles: Angel Tess Cherian
4. Transcending Marginalization Through Language in Londonstani: Ankita Choudhary
5.Depiction of Subalterns: A Study of Select Indian English Novels: Anny Saifi
6.Exploring the Ecofeminist Perspectives in Surfacing: Ayushi Dwivedi
7.Ecofeminism in 3 Tollywood Films: Akkala Bindu Sri Geeta Madhuri Devi
8.Existentialism and Absurdism in Waiting for Godot: Christy Gnana Deepa J
9.Feminist Phenomenology in 10 Minutes 38 Seconds: Diana Monisha R
10. A Therapeutic Narration of The Pull of the Stars: Esny Elias
11.Journey from Absent Mother to Working Mother in The Autobiography of a Sex Worker: Geetanjali Basumatary
12.A Postmodern Study of the Folk Culture of Bengal- the Baul Tradition: Haimanti Bagchi
13.Post-Modern Texts and Retelling in Hag-Seed: V. Heymonth Kumar
14.White Wash Culture in Enid Blyton’s Series for Children: Javairia Nousheen & Dr Abhisarika Prajapati
15. A Postmodern Reading of Ancient Promises: Mrs Jeffy Catherine & Dr R Selvi
16.Mobility and Memory Shaping the Narrative of Unveiling India: Jyoti Priyadarshini
17.Dub Poetry, Re-telling and Elements of Negotiations in “Resilience”: Dr Mahi S Thavarathu
18.The Crisis of New Modernity: Context of Digital Music: Dr Mali Mitra
19.Taxi Driver: A Post-Modernist Study: Malvika Avasthi & Dr Purnima Bali
20.“Quest for Mizo Identity” in Zorami: The Redemption Song: Ms Meghana V Goshi & Dr Vinodhini Chinnaswamy
21.Understanding Postmodernism in Indian Context: Mitali Bhattacharya
22.Nissim Ezekiel’s Post-modern Poetry and Feminism: Momin Taibahfatma & Dr Pratima Rai
23.Postmodernist Tendencies and Hyperreality in Westworld: Neha Pandey & Shweta Yadav
24. A Postmodernist Study of Manto’s “Toba Tek Singh”: Mrs Nisha Narwani
25. The Kite Runner through the Psychoanalytic Spectrum: Padmaja Mishra
26. A Study of House Made of Dawn and Ceremony: Parul Soni
27. Post-modern individual in The Birthday Party: Preetha Mukherjee
28.Intersectional study of Harvest: Priyanka Dutta
29.Indian Woman and Cinema: The Shift from “Men Act, Women Appear”: Dr Priyanka Kulhari
30.Exploring Modern-socio Cultural Phenomena in Chaman Nahal: Radha Singh
31.Problematizing Gendered Automobility in “Birdsong”: Rituparna Mukherjee
32.It’s on me! The viewer of Black Mirror: Bandersnatch: Sakshi Bansal & Vineeta Prasad
33. A Postmodern Insight on Retold Fairytales: Dr M Samadhanam Emimal
34. A Postmodernist Reading of Falling Man: Samikshya Pattnaik
35.BoJack Horseman: Hyperreality, Hollywood and the Horse: Ms Sangeetha M
36.Code-Switching of Assamese Language and Culture: Manju Kumari
37. Post-Modern Tenacity in The Shadow Lines: Dhritimoni Mahanta & Tanmoya Barman
38. ‘Post-Modern Feminism’ in Female Indian Writers: Sanjukta Dutta
39. The French Lieutenant’s Woman as a Deconstructionist of Self-image and a Postmodern Feminist: Shatabdi Mondal
40. Psychological Turmoil in Where Did I Leave My Purdah?: Shreya Bhardwaj & Dr Mukuta Borah
41.English as a Lingua Franca for the Voiceless: Marginalized Literature: Alamuri Sri Nidhi
42.Anthropocene as Grand Narrative of

• Language: English
• Publisher: Manu Mangattu
• Release date: Mar 30, 2022
• ISBN: 9781005344566

Manu Mangattu

Manu Mangattu is an English Professor, poet, editor, lyricist, film-critic, research consultant and publishing expert. He has published 9 books, 79 international research publications, 97 academic papers and 20 edited volumes with reputed publishers like Routledge, Harper-Collins, Harvard University Press and Penguin. He serves as chief editor/editor for various international journals and is on the syllabus revision and approval committees of many reputed universities. During his stint as an Assistant Professor of English, he had done UGC funded research projects and a SWAYAM-MOOC course on Romantic Literature. He completed a UGC funded research project on “Sachin Tendulkar as an Aesthetic Experience" in 2017. A poet at heart who would live and die in Art, he writes poetry in English and several Indian languages. A polyglot with a passion for music and film, he finds delight in doing translations from Chinese, Persian and Sanskrit. The Chinese Poetry Conglomerate acknowledged his contributions in taking Chinese Poetry to the Western world by naming him "Comrade to Poetry China" in 2016. A visiting faculty at various universities and a quintessential bohemian-vagabond, he conducts poetry readings, workshops and lectures. He won the prestigious “Most read and recommended researcher award” during the last 3 years (2018, 2019 and 2020) with close to ten thousand recommendations garnered through his career. After an apprenticeship in Shakespeare under Dr Stephen Greenblatt, Harvard University, Cambridge, he currently offers part-time guidance to 27 research scholars (2 awarded) from India, Iran, Australia, KSA, Indonesia and Djibouti), and mentors about 1300 post-graduates/ guest lecturers/ research scholars preparing for NTA-NET examination. An ambidextrous ambivert blessed with extreme colour blindness, he also plies his trade in the film and publishing industry. He can be contacted at [e-mail], [phone].

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1. A Postmodernist Study of Kim Stanley Robinson’s Green Mars

Aditya Raj

Research Scholar, Department of English, Patna University

&

Dr Stuti Prasad

Associate Professor, Department of English, Patna University

Introduction

Postmodernism is often described as an era following World War II (1939-45). According to Ihab Hassan, postmodernism is about replacing hierarchy with anarchy, mastery with exhaustion, purpose with play, genre with intertext, among others (Jorgensen 302). It focuses on breaking through the conventional thoughts that aid in the perception of any object and questions the universalist idea of truth, human nature, society, reason. This paper investigates some important tenets of postmodernist poetics with reference to Green Mars, a science fiction written by Kim Stanley Robinson. Green Mars is a part of Robinson’s Mars Trilogy, a famous science fiction series that depicts the process of terraforming in order to establish a human colony on Mars. Mars Trilogy contains three volumes: Red Mars, Green Mars and Blue Mars. The important tenets of postmodernist poetics which have been applied in analysing Green Mars include the concept of hyperreality, blurring of distinction between high culture and low culture, and knowledge as commodity and power.

Postmodernist poetics incorporates the concept of hyperreality, a state in which reality and simulation of reality come together. Hyperreality is a term coined by Jean Baudrillard (1981) who views that it is a state in which the consciousness is unable to differentiate between reality and fiction, between virtual reality produced by the increasing human-computer interactions and the real world. Humans in the technological, postmodern world are in significant interface with Artificial Intelligence (AI). Today, we see a number of computers in an organization synchronized in a web pattern. The movement of the world towards this technocentric society and increased dependency upon these scientific objects have created an epoch of hyperreal experiences. Hyperreality can be understood within the framework of the concept of simulation and simulacra. Baudrillard states,

It is a question of substituting the signs of the real for the real, that is to say of an operation of deterring every real process via its operational double, a programmatic, metastable, perfectly descriptive machine that offers all the signs of the real and short-circuits all its vicissitudes. (2)

If simulation is merging of ‘reality’ and ‘representation,’ a copy or imitation that substitutes reality; simulacra is the stage where there is a copy without original. Baudrillard describes four ‘successive phases of the image’ that present the change from representation to simulacrum in the following manner: ‘... it is the reflection of a profound reality; it masks and denatures a profound reality; it masks the absence of a profound reality; it has no relation to any reality whatsoever; it is its own pure simulacrum’ (6). Giles Deleuze states that simulacrum is an image without resemblance (257). Scholars like Baudrillard and Deleuze relate the explosion of simulacra today to the rise of hyperreality and arrival of a world that is either to some extent simulated or totally simulated, and the real does not exist or has become very feeble. However, H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds, a science fiction, has inspired scientists like H.G. Goddard to build the first fuelled rocket for space transportation. Here the real has copied the simulation. Hence, the question that arises is whether the image, or the imaginary, is able to lead to the creation of its real, the true. Can the images, created in the hyperreal world of science fiction, work as a role model for inventions which are real in time and space?

An important tenet of postmodernism is the erasure of the distinction between ‘high culture’ and ‘low culture.’ The American cultural critic Susan Sontag in her work Against Interpretation (1966), celebrates what she calls a ‘new sensibility.’ She explains: ‘One important consequence of the new sensibility [is] that the distinction between high and low culture seems less and less meaningful’ (qtd. in Storey 147). Lawrence Alloway, a pop culture theorist, mentions science fiction among other productions of the recent urban commercial culture which act as a point of contact between the high and low cultures (qtd. in Storey 148).

The relation between knowledge and postmodernism is yet another significant aspect of this intellectual shift. In his work, The Postmodern Condition, Lyotard talks of the world of computerization (7) in which knowledge has become the principal force of production, an informational commodity which has become and will continue to be the major stake in the worldwide competition for power. He also mentions the ideology of communicational transparency, which goes together with commercialization of knowledge. Lyotard talks of economic powers that have become dangerous to the stability of the State through new forms of circulation of capital and are called multinational corporations. These new forms of circulation imply that investment decisions have, at least in part, passed beyond the control of the nation-states (5). He introduced the concept of Paralogy which means moving against the established law or thinking beyond it in order to create new knowledge.

Objectives

The research objectives of this paper are to study the hyperreal world of a techno centric society created in Green Mars, to examine the power of the transnationals and their exploitation and control of knowledge described in the science fiction, and to evaluate the rationale of new societies the scientists wished to establish on Mars. The paper intends to explore these objectives keeping in mind the postmodernist nature of the title of the fiction. Green Mars breaks through the conventional understanding of Mars as a red planet. It looks beyond the established notion and imagines Mars as green which reflects the growth of life on the red soil.

Green Mars: A Postmodernist Study

Green Mars is a 1993 novel and the second volume in the Mars Trilogy written by the science fiction author Kim Stanley Robinson. Green Mars presents the planet from an unusual perspective that Robinson envisions. The human quest for Mars started long ago but due to inadequate technology the Mars mission could not succeed. Meanwhile, authors like Robinson have envisioned the transformation of Mars in three phases, from Red to Green and finally to Blue which resembles the Earth. Green Mars is the story of the survivors from the great historical revolution of 2061 that took place in Red Mars, the first volume of the trilogy. Green Mars focuses on the growth of the plants on Mars and the process of terraforming which was initiated on the planet but was hindered by the revolution described in Red Mars.

Baudrillard’s views on three orders of simulacra are relevant here. He says that the first order is natural, naturalistic simulacra: based on image, imitation and counterfeiting. They are harmonious, optimistic, and aim at the reconstitution, or the ideal institution, of a nature in God's image. To this order belong the utopias. The second order is productive, productivist simulacra: based on energy and force, materialized by the machine and the entire system of production. Their aim is... continuous expansion, liberation of indeterminate energy. Science Fiction belongs to this order. The third order is simulation simulacra: based on information, the model, cybernetic play. Their aim is maximum operationality, hyperreality, total control. (117-118) He further states,

Between the operatic (the theatrical status, fantastic machinery, the grand Opera of technology), which corresponds to the first order, the operative (the industrial status, production and execution of power and energy), which corresponds to the second order, and the operational (the cybernetic status, uncertainty, the flux of the meta-technological), which corresponds to the third order, all kinds of interferences can be produced today within the SF genre. But only the last order should be of genuine interest to us. (124)

Green Mars possesses all the three orders of the simulacra. Let us look at the opening lines of the novel. The point is not to make another Earth: Not another Alaska or Tibet, not a Vermont nor a Venice, not even an Antarctica. The point is to make something new and strange, something Martian. (Robinson 1). Applying postmodern theory, we understand that the scientists are not interested in repeating history by making Mars a copy of the Earth; they want Mars to be Martian in nature. This integrates all three orders of the simulacra — the utopian, in which a radically different and transcendent universe is being created (in this case on Mars), the second order, which is an addition to the unlimited projection of the real world of production (exemplified by scientists and the transnationals on Mars), and the third order in which the ‘models no longer constitute either transcendence or projection, they no longer constitute the imaginary in relation to the real, they are themselves an anticipation of the real’ (Baudrillard 119). The simulacra of Green Mars are neither a transcendence nor a projection, but they anticipate what is not real; there is no original. Human culture in a technocentric society is very uncertain. However, technology keeps on progressing and creating a progressively hyperreal world, and the culture keeps on adapting to it. The life on Mars is also very uncertain and establishment of a human colony in such hard conditions is nearly impossible.

Throughout the novel, the struggle for the existence of life is very clearly visible and the scientists use AI and other technologies they know for fighting against the established government of the transnationals and to support the green life on Mars. The bombardment of nuclear reactors for thickening the atmosphere and the use of nitrogen as a medium of exchange among the underground scientists reflect the hard struggle for establishing the human colony with supporting technologies. Along with the little hope of emergence of life in green forms and the survival of the mutant lichens prepared for extreme conditions on Mars, Green Mars also depicts the hope of establishing a government run by the scientists especially based upon the model of Arkady, a famous character from Red Mars who died in the revolution of 2061. All these details exemplify Lyotard’s postmodern condition. According to him, in this computerised world, the issue of knowledge and who controls it is now more than ever a question of government, of who holds power. With enormous amounts of knowledge stored in digital databases, the body which decides what knowledge is worth storing, what legitimate knowledge is and who has access to these databases holds the reins of power. Lyotard turns a distrustful gaze at multinational corporations. In Green Mars, the multinational corporations – the transnationals – constitute the government. The knowledge is under their control and the scientists who possess knowledge are tools in the hands of these transnationals; they are used for exploiting resources of Mars. Knowledge, thus, becomes a commodity, an instrument for gaining and maintaining power. The scientists who have knowledge desire to establish their own government.

The opening lines of Green Mars, expressing the need to create something Martian on Mars, and not Tibet or Alaska, encapsulate the movement towards rejection of the economic and social structures of the earth. Powerful countries like the USA or Russia are not mentioned, but Alaska or Tibet, which remain subverted on earth. Supremacy of the centres of economic powers are questioned through these lines and the ideas of societies based on the models of Earth are totally dismissed by the groups of scientists. The scientists do not receive any help from the transnationals and rely upon the biosphere of Mars. The opening lines of Green Mars also express multiplicity which is another prominent feature of postmodernism. In the novel Green Mars, the point of view of each individual is given equal importance. For instance, Ann was against the idea of destroying the entire planet through the rough process of terraforming and in her view this is not science but making of a theme park (Robinson 169), whereas Sax insists upon the process of terraforming because many lives on Mars were at stake, and a quick remedial action by the survivors was necessary. Transnationals wished to create certain social and economic structures on Mars so as to regain their political power and restore what they had lost on Earth due to overpopulation. Scientists look at Mars from a different perspective; for them Mars will not be divided into different states as on Earth but will be considered as a single world in which equal respect and importance is given to each culture and religion. Thus, the postmodernist feature consisting in the eradication of the hierarchy of low and high is expressed by these scientists. Obviously, such thought of these groups is also very utopian in nature and this is an instance of hyperreality.

It is the job of the scientists to explore everything, to look at different objects from uncertain perspectives. Only then the formation of new knowledge is possible. Robinson writes in Green Mars that the scientists must explore the subjects, welcoming the difficulties in the process and to stay open and accept ambiguity (460). Lyotard’s Paralogy is manifested here. Robinson’s description of a scientist and his/her role is itself postmodernist in approach because Robinson states that the scientist must accept ambiguity, and this means leaving a space for exploration because uncertainty is the path to certainty. Lyotard’s concept of Paralogy is necessary in this technocentric society to give new perspectives on knowledge.

Conclusion

The application of postmodernist theory to Green Mars, thus, allows us to get new insights into this genre and aids us in exploring different aspects of the novel. Science fiction projects images of a new world conceived by the authors who envision the future and this genre deeply influences the minds of the readers who revel in the scientific insights of a big, technocentric society. The paradigm of postmodernism in what Lyotard calls a computerized world can be well understood within the framework of a science fiction series like Mars Trilogy. In fact, Science Fiction is a postmodernist genre keeping in view the increasing digitization of life and living.

Works Cited

Baudrillard, Jean. Simulacra and Simulation. Translated by Sheila Faria Glaser. The University of Michigan Press, 1994.

Deleuze, Gilles. The Logic of Sense. Columbia University Press, 1990.

Jorgensen, Darren. Postmodernism. The Routledge Companion to Science Fiction, edited by Mark Bould et al., Routledge, 2009, pp. 302-309.

Lyotard, Jean-Francois. Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Translated by Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1984.

Robinson, Kim Stanley. Green Mars. Penguin Random House, 1993.

---. Red Mars. Penguin Random House, 1992.

Storey, John. Postmodernism and Popular Culture. The Routledge Companion to Postmodernism, edited by Stuart Sim, Routledge, 2001, pp. 147-157.

2. Postmodern Elements in the Plays of Manjula Padmanabhan: Lights Out and Harvest

Dr Anchal Dahiya

Assistant Professor, Teaching Resource Person, Gurugram University

Every literary era is a response and continuation of the previous era. Postmodernism cannot be discussed without considering the modernist stance. Postmodernism refers to a shift in perception of people that began in the Western world somewhere around the late 1950s. The scholars generally agree that this socio-cultural shift was primarily brought about by the effects of the Second World War on the psyche of the people and the onslaught of consumer capitalism. Both modernism and postmodernism deliberate on the disorientation, fragmentation and decentredness of human existence. Yet, it is these themes that mark the dissimilarity between the two movements. While modernism abhors the fragmented reality and rootlessness, postmodernism celebrates the lack of centre and meaning. Postmodernists attacked the modernist belief in rationality, objectivity and universalism in favour of constructivism and relativism. The lamentation of the loss of unity and meaning is transformed into a celebration of the existential mode of life. Postmodernism is a complex concept as the rejection of metanarratives creates myriads of meanings that can be derived out of every discourse. It offers a bleak prognosis of the fragmented human reality and offers no real solution.

There is no clear demarcation as to when modernism ended and postmodernism began. In the Indian context, the demarcation is still more beclouded as there is still a large part of India which is untouched by the factors that brought about the onset of postmodernism in the West. In the interiors of India, strong family structures, the lesser reach of consumer capitalism etc. are some of the factors due to which postmodernism isn’t relevant to these parts of India. Nevertheless, the discourse of postmodernism has attained a centre stage in Indian academic circles. It has also become a hot topic in urban Indian metropolitan discourse. The plays Lights Out and Harvest by Manjula Padmanabhan provide us with a slice of urban Indian life, where the characters suffer from postmodern angst and apathy. The plays examine hidden faces, visible screams that leave the characters in moral dilemmas and the denial of the growing void in their lives (Dattani 12).

The play Lights Out (1984) by Manjula Padmanabhan, is based on a real incident that took place in an urban middle-class setting of Mumbai in 1982. The playwright depicts an incident of gang rape through the lens of middle-class people. The play opens with a conversation between the couple Bhasker and Leela where the latter is desperately trying to persuade her husband to inform the police about the frightening noises in the next building. Bhasker makes an attempt to dissuade her from reaching out to the police as he feels that it is futile to call them. Every day they hear the shrieks of a tormented woman and yet Bhasker chooses not to give much importance to the incidents as they do not harmi them directly. Their friend Mohan joins them for dinner where Bhasker and he make absurd theories about what might be happening in the adjacent building. Eventually, there is a chaotic situation where they debate, within the secure space of their home, the manner in which they should deal with this menace. Meanwhile, the screams of the woman stop and there’s no-one left out there (Padmanabhan 189).

Padmanabhan lays bare the hypocrisy of the urban middle class through a realistic portrayal of their attitude towards violence against women. Despite witnessing the heinous crime first-hand, people chose to stand and watch (Padmanabhan 189). The complete inaction of people on the brutal acts of violence happening in their locality, over a period of weeks, depicts a post-modern numbness of people who consider violence to be ubiquitous and ineluctable. Padmanabhan depicts the extent up to which a post-modern individual can turn a blind eye to violence and oppression that occur every day. The play harps upon the problematic attitude of society which has normalised various oppressive behaviours. The play depicts the ugly side of the human psyche by depicting a gross act of violence indirectly. The indifference of the people to the sufferings of fellow human beings, especially to an act of violence against a woman, depicts a society that is drowned in a sea of fear, ignorance and apathy.

Harvest (1997) by Manjula Padmanabhan is a futuristic play that is set in a lower middle-class locality of Bombay in 2010 A.D. The play depicts a dystopian postmodern world that is rotten by technological and medical advancements. It deals with themes like illegal organ trade, digitization of identities in cyberspace, mental colonization etc. This play is also inspired by real-life events. In 1995 I had an idea for a play inspired by news stories about the illegal trade in human organs (Padmanabhan 183). The play examines the plight of a poor family in a suburb where forty families live in a single building and share one toilet. A family of four lives in the same building. Om’s desperation for economic prosperity drives him to make a Faustian deal to sell his unspecified organs in the near future to a company called Interplanta Services. The receiver of the organs is Ginni or Virgil, a computer-generated, white-skinned, blonde ‘wet-dream’ (23).

The postmodern individual does not lament the pathetic condition of life. A fragmented and decentred life is the only possible way of existence. One does not try to escape from these conditions, rather celebrates them. In the play Lights Out, Bhasker and Mohan are extremely insensitive to the tribulations of the woman who is suffering. The extreme insensitivity of Mohan comes to the fore when he compliments Leela on the food while there is a gang rape being committed in front of them. Their postmodern condition has benumbed them to the pain and sufferings of a fellow human being. They indulge in voyeurism without any empathy for the woman being violated. In the play Harvest, the family celebrates the event of Om getting a job. The pretext of a job is just a facade for the illegal organ trade. Om is ready to sacrifice his body, his identity and his freedom for the sake of a better lifestyle. Similarly, Indumati celebrates the newly found luxury and does not seem to regret the consequences of the organ trade. She eventually settles into her Super Deluxe Video Couch and becomes a cyborg figure, leaving her past identity behind her.

The perspective on unity and order is another point of distinction between modernism and postmodernism. The latter rejects any form of order because in the pursuit of order certain peripheral communities like non-white, non-male, etc. are marginalized. Postmodernism criticizes binary opposition in any form, accepts chaos and disorder as the only way of living life. Modernist pursuit of order and unity and stability is termed by Lyotard as ‘metanarrative.’ He remarks,

use the term ‘modern’ to designate any science that legitimates itself with reference to a meta discourse of this kind, making an explicit appeal to some grand narrative, such as the dialectics of the Spirit, the hermeneutics of meaning, the emancipation of the rational or working subject, or the creation of wealth. (23)

He goes on to define postmodern as incredulous towards metanarratives (24). In the play Lights Out, the criminals want people to turn their lights off and indulge in voyeurism, without any fear of law and order. Bhaskar and Rohan also dissuade Leela from reaching out to the police as they feel that it is futile to do so. They, along with many others who watched the incident, consciously chose inaction and have accepted the chaos. The martial relationships portrayed in the play are also chaotic. Bhasker does not pay any attention to the mental affliction caused to Leela. Surinder threatens to inflict violence on his wife Naina when she does not agree with him. Similarly, the play Harvest presents a dystopian view of a futuristic world, where trade can take the gruesome shape of cannibalism in the name of organ harvesting. It depicts a world where poverty and deprivation can be exploited for survival and development using technological advancements. It also depicts the grave reality of the dreams of a utopia that have been promised to us through a blind race for wealth and technological advancement. The relationships in the play are totally chaotic. Om registers Jaya as his sister to the company. Initially, he believes that he is his wife’s brother only on paper, but as the play moves forward, the meaning in relationships begins to blur. Even the mother-son relationship is in a continuous flux of meaning. Jaya comments on the insensitivity of Ma, Your son goes off to a slaughterhouse and you are worried about your TV! (Padmanabhan 242).

In a postmodern world, a signifier has no signified, because there is no reality to signify. Baudrillard conceptualized postmodernism culture as a simulacrum. A simulacrum is a virtual reality, simulated or induced by the media or other ideological apparatuses. In the contemporary world, which is dominated by consumer culture, the replication of images makes it impossible to distinguish between an original and a copy. This forces us to question the term ‘original’ itself. Fredric Jameson calls postmodern cultures as one of depthlessness (6) in his work Postmodernism, Or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. There has been a shift in society from the industrial age to the information age. In the current world, globalization has led to dehumanized commodification of bodies and identities. The play Lights Out depicts a patriarchal hegemony, which has led to the formation of subaltern spaces for women where their identity is submerged by the dominant patriarchal ideological discourse around them. Ginni is the perfect example of a simulacrum.

The technological advancements depicted in the play Harvest point towards a posthumanist world where bodies are modified surgically, which leads to the commoditization of the organs of the poor from the third world. First-world purchasers exploit the poverty and helplessness of the third-world natives using technological advancements and money. The play harps on the inequality between the two worlds. The first world, which is wealthy but ailing, exploits the healthy but poor third world using technology The playwright problematizes the idea of fragmented identities owing to the recent introduction of cyber-space in our lives. The play discusses the post-modern apathy which has resulted from the digitization of identities. The play examines the ironic manner in which cyber culture has brought the world together, while, at the same time, it has distanced us from the elements which define our identity. Ginni (Virgil), a computer-generated, white-skinned, blonde ‘wet-dream,’ communicates with the family using a contact module (Padmanabhan 204) and provides them with quick money in exchange for their vital organs. Only towards the end of the play, does one find out that the ‘real’ person behind the ‘image’ of Ginni was Virgil. He has been surveilling the family all this while. Even the so-called ‘real’ figure of Virgil is virtual. Jaya is the only character in the novel who fights the virtual commodification of her body using money and technology.

Postmodernism rejects the objective notions of reason, universal truth, human nature, social progress, objective reality and so on. It is predicated on the idea that categorization leads to marginalization, which in turn is associated with power. Postmodernism advocates the theory of constructivism and suggests that human nature is merely a social construct. The identity of the woman being raped in the play Lights Out was deconstructed multiple times by Bhasker and Rohan. They derive various meanings of the incident of gang rape. They consider theories like religious rites, exorcism, prostitution etc. Similarly, in Harvest, the very existence of Ginni being a facade supports the idea of constructivism in a postmodern world.

Works Cited

Dattani, Mahesh. Introduction. City Plays. Seagull Books, 2004, pp. 12.

Jameson, Fredric. Postmodernism, Or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Duke University Press, 1991.

Lyotard, Jean-François. The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Translated by Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi. United States, University of Minnesota Press, 1984.

Padmanabhan, Manjula. Harvest. Blood and Laughter: The Collected Plays Vol.1. Hachette India, 2020.

---. Lights out. City Plays, Seagull Books, 2004.

3. Mixing Memory with Music: Juxtaposing Haruki Murakami’s Norwegian Wood and Select Songs by The Beatles

Angel Tess Cherian

Former Assistant Professor on Contract, Assumption College Changanacherry Kerala

Norwegian Wood is a 1987 novel written by contemporary Japanese novelist, Haruki Murakami and is translated into English by Jay Rubin in 2000. It portrays Toru Watanabe’s college life, his friendship with Kizuki and Nagasawa and his romantic relationships with three women – Naoko, Midori and Reiko. Much of the novel focuses on Toru’s unrequited love for Naoko. Apart from being a bildungsroman, the novel also deals with suicide, depression and existential angst. In the novel, Toru, Naoko and Reiko share interest in Western songs, particularly the Beatles. The Beatles were an English rock band comprising John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr. Reiko observes that the Beatles knew something about the sadness of life, and gentleness (Murakami 381). Many of the songs are performed by Reiko and some songs are mentioned multiple times in the novel. The title of the paper, Mixing Memory with Music, is based on the line ... mixing/ Memory and desire... from The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot (Eliot 3-4). The focus is only on the seven songs by the Beatles such as the eponymous Norwegian Wood, Eleanor Rigby, Michelle, Julia, Nowhere Man, Here Comes the Sun and Yesterday. By placing the songs alongside the novel, we can extend the scope of the novel, exploring how the characters mix memory and music together.

Intermediality is a term used to trace the relations between literature, visual arts and music. The term was coined in 1983 by Aage Hansen-Löwe based on the model of intertextuality. It applies to any transgression of boundaries between conventionally and culturally distinct media and is concerned with heteromedial relations between different semiotic complexes and how they communicate cultural context (Rippl 34). Irina Rajewsky uses the term intermedial references to denote references in a literary text about music. For this, Werner Wolf uses the term musicalisation of fiction. Intermedial references are to be understood as meaning-constitutional strategies that contribute to the media product’s overall signification (Rajewsky 32). As youngsters living in the 1960s it is only natural for Toru, Naoko and Reiko to listen to bands like the Beatles. One can analyse the intersections of the songs with that of the lives of the characters and how the songs serve as texts complementing the main narrative.

Norwegian Wood is a song by the Beatles from their album Rubber Soul (1965). In the novel, the song is mentioned several times and Naoko’s friend Reiko plays the song on the guitar because Norwegian Wood is Naoko’s favourite song. When the novel begins, Toru is on an airplane to Hamburg and they play an orchestral cover version of Norwegian Wood. He notes: The melody never failed to send a shudder through me, but this time it hit me harder than ever (Murakami 1). He is extremely shocked on hearing the song and is mentally transported twenty years back to the time he had spent with Naoko. The song is based on John Lennon’s