Thinking Activity : Marxist, ecocritical, feminist and queer criticism.

                              Marxism 

Where did the term come from ? 

                            Marxism is derived from the great philosopher Karl Marx. Marxist criticism, in its diverse forms, grounds its theory and practice on the economic and cultural theory of Karl Marx (1818–83) and his fellow-thinker Friedrich Engels (1820–95), and especially on the following claims: 

1. In the Marxist literary analysis, the evolving history of humankind, of its social groupings and interrelations, of its institutions, and of its ways of thinking are largely determined by the changing mode of its “material production”— that is, of its overall economic organization for producing and distributing material goods. 

2. Changes in the fundamental mode of material production effect changes in the class structure of a society, establishing in each era dominant and subordinate classes that engage in a struggle for economic, political, and social advantage. 

3. Human consciousness is constituted by an ideology—that is, the beliefs, values, and ways of thinking and feeling through which human beings perceive, and by recourse to which they explain, what they take to be reality. An ideology is, in complex ways, the product of the position and interests of a particular class. In any historical era, the dominant ideology embodies, and serves to legitimize and perpetuate, the interests of the dominant economic and social class.

What Marxist critics do

1. They make a division between the 'overt' (manifest or surface) and 'covert' (latent or hidden) content of a literary work (much as psychoanalytic critics do) and then relate the covert subject matter of the literary work to basic Marxist themes, such as class struggle, or the progression of society through various historical stages, such as, the transition from feudalism to industrial capitalism. Thus, the conflicts in King Lear might be read as being 'really' about the conflict of class interest between the rising class (the bourgeoisie) and the falling class (the feudal overlords). 

2. Another method used by Marxist critics is to relate the context of a work to the social-class status of the author. In such cases an assumption is made (which again is similar to those made by psychoanalytic critics) that the author is unaware of precisely what he or she is saying or revealing in the text. 

3. A third Marxist method is to explain the nature of a whole literary genre in terms of the social period which 'produced' it. For instance, The Rise of the Novel, by Ian Watt, relates the growth of the novel in the eighteenth century to the expansion of the middle classes during that period. The novel 'speaks' for this social class, just as, for instance, Tragedy 'speaks for' the monarchy and the nobility, and the Ballad 'speaks for' for the rural and semi-urban 'working class'. 

4. A fourth Marxist practice is to relate the literary work to the social assumptions of the time in which it is 'consumed', a strategy which is used particularly in the later variant of Marxist criticism known as cultural materialism (see Chapter 9, pp. 182-9). 

5. A fifth Marxist practice is the 'politicisation of literary form', that is, the claim that literary forms are themselves determined by political circumstance. For instance, in the view of some critics, literary realism carries with it an implicit validation of conservative social structures: for others, the formal and metrical intricacies of the sonnet and the iambic pentameter are a counterpart of social stability, decorum, and order. 

                            EXAMPLE 

                          CINDERELLA 

                             Cinderella is a film made by Walt Disney based on European folk tale written by Charles Perrault in 1697. ... The author uses theories of Karl Marx to analyze the elements that contained in this film. In this analysis we can conclude that Cinderella is not just a regular animated movie but a movie full of Marxist elements.

                            Feminism                              

                                As a distinctive and concerted approach to literature, feminist criticism was not inaugurated until late in the 1960s. Behind it, however, lie two centuries of struggle for the recognition of women’s cultural roles and achievements, and for women’s social and political rights, marked by such books as Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), John Stuart Mill’s The Subjection of Women (1869), and the American Margaret Fuller’s Woman in the Nineteenth Century (1845). 

Feminism is a movement to free women from oppressive restraints. Which are these restraints ? 

Let’s discuss that one by one 

• What is the definition of women ?

• Definition of cultural identity/identification of women ?

• Does a woman enjoy equal rights to men ?

• Is patriarchal order dominance responsibles for the weak form of feminism ?

• Does any language emerge for women ?

It was Woolf who asked ‘Why is it difficult or impossible for women to write ?

Some of the basic claims :-

1. The basic view is that Western civilization is pervasively patriarchal (ruled by the father)—that is, it is male-centered and -controlled, and is organized and conducted in such a way as to subordinate women to men in all cultural domains: familial, religious, political, economic, social, legal, and artistic.

2. It is widely held that while one’s sex as a man or woman is determined by anatomy, the prevailing concepts of gender—of the traits that are conceived to constitute what is masculine and what is feminine in temperament and behavior—are largely, if not entirely, social constructs that were generated by the pervasive patriarchal biases of our civilization.

3. The further claim is that this patriarchal (or “masculinist,” or “androcentric”) ideology pervades those writings which have been traditionally considered great literature, and which until recently have been written mainly by men for men. 

What feminist critics do ?

1. Rethink the canon, aiming at the rediscovery of texts written by women. 

2. Revalue women's experience. 

3. Examine representations of women in literature by men and women. 

4. Challenge representations of women as 'Other', as 'lack', as part of 'nature'. 

5. Examine power relations which are obtained in texts and in life, with a view to breaking them down, seeing reading as a political act, and showing the extent of patriarchy. 

6. Recognise the role of language in making what is social and constructed seem transparent and 'natural'. 

7. Raise the question of whether men and women are 'essentially' different because of biology, or are socially constructed as different. 

8. Explore the question of whether there is a female language, an ecriture feminine, and whether this is also available to men. 

9. 'Re-read' psychoanalysis to further explore the issue of female and male identity. 

10. Question the popular notion of the death of the author, asking whether there are only 'subject positions ... constructed in discourse', or whether, on the contrary, the experience (e.g. of a black or lesbian writer) is central. 

11. Make clear the ideological base of supposedly 'neutral' or 'mainstream' literary interpretations. 

                             Example 

             Queen (2013)

Can anyone really forget Queen? We all cheered for Kangana Ranaut playing an innocent and overprotected woman dumped by her fiancé on the day of their wedding, who decides to go on her European “honeymoon,” alone. Her friendship with the outgoing and bold Vijayalaxmi (Lisa Haydon) was one of the highlights of this supremely entertaining movie.

          Mardaani (2014)

 Rani Mukherjee received much praise for her role as the undaunted cop, Shivani Shivaji Roy, who is in pursuit of a child trafficker. A very mainstream cat and mouse thriller, Mardaani brought the shadowy world of child trafficking to the attention of the masses.

What is Eco-criticism ?

Eco-criticism was a term coined in the late 1970s by combining “criticism” with a shortened form of “ecology”—the science that investigates the interrelations of all forms of plant and animal life with each other and with their physical habitats. 

Eco-criticism is the study of the relationship between literature and nature. Ecocriticism is the study of literature and the environment from an interdisciplinary point of view, where literature scholars analyze texts that illustrate environmental concerns and examine the various ways literature treats the subject of nature.

What do eco-critics do ? 

1. They re-read major literary works from an ecocentric perspective, with particular attention to the representation of the natural world. 

2. They extend the applicability of a range of ecocentric concepts, using them of things other than the natural world -concepts such as growth and energy, balance and imbalance, symbiosis and mutuality, and sustainable or unsustainable uses of energy and resources. 

3. They give special canonical emphasis to writers who foreground nature as a major part of their subject matter, such as the American transcendentalists, the British Romantics, the poetry of John Clare, the work of Thomas Hardy and the Georgian poets of the early twentieth century. 

4. They extend the range of literary-critical practice by placing a new emphasis on relevant 'factual' writing, especially reflective topographical material such as essays, travel writing, memoirs, and regional literature. 

5. They turn away from the 'social constructivism' and 'linguistic determinism' of dominant literary theories (with their emphasis on the linguistic and social constructedness of the external world) and instead emphasise ecocentric values of meticulous observation, collective ethical responsibility, and the claims of the world beyond ourselves. 

                           Example 

                          ROBOT 2.0

                                     Those who have watched Rajinikanth and Akshay Kumar-starrer 2.0, the sequel to Robot, might be worried about the existence of the birds in today’s environment as the movie takes up the issue of bird plight caused by phone tower radiation. Mohammed Dilawar, the ornithologist known as India’s sparrow man, claims that the scenario might actually not be far-fetched and is very much present. Dilawar was a part of a committee constituted by the Ministry of Forest and Environment that undertook research on the effects of tower radiations on the birds, bees and wildlife in India, 10 years ago. There have been many pieces of research on the same in abroad as well, Rediff reported.

                      QUEER CRITICISM 

                                Queer theory is a field of critical theory that emerged in the early 1990s out of queer studies (often, formerly, gay and lesbian studies) and women's studies.^[1] The term can have various meanings depending upon its usage, but has broadly been associated with the study and theorisation of gender and sexual practices that exist outside of heterosexuality, and which challenge the notion that heterosexual desire is ‘normal’.^[2] Following social constructivist developments in sociology, queer theorists are often critical of essentialist views of sexuality and gender. Instead, they study those concepts as social and cultural phenomena, often through an analysis of the categories, binaries, and languages in which they are portrayed.

                             One of the most useful aspects of queer theory is the critical force that the perspective provides scholars. The tenets of queer theory provide scholars with a model to interrogate how sexuality and other differences play a fundamental role in rhetorical practice. Focusing on differences rather than similarities, queer critics seek to dismantle hierarchies by blurring the definitions of specific identity categories. A framework for queer rhetorical criticism is described and illustrated with a variety of examples from popular culture. The model is further illustrated through an examination of the body of work of Pee-wee Herman.

                                Gender studies and queer theory explore issues of sexuality, power, and marginalized populations (woman as other) in literature and culture. Much of the work in gender studies and queer theory, while influenced by feminist criticism, emerges from post-structural interest in fragmented, de-centered knowledge building (Nietzsche, Derrida, Foucault), language (the breakdown of sign-signifier), and psychoanalysis (Lacan).