People Can't Ruin What They Don't Know - A Critique on a Popular AI Meme

Hi all.

I hope everyone has some internet and free time to redefine their own life through atomic changes in daily life. Also hoping you're in a good company that endures all of the changes and thrives along with you.

There's a popular AI-generated meme that has gone viral for a few weeks. The meme contains two chocolates, one wrapped in plastic and another without any wrapping. Wrapped chocolate is free from germs and ants, but the open chocolate is surrounded by ants and insects. It is created with a specific intention to pass a message about privacy, and the quote goes like this: "Privacy is power. What people don't know, they can't ruin."

The viral meme

I'm still wondering why humans are still compared with ants and insects. I also see how humans tend to compare themselves with shallow things, such as chocolate. Or let me be convinced that humans have taken their animalistic instincts for granted and still function as primitive animals in the fully evolved conscious human body.

Behaviour creates culture. Culture is made up of opinions and beliefs that are collectively accepted by society. We often talk about rape-culture, brain-drain culture, hire-and-fire culture, vote-for-note culture, revdi culture, red-carpet culture, mall culture, VIP culture, suicide epidemics, divorce culture, feudalistic culture, corporate culture, coaching culture, climate culture, and so on. By focusing on such heavy entities, I thought, from which class of society is this meme and quote coming from?

And many other 'wh' questions hover over the mind while I'm looking at this meme. Who controls what defines privacy? From whom can such thoughts come? How does one define privacy, and what does s/he try to protect?

Another question can come from something abstract, that is, fear. Fear is the driving force of human life. Agreed. People run after safety and "feel" safe for a while. But let's face this: The more people run after safety, the more they justify their fear.

Ok, let me state some more questions that again connect this meme with culture.

To what extent do fear dynamics help to create cultures? I'm talking about multiple cultures here. Is it so that I am afraid of something today and share my anxiety or grievance with another fellow, and s/he agrees or approves all of my fears? What point of view should one carry to share something with someone? How far is it true that one should have some non-judgmental, critical, and practical ears to create a sharp listening habit? To what extent is the listener who's paying attention to someone's private affairs afraid of himself or herself? Who and what decides the environmental safety where someone "subjectively feels comfortable to share"?

"Privacy is power. What people don't know, they can't ruin."

Forget about the picture for a while. Let's pose some questions on the quote itself.

What is privacy?

What is Power?

Who are these people who can ruin things?

What is knowledge?

What is there to be known?

What is knowability?

What do we mean by ruining?

What is emotional drainage?

How should emotions be treated when privacy, which is the least valuable thing in the world, is considered as power?

Why is the one who shares something so confident about this flawed fact that knowledge of something can only ruin things?

What does knowledge have to do with the EGO?

Who decides what knowledge can do to a person?

Who decides what should be kept private and what should not?

Why is there a need to keep things private? Is it fear from society or the culture that is created with the collective justification of fear itself?

-----  -----  -----  -----

Thank me later. Find the answers to those questions first. Stop looking at the market, or portfolio, or newspaper, or TV screens, or the bank account statement for a while. Stop that mindless scrolling at those social media apps with lustful consumerist eyes and mind. Stop drinking that soft drink, stop having pizza or ice cream for a while. Stop wasting petrol and diesel on purposeless drives. These questions can change your mental wiring. Be brave about that; you'll surely endure this. Have some silent yet rigorous chit-chat with yourself, and see how far and where your so-called "self-love" takes you. Have the guts to go against yourself and break something bad within? Then this blog is for you.

May you find peace and light in every walk of life.

Thanks for staying tuned.

Cultural Studies in Practice - Hamlet and To His Coy Mistress

Hello Readers!

In the previous blog of cultural studies we have seen five type of cultural studies. Here we will see that how cultural studies is executed in practice. A tragedy by Shakespeare, Hamlet and a poem by Andrew Marvell, To His Coy Mistress, both are taken as an example.

Explain following examples with contemporary illustrations

1. If these two characters were marginalized in Hamlet, they are even more so in Stoppard's handling. If Shakespeare marginalized the powerless in his own version of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, Stoppard has marginalized us all in an era when - in the eyes of some - all of us are caught up in forces beyond our control.

Ans - While doing a general reading of the question it comes at spark that the way Tom Stoppard has portrayed the two nearly unnoticed characters in the play "Rozencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead", it gets clear that it is the reflection of the current culture and society also. The play highlights people's incapability to raise voice against power structure which works undercurrent in society. Democracy, for example, defines the transparent governance by the people, for the people and to the people. But the people who are in power, see the democracy as BUY the people, FOUR the people, and TWO the people. In corporate sector, one finds the power structure is deeply rooted in the system. When money crisis happens in a private firm, the company fires makes many employees free from the jobs, and when the company is on the top in terms of capital turnover, it starts hiring more and more employees. This hire and fire, agenda is not considered by the public sector at all. Similarly, when telecom giant companies tie up with other small telecom firms, they expand their power to control the end users of the telecom services. The lesser the competent companies, the more powerful the telecom giant company will be. At the end, under the single rule of that company, people will have no choice, to change the service, rather to tolerate the high tariff rates and high cost network charges.
This way, one can compare the larger structure of society while looking at Tom Stoppard's play.

2. The poem 'To His Coy Mistress' tells us a lot about the speaker, the listener and also the audience for whom it is written. But what does he not show? As he selects these rich and multifarious allusions, what does he ignore from his culture?

Ans - It can be said that the poem represents the bourgeois class. The speaker of this poem seems to have a background of leisure class and rich class society, that's why he takes much liberty in providing time duration to love the beloved. On the other hand the listener also seems to have the same elitist social and cultural background. What he doesn't show is the unnoticed threat of diseases like Plague and Syphilis. It does not think of poverty, the demographics and socio-economic details of which would show how fortunate his circumstances are. It does not think of disease as a daily reality that he might face. 

We can see Karan Johar's films as example because many of the films by this director highlights only elite or leisure class love and romance which sprouts gets nurtured and decayed in the particular high class. Karan Johar's Ae Dil Hai Mushkil can be taken as contemporary example. The film majorly ignores the basic ground realities. Just the way the poem To His Coy Mistress shows only elitist romance which can be enjoyed by only high society or leisure class.

References

(1) Guerin, Wilfred L. A Handbook of Critical Approaches to Literature Fifth Edition. Oxford University Press, 2005.

Thank You!

Cultural Studies - Five Types

Hello Readers!

In the previous blog of cultural studies, unit 1 thinking activity we have seen four goals of cultural studies and how power can operate and control the culture. Here we will explore some more points and look at five types of cultural studies. Click here to visit the reference blog.

Five Types of Cultural Studies

1. British Cultural Materialism

- Cultural studies was known as cultural materialism in Britain. It begins with Marxist ideology and power hegemony in society. In the late nineteenth century, Matthew Arnold redefined the "givens" or say coals of culture. There are two trajectories through which British cultural materialism can better understood and they are presence of the past and the other is future. The past contains the monarchy system and landowners which can be seen as leisure class. That class was ruling over working class such as land workers and labor class. In short, there were feudal hierarchies in society. Working class was dependent upon landowners or higher class. Future represents a kind of looking at Utopian society. F. L. Lucas, Louise Althusser and Marx were those who looked at the cultural future of Britain. Many British thinkers were inspired from Karl Marx. Raymond Williams states that

"there are no masses, there are only ways of seeing [other] people as masses." 

2. New Historicism

Stephen Greenblatt might have coined the term "New Historicism." Michael Warner phrases the motto of new historicism as "The text is historical and the history is textual". Frederick Jameson insisted that "Always Historicize!" A thought of returning to history became prevalent in the 1980s. New historicism studied letters, diaries, films, paintings and medical treaties in order to oppose the text which is recorded in history. Theorists also tried to bring out new meanings and reading of various events and cultures. In the zeitgeist of today's culture, one comes to know that how a small part of history is getting retold in modern adaptations like films and TV shows. Ram Leela, Padmavat, Bajirao Manstani and ohter historical films are examples.

Contribution of Michel Foucault in New Historicism

- How can new historicism answer the question raised against Laputa episode in Gulliver's Travels?

Susan Bruce suggests a new reading of the word Laputa. It is clear that why Swift has used the word for an Island. Laputa's literal meaning is whore, a lady with scandalous affairs. As the work of Bruce suggests, that Swift studied the

3. American Multiculturalism

As it is known that America is a continent which has become a habitat of several civilizations since long. People of different geographic parts came to America with their own religions, food, clothing, rites and rituals, and many other cultural practices. This plurality of various culture makes the word "Multiculturalsim". As far as the concept of oneness or diversity is concerned, America has diversity but doesn't have oneness in culture. After a great and restless struggle, African identities advanced and found their voice in society. Majorly the issue of "race" was the part of this struggle. Majorly the literary multi-culture consists of 1. African-American writers, 2. Latino writers and 3. Asian American writers. 

4. Postmodernism and Popular Culture

Like poststructuralism, postmodernism critiques the aesthetics. But rather than only critiquing, postmodernism denies the traditional thought. Postmodernism questions the thoughts of European philosophy, and it argues that it is the "others" who pays the price for empowering dominant society. Postmodernism had begun in the mid-1980s and it emerged in art, architecture, music, film, literature, sociology, communications, fashion, and other fields.

- Exemplify the four types of analysis of popular culture. Apply it on popular artifacts.

* Production Analysis


* Textual Analysis - checks how meaning is generated through texts of popular culture.


* Audience Analysis
Who purchases what? Which book is sold largely in which class of people? How the popularity of any book relies on a particular group? Which group of society consumes which kind of products? These are the questions which can be answered thorough analyzing the audience in popular culture. For example, while watching a film at the cinema theater, on the appearance of actress or on a fighting scene, hooting and shouting is done by people. Through this, one can analyze the shallow artistic sense of the audience. Similarly, the

* Historical Analysis


- Difference between modernism and postmodernism. Give examples if possible
There are two major theorist Jean-Francois Lyotard and Jean Baudrillard who explained postmodernism at length. Lyotard


5. Postcolonial Studies

The word postcolonial refers to the time after the decline of colonialism. After the separation of the European empire from the countries of Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, the third world countries were struggling to rebuild themselves. Many authors and theorists focused on both, colonialism and the changes created in a postcolonial culture. Edward Said's Orientalism was a touchstone to  study colonialism. Many theorists have worked on postcolonial studies. Frantz Fanon was a Caribbean Marxist and he wrote The Wretched of the Earth (1961), an important work to study postcolonial theory.  Gyatri Chakravorty Spivak coined the term subalterns for the colonially marginalized people. The authors of postcolonial literature like Salman Rushdie, Chinua Achebe are read alongside European responses to colonialism by writers such as George Orwell and Albert Camus.

References:
(1) Guerin, Wilfred L. A Handbook of Critical Approaches to Literature Fifth Edition. Oxford University Press, 2005.

Thank You !

Ecocriticism and Ecofeminism

Hello Readers!

The word 'eco' relates to ecology and environment. Thus this prefix is attached with some of the branches of knowledge and various disciplines. The famous term eco-friendly suggests human's friendly behavior with ecology and environment. Though we know that there are some certain reasons why we need to think about nature and ecology with serious brows. There are several gases which affect the ecosystem so badly that the natural cover of the Earth called Ozone layer is now getting reduced. These gases are Methane, Chlorofluorocarbon, Carbon Monoxide, Carbon Dioxide, Sulfer Dioxide etc. The ecosystem requires refinement and freshness, which is now nowhere to be seen. Cities are becoming more and more polluted and the clean air is becoming rare. In such situation, what is literature doing in this field? Does it sing the songs of hereditary culture and high society by neglecting the harms to nature? How literature and criticism go along with nature and environment hand in hand ? In order to answer these questions, the term 'eco-criticism' comes forward to help.

Click here to open the blog written by Dr. Dilip Barad.

Rain forest in Andaman

Ecocriticism means the study of environment and nature with the viewpoint of literature. Literary scholars analyse the text related to environmental approach.The term is basically made up of two words, 'ecology' and 'criticism'. As ecology is a completely different from criticism, still it has some connection with it. Ecology is basically the science of the environments and chain of ecosystem.

Illustrations: We find many literature, such as

Ecofeminism is a study of femininity in the context of environment through the literature related to literature.  It can be said that the concept of giving gender to nature i.e. 'mother nature' is part of ecofeminism. Mostly, environmental fantasy literature has this ecofeminism tendency to characterize female as nature.



References:

(1) “Ecocriticism.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 29 Dec. 2019, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecocriticism.

(2) “Ecofeminism.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 17 Jan. 2020, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecofeminism.

(3) “What Is Ecocriticism?: Literary Movements.” A Research Guide for Students, 27 Aug. 2018, www.aresearchguide.com/ecocriticism.html.

(4) Abrams, M. H., and Geoffrey Galt Harpham. A Glossary of Literary Terms. Cengage Learning, 2015.

Thank You!

Culture and Anarchy - Matthew Arnold

Hello Readers!

Matthew Arnold (1822 - 1888) was a prominent cultural critic and voracious prose writer belonging to the Victorian age of English literature. He has written many critical essays, but the most discussed and controversial essay is Culture and Anarchy which was originally published in The Cornhill Magazine during 1867 and 1868. Later on the essay was published as a book in 1869. A preface was added to the essay much later in the year 1875.

Image taken from: tanvirdhaka.blogspot.com

Here this thinking activity is written to highlight the key points and to see what students have understood from the essay. Click Here to open the worksheet of Culture and Anarchy.

Click here to open the blog on Culture and Anarchy by Dr. Dilip Barad.

The essay basically deals with the thought of perfection of culture and how anarchy prevails through various class of society. As a social critic, Matthew Arnold divides English society into three major parts,

1. Barbarians - Class of people who are aristocrat and rich, who are more civilized, who live with high morals and thoughts.
2. Philistines - People who selfishly make money, engage in unproductive and leisure activities. They live their life with self-centered manner. Middle class, often called as bourgeois class.
3. Populace - People who are poverty-sticken and pushed down by the Barbarians and Philistines.

He gives the concept of Hebraism and Hellenism to clarify the cultural difference between higher class and middle class of people.

Thank You!

Workshop on Cultural Studies 2019

Hello Readers!

On 27th December 2019, a full day workshop on Cultural Studies was organised at the department of English, MK Bhavnagar University. The resource speaker Dr. Kalyani Vallath from Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala was invited for detailed explanation of the subject.

Cultural studies is not only the branch of study but also the study of politics, nature, environment, people so on and so forth. Cultural studies contains multiple studies within itself. If one wants to study the culture, one should require a bunch of knowledge of historical sense, traditions, religions, etc. Cultural studies include capitalism, politics, communication, multimedia, advertisement and much more. In order to study this topic, one should be ready to dive deep into the ocean of various cultures. Critics and theorists have given many arguments and opinions about cultural studies. Stuart Hall was the major figure who worked at first about the cultural studies. It seems that in the early 1950s and 60s, the systematic study was established.

* If a layman meets the student of literature and language, one would explain him about cultural studies like this.

Culture means what we do in our daily life. What clothes we wear, how we cook our food, and which festivals we celebrate, what language we speak, how we use the mode of transportation, how we communicate with one another; all those things are defining our culture. It also consists the types of rites and rituals we follow and to which community we belong to. The culture is the mixture of all those things. Many learned people have made this thing a part of study and they have found many interesting things. Nowadays students are selecting this subject as their major and doing their best in the field.

* If one is asked in an interview to teach cultural studies, here is the way one can introduce the subject to the students.

"Students, welcome to the realm of cultural studies. As you all know that even having similar human bodies we still differ from each other in many ways. For example, this class also has it's own culture, because it contains various students coming from different areas and regions. This is the fundamental idea of culture. It doesn't deal with the question who we are, but it surely deals with how we are. If you are accessing internet then you'll be able to find out many blogs and articles related to cultural studies. Here I've shared the link of my blog to your social media group to read something on the subject. Furthermore, this is also culture. Many years back there were very few incidents that people were able to see or meet each other in person, because of lack of transportation, or communication. But here we can see that culture, like time and space is gradually changing and expanding itself. Just as I've shared my work without showing you any physical paper holding in my hand, and still you are able read my blog through internet and smartphones. The interesting thing about culture is it's so plural. If you will just look around yourself, you will find many same things but still different from each other. The people we see around us are so different. Their faces, their skin color, their attires, their apatite, their language, their festivals, their religious practices... and the list will be longer than we imagine. Now let's dive deep into the sea of cultural studies. This is just the beginning, in details we shall see how scholars have furthered this studies."

The whole session was full of examples and interesting talks. I remember the example of food Kalyani mam had given. India is so plural and it is the best place to talk about cultural studies. From North India to South India we have variety of foods and dishes.

The entire workshop was very fruitful and full of references and examples. Thanks to our head of the department, Dr. Dilip Barad for organizing this workshop. Special thanks to Dr. Kalyani Vallath for sparing her precious time for the students.

Thank You!