Welcome to the IAFOR Journal of Arts & Humanities – Volume 11 – Issue 1
Dear readers,
I am delighted to present this issue of the IAFOR Journal of Arts and Humanities, a publication intended to serve as a forum for outstanding research in the humanities. While we interpret the term in the broadest possible sense of the word, IJAH has always endeavoured to publish exceptional studies that address contemporary issues within the scope of its mission. Moreover, the journal’s editorial process is strenuous, as demanded by a top scholarly journal.
A new and important part of our mission is to disseminate an innovative idea of the praxis of humanism as a practical undertaking. Perhaps never in history have the ideas and ethical standards proposed by humanists been more essential to the wellbeing of society than in the present. Now that our planet is roasting while we continue to shoot at each other, we as humanists must enter the battlefield in the name of reason, assuming control over those spaces where science has been unable to improve the prospects for our collective future.
Ever since the advent of the Scientific Revolution, science has been narrowing the scope of its efforts, focusing on the overarching, though limiting question of truth, truth as observed and demonstrated through sustained, reproducible results. Increasingly set aside in scientific thought have been questions of a moral or ethical complexion, questions whose abstract nature disallowed experimental scrutiny. Such questions were better left for magicians or religious charlatans. This scientific disregard for the ethical value of consequences came to a climax during preparations for the Trinity Test, an experiment that produced the first atomic bomb explosion (July 16, 1945). It is common knowledge that its scientists were offering wagers on whether the bomb would ignite the planet’s atmosphere.
This radical objectivity has created a vacuum in human affairs that is best filled by humanist thought, but humanists have either not rushed in or have not been taken seriously. This is a profit-driven world, and nobody has ever seen a poet use quantum technology to improve financial modelling. But that type of reasoning should not have a prominent place in our collective thinking. I am reminded of the Spanish stoic philosopher Seneca, who made the distinction between sapientia and sagacitas, that is to say, between wisdom and ingenuity. Ingenuity allowed man to know and control his physical environment (science), while sapientia (wisdom) allowed him to do it with an ethical purpose (Epistle 90.7-13, especially 11). For the Roman thinker Cicero, man’s ability to know and change his environment should not be separated from dignitas, or ignity, the underlying essence of his moral constitution (De natura deorum 2.50).
Perhaps it is high time that we stopped, took a good look at our sweltering, battle-scarred, over-exploited planet, and read the philosophers of the past as they linked human activities with the ethical value of their consequences. We might find that, sometimes, looking back is the best way to move forward.
The articles included in this volume of the IAFOR Journal of Arts and Humanities demonstrate that sense of urgency that is needed to develop a transformational vision of the humanities’ goals.
Article 1
In “Ideological Conflict and Perpetrators’ Trauma in the Works of Haruki Murakami”, Anisur Rahman analyses PITS (Perpetration-induced Trauma Stress) or perpetrator trauma as a form of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) that is a subject of debate in trauma discourse, where it is regarded as an unwelcome ghost that carries a heavy load of moral and ethical ambiguity. The author explains that the issue arises from the question of how one can experience traumatic stress when one wilfully commits immoral or unlawful acts.
https://doi.org/10.22492/ijah.11.1.01
Article 2
In “Voicing Palestinian Outrage in Rafeef Ziadah’s ‘We Teach Life, Sir’”, Basila Maisoon and Hashmina Habeeb draw upon insights from Stef Craps’s “Decolonisation of Trauma” studies and Stuart Hall’s concept of “oppositional code” in an attempt to explain how Rafeef Ziadah’s poem “We Teach Life, Sir'”, serves as a powerful counter-narrative by delivering emotional and creative expressions that challenge and vehemently oppose the mainstream media’s often biased portrayals of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
https://doi.org/10.22492/ijah.11.1.02
Article 3
In “Decoding Sense of Place and Contested Cultural Landscapes in Select Manipuri Poems”, Remya R states that scholarly analyses of Manipuri poetry have focused on the aesthetics of this poetry’s consistent engagement with the physical landscape, but in the wake of Manipur’s on-going ethno-territorial and ethno-nationalistic conflicts, revisiting Manipuri poetry from a revisionist perspective becomes germane. It is now more pertinent than ever to analyse Manipuri history and its infamous hill-valley divide through its poetry by adopting a spatial lens, as the notion of “homeland” itself is a contested construct. An exclusive focus on the aesthetics of the physical landscape is no longer relevant in this poetry’s case.
https://doi.org/10.22492/ijah.11.1.03
Article 4
Kunal Debnath and Nagendra Kumar examine the Firefly Funhouse Match as a unique pro wrestling match that incorporates various postmodern elements such as intertextuality, non-linear storytelling, blurring of reality and fiction, and parody. It deconstructs the notion of a traditional wrestling match by challenging clichés in professional wrestling and providing a novel, unique, and postmodern outlook. Debnath aims to show how the match digs deeper into the unconscious layer of the wrestlers’ psyche and breaks down the superficial façade of the individuals involved. It is a psychodrama in which various characters, events, and scenarios symbolically represent aspects of the human psyche. It also parodies the superhuman savior-type babyface gimmicks of the past, taking into consideration the condition of the postmodern man living in a fragmented world where the grand narrative of the American Dream has collapsed.
https://doi.org/10.22492/ijah.11.1.04
Article 5
Raveena Prakasan and M G Priya study cultural graphics in Indian mythological graphic narratives, analysing how images play a crucial role in the process of creating meaning in the novels’ cultural context. As graphic novels that retell mythology, written by women authors from the perspective of women characters, the ordinary reading of the novels through a feminist lens is now obsolete as far as the new academia is concerned. By bringing in concepts related to cultural graphics in the study of the selected works, the meaning in the novels is enhanced.
https://doi.org/10.22492/ijah.11.1.05
Article 6
Atisha Rai in “Writings from Under the Mushroom Cloud: Atomic Bomb Literature as a Literature of Atrocity”, states that atomic bomb literature comprises texts that emerged out of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. Almost all these writings deal directly or indirectly with the singular experience of the world’s first nuclear attacks. A-bomb literature has long been pushed to the margins of Japanese literature, often dismissed as testimonial writing or even history, and excluded from writings about violence. Rai’s argument is based on Lawrence Langer’s proposition that a literature of atrocity deals with the disintegration of the human image in the face of inappropriate death. A literature of atrocity strips death of its romantic dress and reveals man’s fragile existence and the vulnerability of the flesh. In short, it deals with “inappropriate death.”
https://doi.org/10.22492/ijah.11.1.06
Article 7
In Subverting “Gendered Narratives: Defiance in Mary Kom’s Unbreakable: An Autobiography”, Abish Jebeshi and A Selvam explain that dissonance between the body, culture, and identity is distinctly observed in sport, a traditionally masculine and gender-bifurcated arena. Through Mary Kom’s autobiography, the study investigates the way in which Mary and other female athletes defy the hegemonic masculine culture that prevails in Indian society.
https://doi.org/10.22492/ijah.11.1.07
Article 8
In “Narrating Physical Diseases in the Malayan Landscape: Hugh Clifford’s ‘A Daughter of the Muhammadans’”, Tejash Kumar Singh investigates Hugh Clifford’s (1866-1941), experiences in Malaya as portrayed in his short stories, wherein the British Resident and Governor of Malaya constructed particular ontological realities regarding Malayan subjects for his European audiences. Singh also examines how Clifford promoted a fabricated perception of their “difference”. In his short story “A Daughter of the Muhammadans”, published in his 1916 collection The Further Side of Silence, Clifford investigates the visually striking corruption of leprosy, juxtaposed against the wholesome, affectionate nature of Minah, the female Malayan subject. Based on the context of medicinal advancements, Singh proposes that Clifford’s physical and psychological depictions of the Malayan body’s diseases led to its constructed “othering”, especially through the furtherance of stereotypes of the Malayan subject.
https://doi.org/10.22492/ijah.11.1.08
Article 9
Swethal Ramchandran writes, in “Memory Dynamics in Small Acts of Freedom: A Hermannian Approach to Indian Female Sagas”, that saga fiction, when viewed from the framework of temporality and collective memory, provides women with an avenue to identify, articulate and reconstruct the past within the scope of the present. Further, it widens the scope for the construction of a memory-based female genealogy through the retrieval and sharing of memories.
https://doi.org/10.22492/ijah.11.1.09
Article 10
In “Absence as Resistance in Palestinian Speculative Fiction”, Netty Mattar analyses works of speculative fiction that tackle the issues of Palestinian identity and portray the Palestinians’ battles as symbolic of the struggle against elimination, against becoming absent. Mattar states that the pervasive use of social media today has been pivotal in revealing this struggle by enabling the direct and unrestricted sharing of Palestinian suffering in the face of unremitting destruction and displacement.
https://doi.org/10.22492/ijah.11.1.10
It is hoped that these articles and viewpoints will offer new insights, promote intellectual discussion and inspire new avenues of research.
Dr Alfonso J. García-Osuna
Editor