If we want to compare any literary text, we must know the connection between the two literary works. And to know that connection we have to know about literary texts. So let's see the brief introduction about "Robinson Crusoe" by Daniel Defoe first. Then we will see the brief introduction about "Foe novel" by J. M. Coetzee.
Robinson Crusoe is a novel by Daniel Defoe, first published on 25 April 1719. The first edition credited the work's protagonist Robinson Crusoe as its author, leading many readers to believe he was a real person and the book a travelogue of true incidents. Robinson Crusoe, in full the life and strange surprising adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of York, Mariner. Who Lived Eight and Twenty Years, all alone in an Uninhabited Island on the Coast of America. It was near the mouth of the great river of Oroonoko.
Now have a look at "Foe" by J. M. Coetzee.
Foe novel is a 1986 novel by South African-born Nobel laureate J. M. Coetzee. Woven around the existing plot of Robinson Crusoe, Foe is written from the perspective of Susan Barton, a castaway who landed on the same island inhabited by "Cruso" and Friday as their adventures were already underway. Like Robinson Crusoe, it is a frame story, unfolded as Barton's narrative while in England attempting to convince the writer Daniel Foe to help transform her tale into popular fiction. Focused primarily on themes of language and power, the novel was the subject of criticism in South Africa, where it was regarded as politically irrelevant on its release. Coetzee revisited the composition of Robinson Crusoe in 2003 in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech.
Q. 1 How would you differentiate the character of Cruso and Crusoe?
If we look at the character of Cruso, it is a satirical reinvention of Deniel Defo's Crusoe. In "Robinson Crusoe" the character of Cruso is described as an ideal person. He is very much active in his everyday life. First we see he wins the island. He saved Friday also. Then he teaches Friday how to do work, how to behave, how to express everything. He planted plants on that island. He does hard work for that. So Crusoe in Robinson Crusoe is HERO.
But the character of Cruso in "Foe" is opposite from the character of Crusoe of "Robinson Crusoe". Cruso becomes ZERO here in this novel by Coetzee. He was described as a very lazy man after Friday came. Friday manages all the things so he sits down at one place and mostly stays at that place. He is not doing any adventures, fighting, planting or teaching, so here the center was changed in this novel. Only because of his laziness. Even he was not attracted towards Susan's beauty. So this are the differences between character Crusoe and Cruso.
Q.5 Which novel is convincing and has poetic justice? (or is there poetic justice? – Has the writer achieved what it wished for? – Has Friday got the justice? )
If we think through the character of Friday in both novels we can say that the novel "Foe" has a poetic justice rather than "Robinson Crusoe". In the whole novel Susan wanted to make Friday free and to teach him with his permission. She wants Friday to learn everything and then he can live his life with his rules. Whole novel focuses on the character of Friday. So when we look at the poetic justice this novel "Foe" has that justice. Even he didn't Speak in the novel. But the overall story of the novel is Friday.
Q. 6 Who is the Protagonist? (Foe – Susan – Friday – Unnamed narrator)
As we see in the novel, we have different protagonists throughout the novel. First we see Denial Defoe is the first narrator. Because it's a prequel to that novel. So it is very important to study them first.
Second narrator is Susan Barton. She tells us the story through the use of letters.
Third narrator is Mr Foe, because he tells the story. Also he wrote a story on the voyages of Susan, Cruso and Friday. So he is the third narrator of the novel
Fourth narrator is an unnamed person. Who observes everything and tells us what is happening. So the name is not given here of that narrator.
The final and fifth narrator of the novel is J. M. Coetzee. Because he wrote everything. He described all the situations.
So these are several points that we can see in both novels. And we can also see the similarities and differences in them.
The power is very pivotal to study in cultural studies. So in this blog I will discuss the power and the media; the controller of information. The study of Cultural Studies in incomplete without the study of 'Power'. Today we see 'Media' is the tool to control the perceptions and the subject, the Power makes extensive use of Media. In all forms of media like, radio, TV, electronic, social media etc. So let's see the power and media.
First I would like to present six sources of power.
Physical Force :- It means you can control anyone by beating. Like using police force you can control the situation. For example to control Kisan Andolan government using police force to control them.
Wealth :- By using money you can control anybody. If we look at the current time, the countries are are under control of businesses who are very rich. And the government also have good relation with them. For example in our India Mukesh Ambani cheated other telecome company in the name of digital India with the help of power, broken all rules and regulation of TRAI and made his Jio company.
State Action :- It means state government decide what to do and what not. Once government made rules nobody can denied them. For example during first wave of Corona, government declared lockdown. So all had supposed to follow that rule.
Social Norms :- Social norms we aware of. That govern people who are living in society. Society make some rules that all have to follow. There are lots of rules made by society like, how to behave, how to live life, who can do what work etc.
Ideas :- It means power generate idea and and suggest to people to do as power like. For example, If one Idea came into my mind, I suggest it to others any they will follow me, so they are in under control.
Numbers :- That means majority of thinkers express their collective interest and creat power.
So this are the sources of power. With the use if that we can control anybody. It seems like we can control anybody by સામ, દામ, દંડ, ભેદ. This are the techniques of control.
Now I want to talk about three laws of power.
Power is never static
Power is like water
Power compound
After understanding of power and it's source and rules we have to concern about our duty. What we can do ?
So the first thing is to Read Power. When anything is happen, we have to analyse it and we have to recognise the power in them. Because if you don't know where is the origin of problem you can't give solution of that problem. So the first thing we have to keep in mind that whenever people control us, we should understand which kind of power they are using. The second thing is to Write Power. So whenever you feel like ther is the use of power control you can write that experience and share with others. So the truth can be come out to the people. But for that we have to learn to read power.
If we can read power then and then we may write power.
So the necessary thing is we have to start reading and critiquiimportant to study these things inng anid asking against the power. So it becomes cultural studies.
Media
Media is very powerful weapon nowadays. Study of media become very pivotal part in cultural studies. It controls the information. We can connect it with Post_Truth also. Here is my blog on Post Truth, to read click here. Media is the key that we can see all the things happening around us. But media became now more praising media, rather than opposed media. We find media is not showing the truth. They hide the true information to the people. But the thing is that, media have power to make things popular and unpopular also. In this society big corporate controls the few people and that few people control may ordinary peoples. And that chain become more powerful. That is what happening today. Media controller are not common people, but rich people.
All are controlled by media in one or another way. We are seeing everything that they wanted to show us.
About media Malcolm said,
So, we can say that media should be free from all this biases. They should show us truth, rather than praising government and wrong things. And we also have to be aware what is right and what is going wrong with the things.
Hello friends, in this blog I'm going to discuss Cyber Feminism and the bias we see on the internet platform. First of all we need to understand what cyber feminism is. According to Wikipedia source,
Cyberfeminism is a feminist approach which foregrounds the relationship between cyberspace, the Internet, and technology.
According to Oxford Reference,
It is a movement that began in the 1990s utilizing cyberculture and feminist ideas to re-theorize gender, the body, and identities in relation to technology and power.
The term was coined in the early 1990s to describe the work of feminists interested in theorizing, critiquing, exploring and re-making the Internet, cyberspace and new-media technologies in general. It is a community, philosophy and set of practices concerned with feminist acts in cyberspace. Cyberfeminism is a postmodernist keyword used to describe the philosophies of a contemporary feminist community whose interests are cyberspace, the Internet, and technology. The term was coined by Sadie Plant to describe the work of feminists interested in theorizing, critiquing, and exploiting the Internet, cyberspace, and new-media technologies in general. Cyberfeminism is considered a predecessor to networked feminism. The dominant Cyberfeminist perspective takes a utopian view of cyberspace and the Internet as a means of freedom from social constructs like gender and sex difference. Cyberfeminism views technology as a vehicle for the dissolution of sex and gender as well as a means to link the body with machines. For better understanding watch the video:
It is a term of any illicit activity that involves the use of a computer as its elementary means of the commission. It is a wrongdoing which is committed against a single individual or a group of them with a criminal mind to intentionally cause harm to the dignity of the sufferer or to cause physical or mental trauma to the victim in any manner, direct or indirect, by way of modern telecommunication networks like the internet.
If we see in society we find females are not much connected with cyber space and technology. But males are all much familiar with all this technology. Why did it happen ? Because there are the reasons like,
Culture
Gender Stereotypes
Growth of baby and their Sports equipment
If we talk about culture, we find that in our society boys are much familiar with technology and cyberspace. Slowly and steadily girls are starting to use technology and doing work with technology. Because of the patriarchal society, we see most things were not taught to girls. We find most of top companies and their founders are men. For example, if we look at the big tech companies and their founders :
Microsoft - Bill Gates and Paul Allen
Apple - Steve Jobs
Facebook - Mark Zuckerberg
Amazon - Jeff Bezos
Google - Larry Page and Sergey Brin
All are men ! We find very few women who are founders of companies. Because they are not connected with technology. The girl was also restricted from using this heavy work, like repairing. So the mindset of girls has been narrow in this field of technology since childhood.
Since technology became important, we used to fill out the online forms and all these works,and that was done by our father, brother or friend (boy), because they know much about it and we don't know how to do all the things. Why does it happen ? Because from childhood we divide babies into genders. If the baby is a boy then we give him toys like, car, airplane, machine etc. and if we have a baby girl we give them toys like, kitchen equipment, Barbi doll etc. So they learn the things which we are giving them. So that is why women are not much aware about technology.
On the internet many female writers publish their work with male names. Because the work is judged by people with gender discrimination. We find many examples from the past. If women write anything, people will question her abilities. But if a man writes anything, their work easily overcomes the question of ability. So gender biases are also created in AI. And this AI was created by humans, so we have to input equality into them also.
But now the situation is changing. Women got space in using technology. But the threats are also rising for women. Cyber crime has become an easy weapon to abuse women. So what are the reasons behind that ? Let's see.
MAJOR REASONS FOR THE GROWTH OF CYBER VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN :-
The usage of the internet for criminal activities causes big threat to the society in the form of cyber violence and the major victims of this crime are females of all age groups. According to studies, it has been shown that the number of users which were 52 million went up to 71 million in 2009. In these users, 8% of the users were working women and 7% of the users were non-working women in 2009 and 37% of all the users used the internet by way of cyber cafés. What commonly happens is that the cyber café owners leak the personal and essential data of the internet surfer which is then used for illicit activities. And that is why families are not allowing females to use these technologies.
What are the reasons in this cyber violence against females against women are following:
(1) Easily available information of the victims:-
Social networking websites are made for people to connect to each other even at long distances and also to let people know each other. To show the presence of a profile, the users have to put their personal data like age, phone number, residential address, marital status, and so on.
(2) Ignorance and carelessness of the users:-
The social networking websites provide for several options to keep the profiles secure and keep oneself protected from being harassed in numerous ways such as putting up security measures and giving options to lock the personal photos, albums as well as messages. A user can also block a harasser which permanently hides the profile and cannot be found on the website by the harasser. Further, there are options like with whom to share information, a user can select to share it with only the members or with the public or with just oneself. Even after all these security measures provided by the social networking websites, women are prone to all types of cyber violence such as stalking, morphing, hacking, cheating, defamation and sexual abuse on the online platform. Some females had oral arguments with their group mates and they suspected that their user profiles on the website were hacked by some people. Very few women are aware of their legal right to protect their privacy from any outside intervention on the social networking website although many women experience cybercrime more or less and in some or the other way.
(3) Hiding one’s real identity under fake profiles:-
The fundamental right of freedom to speech and expression has encouraged the right to be unidentified on the social media. These websites provide space for changing names, addresses and other personal details regularly. This was done by social networking websites to allow a user to change their physical condition and geographical location from time to time so as to get in contact and interact with the other member on that website but, this has resulted in the other way around where the perpetrators commit crimes and get a blanket to hide under different identities which are fake. These fake account users have put females in more danger and risk on the social media.
TYPES OF CYBERCRIMES COMMITTED AGAINST WOMEN :-
(1) Cyber Harassment:
This is a form of harassment, including blackmailing, threatening and continuous sending of love letters by fake names or constant sending of embarrassing emails to the mailbox of some other user. This behaviour is intended to disturb a person through the usage of the internet. Sexual harassment is a specific type of harassment which is particularly sexual in nature, among several other types of them, it vitally takes into consideration constant and undesirable sexual activities.
(2) Cyber Stalking:
Cyber stalking is one of the most talked about cybercrimes in the modern day. It takes into account following the movements of a person all over the internet by sending messages which are sometimes threatening on the bulletin boards and going into chat-rooms frequently visited by the victim, constantly bombarding the mailbox of the victim, etc. The offence of cyber stalking is generally committed by men who stalk women or by adults who stalk the children.
(3) Cyber Pornography:
It is defined as the posting of sexual substances on the internet. This is again a threat to female internet users as they don‟t even know which of their activities are being recorded and might then go viral all over the web. It is a non-consensual activity wherein pictures and videos of the victim are obtained by certain ways such as hacking into the computer or phone of the victim, via social media accounts, etc. and these harm the life of the victim in the real world. This offence has been covered under the IT Act, 2000 to some extent under Section 67.
(4) Cyber Defamation:
Defamation is a tort and cyber defamation is when the defamation is committed by the use of computers and on the internet. It happens when people start publishing defaming statements or obscene material on various social networking websites on the online platform. The bulletin board of a user is open to be accessed by all other users which means that anyone can post a defamatory statement on their board and then it is visible to everyone. Cyber defamation is also called cyber smearing.
(5) Morphing:
It is to make a picture look different completely or partially from what it originally looks like by a fake identity. The offenders download photos of women from their social media accounts and edit (morph) them and then again upload the new picture in the name of a fake account. Morphing is generally done with two pictures wherein one picture is mixed with another picture and shown in a compromising situation or position which make it look like the women is indulging in the act portrayed in the picture. After this comes blackmail, where the woman is threatened to do something and if not, the pictures would go viral all over the web which will lead to embarrassment of the woman in the community and her status will be diminished too. The offenders committing this crime are booked under Section 43 and Section 66 of the IT Act, 2000.
(6) Email Spoofing:
Email spoofing is to change the real origin of an email in a fraudulent and illegitimate manner. The header part of the address and the sender‟s address is changed in such a way that it is not possible to recognize that the email has been spoofed and looks like that it as been sent from a different source. Men generally send their obscene and vulgar photographs to women via such emails, glorifying their beauty, demanding favours for them and asking for a date or for the price the woman would take for a night with them.
So, in this way cyberfeminism works. If want to reduce the cyber crime we have to educate women more, because the knowledge make them aware about the technology and it will easy to Artificial Intelligence for them.
Our lives become very fast with passing time. In every work we need more speed and want to complete all the things in less time. But by running behind the time something is lacking, something we are leaving behind us. And it is connected with society and society is subject of cultural studies. That is why the slowness has become a part of study here in cultural studies.
We can say that,
Slowness is a new way of thinking about time
When we can do everything on time, then why should we hurry ? In the speed, we forgot to balance things. But in slowness, we can balance everything. So if you must hurry, hurry slowly ! We find lots of works also written about slowness. Let's discuss about it.
In Praise of Slow by Carl Honore.
In this works Honore discuss about slow movement and the importance of slowness. In a way it is as the title, praise of slow and it's effect on the world. Here is TED talk about slowness by Carl Honore. Here is the video link of that TED talk,
In the video we find interesting things that praising the slow movement and the importance of slowness. Honore said that, A world obsessed with speed, with doing everything faster, with cramming more and more into less and less time. Every moment of the day feels like a race against the clock. We're so marinated in the culture of speed that we almost fail to notice the toll it takes on every aspect of our lives like on our health, our diet, our work, our relationships, the environment and our community.
Honore discussed about two questions. The first was, how did we get so fast? And the second is, is it possible, or even desirable, to slow down? Now, if we think about how our world got so accelerated, the usual suspects rear their heads. We think of, we know, urbanization, consumerism, the workplace, technology. But he said if we cut through those forces, we get to what might be the deeper driver, the nub of the question, which is how we think about time itself. In other cultures, time is cyclical. It's seen as moving in great, unhurried circles. It's always renewing and refreshing itself. Whereas in the West, time is linear. It's a finite resource; it's always draining away. You either use it, or lose it.
"Time is money,"
-Benjamin Franklin
So the talk makes the things clear about slowness and it's importance. According to Honore,
The purpose of the Slow Movement, or its main goal, really, is to tackle that taboo, and to say that yes, sometimes slow is not the answer, that there is such a thing as "bad slow."
-Carl Honore
So we can say that Honore believes the Western world's emphasis on speed erodes health, productivity and quality of life. But there's a backlash brewing and all people started to taking break.
Here are some other works also about slowness. One of them is Paul Virilio's work on 'Dromology'. Dromos is an Ancient Greek noun for race or racetrack, which Virilio applied the activity of racing (Virilio 1977:47). Meaning of this Dromology is "science (or logic) of speed". He noted in his work, that the speed at which something happens may change its essential nature, and that which moves with speed quickly comes to dominate that which is slower. 'Whoever controls the territory possesses it. Possession of territory is not primarily about laws and contracts, but first and foremost a matter of movement and circulation.
So at the end we can say that this movement makes aware people about the slowness, it's different aspects and it's impect on our life. There are the questions that were answered in the video talk also. If we want to balance the things we can be slow and that helps us to do things correct, because in our busy life we were damaging our relationship and other things that can be a serious problem for us.
Why are we scared of Robots / Artificial Intelligence ?
We know that technology is growing so fast. All the things are going faster. The invention of robots is the major part of invention. Human beings will face some difficulties because of the invention of robots. Because what if they took the place oh human ?
They are smart in comparison to humans.
They learn very fast.
They work very fast.
They need batteries only.
They work without exhaustion
So in that way we can say that robots are better than humans. In every way they are better in comparison to human beings. But should all prefer to stay with robots ? No. Why is it happening ? There are reasons that we should prefer to stay with humans rather than robots.
So first if we talk about the advantages of robots we can say that robots are better than humans at work. They can do everything that humans are doing. But we see we are scared of robots and artificial intelligence. So let's understand what a robot is and what Artificial Intelligence is first.
According to dictionary of Oxford language,
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the theory and development of computer systems able to perform tasks normally requiring human intelligence, such as visual perception, speech recognition, decision-making, and translation between languages.
According to Wikipedia,
Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence demonstrated by machines, as opposed to
the natural intelligence
displayed by animals including humans.
It is a transformative technology that is currently remaking how businesses operate and stay competitive. Although AI is unlocking tremendous business potential, it also imposes new risks and liabilities.
We know what robot is. So now come to the point that why we are so scared of robots ? So are some reasons:
They take our jobs
They harm the humans
They are not safe
They are powerful / strong
There are some examples of video and movies:-
These movies shows us how the robots become uncotrolable. And kill the people. And that is why we have fear of them.
Here is one video also,
So we have some wrong things about the robots and artificial intelligence. Because that is not truth. Yes, in some of the movie we seen that type of things, but it is not true. Robots are not that type of cruel and harmful. Because cinema potryaed robots in that way we started believing that is true. We have seen in some of the movie and videos, where robots are hurting and killing people. But that's not so. So all that things are wrong, that robots can hurt people ? Yes, now we must think how ? So,
Robots are made by human, so they have control over it
Robots have not emotions, so they can't feel revenge and all the things.
Human add all the features in robot, so they can work in that way.
So here is nothing like fear of robots. But yes still if you give choice to people, with whom they want to stay ? They will choose human beings. If I ask you,
With whom would you like to stay ? What will be your choice ? Robot or human ?
I think most of people choose human beings. Even if they are enemies ! But the thing is robots are not harmful. They can perform better, they can be our good friend.
So at the end I would like to say that, there is no worry about robots and artificial intelligence because they are surve to people. Humans have control over it and humans are their operator so they can only add the features of how robot and artificial intelligence will work.
Have you seen any film adaptations ? Which is taken from any novel, story, play, drama etc. Well this is my fourth or fifth experience of watching a film adaptation. We have seen a film adaptation "The Final Solution" directed by Mahesh Dattani, which is based on his play "The Final Solution". This adaptation is available on the Zee5 app also. We had a screen of the play on 29 September, 2021. So let's discuss it more.
"The Final Solution" is a play by Mahesh Dattani. Mahesh Dattani (born 7 August 1958) is an Indian director, actor, playwright and writer. He wrote such plays as Final Solutions, Dance Like a Man, Bravely Fought the Queen, On a Muggy Night in Mumbai, Tara, Thirty Days in September and The Big Fat City. To read more about Mahesh Dattani click here. Let's see a brief summary of the play.
Final Solutions has taken the issues of the majority communities in different contexts and situations. It talks of the problems of cultural hegemony, how Hindus had to suffer at the hands of Muslim majority like the characters of Hardika/Daksha in Hussainabad. And how Muslims like Javed suffer in the set up of the majority Hindu community. This all resulted in communal riots and culminated in disruption of the normal social life, and thus hampered the progress of the nation. Here is the poster of film adaptation.
Now let's think about the question answers :
Here are some questions to ponder upon. To know more about task visit teacher's blog, click here.
👉Does the movie help you to understand the narrative structure of the play?
Well, any adaptation helps us to understand the structure of the literary work, if they are truthful with the original work. In The Final Solution, we see the story is told by the perspective of Daksha in diary form. She wrote a diary and tells us what and how everything has happened. The other perspective is Javed. His experience and his story also shown in flashback mode. Bobby's story also shown different perspective. So this all Techniques are used in the play, which we understand better through screening of a film.
👉What do you think about women’s situation during the time of communal riots?
The situation of women during the time of communal riots very bad. Even in common situation it is not good. They don't have freedom of speech, not right to do what they wanted, and also they don't have right to choose her hobby. So slowly and steadily the situation is changing nowadays. In the movie and play we see that Daksha wanted to be a singer, but her father in law and mother in law denied to do so. Even she haven't right to listen songs also.
👉Does the women characters like Daksha, Aruna etc. have helped you in understanding it.If you were the director of the movie, what kind of changes would you make in the movie. Does the movie do justice to the play?
All women characters helps us to understand the play. If I was the director, I will end the play with solution. And all we know the solution is to be aware about what others says about other religions. We should not conclude any point without knowing everything about the matter. We have to see that we should not provoked by other peoples.
So overall this adaptation is good and it helps us to understand the concept of the play by Mahesh Dattani. The play is also portrayed in a very interesting way, and also it presents the harsh reality of society. We have to be careful while watching and listening to those nusense. Because many times it's happened that we don't know anything, but we join the groups of those people who are violent and provoke us against other religions.
