Oxford Dictionaries has declared "post-truth" as its 2016 international word of the year, reflecting what it called a "highly-charged" political 12 months.The Oxford Word of the Year is a word or expression that has attracted a great deal of interest over the last 12 months. Every year, we debate candidates for word of the year and choose a winner that is judged to reflect the ethos, mood, or preoccupations of that particular year and to have lasting potential as a word of cultural significance.
●Definitionof theword :-
" Post-truth is an adjective defined as ‘relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief ".
【-Oxford dictionaries】
Oxford dictionaries declared "post-truth" to be the international word of the year. The editors said that use of the word had increased by around 2,000% in 2016 compared to previous year, and attributed it's rise to the context of the EU referendum and the presidential election in the US.
"It wouldn't be surprised if post-truth becomes one of the defining words of our time".
-OED President Casper Grathwohl
It is our decision how we will react to a world in which someone is trying to pull the wool ever our eyes. Truth still matters, as it always has. Whether we realize this in time is up to us. How we arrived in a post-truth era, when "alternative facts" replace actual facts, and feelings have more weight than evidence.
Everyday we all covered with wrong information and fake news. And without any knowledge we simply believe in this all fake news. We simply forward all messages in our groups without any confirmation or proof. We don't see the truth of any news but believe in social media.
We all used to choose an easy way for doing our work. And it makes more wider area for fake sources. We don't use complexe path for any answers.
Generally we are controlled by social media !!! What they tell we blindly believe them. It is like that…
In present time nobody wants to know that this is right or wrong, even they don't recognize what is right and what is wrong. I find one gujarati story which is very appropriate :
This is the time in which we live, we can't even speak truth against well known figures.
"During times of universal deceit telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act".
-George Orwell
The sad reality of the post-truth era where education is no longer valued and comfortable lies with no evidence is valued.
Political parties use social media as source of fake news and spread wrong information about other opposition parties. This type of politics play very vital role in every country. Social media is very easy platform to them.
When we talk we are only repeating what we already know, but when we listen, we might learn something new. It is depend on us that do not believe blindly in everyone, think , take help of Google ગુરૂ and then build any opinions.
◆ Some facts of post-truth era :-
Truth is adonai with all your heart; do not rely on it own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him; then he will level your path. The selective use of facts that prop up one's position, and the complete rejection of facts that do not, seems part and parcel of creating the new post-truth reality.
◆ Some examples :-
Here are some examples that can express this word :
This is how social media show the reality of any truth. Role of social media now days become very important because this is the way to reach information to everyone.
So, it's is our responsibility to check the existence of any news and then believe in them.
This is the talk of post colonialism by Bill Ashcroft. Bill Ashcroft is an Emeritus Professor in the School of English, Media and Performing Arts. A founding exponent of post-colonial theory, co-author of The Empire Writes Back, the first text to examine systematically the field of post-colonial studies. He is author and co-author of twenty one books, variously translated into five languages, Including Post-ColonialTransformation (Routledge 2001), Post-ColonialFutures (Continuum 2001); Caliban'sVoice (Routledge 2008) Intimate Horizons (ATF 2009) and Utopianism in Postcolonial Literatures (Routledge 2016). He is the author of over 200 chapters and papers, and he is on the editorial boards of ten international journals.
●What is post colonialism :-
Postcolonialism is the critical academic study of the cultural legacy of colonialism and imperialism, focusing on the human consequences of the control and exploitation of colonized people and their lands. More specifically, it is a critical-theory analysis of the history, culture, literature, and discourse of (usually European) imperial power.
Postcolonialism encompasses a wide variety of approaches, and theoreticians may not always agree on a common set of definitions. On a simple level, through anthropological study, it may seek to build a better understanding of colonial life based on the assumption that the colonial rulers are unreliable narrators from the point of view of the colonized people. On a deeper level, postcolonialism examines the social and political power relationships that sustain colonialism and neocolonialism, including the social, political and cultural narratives surrounding the colonizer and the colonized. This approach may overlap with studies of contemporary history, and may also draw examples from anthropology, historiography, political science, philosophy, sociology, and human geography. Sub-disciplines of postcolonial studies examine the effects of colonial rule on the practice of feminism, anarchism, literature, and Christian thought. There is also post colonial ways if reading.
Period or state of affairs representing the aftermath of Western colonialism; the term can also be used to describe the concurrent project to reclaim and rethink the history and agency of people subordinated under various forms of imperialism. Postcolonialism signals a possible future of overcoming colonialism, yet new forms of domination or subordination can come in the wake of such changes, including new forms of global empire. Postcolonialism should not be confused with the claim that the world we live in now is actually devoid of colonialism.
●About The Book "On Post Colonial Future" by Bill Ashcroft :-
In this groundbreaking work, Bill Ashcroft extends the arguments posed in The Empire Writes Back to investigate the transformative effects of postcolonial resistance and the continuing relevance of colonial struggle. He demonstrates the remarkable capacity for change and adaptation emanating from postcolonial cultures both in everyday life and in the intellectual spheres of literature, history and philosophy. The transformations of postcolonial literary study have not been limited to a simple rewriting of the canon but have also affected the ways in which all literature can be read and have led to a more profound understanding of the network of cultural practices that influence creative writing.
●TheoryofPost-colonialism :-
Postcolonial theory (or often post‐colonial theory) deals with the effects of colonization on cultures and societies and those societies' responses. The study of the controlling power of representation in colonized societies began in the 1950s with the work of Frantz Fanon and reached a climax in the late 1970s with Edward Said's Orientalism. This study led to the development of the colonialist discourse theory in the work of critics such as Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak and Homi Bhabha. The term “postcolonial” per se was first used in literary studies by The Empire Writes Back in 1989 to refer to cultural interactions within colonial societies. Postcolonial theory accompanied the rise of globalization theory in the 1990s, which used the language of postcolonial theory in studies of cultural globalization in particular. Countries colonized by the English.
Post colonials is above all a way of reading. So it's reading practice that draws attention to the profound and continuing effects of colonization upon literary production on anthropological accounts historical records and scientific and administrative writing. But above all it is a reading of post-colonnial literature.
●Utopianism in postcolonial literature :-
In this new book, Bill Ashcroft sets out that there is no utopian tradition beyond the Western and Christian cultures. Analyzing a wide array of literatures from Africa, India, the Caribbean, Pacific islands, Australia, New Zealand, and from Chicano people, Ashcroft examines utopianism in the Blochian sense (as the hope impulse) in postcolonial contexts. His major argument is that if, as Bloch would have it, utopianism is inherent to all creative pursuits--and perhaps especially literature--postcolonial utopianism distinguishes itself with a particular brand of future-thinking or "anticipatory consciousness" that both engages with and goes beyond the imperial order. Responding to scholars that would see postcolonialism as simply anti-colonialism, Ashcroft demonstrates how postcolonial literatures outline not only the path to resistance but also the future of an enfranchised nation and thereby transcend what he characterizes as the disappointment with the immediate postcolonial nation.
The book is composed of ten short chapters not including the introduction and conclusion. The first three chapters serve to outline his theoretical framework, mostly focusing on Bloch but also addressing the relationship between ideology and utopia in Karl Mannheim and, later, Paul Ricoeur. The rest of the book is dedicated to analyses of multiple texts in different postcolonial contexts. In the first chapter, Ashcroft examines the utopianism at the heart of the imperial project, drawing a concrete connection between travel writing and the journey that is the structural foundation to the utopian narrative (beginning with More's Utopia [1516]). He argues that imperialist utopianism is paradoxical in its desire to both find utopia (the "desert island," the tropical paradise) and create a utopia (via its civilizing mission). As such, he concludes that imperialist utopianism represents the "prehistory against which postcolonial utopianism has established itself. Ashcroft's analysis of imperialist utopianism allows him to set up the crucial distinction between "achieved utopias" such as the colonized nation and which, according to him, immediately become dystopias, and utopianism in the sense of "anticipatory consciousness," the drive toward a better future always hovering on the horizon. In this sense, postcolonial utopianism seeks not to represent a closed, definite utopia but rather a vision which "is located in the act of transformation of coercive power, a certain kind of praxis rather than a specific mode of representation".
●Borders and Bordering in post colonialism :-
When considering the postcolonial, it is important to keep in mind its historical trajectory in terms of how certain discourses of western self-understanding have reconciled the humanist and universalist elements of modernity with systematic oppression and exploitation. This is the subjugation involved in knowledge production about conquered peoples and their lands – about the bordering of postcolonial communities and peoples through the idea of the nation-state.
The impact on early ethnography, cartography and cosmology cannot be overestimated, leading to a focus on nations as naturally enclosed territorial units and the state as their guardians. But it is also the inauguration of the ‘Subject’ itself, as Spivak argues.
The emergence of the modern subject with a claim to knowledge who was guided by Enlightenment principles of reason and science, but also by the ‘urge to shut the other out into the opacity of the unknown alien, to be excluded or reduced to the status of a beast of burden and treated accordingly’.
As Butler argues, power relations and hierarchies are affected by different temporal conceptions, where a linear and progressive understanding of time (and borders) facilitates the representation of some collectives as modern – as actors that advance history – while others are stuck in the past.
Hence, it is difficult to talk about narratives of borders apart from the imaginary logic of international relations (IR) theory in which the organising principle of state sovereignty has resulted in the loss of sovereignty for others – other states, other communities and other individuals.
This implies that the traces of the colonial state have not withered away as sovereignty in the postcolonial world has often remained provisional and partial, and at times even despotic and viciously violent.
As Jean and John Comaroff write:
Identity struggles, ranging from altercations over resources to genocide, seem immanent almost everywhere as selfhood is immersed existentially, metonymically into claims of collective essence, of innate substance and primordial sentiment, that nestle within or transect the polity. In short, homogeneity as a “national fantasy” is giving way to a recognition of the irreducibility of difference.
●Post Colonialism in international relations :-
Postcolonialism examines how societies, governments and peoples in the formerly colonised regions of the world experience international relations. The use of ‘post’ by postcolonial scholars by no means suggests that the effects or impacts of colonial rule are now long gone. Rather, it highlights the impact that colonial and imperial histories still have in shaping a colonial way of thinking about the world and how Western forms of knowledge and power marginalise the non-Western world. Postcolonialism is not only interested in understanding the world as it is, but also as it ought to be. It is concerned with the disparities in global power and wealth accumulation and why some states and groups exercise so much power over others. By raising issues such as this, postcolonialism asks different questions to the other theories of IR and allows for not just alternative readings of history but also alternative perspectives on contemporary events and issues.
To wind up, we can say that, Postcolonialism interrogates a world order dominated by major state actors and their domineering interests and ways of looking at the world. It challenges notions that have taken hold about the way states act or behave and what motivates them. It forces us to ask tough questions about how and why a hierarchical international order has emerged and it further challenges mainstream IR’s core assumptions about concepts such as power and how it operates. Postcolonialism forces us to reckon with the everyday injustices and oppressions that can reveal themselves in the starkest terms through a particular moment of crisis. Whether it has to do with the threat of nuclear weapons or the deaths of workers in factories churning out goods for Western markets, postcolonialism asks us to analyse these issues from the perspectives of those who lack power. While postcolonialism shares some common ground with other critical theories in this regard, it also offers a distinctive approach. It brings together a deep concern with histories of colonialism and imperialism, how these are carried through to the present – and how inequalities and oppressions embedded in race, class and gender relations on a global scale matter for our understanding of international relations. By paying close attention to how these aspects of the global play out in specific contexts, postcolonialism gives us an important and alternative conceptual lens that provides us with a different set of theoretical tools to unpack the complexities of this world.
# Thinking activity on 'Sitanshu Yashaschandra's poem and EcoCriticism' by Devang Nanavati
#Department of English MK Bhavnagar University
∆ Recording of the session :
◆SitanshuYashaschandra'spoem :-
That olden ochre brown tree trunk
Already sawed and tip-tapped for so many years from now
Was used to make the furniture for home.
The dining table for hasty meals and the chairs,
And the table to write letters to the new acquaintances and to the Seniors
A radio stand from which absolutely fresh news keep flowing daily - so many thing of such great importante
Were Made out of
That olden ochre brown three trunk.
Nowhere a storm struck. Nor did any thunder bolts.
Even not a tint of memory could trace how that tree looked like. Tree ?!
Funny it sounds and I cannot even believe it today
That this table,chairs,writing table,stand,book shelf
All these things
Were indeed an olden tree once upon a time !
Today, it's incredible
And, perhaps I would laugh.
In fact, sometimes, after returning home exhausted, having had a full meal, while reading the latest issue of JanKalyan - a gift that comes from a well-wisher...In fact sometimes, as if one fantasises
That
From the arm of the chair lying near this door - blossoms a violet coloured flower,
That
There nods a sour - tasting sweet fruit from the drawer of the table - covered with the paper full of oration notes,
That
A red bird suddenly takes a flight from the shelf where the files of Jankalyan and akhand anand are stacked,
That
The intoxicating fragrance of a spring arriving unannounced oozes into the drawer where the daily wares kept folded.
And, then, again one laugh a little, and feels amused, and remembers
That
The olden ochre brown tree trunk
Already sawed, resped and tip - tapped so many years from now
Has been used to make the furniture for home.
In present era humans become very selfish. They want to control everything on the earth. They use natural resources but forget to increase this resources. In present time there are lots of environmental problems which can become very harmful for everyone. We are suffering from many disaster only because of cutting trees. Like inadequate and excess rainfall, flood, tsunami, global warming, acid rain, etc. So we have to discuss about this all disaster.
●What is EcoCriticism :-
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. It takes an interdisciplinary point of view by analyzing the works of authors, researchers and poets in the context of environmental issues and nature. Some ecocritics brainstorm possible solutions for the correction of the contemporary environmental situation, though not all ecocritics agree on the purpose, methodology, or scope of ecocriticism.
●Environmental problems :-
As we know that the earth is now becoming more and more polluted. There are some images that can present the current situation of the earth ….
We are cutting trees for our benefits but we don't think about animals and birds who estimate of this trees. They couldn't speak for them. So the situation is becoming more difficult for them.
Forests still cover about 30 percent of the world’s land area, but they are disappearing at an alarming rate. Between 1990 and 2016We use 1.6 times as many resources as the earth produces in a year. Since humans started cutting down forests, 46 percent of trees have been felled, according to a 2015 study in the journal Nature. About 17 percent of the Amazonian rainforest has been destroyed over the past 50 years, and losses recently have been on the rise.
We need trees for a variety of reasons, not least of which is that they absorb not only the carbon dioxide that we exhale, but also the heat-trapping greenhouse gases that human activities emit. As those gases enter the atmosphere, global warming increases, a trend scientists now prefer to call climate change. Tropical tree cover alone can provide 23 percent of the climate mitigation needed over the next decade to meet goals set in the Paris Agreement in 2015, according to one estimate.
●Causes of deforestation:-
Farming, grazing of livestock, mining, and drilling combined account for more than half of all deforestation. Forestry practices, wildfires and, in small part, urbanization account for the rest. In Malaysia and Indonesia, forests are cut down to make way for producing palm oil, which can be found in everything from shampoo to saltines. In the Amazon, cattle ranching and farms—particularly soy plantations—are key culprits.
Logging operations, which provide the world’s wood and paper products, also fell countless trees each year. Loggers, some of them acting illegally, also build roads to access more and more remote forests—which leads to further deforestation. Forests are also cut as a result of growing urban sprawl as land is developed for homes.
Not all deforestation is intentional. Some is caused by a combination of human and natural factors like wildfires and overgrazing, which may prevent the growth of young trees.
●How many trees are cut down in the year ?
As to the “number of trees” this represents, it's impossible to get an accurate count. Tree density in primary forests varies from 50,000-100,000 trees per square km, so the math would put this number at 3.5 billion to 7 billion trees cut down each year.
"Matter is not how many trees cut in a day. Matter is how many can we stop cutting trees in day?"
●Solution of this problem:-
As a part of nature this is our duty to save trees and plant more and more trees.We use 1.6 wines as resources as the earth produces in a year. Here are some best examples of how we can save trees with some creative ideas.
With this type of creativity we can save trees.If we use plant bamboo and use it insteed of tree we can stop cutting the tree. We cut trees for furniture, fire wood and paper and we can get everything's from bamboo also. Then why cannot we plant bamboo and use it.
" Be the part of solution, not of pollution "
In India there is best way to save trees,
I find one beautiful gujrati poem, which is appreciated with this topic as well as use of technology in present time. This was under
કાગળ નો વ્યય થાય એટલે કાગળ બગાડતો નથી,
વૃક્ષપ્રેમી છુ, મારી રચના કાગળ પર ઉતારતો નથી,
રોજ સવારે E-છાપા નો આગ્રહ રાખુ છુ,
દર્દી ને દવા કાગળ ને બદલે SMS થી લખી આપુ છુ.
શાળા માં કાગળ નો પર્યાય મને જડતો નથી,
વૃક્ષપ્રેમી છુ, મારી રચના કાગળ પર ઉતારતો નથી,
શિક્ષક પાંચ વાર લખવા આપે તો એક વાર લખી જાઉ છુ
મે કેટલા કાગળ બચાવ્યા એ જાણી ને હર્ખાઉ છુ,
શિક્ષક ની સોટી ના માર થી હું ડરતો નથી,
વૃક્ષપ્રેમી છુ, મારી રચના કાગળ પર ઉતારતો નથી,
ડૉ.વિદુર ગોટાવાલા
This is the time of using technology in our everyday life. Our one right step can save life of one tree, animal, bird. As our sir 【Dr. Dilip Barad 】said that you have your own e-dairy for your work and your views,ideas, thoughts and as well as your own material.
Construct the road as wide as possible without cutting or damaging the trees.
The roots of trees damaged during excavation must be provided immediate care of survival.
If the road is planned as a 2-lane or 3-lane road, it will accommodate traffic in the future, and the old trees will also be saved.
We must expect in a democracy, that when public work is being carried out in the interest of the people, their opinions and concerns should be heard by the government.
If we can't do this then what happened ? I think this photographs can speak everything !!
If we remember forest fire in Australia !
24 people died
500 million animals died
8,000 koalas died
Over 5.5 million hectares burned
Trees are burned in this fire. This is the example that how nature destroys their own part.
I remember one poem about tree is like that :
A tree is like our mother, whenever we play bestow its love and blessings on us.
It never let us fall, as it treats as its own soul It gives everything it can give It provides us oxygen to live fruits, vegetables to eat
Then why are we treating a tree in such a rude way Why are we cutting trees like a hungry devil It not only destroys our mother Earth but also, Decreases our animals and humans life….
A tree that looks at god whole day and join its leafy hand to pray that “save my life!” we can save many lives by planting a single seed. PLANT TODAY TO LIVE TOMORROW
●Social activists :-
There are also some organisations, groups, leaders, who can spread awareness in people. They doing work not for their personal benefits but only because to save the trees. In present time we see that Greta Thunberg is only 17 year old. She is an internationally known Swedish environmental activist who began her activism by missing school to protest what she perceives is the inaction and/or insufficient response of governments and the business sector to the United Nations Paris Agreement on climate change.
There are also some organizations that can make aware people about save trees, plant trees, and do not cut trees.
