Intelligentsia

If the practice of criminal justice does not live up to its rhetoric one should not look only to the interactions and negotiations of those who put the law into practice but to the law itself. One should not look just to how the rhetoric of justice is subverted intentionally or otherwise by policemen bending the rules, by lawyers negotiating adversariness out of existence, by out-of-touch judges or biased magistrates: one must also look at how it is subverted in the law. Police and court…

agreement with the newly emerging viewpoint. For example, Anna Letitia Barbauld argued the opposite viewpoint, writing her poem “The Rights of Women” as a response against Wollstonecraft’s Vindication; she “was one of the few members of the radical intelligentsia of the time whose opposition to Wollstonecraft was the product of a real engagement with her views on women” (Tomaselli). Barbauld begins her poem by stating: Yes, injured Woman! Rise, assert thy…

Phillis Wheatley was an African American woman born in West Africa in the year of 1753. Enslaved and brought to America at only age 8, Phillis Wheatley served as a house slave to the Wheatley family in Boston. After converting her to Christianity, the Wheatley family gave Phillis a formal education, and when Phillis demonstrated a talent for poetry the Wheatley family encouraged her artistically. Phillis Wheatley’s poems mainly dealt with her Christian faith and won her fame in both America and…

INTRODUCTION It is a well know fact that the colonizing of India by the British was not just done with “the power of superior arms, military organization, political power, or economic wealth – as important as these things were”, but it was “sustained and strengthened by cultural technologies of rule” (Bernard S. Cohn, Colonialism and its Forms of Knowledge, ix). The British “had to devise novel, and exceptional, theories of governance,” (Thomas R. Metcalf, Ideologies of the Raj Vol. 3, ix) as…

Not necessarily, I do maintain any order of my reading, neither do I control. There isn’t a clue what factor dominates the list of my readings! Lately, my fiction reading narrowed in a specific area, obviously the criteria of selections indicate my recent reading focal point. It’s Bengali Diaspora literature, not the whole, but a major portion of the chunk, which is available in the open market. I remember the instigation of this diasporas reading. It is Zadie Smith, who I consider the pioneer…

After the Enlightenment, European intelligentsia began studying the relationship between human consciousness and action. The inner mechanics of the human mind could be studied, interpreted, and generalized (Cherry). After observing Raskolnikov’s illness and half-lucid ravings, Zossimov offers…

I can picture all the political intelligentsia watching these events in total disbelief. When I was a child, I used to love to watch Godzilla movies. They made my Saturday mornings exciting. Watching the Republican Primary run was like watching a Godzilla movie. Picture a cheesy film where…

COLONIAL HISTORIOGRAPHY The systematic history writing in the Indian subcontinent started with the coming of the Europeans, who, for their administrative compulsions were required to know the land and its inhabitants whom they were going to rule. But the history produced by them was always imbued with the notions of oriental despotism and self-sufficient village economy, the main characteristic of which was the changelessness from the earliest times to the coming of colonial rule. Hence, all the…

Hindu Rashtra is one of the most complex and misunderstood concepts of modern India. Intellectuals and opinion makers had divergent beliefs on this issue. There has been a historical significance as well as modern understanding of this concept that makes it a very widely debated issue on various print and visual media. The concept of Hindu rashtra can be understood by understanding the meaning of the two words ‘Hindu’ and ‘rashtra’ separately. The term Hindu connotes not a particular religion,…

elections. It was three candidates: the first candidate was the previous leader Kebich (Communist party), the other one was a leader of the opposition and the oppositional Belarus People’s Front Party Zyanon Paznyak (he was mainly a representative of intelligentsia), and Lukashenko was the third candidate. Lukashenko turned out to be the middle ground between the old communist candidate Kebich and a supporter of reforms, a representative of a new wave Paznyak. I have to say that Paznyak had a…