Critical Essays on

Literature, Language,
and Aesthetics
Critical Essays on
Literature, Language,
and Aesthetics

A Volume in Honour
of Milind Malshe

Edited by

Arnapurna Rath
Chandrani Chatterjee
Saroja Ganapathy
Critical Essays on Literature, Language, and Aesthetics:
A Volume in Honour of Milind Malshe

Edited by Arnapurna Rath, Chandrani Chatterjee, Saroja Ganapathy

This book first published 2019

Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Copyright © 2019 by Arnapurna Rath, Chandrani Chatterjee,

Saroja Ganapathy and contributors

All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without
the prior permission of the copyright owner.

ISBN (10): 1-5275-2025-0

ISBN (13): 978-1-5275-2025-7
 CONTENTS

Preface ....................................................................................................... vii

Introduction ................................................................................................. x

I. Philosophy and Literary Aesthetics

1. The Speaking Subject: A Preamble to Jivatman ...................................... 2

K. P. Jayasankar

2. Modernism and Postmodernism in John Barth’s Works ....................... 29

Binu James Mathew

3. The Return of the Visual: Evolution of Aesthetics in the Nineteenth

Century ...................................................................................................... 43
Pragyan Rath

4. Phantasia-Techne in Greek Discourse .................................................. 55

Gagan Deep Kaur

5. Aporias of Literary Theory: Fuzziness and ‘Literary Contract’ ............ 78

Prasenjit Biswas

6. A Note on Aesthetics in Marathi ........................................................... 91

Milind Malshe

II. Genres, Narratives and Dialogical Selves

7. Dialogic Reverberations in the Indian Literary “Event”:

A Bakhtinian Perspective ........................................................................ 100
Amith Kumar P.V.

8. Land, Language, and the Journey: Sea of Poppies as an Epic Novel .. 112
Arnapurna Rath

9. Dystopia and Empire: Orwell’s Journey to Oceania............................ 131

Manoj Patharkar
vi Contents

10. A Dream, a Road and a Pilgrim: Locating the “Utopian Mentality”

in Paulo Coelho’s Works ......................................................................... 143
Madhavi Gokhale

III. Cultures, Transitions and Translations

11. The Scripted and the Spontaneous: Exploring the Dynamic

in Classical Indian Performances............................................................. 158
Maratt Mythili Anoop

12. Can Music be the Food of Love? Music, Solipsism and Bathos in
Vikram Seth’s An Equal Music and Mitra Phukan’s A Monsoon of Music ... 172
Saroja Ganapathy

13. New Directions in Translation Studies: Some Thoughts ................... 189

Chandrani Chatterjee

IV. Language and Linguistics

14. A Web-based (WBLL), Direct Approach to Teaching and Learning

Academic (EAP) Vocabulary .................................................................. 200
Amit Hiray

15. Transitive Alternations in Bangla ...................................................... 219

Debasri Chakrabarti

16. Language Variation in Konkani......................................................... 236

Vivek M. Bhat

17. Borrowed Words Make it informal! The Pragmatics and Aesthetics

of Code-mixing of English in Indian Languages ..................................... 249
Chinmay Dharurkar

18. Oral Transmission of Texts and Grammatical Considerations

in Sanskrit Tradition ................................................................................ 262
Malhar Kulkarni

Acknowledgement ................................................................................... 271

Contributors ............................................................................................. 273

 PREFACE

ASHOK KRISHNAJI JOSHI

Professor Milind Malshe has been a good friend of mine for nearly five
decades. Over these long years, I have seen him grow into a fine bilingual
scholar and a much admired teacher. Undergraduates and doctoral students
at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IIT Bombay), postgraduates at
various universities, college teachers at refresher courses in English and
Marathi and participants at several conferences have all benefitted from
his scholarship and guidance. During these years, Malshe has also
developed into a good musician and a scholar in the area of the performing
arts. Above all, he has endeared himself to many as a good human being.
I first came in contact with Malshe way back in 1971 when he was
pursuing a Master of Arts (MA) degree at the Department of English,
University of Mumbai. Along with his MA, he completed a diploma in
Indian classical music at the university’s Music Centre which was then
headed by the renowned musicologist, Professor Ashok Ranade. Malshe
and I had a common teacher and guide in Professor R.B. Patankar from the
Department of English, University of Mumbai. He was an avid advocate
of the discipline of Aesthetics and a pioneering scholar of Aesthetics in
Marathi. Dr. Patankar was an exemplary bilingual scholar and a role
model for his students. He would urge scholars of English to write in
Indian languages so that global developments in thought could help
scholarship in these languages keep pace with the times. Malshe has been
among those who have consistently strived to achieve this.
Malshe’s teaching career began in Mumbai at SIES College, Sion, and
the Nalanda Nrityakala Mahavidyalaya at Juhu. He then pursued an
M.Litt. at the Central Institute for English and Foreign Languages (CIEFL,
now EFLU) at Hyderabad and eventually joined IIT Bombay where he has
been teaching for the past 35 years. His PhD, completed under the
guidance of Dr. Patankar, was titled The Aesthetics of Literary
Classification. During the course of his long career at the IIT Bombay, he
formulated and taught courses such as “Introduction to Arts and
Aesthetics”, “Introduction to Linguistics” and “Appreciation of Hindustani
viii Preface

Classical Music”. He has also guided several doctoral students working in

such diverse areas, as is evident from this volume.
Malshe has authored five books and several research papers, one in
English and four in Marathi, besides several research papers in English
and in Marathi. He has been a regular participant at conferences in both
English and Marathi. His presence always enlivens the academic
atmosphere at such events.
Malshe’s book Adhunik Bhashavidnyan: Siddhantani Upayojan (Modern
Linguistics: Theory and Applications), published in 1995, is a commentary
on modern linguistics that marks an important contribution to Marathi
scholarship. The first half of the book traces the development of linguistics
as a discipline until the generative theory of Noam Chomsky, while the
latter half deals with issues in applied linguistics, particularly in the areas
of socio-linguistics, stylistics and language pedagogy. Apart from this
important book, Malshe has written a series of articles on modern
linguistics in two reputed Marathi journals, Anushtubh and Navabharat.
Over the last few years, he has been working on a translation project that
aims to bring to Marathi readers ten important papers on linguistics in the
twentieth century.
Malshe also collaborated with his father, Prof. S.G. Malshe, a well-
known scholar in Marathi literary studies. They jointly authored a
translation of R.G. Collingwood’s Principles of Art and a path-breaking
booklet on research methodology in Marathi titled Shodhanibhandachi
Lekhan-paddhati (How to Write a Research Paper). Malshe has made a
noteworthy contribution to the academic study of the performing arts. His
book on research methodology for the performing arts, published by the
University of Pune and Lokavangmay Gruha, is one of a kind. He has been
invited to conduct several series of lectures on aesthetics and the
performing arts at a number of institutions including the University of
Mumbai, the SNDT University at both Mumbai and Pune, the National
Institute of Design at Ahmedabad, FLAME University at Pune and the
Faculty of Fine Arts at MS University, Baroda.
Literary theory has been an area of continuing interest for Malshe. He
has published many papers on literary criticism and aesthetics in Marathi
journals such as Anushtubh, Lalit, Mouj, Navbharat, Muktashabda and
Kalanirnay Diwali. I had the pleasure of collaborating with him on
Adhunik Sahitya Siddhanta (Modern Literary Theory), a book that deals
with developments in modern literary criticism. It was published in 2007
by the University of Mumbai and Mouj Prakashan and has since proved to
be a major critical work in Marathi on twentieth-century literary theory,
appreciated alike by scholars in literature and the social sciences. The
 Critical Essays on Literature, Language, and Aesthetics ix

book provides an extensive overview of developments in literary theory

such as modernism, postmodernism, structuralism, post-structuralism,
semiotics, deconstruction, the Marxist and the psycho-analytic approach to
literature and the other arts, feminist theory, reader-response theory, the
new historicism, post-colonialism and cultural criticism. It received three
coveted prizes for its significant contribution to Marathi literary criticism.
Malshe’s extensive pursuit of music has complemented his keen
interest in literary theory and aesthetics. He learnt Hindustani classical
music from gurus such as Pandit G.T. Tilak, Dr. Ashok Ranade and Pandit
Ratnakar Pai. Under Pandit Pai, he had the opportunity to learn several
recondite or anvat ragas which he continues to present at his concerts.
Malshe’s learned introduction, titled “Bandish in Khayal”, to the book
Raga-rachananjali authored by his gurubhagini, the well-known vocalist
Vidushi Ashwini Bhide-Deshpande, has proved to be an important
contribution to the subject of composition in Hindustani classical music.
It is significant that Malshe’s long career has unfolded at a premier
institute of technology like IIT Bombay where the Department of
Humanities and Social Sciences is admirably well-integrated into the
institutional structure, functioning not as an appendage but as one of the
core faculties. Malshe’s contribution to research, teaching and the
performing arts is in keeping with the holistic spirit of this institute and
will certainly prove to be an exemplar for contemporary interdisciplinary
studies.
 INTRODUCTION

The field of humanities studies in India has a rich cultural and

historical lineage. Practising researchers and academics are engaged in
interdisciplinary work that cut across local and global literary-linguistic-
aesthetic-cultural nodes.
Research practices in English Studies within the Humanities clusters of
the Indian Institutes of Technology demand a critical depth into an
interdisciplinary spectrum covering literature, language, philosophy,
cultural and social studies. This important dialogue of thoughts across
fields offers a freedom for exploring terrains beyond watertight
compartments of disciplines and sub-disciplines. The raison d’être of
English Studies in India is its cosmopolitan character that embody a
significant involvement of the local cultural and literary traditions, while
preserving the international nature of the discipline.

This volume of papers is a humble recognition of the centrality of

knowledge in the field of humanities, while we are felicitating the
scholarship of one of the Indian voices of the interdisciplinary humanities
tradition. Creation of knowledge, as a continuous dialogic process
spanning across the boundaries of disciplines and sub-disciplines, defines
the scope of this volume. This scholarly volume of papers covering
various facets of literature, language, cultures, aesthetic philosophy, and
critical theories celebrates the lifelong dedication of Professor Milind
Malshe to the field of Humanities, through the work of his students and
peers. The editors conceived the idea for this felicitation volume in 2013.
It has taken us a long time to compile and edit the papers of the volume.
We intend to preserve the rich tradition of writings, as well as do justice to
the individual thoughts of the contributors of this volume. The papers
compiled in this volume emerge from the varied research interests of
Professor Malshe, his doctoral group, and some of his colleagues and
peers.
When Edward Said famously articulated his own role as the
“humanist” within the discipline of humanities in the seminal work
Orientalism, he made a clear remark that knowledge cannot be demarcated
into the “pure” or the “political”. It owes a lot to the individual’s position
in the process of knowledge production: “No one has ever devised a
 Critical Essays on Literature, Language, and Aesthetics xi

method for detaching the scholar from the circumstances of life, from the
fact of his involvement (conscious or unconscious) with a class, a set of
beliefs, a social position, or from the mere activity of being a member of a
society. These continue to bear on what he does professionally…”
(Orientalism 18). Professor Malshe may be called a “humanist” in that
Said-ian sense.
The essays in this volume embark upon a journey to creatively
negotiate through various aspects of critical humanities. The uniqueness of
this volume is that the essays have been contributed by certain leaders of
the field as well as by young, emerging academics and researchers. The
contributors are well-known in humanities circles and these essays mark
their rich academic journeys. Most of these papers by former and present
students are a part of the doctoral work of these scholars conducted under
the guidance of Professor Malshe at IIT Bombay. The papers by his
colleagues reflect dialogue and mutually enriching scholarship. The
central binding force in all these essays is critical theory and aesthetic
philosophy. The task of observing a dialogue between the different
thoughts of the volume was a rich learning experience by itself. It was
interesting to note that while each of these papers stands out as unique by
itself, they also share a dialogic relationship with other essays of the
volume. These papers seem to engage in a conversation with one another
along several interconnected threads.
The volume is divided into four segments, each segment comprising a
set of essays: (a) Philosophy and Literary Aesthetics; (b) Theories,
Narratives and Dialogical Selves; (c) Cultures, Transitions and Translations;
(d) Language and Linguistics. The segments are named broadly according to
a particular sub-field of humanities.
The first segment of this volume, Philosophy and Literary Aesthetics,
has six reflective papers on the connections between aesthetics, philosophy
and literary studies. Together, they cover a sweeping range of questions on
the self and the other that have compelled humankind to come up with rich
intellectual and creative propositions on the nature of experience. K.P.
Jayasankar’s paper on the Speaking Subject and the philosophical concept
of the Jivatman combines a rich dialogue between the Western and Indian
philosophical traditions in the context of the elusive role between the soul
and the self. Binu James Mathew’s paper enables the discussion to begin
with views closest to our time by analysing the significant position of
American novelist John Barth as a thinker and writer deeply located within
the postmodernist philosophical discourse. The paper looks at Barth’s
writings as strongly postmodernist vis-à-vis the prevalent modernist
tradition of writing of his time. The two papers that follow plumb deep
xii Introduction

into some founding ideas of the Western and Indian philosophical

traditions. Gagan Deep Kaur’s paper studies the epistemic position of
techne in the intriguing play between imagination and fantasy in Greek
philosophical trajectories. The study brings an interesting analysis of the
dichotomies between the craftsman and the imitator. It not only dwells on
another of the ever-interesting debates between the iconic teacher-student
pair of Plato and Aristotle in Greek classical thought, but also traces these
ideas through the writings of their successors. Pragyan Rath’s paper takes
into consideration the aesthetic and philosophical turn of the nineteenth-
century European tradition with Walter Pater and Doris Lessing. The focus
of the paper is the dialogue between the visual and verbal in art,
philosophy and literature. The paper brings out the complex dichotomies
of understanding intellectual traditions and provides a counter-reading to
the easy categorization of canons, problematizing the idea of what is
intellectual and what is not intellectual. The paper by Prasenjit Biswas is a
critical commentary on Milind Malshe’s aesthetic contributions as
reflected in the latter’s critical writings and thoughts. Biswas makes a
thorough critical reading through the idea of “literary contract” and
Malshe’s contributions to the literary context of Maharastra. The last paper
in this segment has been contributed by Milind Malshe. The paper
discusses Marathi aesthetic scenario and the significance as well as need
for the inclusion of aesthetics in the Marathi language and literary context.
The paper focuses on the contributions of Professor B.S. Mardhekar to the
Marathi aesthetic scenario.
The second segment titled Genres, Narratives and Dialogical Selves
contains four papers on various aspects of literary and narrative theory.
The papers by Amith Kumar P.V. and Arnapurna Rath have the Russian
thinker Mikhail Bakhtin as a focal source of their analyses. Amith
Kumar’s paper provides a critical overview of the Indian literary scenario
with respect to the Bakhtinian concepts of dialogism and unfinalizability
of literary art. The paper complicates the division between tradition and
modernity and looks at an Indian literary “event” as possessing an
“internal dialogism” of its own. While Amith Kumar’s paper identifies
patterns and interconnections across an array of texts, Arnapurna Rath’s
paper demonstrates the possibilities of a Bakhtinian analysis in the close
reading of a single text. Her focus is on the Bakhtinian concept of the
chronotope through a close reading of the novelist Amitav Ghosh’s novel
Sea of Poppies. The paper opens the idea of an independent genre of epic
novels. Manoj Patharkar’s paper draws on the writing of another prolific
twentieth century theorist, Raymond Williams. Considering literary
“production” from the perspective of Williams’ thoughts, the paper
 Critical Essays on Literature, Language, and Aesthetics xiii

preflects the connections between George Orwell’s ambiguous encounter

with the Empire, arguing that this encounter was constitutive of the very
genre of dystopia in the Orwellian vision. Madhavi Gokhale’s paper takes
the discussion from classical dystopia to the kind of Utopian world
conjured in popular “inspirational” literature. Her paper on the religious
and transcendental symbols and allegories in Paulo Coelho’s writing
reflects on the sociological and pedagogical implications of the kind of
mystical reality that such writing constructs.
The third segment is broadly titled Cultures, Transitions and
Translations. Mythili Anoop’s paper on dance invites the reader to step
beyond the literary and consider a key binary of performance and
literature. The interplay between the “scripted” and the “spontaneous”
becomes, in her analysis, the very germ of continuous creativity in
classical dance. Her observations are drawn from different schools of
dance in India and as such provoke thought on the fluidity of categories
such as “folk” or “classical”. Saroja Ganapathy brings back the discussion
to an engagement with the literary, while exploring its relationship with
another art form. Her paper draws on two texts and two different genres of
music. It goes on to ask what happens to the most commonplace aspect of
a fictional text – the telling of a story – when fiction meets music.
Translation presents one of the first challenges to a constricted view of
literature. In this context, Chandrani Chatterjee’s paper addresses the need
for adopting an interdisciplinary approach towards translation studies and
of understanding translation within the broad purview of “cultures”. The
paper provides a broad survey of translation studies as a discipline and
proposes several interdisciplinary approaches like postcolonial studies,
cultural studies and linguistic studies to broaden the ways in which
translation studies as a discipline could emerge. Her approach towards
translation studies as a way of understanding cultures and cultural
transitions brings an interesting insight for scholars working in the field.
The fourth segment of the volume, is named Language and Linguistics.
It includes five papers on theoretical and application based approaches to
the study of various Indian languages and their relation with the English
language. These papers demonstrate a unique balance between theory and
praxis and between abstractions and pragmatic notions in language studies.
The paper by Amit Hiray explores certain application-oriented approaches
like web-based learning towards developing pedagogical tools for English
language learning for native undergraduate engineering students. Debasri
Chakrabarty’s paper focuses on the Bangla language and analyses the
morphological and syntactic ways in which verb alternations happen in
Bangla language. Vivek Bhat’s paper presents a study of the Konkani
xiv Introduction

language vis-à-vis the Marathi language. The paper takes into

consideration a historical-cultural approach as well as a close syntactical
study of Konkani. It specifically explores the richness of the cultural
heritage of the language with its contact with Portugese and Marathi
cultures. Chinmay Dharurkar’s paper draws examples from Marathi,
Hindi, Telugu and Malayalam languages to illustrate the aesthetic and
pragmatic ways in which English words and phrases have been
appropriated in these languages. The paper calls attention to the significant
role of “borrowing” across languages. Malhar Kulkarni’s paper on the oral
transmission of texts in the Sanskrit language traditions explores the
complex grammar and meaning-making processes within the oral texts of
Sanskrit. The paper brings out the rich interrelationship between word and
meaning in the Vedic tradition and a methodological approach to words of
the Vedas through an exposition of the śabdasūtra.
The idea of putting together this volume was also a gesture on behalf
of all the doctoral students of Professor Malshe who have benefitted in a
variety of ways from his scholarship. Needless to say, the papers in this
volume stand in their own right as independent contributions to the
humanities and social sciences and each paper aspires to make its own
contribution to the field. However, the papers also talk to each other,
paving the way for an interdisciplinary discourse that has been at the core
of Professor Malshe’s research methodology. All the contributors to this
volume are established scholars and academics distinguished in their own
areas of research and teaching.
This volume alerts us to the fact that strict disciplinary frameworks
need to be transcended for a more productive discussion at the rather
porous boundaries of academic disciplines.The sheer variety in terms of
content, style, methodology and theoretical approach makes the present
volume a rich intervention, rare of its kind in contemporary academia.
Though the editors have taken some efforts in standardizing certain formal
features, style being one of them, there has been no attempt whatsoever to
even out irregularities. In fact, we feel the strength of the volume lies
precisely at those moments of unevenness, of a hesitant step towards
reaching out to listen to the “other”. Such steps are never easy, there is
bound to be faltering of various kinds but that does not erase the attempts
at conversation. Our individual academic limitations may have at times
come in the way of editing the papers or categorizing them in different
sections. We have tried to keep minimum editorial interference in the
original ideas, research problems or concepts proposed by the contributors.
As editors we have only tried to explore the possibilities of connecting the
dots of literature, language, philosophy, and aesthetics.
 Critical Essays on Literature, Language, and Aesthetics xv

Professor Malshe during his lifetime of teaching and research has been
keen to initiate academic conversations. As a mentor, he is a patient
listener allowing the scope for dialogue – the essential criterion for any
intellectual life force. It is this aspect of our mentor that we propose to
keep alive in the present book – the keen, alert, curious and empathetic
mind that has always been willing to listen and to grow. We do hope that
the current collection of essays will make an intervention in humanities
and social science research at large, opening new terrains of enquiry for
students, scholars and researchers across disciplines. We thank all the
contributors for their patience and support. Without their scholarly
contributions this volume would not have been possible. We hope this is
just the beginning of a long journey of academic collaborations and
associations.

Arnapurna Rath
Chandrani Chatterjee
Saroja Ganapathy
 I.

PHILOSOPHY AND LITERARY AESTHETICS

 THE SPEAKING SUBJECT:
A PREAMBLE TO JIVATMAN

K.P. JAYASANKAR

Abstract
This paper delineates the notion of the speaking subject, in various
discourses. It explores the crisis in Western thought underpinning
theorization on the subject, to interpret how Advaita Vedanta addresses
these concerns. Adhyaropa Apavada as a methodological strategy of
Advaita is an attempt at comprehending the construction of the subject.
The potentiality of Sankara’s work offers an ontology, rooted in an eternal
critical practice of neti, neti, which is a project of revising and radicalizing
the discursive practices pertaining to the self and the world. The paper will
carry a brief epilogue, which will attempt to revisit the “secular” energies
of Sankara’s thought. In contemporary India, where there is an attempt to
hijack these philosophical traditions for sectarian right-wing political ends,
it is important to reclaim these traditions for their critical potential.

Introduction
This is an attempt to draw out the notion of the speaking subject, as
articulated in various discourses, from Saussure to Sankara. It aspires to
explore the crisis in Western thought underpinning theorization on the
subject and to understand how Advaita Vedanta addresses these concerns.
This paper traverses two different planes: Western and Indian thought.
The bifocalness of this movement is the measure of the paradox that we
live with as “Indians”, bringing us perilously close to the question: What is
Indian philosophy? This question forces us to occupy a position outside
the tradition, assigning to it the status of an object before our gaze. If we
were within the tradition, we would also have raised the question: What is
philosophy? Instead we have the onus of tackling both the themes in
parallel. To be an Indian and to be raising questions pertaining to our
Indianness is paradoxical. It is the discomfiture this paradox generates that
this paper addresses, an attempt that we qualify as a preamble, which
 K.P. Jayasankar 3

“involves a movement of thought that is less like an arrow in flight toward

its target than a rowing and rambling, a movement to and fro, between two
different realms of discourse and vision, an exploration of two different
topologies” (Mehta 15).
The parallel thematization of Indian tradition not only warrants
occupying a space outside, but also necessarily impels us to contrast it
with other philosophies. We are forced to reconstruct its identity vis-à-vis
what it is not and where it impinges on the truths of philosophical
traditions outside its jurisdiction.
“What is Indian philosophy” is, in that very questioning, also to contrast
Indian Philosophy with non-Indian philosophy. Unless one transcends the
tradition, one cannot and need not, ask such a question. Yet, unless one
understands the tradition from within, one cannot answer it. We are thus
confronted by a paradox, a paradox which we need not resolve, but, by the
very nature of what we, modern Indian philosophers, are, we have to live
through. (Mohanty 233)

This is a paradox that we have internalized; but the question still

persists: “What is Indian philosophy”? Do we restrict ourselves to what
Indians write on Indian and Western philosophy or what non-Indians write
on Indian philosophy? As Mohanty points out, a more fruitful approach
would be to enumerate “the core source-material in the various darsanas
and then, extend the scope of ‘Indian philosophy’ to include any
philosophical work which self-consciously takes up that core-tradition and
perceives itself as continuing the discussion of the themes, issues and
problems formulated in, and arising out of, that tradition, no matter in
what language and irrespective of the geographical and socio-political
loyalty of the author” (Mohanty 235). This is how the disparate discourses
handled in this work become programmatic. They are all impelled by the
same core concerns.
Advaita Vedanta argues not only for the demolition of a reified subject
but also for the recognition of the world as an imaginary construct,
debunking the dualist metaphysics that preceded Advaitic thought. In
philosophical structuralism, one perceives a crisis within Western thought,
a crisis that can be traced back to its dualist metaphysical underpinnings.
Within the dualist discourse, language emerges as a tool “used” by a
subject, either psychological or substantive. Structuralism aspires towards
dissolution of the subject, granting an ontological priority to language, a
problematic that finds its way to the writings of Lacan, Kristeva and
Foucault.
Having said this, we would like to reiterate that this is an interpretation.
Advaita Vedanta posits only one validating principle: any interpretation
4 The Speaking Subject: A Preamble to Jivatman

has to strive towards the demolition of the constituted subject. If any text
shows that the subject and the world are imaginary, then it acquires
legitimacy. We have treated this as the prime presiding concern of this
paper.
Apart from this endogenous rationale, in the Indian tradition, an
interpretation is the interplay between Sruti (literally, what is heard) and
Smrti (literally what is recalled as residual memory). Sruti denotes the text
and Smrti the specific historical and ideological space of the interpreter. In
interpreting the Advaitic tradition, hence, we have to take cognizance of
the encounters that we have had with other traditions, and vice versa. This
is not a transgression, but a necessary condition for any interpretation.
How else could a Sruti deliver itself but through our Smrtis? Our Smrtis
are replete with our encounters with Western traditions. The onus of
justifying that there exists a “pure” tradition, which has to be appropriated
without certain occidental or oriental prejudices, rests with the critics of
the inauthenticity of this interpretation.

Saussure: The Dislodged Subject

Ricoeur chooses to distinguish philosophical structuralism from
structural linguistics, since the former “adds to it a tenet concerning
reality, which is philosophical rather than a linguistic thesis” (Ricoeur
1354). Both can be traced back to Saussure. Philosophical structuralism
was the first attempt to articulate self-consciously a concept of the
speaking subject and incorporate it into various theoretical artifacts.

Saussure and Philosophical Structuralism

The Saussurian philosophical position can be summed up as follows:

 Langue is a system of differences: the identity of each sign is

governed by its opposition to other signs, and not by its material
condition. The reality of langue is devoid of substance, either
physical or psychical. Each sign contributes to a relational closure
of the system.
 The speaking subject’s relation to this system is one of compliance.
The codes of this system do not obtain from the speaking subject.
 The sign is the basic unit of language, which attains its value due to
the relations internal to it, viz.: that between the signifier and the
signified. The relation between a sign and a thing is fictional.
 K.P. Jayasankar 5

Thus, langue is a system without terms, without a speaking subject and

without things.

A System without Terms

Material and historical identity is not pertinent to a sign. The “8:25p.m.
Geneva–Paris Express” does not refer to one particular rake (Saussure
108–9). The status of the train is defined by its relation to other trains, and
consequently to the universe of trains:
In language there are only differences without positive terms, whether we
take the signified or the signifier, language has neither ideas nor sounds
that existed before the linguistic system, but only conceptual and phonic
differences that have issued from the system. (Saussure 120)

A System without a Speaking Subject

The Renaissance, the French Revolution and the advent of political
humanism in Europe witnessed some of the most categorical assertions of
Homo Faber; the Cartesian Res cogitans is perhaps the most significant.
There are variations of this dualist theme, a “psychological” ego as
opposed to the “substantive” ego of Descartes, both of which have been
debated and internalized by various discourses of the Western world from
Kant to Fichte and to Husserl. The dualist themes have one aspect in
common: a world that is inhabited by the ego. The debates have been over
the primacy of these two essential adjuncts. Descartes doubts the existence
of the world: Cogito ergo sum. Locke and Hume are preoccupied with the
world “out there”; the ego is after all a tabula rasa, a psychological entity.
The I/world distinction itself escapes their scepticism. It has always been a
distinction unanalysably given. Within the structuralist schemata, the
intentions of the “locator” are mere contingencies belonging to parole. It is
not his subjectivity that brings langue into being, but the oppositional relay
of the system itself. Like social reality, the human being is a product of
language, not its inventor.

A System without Things

There is no natural a priori connection between the concept (signified)
and the acoustic image associated with it (signifier). The sign itself is
defined by the internal dialectic between the two, an interaction that is
arbitrary and absolute within itself, a closed system. The sign “Geneva–
6 The Speaking Subject: A Preamble to Jivatman

Paris Express” has nothing to do with the object in question. The identity
of the sign is generated as a result of its own internal relationship. This
marks a turning point as well as the beginning of a host of unprecedented
philosophical problems. Whereas the discourses prior to this were pre-
occupied with “reference predication” and use of language as the only
theoretical possibilities, structuralism shifted the debate back to its own
object of inquiry: language. All the terms of reference used till then point
towards an extra-linguistic reality, which language is purported to mirror
instrumentally in a relationship of mimesis.

The Fragmented Subject

Las Meninas: The Void
Structuralism denotes a break from the classical tradition in which
language stays in mimetic harmony with the world, language as a
representation of nature and the world. The sign with its internal
relationship effects two shifts:

1. By conceiving of the sign as an interplay between signifier and

signified, without any concrete historical materiality other than this
relationship, it breaks off with a world outside. The world and the
word do not share the responsibility of living up to each other.
2. The sign being a relational entity, within a system of oppositions
implies a retrenchment of a speaking subject. This is a shift towards
signification from an act of mere representation.

Is this shift from the classical paradigm of representation to signification,

radical though it is, unproblematic? Is it also plagued by the fundamental
finitude of all such discourses on language? Foucault’s analytic of the
painting Las Meninas by Velasquez bears witness to these doubts,
revealing the futility underlying any such enterprise.
The painter is standing a little back from his canvas. He is glancing at his
model; perhaps he is considering whether to add some finishing touch,
though it is also possible the first stroke has not yet been made. The arm
holding the brush is bent to the left, towards the palette, it is motionless,
for an instant, between canvas and paints. The skilled hand is suspended in
midair, arrested in rapt attention on the painter’s gaze; and the gaze, in
return, waits upon the arrested gesture. Between the fine point of the brush
and the steely gaze, the scene is about to yield up its volume. (Foucault,
“Order” 3)
 K.P. Jayasankar 7

He stares into us, the space that we occupy behind his canvas, frozen
into the silence of non-recognition by his gaze. The tableau threatens to
dissolve once he resumes his activity; the painter would be lost behind the
canvas, his gaze no longer addressing us. He is “caught in a moment of
stillness, at the neutral centre of this oscillation” (Foucault, “Order” 3). In
another instant, he will re-enter “that region where his painting, neglected
for an instant, will, for him, become visible once more” (Foucault, “Order”
3). It is as if the very nature of this tableau warrants that “the painter could
not at the same time be seen on the picture where he is represented and
also see that upon which he is representing something. He rules the
threshold of those two incompatible visibilities” (Foucault, “Order” 4).
What of us who occupy the position of his subject, eternally invisible?
“The spectacle he is observing is thus doubly invisible: first, because it is
not represented within the space of the painting, and, second, because it is
situated precisely in that blind point, in that essential hiding-place into
which our gaze disappears from ourselves at the moment of our actual
looking” (Foucault, “Order” 4). His gaze, “addressed to the void
confronting him outside the picture, accepts as many models as there are
spectators; in this precise but neutral place, the observer and the observed
take part in a ceaseless exchange. No gaze is stable, or rather, in the
neutral furrow of the gaze piercing at a right angle through the canvas,
subject and object, the spectator and the model, reverse their role to
infinity” (Foucault, “Order” 4–5). This gaze transposes the spectator into
the realm of the painting.
As soon as they place the spectator in the field of their gaze, the painter’s
eyes seize hold of him, force him to enter the picture, assign him a place at
once privileged and inescapable, levy their luminous and visible tribute
from him, and project it upon the inaccessible surface of the canvas within
the picture. He sees his invisibility made visible to the painter and
transposed into an image forever invisible to himself. (Foucault, “Order”
5)

There appears to be no clue as to what the painter is representing,

except the mirror in the background, which suddenly reveals in its obscure
forthrightness the countenance of King Philip and the Queen. The painter
seems to be transfixed on his subjects that he is representing; the mirror in
turn freezes the gaze of his subject as they look at the painter. The gaze on
the mirror is shared by the spectator, who seems to have just come in from
the back door. He beholds in his gaze the painter and the painted and the
painting, signifying all the three aspects of representation itself. The
spectator in the painting is “like a pendulum caught at the bottom of its
swing. He repeats on the spot, but the dark reality of his body, the
8 The Speaking Subject: A Preamble to Jivatman

instantaneous movement of those images flashing across the room,

plunging into the mirror, being reflected there, and springing out from it
again like visible, new, and identical species” (Foucault, “Order” 11).
Las Meninas represents the three-fold nature of representation: the
model’s gaze, the spectator and the painter. It also points to the futility of
representing the act of representation. “It may be that, in this picture, as in
all the representations of which it is, as it were, the manifest essence, the
profound invisibility of what one sees is inseparable from the invisibility
of the person seeing – despite all mirrors, reflections, imitations and
portraits” (Foucault, “Order” 16). To Foucault, the Velasquez painting
represents the quintessence of all classical representation, a representation
that represents the act of representing:
But there, in the midst of this dispersion which it is simultaneously
grouping together and spreading out before us, indicated compellingly
from every side, is an essential void: the necessary disappearance of that
which is its foundation – of the person it resembles and the person in
whose eyes it is only a resemblance. (Foucault, “Order” 16)

Foucault’s analysis of Las Meninas illuminates “what is at stake in all

orders and principles of ordering: a fundamental disorder or absence”
(Carroll 58). It confronts “the instability at the heart of representation and
the representation of representation” (Carroll 59). In this process, Foucault
does not commit himself to any specific epistemological tradition; his
attempt is to point out the fundamental finitude of all orders and theories
of ordering.
Foucault repeatedly returns to the void at the heart of the order of words
and things, a void that no epistemological order or historical series
effectively compensates for or overcomes, . . . the repeated return to the
point where the different orders break down is an attempt to indicate the
possibility of transgressive, critical perspectives on any order or processes
of ordering. (Carroll 67)

A General Theory of the Subject

Any discourse on language and meaning cannot escape theorizing
about a speaking subject; theories of language, in effect, become theories
of subjectivity. Saussure’s privileging of langue over parole enables an
elision of the speaking subject in the study of discourse. This elision
entails an unwillingness to talk about the process by which the subject is
positioned and constructed within discourse. Langue as a closed system
can afford to dissolve the subject, but parole as a concretization of this
 K.P. Jayasankar 9

system needs a subject to actualize it. The dissolution of the subject, thus
leaves a vacuum which Chomsky aspires to fill with a competent subject,
in the process, rewriting the basic dichotomy of Saussure using subtler
distinctions. The structuralist and the Chomskyan enterprise fail to take
into account the constructed nature of subjectivity. For Chomsky it is an
eternal presence and for the structuralists an eternal negation. Structural
linguistics and Transformational Grammar (TG ) are the culmination of a
crisis which marks the enterprise of representing representation.
Structuralism, however, opens up pathways to interrogate traditional
notions of subjectivity.
The removal of the human subject from the centre of the stage can be said
to have enabled the interrogation of what Stephen Heath has called “the
mythic site par excellence in our society” – the subject/author as
originating consciousness, authority for meaning and truth . . . It could be
said that it was only the decentring, indeed exclusion, of the subject in
Saussure’s own formulations that allowed the subject’s reintroduction –
not as a plenitude, a full imaginary unity, but as a serial movement, an
effect of language. (Young 12–13)

Lacan and Kristeva, drawing from Marxism and psychoanalysis, posit

a general theory of the subject as a construction in language. The notion of
ideology is central to the theory of the subject in Lacan and Kristeva. The
subject is viewed as an ideological insertion into signifying practices.
Hence, we begin with a discussion on ideology. We then move on to
Lacan and Kristeva’s reinterpretation of the psychoanalytic subject.

Ideology
Ideology has had different kinds of signifying statuses within the
Marxist discourse. This can be traced to divergent notions of the
relationship between the human agent and the societal whole. On the one
hand, the subject appears as a product of the social formation, and on the
other, as an agent of social reproduction and transformation. This
problematic can, in part, be attributed to the fact that the corpus of Marx’s
work lends itself to varying interpretations: from the political economy
reading of superstructure as determined by the base, to readings that
question this deterministic formulation.
A vulgar Marxist reading of ideology sees it as false consciousness,
imposed by the dominant interests. This signifies a myopic view of the
whole (“upside down as in a camera obscura” (Marx and Engels, cited in
Hall, “Culture” 320)), myopic due to the interference of the class interests
10 The Speaking Subject: A Preamble to Jivatman

of the perceiving subject. Dominant ideology is the manifestation of the

ideology of the ruling class.
A more contemporary conception would view ideology in terms of the
insertion of the subject into particular signifying practices. “Ideology has
no creators in this sense, since it exists necessarily . . . The destination of
all ideology is the subject” (Belsey 58). The fundamental differences
accorded to the subject in these two formulations are:

1. A dualist conception of the subject as in Lukacs, which constitutes

itself as a transcendent identity in relation to reality.
2. The non-constitutive subject, as in Althusser, as a structural
component in the socio-economic historical process. Subjectivity is
imposed on the individual through ideology. Individuals are
“always already subjects” (Althusser 164).

Althusser defines ideology as transmitted on a “preconscious” level

and hence neither repressed (unconscious) nor intentional (conscious).
Althusser perceives ideology as a “representation of the imaginary
relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence” (Althusser
152).
The individual becomes an ideological insertion in a social formation
occupying certain positions in relation to the mode of production. The
constituted subject presents itself as a free unified and coherent self to
which society addresses itself. Ideology “puts the subject in the position of
a homogenous subject in relation to meaning, a subject who thinks
himself/herself to be the point of origin of ideas and actions” (Coward and
Ellis 77). Althusser draws attention to the dual meaning of the word
“subject”:
In the ordinary use of the term, subject in fact means: (1) a free
subjectivity, a centre of initiatives, author of and responsible for its
actions; (2) a subjected being , who subjects to a higher authority, and is
therefore stripped of all freedom except that of freely accepting his
submission. This last note gives us the meaning of this ambiguity, which is
merely a reflection of the effect which produces it: the individual is
interpellated as a (free) subject in order that he shall submit freely to the
commandments of the Subject i.e. – in order that he shall (freely)accept
his subjection, i.e. in order that he shall make the gestures and action of his
subjection ‘ all by himself’. There are no subjects except by and for their
subjection. (Althusser 164, emphasis in original)

The social formation itself, in the schemes of the constituted subject

becomes another “subject” and creates for itself a sense of identity above a
 K.P. Jayasankar 11

mere position in the societal structures. To Althusser, as against Lukacs,

ideology is the totality of these relations.
. . . a complex formation of montages of notions, representations, images
and modes of actions, gestures, attitudes, the whole ensemble functioning
as practical norms which govern the concrete stance of men in relation to
them the objects and problems of their social and individual existence; in
short, the lived relation of men to their world. (Heath, cited in Coward and
Ellis 35)

As opposed to the notion of the subject who acquires an ideology after

lived-in experience, Althusser posits subjectivity as a product of ideology:
subjectivity as an ideological insertion.

The Lost Object

Lacan posits the subject as a “lost object in the field of the other”
(Lacan, quoted in Young 13) – subjectivity as an insertion into the familial
discourse controlled by patriarchal authority. The subject is viewed as an
object posited for eventual fulfilment of incestual desires, the most
instrumental mechanism in the formation of subjectivity being the
castration complex posited by Freud. Freud was the first to realize the
dubiousness of assigning the subject to the realm of consciousness
(Coward and Ellis 95).
Kristeva’s attempts are located in the direction of reinterpreting the
Freudian signification of the subject and its socialization vis-à-vis its
relationship to language. The arguments are developed through premises
which are directly traceable to the Lacanian conception of the self: the
process by which the subject comes into being is analogous to that of the
sign. Lacan argues that Freud could not possibly have acknowledged the
presence of such links mainly since the concepts are antecedent to his
work. Lacan views Freud’s theoretical formulations as powerful enough to
accommodate these concepts pertaining to the sign. The dichotomy of the
signifier/signified becomes more meaningful in the context of Freud’s
work: “the signifier has an active function in determining certain effects in
which the signifiable appears as submitting to its mark, by becoming
through that passion the signified” (Coward and Ellis 284).
Lacan traces the history and formation of the subject from the pre-
oedipal to the oedipal through the mirror phase. The unified image of the I
exterior to itself in the mirror brings an act of misrecognition
(méconnaissance) into play. It is this misrecognition that prompts the
12 The Speaking Subject: A Preamble to Jivatman

identification/alienation. The misrecognition is a split within the I: the

only “real” other that the infant knows is the mother.
The infant in the mirror phase is akin to a signifier, with its internal
relationship with its own image, the signified. Both these unify momentarily
to form a sign in the Saussurian sense and its identity is established by the
internal relationship, a misrecognition. This misrecognition generates
anxiety in the infant, anxiety to “assume an image” and live up to it. The
infant’s relationship with its primary object, the mother, exacerbates this
anxiety. It has to resolve for itself the presence and absence of the primary
object. Summing up, the anxiety at the pre-oedipal phase is twofold: a) the
constitution of the ego; b) its differentiation from the primary object.
The oedipal phase is indicated by the entry of the “Father” into the
dyadic relationship between the infant and the mother. The term “Father”
designates not only the male parent, but could be any male, the societal or
religious order, or the law. He represents the intervention that “delimits”
the mother–child interaction, in which the infant gains a positionality for
itself in the discourse of the familial and the societal. Repression and the
subsequent formation of the unconscious are consequential. The
unconscious represents potential deviance from this assumed positionality
in the familial discourse. The sign, in the pre-oedipal, enters the
oppositional systems of discourse, for in the Saussurian scheme, identity
of a sign is established by its relation with other signs. This identity is
devoid of the object of signification, since material identity is not pertinent
to this system. The sign does not signify a presence, but an absence: all
identity is difference.
The infant’s entry into the world of discourse, the “symbolic order”, is
marked by its constituting itself in relation to a central signifier. The
central signifier assigns a differential identity to the infant, viz. boy or girl,
daughter or son etc. This identity is delimited by parental authority and the
castration complex; it is an attempt at submitting itself to the father, so as
to enable the infant to eventually occupy the position of the father. The
constitution of the subject as opposed to the central phallic signifier is also
an entry into the world of language rules. The “metaphorical” world of
language shifts to the “metonymic” relay of discourse. The mirror phase is
marked by a condensation, a process as in dreams where several
associations and meanings slide “to converge on one idea at the point of
their intersection” (Coward and Ellis 98). The symbolic order represents a
massive erosion, an eternal relay of signifiers, a relay of differences and
absences.
In joining a process of familial enunciation, the infant is faced with an
eventual desire to identify with his father, and at the same instant, an
 K.P. Jayasankar 13

inability to do so. Certain syntagmatic couplings in the discourse of the

infant, are ruled out by the symbolic, for the distributional relay is
governed by parental law. Incest becomes a taboo, a forbidden
syntagmatic distribution. These taboos negotiate the body of the repressed;
the other (probable) syntagmatic distribution would violate the constituted
subject’s relationship with the father. The son has the destiny of becoming
a “husband” and a “father”. This is again a projection of desire for
eventual fulfilment propelled by the castration complex.

The Symbolic and the Semiotic

Any desire springs from an absence. Discourse also comes into being
because of an absence, a lack. Discourse lacks mimetic grounding; the
words are devoid of the objects they desire to signify. According to Lacan,
language is “what hollows beings into desire” (Lacan, cited in Eagleton
168). This “desire is insatiable because it is desire not of a symbolic
position which is powerful, self constituting, source of the law, arbiter of
the possibilities of the expression of desire. The desired object, like the
signified, constantly recedes, being only the idea of an ultimate
transcendent guarantee of identity” (Burniston and Weedon 216).
The corpus of the repressed syntagmas constitutes the unconscious and
subsequently, constitution of the subject occurs in accordance with the
phallic central signifier. “Language as symbolic function constitutes itself
at the cost of repressing instinctual drive and continuous relation to the
mother” (Kristeva 136). The subject aspires for a unification at the site of
language, an imaginary unity. This, unlike the Cartesian cogito is, as
rewritten by Lacan, “I am not wherever I am the plaything of my thought;
I think of what I am where I do not think to think” (Lacan 166) and rejects
the idea of an autonomous ego, which is spurious knowledge, a repository
of absences. The subject is signified as an eternally fragmented self,
decentred and empty.
Kristeva’s subject is located as a “thetic subject” in a “symbolic realm”
(Kristeva 130). Social discourse is a linking of the subject–object nexus
within the domain of syntax. This symbolic order is linked to the concept
of repression and hence is not free flowing in its transactions. Kristeva
counterposes the symbolic with the semiotic. The semiotic order is the site
of subversion, it is the negation of what the symbolic represses. Every
discourse is an overlapping of the symbolic and the semiotic. Semiotic
refers to the residue of the pre-oedipal, where the infant is unstructuredly
libidinous, with unorganized drives. This residue of the pre-oedipal is
discernible in the symbolic, which causes the overlapping of the two. The
14 The Speaking Subject: A Preamble to Jivatman

delimiting of the semiotic by the symbolic brings syntactical lexical

transformations into being, expelling ungrammatical distributions. This
process which marks the subject’s entry into language also subverts the
constituted subject: Kristeva names this site of subversion “negativity”.
Meaning is a measure of the symbolic. It is an eternal sliding as in the
discourse of the unconscious, remaining extraneous to any one meaning.
This is termed “semiotic chora” (Kristeva 133). The semiotic can violate
the grammatical and subvert meaning in the predicative syntactic realm of
the thetic.
The semiotic precedes the symbolic and hence it is impossible to fix
the semiotic in terms of a unified subject, because the unified subject is
constituted in the realm of the symbolic. Language being the site at which
the infant resolves its anxiety and constitutes itself, the semiotic is pre-
linguistic. The semiotic is a pre-condition for the constitutive fixing, which
demands an eternal “expulsion” of the subject into the “symbolic”. Any
constitution therefore can only be fragmentary and spurious. The unified
transcendence is a transitory moment in any signifying practice. Kristeva
names this site “the subject in process” (Kristeva 125). The tension
between the two orders overlap, the symbolic appearing as a fixed moment
in the subject in process. Starting as an enterprise to investigate
subjectivity in Althusser’s work, Kristeva goes on to relate the “mode of
sign production” to the modes of production. The linking of the semiotic
to the dominant political praxis is through the intermediation of familial
and social structures. The infant’s entry into the symbolic can only be
momentary, since there exists an eternal attempt to subvert it by the
semiotic. It is at the level of the familial that this constitution is reaffirmed
and stabilized. This stabilizing, in turn, is linked to the established order,
state and legal systems. Kristeva maintains that the speaking subject is the
site at which the symbolic and the semiotic coincide, which involves the
tension between the means of production (represented by the symbolic)
and signifying practices (the semiotic). The subject assumes the
potentiality to challenge the imaginary unity of its identity within the
discourse of art and literature, the marginal discourse, eternally incestual.
. . . poetic language would be for its questionable subject in process the
equivalent of incest: it is within the economy of signification itself that the
questionable subject in process appropriates to itself this archaic,
instinctual and maternal territory; thus it simultaneously prevents the word
from becoming mere sign and the mother from becoming an object like
any other – forbidden. (Kristeva 136)