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Diptarup Ghosh Dastidar
Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, English, Graduate Student
- Assistant Professor, School of Languages, Amity University Chhattisgarh.Comics Studies expert, TableTop Gaming enthus... moreAssistant Professor, School of Languages, Amity University Chhattisgarh.Comics Studies expert, TableTop Gaming enthusiast, Comics and Games researcher, Musician, Composer and an avid reader.edit
'Liminality' is an anthropological term which refers to the events happening at the limen (threshold) of a ritual as understood by cultural anthropologists in the early twentieth century. The term was restricted to the domain of... more
'Liminality' is an anthropological term which refers to the events happening at the limen (threshold) of a ritual as understood by cultural anthropologists in the early twentieth century. The term was restricted to the domain of anthropology until very recently, when scholars like Agnes Horvath, Bjørn Thomassen, and Harald Wydra found common grounds to associate the concept of 'liminality' to Sociology. The term has since been used in disciplines like Spatial Studies to understand the contemporary society and individuals. This paper takes into account Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni's novel The Palace of Illusions, which is based on the epic Mahabharata, and attempts to portray the protagonist, Draupadi, as a liminal being describing how she has been in a liminal stage for her entire life. The paper attempts a close reading of Divakaruni's novel with a liminalist critique and divides the life of Draupadi, as shown in the novel, into multiple rituals to establish Draupadi as a liminal being and through Draupadi, present the case of humans in general as existing in liminal spaces.
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While there is voluminous literature on pain in the context of medicine, pain as an aesthetic, representational, and epistemological issue remains undertheorized. The present article, after reviewing the nature of pain and surveying the... more
While there is voluminous literature on pain in the context of medicine, pain as an aesthetic, representational, and epistemological issue remains undertheorized. The present article, after reviewing the nature of pain and surveying the emerging interdisciplinary field of graphic medicine, seeks to close-read sections of Georgia Webber's Dumb (2018) to demonstrate how the artist transforms the inexpressibility and invisibility of pain into a visual and sensate language. Webber's Dumb articulates a complex sense of pain, in which pain is conceived at once as a generative and also as a disabling force. Webber not only transforms pain into a knowable sensation but also teases out the relationship of pain with the creation of comics-artisanal labor-itself. This article also draws attention to the potential of the comics medium in visualizing and expressing pain, and it concludes by showing how pain is at once biological, cultural, and social.
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Colonial influence can be felt in the Indian consciousness as an idealistic fascination with Eurocentric notions of utility, work and leisure, broadly and wrongfully categorizing them as ‘western’ ideology. What affirms this belief in a... more
Colonial influence can be felt in the Indian consciousness as an idealistic fascination with Eurocentric notions of utility, work and leisure, broadly and wrongfully categorizing them as ‘western’ ideology. What affirms this belief in a ‘western’ order of existence is a feeling of economic and cultural inferiority. This feeling of inferiority is solidified by the visible differences in the choice of lifestyle – simplistic tribal life adhering to traditions that lack the intentional production of capital, or technocratic complex urban life surrounded by amenities and perks, which are available as rewards against ‘work’ done. In this chapter, I intend to present the above argument and show these conflicting lifestyles by analyzing the graphic novel River of Stories (1994) by Orijit Sen. The narrative is about the construction of Rewa Sagar dams and the reactions against it by the locals as seen by a journalist from Voice who goes to cover the story. A parallel narrative voice of Malgu Gayan, the village singer, adds a mythic element to the narrative. On that note, I discuss how the graphic novel takes a decolonial stand, pointing out certain futile elements of the Eurocentric notion of ‘development.’
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Comics in India have developed in their journey from being children-centric nationalist and educational icons (as in Amar Chitra Katha) to counter-cultural superhero narratives (as in Raj Comicsand Indrajal Comics) and have grown into the... more
Comics in India have developed in their journey from being children-centric nationalist and educational icons (as in Amar Chitra Katha) to counter-cultural superhero narratives (as in Raj Comicsand Indrajal Comics) and have grown into the social realism of twenty-first century graphic novelsholding the hands of contemporary independent comics artists and graphic novelists. The representation of women in the Indian comics scene before the advent of the graphic novel in 2004 (with Sarnath Banerjee's Corridor) is dominated by masculine projections of femininity, where, given the context of Indian societal values, visuality becomes a pretext of stereotypical depictions and unreal or generally misconstrued gender roles. This paper considers both shortform and longform comics by select women author/artists of India and aims to situate them in the corpus of the Indian comics industry, along with providing a critical evaluation of women representation on the reformed comic book page by said authors and artists. The paper will showcase how contemporary Indian comics by women have been able to naturalize the erstwhile stereotypical and limited attitude towards the body, psyche, and the socio-cultural stance of a woman.
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This War of Mine not only dramatizes trauma, pain, hopelessness and despair in the format of a videogame but is also successful in eliciting empathetic responses from the players giving space to pity, love and understanding, rather than... more
This War of Mine not only dramatizes trauma, pain, hopelessness and despair in the format of a videogame but is also successful in eliciting empathetic responses from the players giving space to pity, love and understanding, rather than imagining warfare as a matter of heroics. While it is true that the stories are not very long and that the core game mechanics can become repetitive after a time, there is no doubt about the fact that the game represents trauma in an effective manner and is able to sensitize a lot of perspectives which are otherwise overseen and judged as immoral. What would you say to a thief you catch after you have yourself stolen from an old couple? How do you face your neighbors whom you did not help no matter how many times they asked? The game challenges the player to not be hypocritical but while giving every reason for the player to be as hypocritical as possible to the point of stating that if you play the game you always have a choice-play as a gamer or as a human being? This paper engages with the gameplay choices and design to understand how the video game format deals with real world issues and emotions.
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The past decade has seen the burgeoning of a new genre of comics dealing with the experience of illness. Labelled as ‘graphic medicine’ by the British doctor and graphic novelist Ian Williams, the term refers to comics' distinctive... more
The past decade has seen the burgeoning of a new genre of comics dealing with the experience of illness. Labelled as ‘graphic medicine’ by the British doctor and graphic novelist Ian Williams, the term refers to comics' distinctive engagment with the discourse of health care. Georgia Webber’s Dumb is perhaps the first graphic medical text with the exception of David Small’s Stitches that coheres around issues of voice/voicelessness which also translates to questions of marginality, health justice and self-care. Webber is a Canadian author, comics artist and freelance editor whose interests lie at the intersection of health and art. Webber suffered from a minor throat injury in 2012 which propelled her into a harsh phase of living without a voice. Initially self-published and serialised in zine format in eight issues with introductions by comics artists and activists for each issue, Dumb was later published in 2018 as a single volume by Fantagraphics with an additional chapter titled ‘Contribution.’ Blending Bill Watterson inspired minimalistic art style while maintaining a majorly dichromatic colour scheme of red and black (with traces of grey and paper white), Webber offers an honest portrayal of her experiences of living without a voice. Besides working at a café and volunteering at a local bike co-op, Webber is also a vocal health activist who administers a community event called MAW to celebrate the vocal arts and promote awareness about self-care and voice preservation. Previously, she has published a series of short comics on psychological trauma from an upcoming work titled Dark Whole for the website The Hairpin. Webber currently lives in Toronto and is working as a co-author with Vivian Chong to create Chong’s graphic memoir titled Dancing After TEN. Slated to be published in 2020 by Fantagraphics, Dancing After TEN concerns Chong’s TEN (Toxic Epidermal Necrolysis) related blindness. In this email interview, Webber as a comics artist, editor, illustrator, event coordinator and as a socialite delves deep into her artistic vision, community engagement, comics industry, graphic medicine, future prospects of healthcare and self-care, and her ongoing projects among others.
Research Interests: American Literature, Cultural Studies, Health Communication, Self and Identity, Comics Studies, and 10 moreMedical Education, Graphic Design, Identity (Culture), Medical Humanities, Visual Communication, Comics and Graphic Novels, Theory of Comics, Sociology of Health and Illness, Graphic Medicine, and Health Humanities
Unlike deafness and disability, speech-related disorders-voluntary/ involuntary voicelessness, mutism, and their imperatives-have largely remained un-dertheorized both as scholarship and praxis. Given the primacy and over-privileging of... more
Unlike deafness and disability, speech-related disorders-voluntary/ involuntary voicelessness, mutism, and their imperatives-have largely remained un-dertheorized both as scholarship and praxis. Given the primacy and over-privileging of vision, a consideration of the nature of voice/voicelessness is critical and urgent. Framed in metaphysical, metaphorical, and existential terms, Georgia Webber's graphic memoir Dumb (2018), which narrates the protagonist's temporary loss of voice, is perhaps the first graphic medical text that coheres around issues related to voice/voice-lessness in its entirety. Taking these cues, the present article, after briefly reviewing the significance of voice in human life and the relationship between voice and identity, provides a close reading of how Webber negotiates her lost acoustical agency in an otherwise abundant soundscape. Intriguingly, Webber also utilizes her voicelessness as a metaphor to reflect on her own marginality in an ableist society. Finally, the essay explores how Dumb projects drawing/comics-making and self-care as recuperative projects that not only help Webber to process her suffering caused by voicelessness but also aid her in reclaiming her lost voice and to acuminate practices of self-preservation.
Research Interests: American Literature, Cultural Studies, Health Psychology, Health Sciences, Nursing, and 14 moreEnglish Literature, Health Communication, Self and Identity, Comics Studies, Identity (Culture), Literature and Medicine, Literature and Visual Arts, Visual Arts, Comics and Graphic Novels, Voice, Graphic Medicine, Human Resources for Health, Body studies, and Public Policy
Although the prehistory of comics in India can be traced all the way back to the 1850’s Delhi Sketchbook or the Indian Punch, the proper Indian comics scene can be said to have started from the 1960’s with the publication of Amar Chitra... more
Although the prehistory of comics in India can be traced all the way back to the 1850’s Delhi Sketchbook or the Indian Punch, the proper Indian comics scene can be said to have started from the 1960’s with the publication of Amar Chitra Katha Comics and thriving publishing houses like Raj Comics and Indrajal Comics. Since then, for the past five decades there has been a steady rise not only in the publication of comics in India, but also in its reception and appreciation. The appropriation of the term ‘graphic novel’, coined by Will Eisner, into the Indian scenario has uplifted the importance given to the comics form. Post-1980’s comics artists in India like Sarnath Banerjee, Vishwajyoti Ghosh, Sarbjit Sen, Orijit Sen, Amruta Patil, Appuppen and many others have started their own endeavors instead of working for publishing houses. This along with numerous graphic anthologies in the recent years like Gaysi Zine, This Side: That Side, Longform, and many others have enlarged the scope and directions of studying comics in India. Having discussed the comics scenario, this paper talks about various ways in which the Indian comics industry is affected by the conceptual notions generated in the western world. It also raises questions about the future of comics as a genre in the Indian context and what its place may be in the upcoming researches of the Humanities departments in India.