Manujendra Kundu

... On 22 May 1865 the Hindoo Patriotwrote: We acknowledgedin our last issue the receipt of Sakontollah by Baboo Unodapersad Banerjee.This is ... serious internal disagreement surfaced once more,never to be healed again.38 One of the vices for which Jatra [Jhumur, etc.] had ...

This book probes into the evolving phases of Badal Sircar’s theatrical career and offers a historical sense of how he developed his theatre. Divided into seven chapters, they are supported by a pithy summary of the historical context that necessitated the growth and development of Sircar’s theatre—both in praxis as well as theory. This work also challenges some very important notions of Sircar’s Third Theatre, and brings out its inner contradictions: contrary to the common belief, the influence of Indian traditional performances on the Third Theatre exists superficially and sparsely; Third Theatre is not a free theatre in the strictest sense; in spite of emphasizing egalitarianism, the Third Theatre plays bear only Sircar’s name as their author, one of the indices of Sircar’s authority, if not authoritarianism, in Satabdi. There are many similar aspects ‘disentangled’ by rigorous analyses of Siracr’s monographs, travelling through the labyrinth of more than fifty plays, and interacting with some of the members of Satabdi, including his second wife, who were/are practically lost in the aura of Sircar. In the course of analysis, it has also been observed that the Third Theatre could not progress much from the colonial theatrical tradition vis-à-vis the exclusion of the ‘uneducated’, ‘uncultured’, ‘unsophisticated’ people. Although Sircar left the proscenium arch in pursuit of a demotic, intimate space, his procedure and style of action also eventually left the masses out of Third Theatre’s ambit.

This paper explores the decolonization of literature and whether it is a possible/credible idea without considering the decolonizers. It argues that when we talk about decolonization, it is essential to decolonize the existence. Mere changes in the academic syllabus or cultural dispensation won’t help.

By way of explanation: This is the practical part of the previous one. In this part the readers can find some of the very well known facts, but my objective, though it might seem otherwise, is not to reiterate/repeat the old discussion on academic ostracism per se. Here, I wanted to discuss the author-making processes in the academic preserve. In fact,

"The Author Cannot Die: Contradictions in ‘The Death of the Author’" is a study of Roland Barthes’s famous essay “The Death of the Author”. The bigger question is, however, how this kind of intellectual adventurism deviates us from understanding a society which is purely governed by authorial providence. Barthes’s essay, like others in the same strand, deliberately avoids politico-economic questions, and hovers, from the very beginning, over an intangible ambiguity in an attempt to philosophize and sermonize. However, my article is divided into two sections: the first deals with the language (text), Barthes put to use in his essay, to show its inner contradictions, while the second part is an extension of the former and an overview of the (capitalist) academic structure that sustains author and authority. I also believe that most of my observations are not unknown to the learned world. It cannot escape the readers’ attention either that some of the observations on Barthes’s article are also applicable to my essay for obvious reasons. I am not free from the vicious circle and also share the same identities in some/many respects. (DoP: 11. 12. 2017)

This interdisciplinary series explores cultural formation and evolution by understanding matrices of performance discourse and religious, gender, racial, political and economic complexities. It welcomes proposals on drama, theatre, dance, music, theory and praxis related to Performance Studies from the South Asian region and beyond. It discusses the performance history, diverse practices, customs, and principles prevalent in urban and hinterland spaces. The primary aim of this series is to incorporate not just individual urban voices but to examine the marginalized vocabularies and understand their agency and “affect”-edness. It deals with aesthetic practices or practices that have a stated artistic goal and performances that may be non-artistic in their objectives. The series invites original monographs, edited books, and handbooks.

For inquiries and submission of proposals, authors can contact the Series Editor, Manujendra Kundu, via: manujendra@gmail.com