Personally, I had no idea what the word “nemesis” meant, before I started reading the novel Nemesis by Philip Roth. Google gives us the following definitions: – the inescapable agent of someone’s or something’s downfall. – a long-standing rival; an arch-enemy. – a downfall caused by an inescapable agent. – retributive justice. Digging a little […]
Read More →Archive for April, 2014
Judging the Infirm
Philip Roth’s Nemesis tells the story of 1944 polio outbreak in Newark, where Mr. Bucky Cantor works as a playground director after being unable to join the army due to his impaired vision. The death of Alan, a 12 year old, triggers mass hysteria as villagers undertake a frantic search for the causes of polio. […]
Read More →The Yes Men – Dow Chemicals Give Additonal Compensation to Bhopal Victims SCAM
This video is about a duo of activists, who describe their mission as ‘Identity Correction:’ Impersonating big-time criminals in order to publicly humiliate them, and otherwise giving journalists excuses to cover important issues. Among other things, they impersonated Dow Chemical (the owner of Union Carbide, which ran the factory in Bhopal) spokespeople on BBC. You can […]
Read More →The World Without Us
Animal’s People sets up thinking about post-apocalyptic scenarios. Surfing the internet, I came across Alan Weisman’s book The World Without Us in which he comments how cities and infrastructure would collapse days after humans disappear from the face of the Earth. A few more clicks led my to these pieces by Nick Pedersen, in which he proposes […]
Read More →The Martyrdom of Animal’s People
Indra Sinha’s Animal’s People (re)presents an interplay of a variety of religions in the fictional city of Khaufpur. Tape Fourteen (pages 205-222) coincides with the ritualistic mourning of Musharram, the first month of the Islamic calendar, and on the tenth day, the Day of Ashurra, the night of the fire walk happens. Historically, it refers to “Zibh-e-Azeem,” the Great […]
Read More →The Gulabi Gang
“There’s a whole Yar-yilaqi quarter of Khaufpur, the women in that district wear high heels under their burqas and lipstick under their veils, but if you upset one of them with some Eve-teasing type of remark she’s liable to out with a knife and stick you, this too Farouq told me, in which case it’s […]
Read More →Morrissey narrates.
Considering how much Bryan mentions The Smiths in class, I figure they might as well be another source to consider in our class. And I didn’t feel like people appreciated my comparison between Morrissey and Animal enough today in class… (created by yours truly) {image} hehe, okay, sorry for all the references — by uploading […]
Read More →The Plasma Economy in China
Abused By Progress
After our reading of Dream of Ding Village, it would seem only appropriate to change the “Tibet” and “Darfur” tags in the picture for “Ding Village” or “Henan Province”. As we’ve discussed in class, the novel alludes to the ethics of China’s rapid economic growth, posing questions about the urban-rural divide, the competence of state officials […]
Read More →“A Minority of One”
Animal’s People offers insight into the lives of people who experienced the trauma and the aftermath of the gas leak that plagued the Indian city of Bhopal. The story is narrated by a nineteen-year-old boy who survived “that night,” and is written as a series of transcripts of oral recordings. The novel is about the […]
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