The Child is Given Over to a Stepmother
Prasanta Chakravarty Unappeasable and plain. That is the reason Simone Weil is able to unburden and pull us deeper into relentless entanglements and by doing so, sets us free. “The woman who wishes for a child white as snow and red as blood, gets it, but she dies and the child is given over to the stepmother” (Weil, 1947/1952). There are few statements that can match the starkness of the utterance. Weil considers chance in utter bareness. Chance makes every hope for security turn into a numbing stupor, and hence a joy forever, playing out its momentary and repeated whim in the lives of stranded creatures. The woman had craved for a perfect child, which is a remarkably hyperbolic aspiration in itself, biologically speaking. A speck of hubris. And yet a turn of fortuitousness conspires to bequeath her exactly what she had wished for: a white and ruddy child. But what human agent is she to desire such a gift of grace? But she does, and just like that, her wish is fulfilled. Happenstance. And at that moment, perhaps during childbirth or soon after, the woman dies. She was otherwise perfectly healthy. Some error or medical complication? Or perhaps something completely disconnected to the event of childbirth. Maybe a stray fever or a developing condition turning rogue? Chance’s scythe is unerring. She does not live to savour motherhood. The newborn too, is now reared by another woman, the stepmother—an event over which the little one has no will of its own. The child’s life takes a completely different dimension and trajectory. Is the new home a refuge and a safe-custody? Will the new born be loved, or be indifferently treated as a step-child? At the least the kid’s growing up will be different. And the stepmother, who had no plans perhaps for a child at this time, or conversely, had prayed intensely to have a child of her own—now will come to rear the child. She is given the child—someone somewhere decides to give the child to her. The child is given over to her. Their dual lot. Not by any physical agent—not by the nurse in the hospital or the official at the orphanage, but by chance. Do we still remember the second wave of pandemic in India? Thousands of corpses were detected floating in rivers in some parts of India and many more burnt on the banks. Dozens of bodies were being burnt in New Delhi too, on roadsides, since the crematoria were full. Round the clock. Veer Singh used to drive me occasionally from Noida–a suburbia of Delhi, to my university. One morning, at around 4 am, the door-bell rang. I opened the door and found Veer, with his 10-year-old daughter’s dead-body over his shoulder, coughing violently: “Saab, is nanhi sharir ko jalaane ka jagah nahi mil raha hai. Kal bete ko jalaane mein sab paise kharch ho gaye. Aaj ye. Kuch paise de do saab. Kuch bhi.” (Sir, I am unable to find a place to burn this innocent body. Yesterday I spent all my money to burn my teenage son. Today, this. Please help me with some money Sir. Any help will do”). I could do scant little. For a month Veer was not to be seen. And then he returned one Sunday and softly enquired whether I needed his services anymore. For the next three or four months he used to come sporadically: duty bound, but completely silent, with a vacant look about him. Then he disappeared again, never to be seen in the area. My life has moved on. “The beings I love are creatures. They were born to chance. My meeting with them was also by chance. They will die. What they think, do and say is limited and is a mixture of good and evil. I have to know this with all my soul and not love them the less” (Weil, 1947/1952). She doesn’t love less. In fact, Weil’s love is infinite since all our meetings take place by chance. Infinite love for finite things in that they are limited and finite. That we shall die makes the density of life that much more wondrous and acute. A pattern of moment-making flows underneath our chance encounters with each other. The piercing odour of intimate distance is to be savoured with the entirety of one’s being. We cling to each other, so that the infinite is made momentary. For caesura is inevitable. Caesura makes chance beautifully stark. This truth she has tried to know all her life, with a singular immersion and a geometric precision. So, she waits, preparing herself and her readers, to receive in its naked truth the object which is to penetrate our beings. Fragility projects the soul beyond time, into something enigmatic that must remain shrouded. Until grace arrives. After actor Sushant Singh’s death in June 2020, his friend and actor Rhea Chakraborty became a lightning rod for relentless trolling, threats and media trials. Her torment was not restricted to social media. A case for abetment to suicide, mental torture and financial fraud was registered. It was a free fall. Under immense public pressure, all major governmental investigative agencies were mobilized. Eventually, she and her brother had to face jail time for a month under some flimsy pretext. A lookout circular was promulgated against the Chakraborty family. Bit by little bit, the family was completely broken and devastated. They tried to show nobility, but under such scrutiny, there was no possibility of maintaining sanity. Everyone cheered on. She and her family were fodder for a primordial death dance of creatures we call humans. The rest remained silent. As other creatures know, humans are hardly like other creatures; they are smooth operators: crafty, pitiless and craven. Meanwhile, Rhea had to face travel restrictions and her bank account was frozen. Most importantly, her career as an actor was finished forever, though she has tried some comebacks since, not doing very well. Chance carries mischance along with it. She has
Colour of Olives
Prasanta Chakravarty Wartime _________ Our country is not warring right now With any other country Still, you have got to know A state of war has been declared Barbed wires at the borders, beyond that—prohibition In olive-coloured clothes Alertness of the woodlands And so, with much added caution One steps into the forest To the sound of bullets, a fusillade, do you hear it? Within wordlessness, now Are bitter words of wartime An explosion created by anger’s frenzied regret Is to be deflected—towards safety By lowering a trench that lies only within your heart Did you know this? Here, the worldly-being Recalls the honeyed moment Just before the war began The sanyasi Seeking peace after the war Sits bent-kneed Even the poets From the trenches, through their binoculars Watch the seasons turn The chilly winds of Magh Sweep memories in And depart with dreams This winter Is your dress smeared with the colour of olives? *** যুদ্ধকালীন __________ আমাদের দেশ এখন কোনোযুদ্ধ করছে না অন্য দেশের সঙ্গেতবু তুমি জেনে গেছযুদ্ধকালীন অবস্থা এখন জারি আছেসীমান্তে কাঁটাতার, কাঁটাতারের ওপারে নিষেধ-জলপাই রংয়ের পোশাকেবনস্থলির সতর্কতাঅতএব বড় বেশি হুঁশিয়ার হয়েএখন জঙ্গলে পা রাখাএখন গোলাগুলির আওয়াজ পাচ্ছ কি?এই নৈঃশব্দ্যের মধ্যেযুদ্ধকালীন কটু কথাক্রোধের উন্মক্ত আক্ষেপ যে বিস্ফোরণ তৈরি করছেতার থেকে সুরক্ষিত হতে নেমে যাবেএমন ট্রেঞ্চশুধু তোমার মনেরই মধ্যে থাকতে পারেতা কি তুমি জানো?এইখানে সংসারীযুদ্ধ শুরুর আগেরমধুময় মুহূর্তকে মনে করেসন্ন্যাসী এখানেযুদ্ধ শেষের শান্তির জন্যেহাঁটু গেড়ে বসেএমনকি কবিরাওএই ট্রেঞ্চের থেকে দূরবীনে দেখেঋতুর পরিবর্তন হচ্ছেমাঘের ঠান্ডা হাওয়াস্মৃতি নিয়ে আসেস্বপ্ন নিয়ে চলে যায়এবারের শীতেতোমার পোশাকে বুঝি জলপাই রং? Wartime is not war; though it could include actual conflicts. It is simply a tract of time, a signpost “wherein the will to contend by battle is sufficiently known; and therefore, the notion of time is to be considered in the nature of war,” Thomas Hobbes had averred. Indeed, wartime is a predicament and a temperament to which a whole people one day wake up and find themselves mired in. In fact, unbeknownst to them, they begin to gravitate towards such a state until it takes away their multiple private times and flattens those into a homogenous time-period for everyone. Such a mad ancient condition is renewed from time to time among socially interacting human beings. Could it be that otherwise a time of such unease and rancour could also offer possibilities of renewal and redemption from within its own belly? There have been quite a few distinct poems on war and its effects on daily living in Bangla (especially on the two world wars and the Bangladesh war of 1971), but the one written above by the actor, play-director and consummate writer and poet Soumitra Chatterjee stands apart for its psychological insight and modernist suggestivity. The first four lines constitutes the proem: ‘Our country is not warring right now / With any other country Still, you have got to know/A state of war has been declared’ A case is made in order to distinguish the temporal slice of wartime from the physical fact of warring: that one knows the time of war though one’s own country may not be going through an actual war. How could such a wartime have been ushered in? Who may have declared it? It could be that battles rage in and among other lands and the economic or political costs also have an effect on us. It could also be that some civil war takes place, within one’s own land, region or community for which no actual declaration of war is necessary. Still, it is not war that is important here. The ‘state’ of being in war is. Time has turned itself into a state of being for agents gripped by it. Perhaps such a state of war happens more at the level of individual agents and rages even within one’s own psyche? Wartime is a sudden realization; it dawns upon oneself— ‘you got to know.’ Everyone knows. The declaration of wartime is in the air, so to say. The next section elaborates on the actual predicament: the borders are guarded and wartime means encountering a certain alert watchfulness everywhere. ‘Barbed wires at the borders, beyond that—prohibition/In olive-coloured clothes/Alertness of the woodlands’ Barbed wires have arisen between us and a hush descends in everyday living. A pall marks wartime. Regular human interaction is suspended. A time of war is known to us by being aware of the limits and boundaries that cannot be trespassed—among friends, relations, even loved ones. One would perhaps not even cross the limits of one’s own imagination and mind-space. All movement is stymied. The state of war begins to choke you. You refrain from argument and affection alike. Breathlessness begins to congeal as time turns prohibitory. You endure. At this point that poet puts forth a visual image—that of the forest. Is the state of war literally related to the forest? That is to say, are some secret battles rage within the innards of the country? Or is it that the forest is a metaphor for the state of the society as such? And alertness in the forest dons a colour too—olive. Olive is of course a Mediterranean tone and flavour. But it is also universal in its reach. We are all aware of its dark yellowish-green hue. We also know that it is widely used as a camouflage colour for uniforms and equipment in the armed forces. Olive is the colour of combat. But here it is used in a more universal sense—in order to denote the forest and watchfulness associate with the forest at wartime. Thickets are soothing to the eye, but underneath its foliage lurks mystery and danger. And at this point comes the first interrogative statement of the poem: ‘To the sound of bullets, a fusillade, do you hear it?’ From generality, now the poem turns specific and we realize that the poet-speaker is actually directing his words towards some interlocutor. What kind of interlocutor is this? A close friend may be, a lover, a family relation—with whom now things have turned frosty? Now the parity is drawn between the two sides with the sounds of bullets –which defines the wartime atmosphere.
Hereafter the Bitterness
Prasanta Chakravarty_____________________ It is quite agonizing when one fails to find a close enough word or phrase to convey certain words in the English language. In Bangla, once such cluster comprises of words like: স্নিগ্ধতা, শ্রী, লাবণ্য | Grace for labanya or softness for snigdhota actually does not do justice to either language. Sree is even more difficult—at once having a sense of financial well-being and an elegance that has more to do with poise. Likewise, I had a very hard time considering what the actual English equivalence of মাধুর্য is as I was recently rereading one of my favourite poems তারপরে যে তিক্ততা (Hereafter the Bitterness) from Prasun Bandyopadhyay’s later collection of lovely poems: Modhur Tumul/ মধুরতুমুল. The regular reader of Bandyopadhay who has followed him over the years knows how his acute observations of everyday activities, objects, relations and certain enduring institutions are framed within the chalice of a selfhood that is so brittle, confused and vulnerable that it often gives over its many fragments to the eternal flow of time and space. Though he has evolved over the decades, his best poems are playful, naughty, even sassy in bringing to us certain enduring home truths. In this one, he places two contrary attributes—tiktota and maadhurjo side by side and goes on to spin his tale. (Aside: with modhur/maadhurjo I toyed with—lusciousness, charm, softness, sweetness, grace, sonority—and eventually settled on mellowness. I am not happy—for mellow is more mature than sweetness, but then sweetness is too light a word to convey the immersive sense of the original. Sweetness lacks viscosity and affection.) Contraries make the whole, even if ostensibly the attributes may seem divergently directed. The initial move is to suggest that all bitterness must come to an end: for the walnut’s hardness is deceptive. It hides the luscious and soft kernel within. One can hope that all that is modhur shall triumph eventually. A hopeful beginning. The second stanza changes tack as the poet makes a startling resolution that he shall espouse and embrace bitterness as he would do with the mellower, more affectionate conditions of living. The two are subtly woven actually; entwined with each other in a far larger relationship. And here opens space for the second example: unlike the walnut, the colourful sweater is knit with contrary threads and antithetical movement—warp and weft. But the two units are not separate but unified in a mysterious, blended concoction: sweetbitterness. In the final stanza, with the sudden inclusion of the term bodhu/ বঁধু (sweetheart), we realize he has been actually recounting the secret of the universe to his beloved, who is obviously the contrary principle in attachment. The naïve realization of the first stanza—that bitterness would eventually fade, is now no more. Once the poet has confronted the true nature of the cosmos: that contraries clash and may stay as is without reaching any final resolution or stillness, he begins to accept that as life would bring to each one of us the honey (মধু) of care and immersion, so will it churn malignancy and bitterness. But it’s only when both the principles arrive shall we realize what is the nature of the hereafter—of bitterness and mellowness melded. The equilibrium is achieved through the occasional clash of the two principles, not by skirting or striking out either of the two. The poet is perhaps trying to make us appreciate the configurations of various forms of vibrations (স্ফোট) effected through these apparently opposed principles, which are a part of a larger realized truth. Prasun Bandyopadhya has been a traveller who has tried to steer clear of political-cultural harangue (aapkhoraki/ আপখোরাকি) and discursive superfluity (maanbhasha/ মানভাষা) (which he considers to be forms of ‘fatal anaemia’) so that language and selfhood, by means of quitting inertness, can reach a certain ‘non-age time’ and a space (shawsthan/ স্বস্থান). He has often said that a mountain summit can be observed from many sides. Like the many-hued sweetbitter sweater perhaps? *** Hereafter the Bitterness________ so that the bitterness that rises hereafter can also come to an end at last, the hard walnut, in mellowness discards its shell to reveal the kernel *** to regard mellowness when bitter when mellow, not to banish bitterness on a route similar, commingled—shall receive in contrary-pairs whatever lies woven *** like a sweater many-hued still, a single one you wear the one you wore in Kalimpong Is it not a unit in partnership *** should mellowness churn honey no regrets then when bitterness arrives in realization coalesced, my sweetheart whatever originates in contrary-pairs _______________ adminhumanitiesunderground.org
Countless Transcendentals: Kant on Discourse and Quantity
Debajyoti Mondal “Always quantify writing.” – Deleuze & Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus This essay is a mad enterprise in dismantling Kant’s philosophy, particularly his project of ‘transcendental critique’, developed as the trial of reason’s own capacity to enquire after its limits and expected to lay the ground for philosophical cognition itself, along and around the idea that there was a more originary drive in the said ground-laying that estimated an augmentative rather than limitative outcome. The fancy goes that this will amount to an awakening or reawakening of Kant, this time not from the dogmatic slumber but an all-too-skeptical reality, which means this would be a reawakening to the dream, or softly, to some dream. In travestying the Cartesian shudder, the effort will be made to look into what is still living and adventurous in Kantian philosophy. We may begin by asking a rather vague question: What does a literature-lover have to learn from Kant? The figures of the beautiful and the sublime are what immediately comes to one’s mind. People are indeed, to some extent, interested in the Third Critique. But what about the critical project as such? What about the First Critique? Should one not try to understand, while reading about aesthetic judgment, how it is related to the project of an immanent critique of reason? Literature departments would not encourage such questions and will in all probability relegate the task to the discipline of philosophy. What’s more, they will find Kant himself standing on their side, endorsing the avoidance. He would like to keep philosophy innocent of the murky business called “writing”. Such a divisive denomination is no doubt intended and instituted by the critique. Kant steadfastly guards against what he terms “subreption”, by which we are to understand any confusion of the transcendental with the empirical. Such confusions, as evidenced in the Critique of Pure Reason, results, moreover, from the rhetorical situation of speech. Subreption, in Kant’s own words, is a sophisma figurae dictionis. However, Kant cannot simply correlate this form of sophism (a transcendental condition) with the bad intent of the sophist (empirical), because that would be reinstating the subreption itself, the algorithm whereof is inherent to discourse. Philosophy, if it must avert this danger, has to withdraw from the figurative resource of language and thus observe to its “discipline”, i.e. fashion for its use a model of scrupulously literal presentation. The self-disciplining of philosophy apparently rules out any possible correspondence with literature and its stylized diction. It will have certain consequences for the critical project itself. This time we will have to frame the questions from an obverse orientation: Why did Kant have to humble the project after beginning with a superlative ambition? Why did he arrive at the point of noumenal inaccessibility? Would we still have to see the declaration (of non-access) as absolutely necessary? If so, then, indeed, what efficacy is left to the critique, which was conceived with the aim of augmenting knowledge and was justified, originally, by this claim? Perhaps, in order to save the critique, one will have to read it a little lightly? Let’s say, a little figuratively? Or one may take what it says with grave seriousness, maybe only to discover, who knows, that at the end the critique reveals itself to have all along been literary. Which one is the case for what follows is left to the readers’ discretion. I. The Surreptitious Supplement There is an unbending tendency in the Critical project, arising from its dream of legislation, that can be correlated with a thoroughgoing distrust of the oblique. Much of the validity of the cognitive processes, and of the critique consequently, depends on their straightness, understood in both the senses of rectitude and literality. Kant’s temperament is such that only the upright and literal is taken for the lawful: whatever moves straight follows the path of truth, everything else is just metaphor, false ascription, unfortunate suggestio falsi. To falsities of such type he gives the name of “subreption”, as we know well by now. One might verily wonder, although, if that naming is not sullied with a metaphorical residue. Subreption (Subreption), compounded with quite the suggestive qualifier “surreptitious” (Erschleicht) [1], points to the movements of creeping and crawling, maybe in direct contrast to the stride of homo erectus. The question has been appropriately raised by Paul de Man: cannot the arbiter who judges on and prohibits subreption be found himself guilty of first having committed it?[2] One need not even rely on a rhetorical device to corroborate the point; the weakness is betrayed in what constitutes the veritative strength of the critique: the transcendental. It is the transcendental which desists the pure concepts of understanding from falling victim to incautious use. Standing at the divide between “canon” and “organon”, the transcendental is the self-reflexive awareness of limit on part of a-priori forms in general and of the faculty of logical explication in particular. Of course, the word “transcendental” was not new to philosophy. What Kant did was turn it into the differentiator between the empirical and the pure reflexive (alias conceptual) elements of knowledge. In short, it was cleverly devised in order to guard against the various internal errors of reason that issued from the confusion of the conceptual with the empirical. As Malabou recapitulates in her book on Kant, the transcendental has since been handed down to the philosophical posterity as an indispensable critical advance. However (and this she also points out), one must have to be able to see that the methodological nuance added by the transcendental thrives on the a-priori separation of the logical from the empirical, of pure thought from experience, to question which would be the condition enough to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the transcendental. What happens if we come to see that there is no such systematic separation between thought and experience? Wouldn’t it expose the transcendental itself as the site of a prior subreption? If a false ascription can results from the error of