What we normally understand by culture is a document composed of specific signs, sounds and symbols. Some of these are self reflexive representations, consciously and deliberately conceived. Reading into representations we can improve our culture and metaphysics. The manner and mode of our reading contributes to the significance of the acts of representations.
Contemporary theoretical discourse has introduced into our cultural practice, the concepts like center, periphery, text, context, difference, alterity, subversion, transgression, etc. They have in turn triggered new intellectual vibrancy into the general slackening of dynamics and direction that followed the modernist movement. There is also now a transverse concern for a new internationalism with its consequent ambivalent attitude towards postcolonial Western style modernizing of society, state and the nation. But there are certain moot questions which need to be answered: How do our cultural practices respond to the emerging situations? What is the role of critical theory and practice in the context of Indian literary and artistic representations?
The essays in this book attempt to answer these and many other pertinent questions in various ways. Written by erudite scholars in the field, the essays take up themes like dynamics of representation in the context of cultural situations, relation between literature, culture and society, challenges to cultural plurality, and theoretical perspective of subalternity, among others. Papers on modernism, postmodernism, creativity and colonialism in Malayalam literature, and development of people’s information system in Kerala have been included to study situations in specific regions.
By incorporating the works of creative writers and critical thinkers, an attempt has been made to throw light on various issues relating to literary, aesthetic and cultural representation. The book will be useful to a wide cross- section of readers including students of literature, social sciences and cultural studies, and researchers in these fields.
S. Murali Sivaramakrishnan, Ph.D. from the University of Kerala (1990), is a scholar of repute, deeply concerned with indigenous values and environmental issues. Presently, he is a Professor and Head of the Department of English, Pondicherry University. He is the Founder President of ASLE India (Association for the Study of Literature and Environment). He is a member of the Scientific Committee of English Studies, University of Valladolid, Spain. He was also a Fellow at the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, Teen Murti, New Delhi and an Associate of the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla.
Dr. Murali was awarded a Fulbright Post Doctoral Travel Grant to teach and do research in the University of Nevada at Reno (2006-07). He has more than 50 research papers to his credit. The books written by him include Nature and Human Nature: Literature, Ecology, Meaning and Tradition and Terrain: Aesthetic Continuitie Dr. Murali has participated in international conferences in Jamaica, Spain, Taiwan, Austria and Brussels and lectured in the University of Salamanca, Valladolid and Extremadura in Spain and the University of Umea in Sweden. He has coordinated many seminars and conferences in the field of literary theory, postmodernism and culture studies. Besides, he has held two solo exhibitions of his works in Germany and India.
