The much-touted narrative of totality that sells beguiling indulgences for transforming man and his cherished world into a commodity can only be thwarted if ‘realism’, ‘rationalisation’ and ‘motivation’ are not spurned and truth is not described as a mere ‘statement’ or ‘utterance’ which is being used for bringing our cultural needs to fruition.
We must cast off kicky notion about truth that views truth as a statement wrapped in language. It stimulates no absolute or fixed meaning. It is essentially a narrative spoon that feeds everyone who is free to create his own meaning, and hence truth no longer creates its ontological space. It is hardly more than old-fangled trivia. Renunciation of truth simply means taking the side of the oppressors who have unbridled powers but do not recognise their moral obligation. Exiguity of truth is used by the power that be to terrify teeming disempowered segments of the society into a cowed silence. These are the contours of an alternative narrative aptly spelt out by an eminent Hindi critic and fiction writer Ramesh Upadhyay in his recent book “An Introduction to Global Realism”.
Analysing new ideological positions and epistemological framework of post modernism through the prism of neo-realism, Ramesh Upadhyay makes a strong plea for replacing capitalist globalisation with labour driven globalisation. Running into 50 chapters, the book proffers an academically informed debate on trailblazing books on literary theories, new-fangled ideological and theoretical positions, cultural studies, gender discourse, narratology and identity.
For him new ideological and semantic space created by Leotard, Foucault, Roland Barthes, Derrida and Paul De Man has become the hot bed of ignoble crimes, cultural subjugations and iniquity. Through his review articles Ramesh unleashes a fusillade of criticism to resist the legacy that post-modernism has bequeathed us.
Deliberating over new theoretical discourse, Ramesh Upadhyay, who also edits a reputed literary journal “Kathan”, points out that of late capitalism has consigned the whole world to a new kind of harrowing cultural subjugation. He fashions a passionate, erudité and far-ranging narrative on ground breaking contemporary books published in English such as “Archaeology of the Future: The Desire called Utopia and other Science Fictions”, “Spaces of Hope”, “Adventures in Realism”, “New Imperialism”, “Debating Empire”, “The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a socially symbolic Act” , “Imagination and Time”, “The Unresolving Plot: Reading contemporary Fiction”, “The Politics of Writing”, “Linguistic Imperialism”, “Retelling / re-reading: The Fall of storytelling in Modern Times” and the like to acquaint the readers with various strands of the prevalent cultural arrogance that is devoid of a moral centre.
Referring to Karl Kroeber, he describes story telling as the first human endeavour that looks beyond the apparent reality and paves the way for change. Story is essentially an act of telling and retelling that keeps us alive. It simultaneously changes itself and the world we live in. It does not need people who glue to it time and again as creative text invariably finds them.
Upadhyay writes extensively on what constitutes culture, literature and world view is not carried away by the pronouncements “End of history”, “End of ideology and Realism” and asserts that realism is not as simple, predictable and formulated as we think. It is a nuanced vision of reality that hardly surfaces itself. It is what that makes the text wondrous. His article on neo-realism seems to be a must read for all those who want to understand realism and its multicultural dimensions and also intend to use it for making the life better.
For many ideologues we have been living in post – truth and post-nationalism period and all emancipatory ideologies are now with God and Ramesh does refer to many environmental, ecological and human right issues which cannot be understood in geographical terms , these are issues that have a lasting bearing on the whole mankind. Jingoism hardly solves these issues, he cogently argues.
Writing neither expresses nor conceals; certainly it is not the writing that writes, not the writer but it is essentially a political act, asserts Ramesh who seems to be in awe of the book “The Politics of Writing”. He debunks common sense fed about writing that writing is a divine blessing and its recipients are not many. It denotes deep rooted politics that gives freedom of writing to handful chosen people and takes pleasure in ensuring deprivation of the same right to millions of others. It anti people politics that must be resisted, he argues.
The book creates a new ideological and semantic space and Ramesh Upadhyay deserves appreciation for such an uproarious new book that seldom appears in Indian languages.
