Delivering the valedictory address at the two-day national seminar on “Nationality, language and culture: Contestations in contemporary writing,” organised by the Department of English in St Aloysius College here on Saturday, he said the narrative style of the nation - state is splendid but it fails to enter ito the discourse of justice. Stating that most of our energy is spent in bringing the unseen God to legitimise the exiting power equations to the newly carved out territorial nation-state, Dr Da Silva said “the moment this territorial regime is explained in terms of religion, we turn our symbolic meaning systems into communalism.”
Earlier, presenting a paper on “Hybridity, nationality, culture and language:
Contestations from below,” Bangalore University Associate Professor Dr Dominic D said that hybridisation of life forms the articulation of differences and the disenchantment with meta narratives is nothing but re-articulating the symbolic systems for the future. He said that during the last two decades, ‘Postmodern philosophy and cultural studies’ moved towards important theoretical currents that impelled a strong critique, inside and outside the academy of the pathologies of modernisation in India and specifically in Karnataka.
Citing an example, he said Kannada literary world took towards an inward orientation that was done by the German missionary Rev God Fried Wigal.
His historical work called ‘The history of canneries literature’ did the magic process of ‘standardisation of Kannada Language’ which gave rise to the modern Kannada identity and nationality.
“The native with his/her emergent identity as Kannadiga and Indian negotiated English to suit the needs of the day. But again this process was done through calling English as ‘Parangi English’ (English of the Foreigner), ‘Butler English’ and ‘Kanglish’ (English that is spoken in Kannada),” he said and referred to the role of ‘Print Capitalism’ as Benedict Anderson notes gave the standerdisation tolls to the languages in India. Nearly 50 lecturers from various colleges participated in the seminar.
