The thesis has been an attempt to make sense of the political discourse in Kashmir from the early 1940s till the emergence of the popular uprising in the Valley towards the late 1980s. The thesis... Show moreThe thesis has been an attempt to make sense of the political discourse in Kashmir from the early 1940s till the emergence of the popular uprising in the Valley towards the late 1980s. The thesis has tried to underscore the fragmented nature of the political in Kashmir, and the implications it has had on the politics of the region, particularly on the politics of rai-shumari (self determination) and aazadi. These inner fragments or contradictions that underline the political life in Kashmir may be attributed, as the thesis has sought to argue, to the multiple political subjectivities that constitute ‘Kashmiri people’ as a community. Show less
'What is the desire of the medium?' is both a rhetorical question and a fundamental one. The rhetorical question serves as a framework for investigating the interplay between the artist/designer... Show more'What is the desire of the medium?' is both a rhetorical question and a fundamental one. The rhetorical question serves as a framework for investigating the interplay between the artist/designer and the medium during the creative act. Arts and design operate on the level of problematising: they do not reproduce the visible, they make visible. By this, I am suggesting that there is no preconceived objective criterion: all perception needs to be produced. A critical supposition is that the complexity of the world cannot be reduced to either macro- or micro-systems or models (anti-representation). The only interesting route to pursue is to investigate what a medium does (asignification), not what it is (essentialism). My interest lies in affective capacities, not inherent properties and their respective place in any taxonomy or ontological setting. This requires the exploration of a non-hierarchical, flat ontology based on the equality of all parties (human and nonhuman). I propose four backgrounds against which to investigate the desire of the medium: ethoscape (which deals with affect), ideoscape (which deals with concepts), mediascape (forms of expression) and technoscape (forms of content). The desire of the medium is located somewhere in the middle between affect, concept, expression and content. Show less
The study addresses and explains the issue of negative descriptions of the Arab Other in modern Iranian thought. It attempts to understand and illustrate what the notion of the Arab means for... Show moreThe study addresses and explains the issue of negative descriptions of the Arab Other in modern Iranian thought. It attempts to understand and illustrate what the notion of the Arab means for Iranians and how Arabs are portrayed and by examining how they depicted, It describes why they depicted in modern time in such a way, linking this portrayal to a range of ideologies in modern Iran. In doing this research, the researcher has limited his analysis to a certain body of fiction and non-fiction texts. he has selected writings produced by prominent Iranian authors of a variety of ideological affiliations, including literary works such as short stories, novels, historical stories and works published in academic or semi-academic journals, as well as some works in the field of historiography, all of which were written in Persian by Iranian writers between the 1850s and the 1950s. In a broader sense, the study offers an analytical model for the understanding of the Iranian notions of Self and Other in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It investigates the ethnic and racial attitudes of a number of Iranian writers and thinkers toward Arabs, contributing to an understanding of the way in which the Iranian identity has been shaped in modern times. Show less
