Dibyadyuti Roy

Bio: Dibyadyuti Roy is an academic researcher from Indian Institute of Management Indore. The author has contributed to research in topics: Masculinity & Hegemony. The author has an hindex of 4, co-authored 10 publications receiving 41 citations. Previous affiliations of Dibyadyuti Roy include West Virginia University & Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad.

Radioactive masculinity: How the anxious postcolonial learnt to love and live in fear of the nuclear bomb

Abstract: RADIOACTIVE MASCULINITY: HOW THE ANXIOUS POSTCOLONIAL LEARNT TO LOVE AND LIVE IN FEAR OF THE NUCLEAR BOMB Dibyadyuti Roy Radioactive Masculinity explores how the Cold War legacy, of nuclear weapons finding resonance in images of white maleness and masculinity, results in anxious hypermasculine performances. These discursive and physical masculine acts contingent on the symbolic and material power of nuclear weapons, I argue, represent radioactive masculinity, a form of hegemonic militarized masculinity, which is intrinsically linked to the concept of nationhood and sovereignty. This idealized masculinity is fluid and cannot be tangibly or materially realized, much like the constantly decaying radioactive bomb on which it is modeled. Through analyzing a wide range of artifacts from America and India, I show that the anxieties of radioactive masculinity produce belligerent masculine performances, which are always volatile and unsuccessful. While existent scholarship has examined the gendered nature of nuclear technology, the cultural effect of unexploded nuclear weapons has been seldom researched. My project remedies this gap by locating physical and cultural sites in America and India, where the materiality of the bomb is made visible through its associations with male corporeality. This relationship, I argue, is indispensable toward understanding both the continued legacy of the Cold War within the Indian subcontinent, as well as its effects on postcolonial subjectivities. The dissertation begins with an introductory chapter that chronicles the rise of radioactive masculinity within the American military-industrial complex. Here, I analyze official US government documents and related materials, which perform the equation of the bomb to the hardened white male body. I show that while nuclear technology is not inherently gendered, both the bomb and its production spaces were pre-discursively masculinized in order to counter dual insecurities: of post-Depression era American emasculation and a hypermasculine Nazi Germany. Next, I bring in a comparison to Indian governmental documents to further describe how the transference of American radioactive masculinity into postcolonial spaces creates postcolonial nuclear borderlands, which are co-extensive with all nuclear postcolonial spaces everywhere. Chapter 2 examines the formation of a (pseudo) nuclear public sphere in America— resulting from the crisis in official publicity about the bomb—in the period following the cessation of above ground testing. By juxtaposing canonical Anglo-American nuclear disaster fiction with postcolonial speculative fiction, Chapters 3 and 4 emphasize that the structures of radioactive masculinity are fluid and not bound to specific spatio-temporal contexts. In Chapter 5, a comparative analysis of Leslie Silko’s Ceremony with postcolonial Indian texts from the eco-conservationist Bishnoi community demonstrate how tactical storytelling challenges the strategic structures of radioactive colonization. My dissertation concludes with an examination of minority anti-nuclear cultural productions, which by challenging the ideology of nuclear nationalism implicit in radioactive masculinity, deconstructs dominant Anglo-American nuclear historiography. By challenging the symbiotic relationship between radioactive masculinity and nuclear nationalism these texts initiate Nucliteracy—a dynamic multimodal form of literacy— that interrogates dominant and official publicity/secrecy about the bomb.

From Non-places to Places: Transforming Partition Rehabilitation Camps Through the Gendered Quotidian:

Abstract: The political partition of India in 1947 into a truncated India and the dominion of Pakistan witnessed a wave of forced migration, hitherto unseen in human history. The alteration of a singular nat...

Anxious postcolonial masculinity in online video games: race, gender and colonialism in Indian digital spaces

Abstract: This article examines representative games from Zapak.com: India’s most-popular gaming website (highest number of daily visitors) to conceptualize the relationship between masculinity and coloniali...

Will the Real Atomic Subaltern Please Stand Up? Critiquing Nuclear Historiography through Nucliteracy

Abstract: On May 11, 1998, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the Indian prime minister and leader of the ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP), proudly proclaimed that under the aegis of Operation Shakti ...

Can the Subaltern Speak

Abstract: In the present paper a research has been done on the essay ‘Can the Subaltern Speak’ by’ Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’. It has been explained into much simpler language about what the author conveys for better understanding and further references. Also the criticism has been done by various critiques from various sources which is helpful from examination point of view. The paper has been divided into various contexts with an introduction and the conclusions. Also the references has been written that depicts the sources of criticism.

Interview ラン・ラン

Abstract: Brian Thompson is a Senior Nutrition Officer at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). FAO is an intergovernmental organization, it has 191 Member Nations, two associate members and one member organization, the European Union. As a knowledge organization, FAO creates and shares critical information about food, agriculture and natural resources in the form of global public goods. FAO plays a connector role, through identifying and working with different partners with established expertise, and facilitating a dialogue between those who have the knowledge and those who need it. By turning knowledge into action, FAO links the field to national, regional and global initiatives in a mutually reinforcing cycle. Its mandate is to raise levels of nutrition and standards of living. What is the size of the malnutrition problem and what regions are most affected? There are persistently high levels of undernutrition. Nearly 870 million people in the world go to bed hungry (1 in 8 people) according to the recently released report of The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2012 (SOFI) and 2 billion have some form of micronutrient malnutrition – this constitutes a crime against humanity and is a responsibility for all of us. Prevalence of undernourishment in developing countries has declined over the past two decades, from 23 to 15 percent. In terms of total numbers in 1990– 92, around 980 million individuals were estimated to be undernourished. The number dropped to 901 million in 1999– 2001, to 885 million in 2006–06 and to 852 million in 2007–09. The financial crisis, economic downturn, persistent food price volatility, drought and other repercussions of climate change since 2006–08 may have prevented any further significant improvements in the number of people who are undernourished in developing countries since then. Africa has by far the highest prevalence, at around 23 percent in 2010–12 but though it is down from what it was in 1990–92 (27 percent) the numbers have risen from 175 million to 239 million with nearly 20 million added in the past four years. In subSaharan Africa, the modest progress achieved in recent years up to 2007 was reversed, with hunger rising 2 percent per year since then. In Asia, both prevalence and numbers dropped over the same period from 24 percent (739 million) to 14 percent (563 million). Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) boasts the lowest rate of undernourishment (8 percent) among developing country regions but the rate of progress has slowed recently. Countries considered as leastdeveloped countries and lowincome economies have the highest prevalence rates of all around 30 percent but down from the 40 percent levels of twenty years ago.

Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity

Abstract: It is ‘the logic of these late-capitalist phenomena’ that Augé attempts to describe. So far, so good, but this is only from Non-places’ back-cover blurb. In fact the book is very disappointing: the author offers a bland narrative of the experience of modern life, for example, on the supermarket: ‘The customer wanders round in silence, reads labels, weighs fruit and vegetables on a machine that gives the price along with the weight, then hands his credit card to a young woman as silent as himself—anyway, not very chatty—who runs each article past the sensor of a decoding machine before checking the validity of the customer’s credit card’ (pp.99–100). He nostalgically contrasts this to some romantic idealization of the (French) past, and mixes it up with what can only be described as pretentious waffle. To be fair, some of the concepts introduced are interesting. Anthropological places are contrasted to spaces; places in turn are contrasted to nonplaces: ‘If a place can be defined as relational, historical and concerned with identity, then a space which cannot be defined as relational, or historical, or concerned with identity will be a nonplace’ (pp.77-78). Modernity is contrasted to supermodernity: it is supermodernity which creates non-places, ‘spaces which are not themselves anthropological places and which, unlike Baudelairean modernity, do not integrate the earlier places...’ (p.78). For example, ‘in the modernity of the Baudelairean landscape ... everything is combined’, the old and new are interwoven; on the other hand, supermodernity ‘makes the old (history) into a specific spectacle, as it does with all exoticism and all local particularity ... in the non-places of supermodernity, there is always a specific position ... for “curiosities” presented as such’ (p.110). It’s true that airports, supermarkets, new housing estates, suburbs and so on are alienating (non-)places—just listen to Strummer’s lyrics to ‘Lost in the Supermarket’ (The Clash, London Calling, 1979); it is also true that we are forced to spend more and more of our lives in such (non-)places. This is why this little book appeared promising. But the concepts Augé employs are hopelessly inadequate to explain the proliferation and character of these ‘late capitalist phenomena’. The definition, cited above, of place vis-à-vis non-place begs the questions: relational to whom?, concerned with whose history?; whose identity? Augé’s point is, of course, that everywhere 144 Capital & Class #60