Recollecting the Body: Violence and Resistance in the Writings of a Theatre Actress in Colonial Bengal

Critical interventions by black, third world, and/or postcolonial feminists against the homogenizing tendencies of majoritarian narratives of women have led to the emergence of intersectional feminist scholarship and its endeavour to postulate women’s stories along the interfaces of race, class, caste, and gender hierarchies. Historicizing social and material bodies has been a constant engagement here, resulting in the analysis of symbiotic processes of subject formation and otherization, thereby entailing a confrontation with the heterogeneous nature of violence and its functioning in such processes. Using such scholarship, this article seeks to comprehend the interplay of various forms of violence in the historical production of given identities and spaces relegated to the bodies of the Other – the Other of Hindu elite women. To do so, this article explores the sub-world of women in the commercial theatre of Bengal during the late colonial period (late 19th to early 20th century). Through a close and critical reading of the writings of one of the most popular actresses of Bengali theatre during those times, Binodini Dasi, the article illuminates the ways in which violence has functioned on the actress to reproduce an otherized body. For the second objective, the article analyses how the actress subverts through the act of writing such subjection of violence. It can be argued that the actresses’ writings do not specifically symbolize an unadulterated agential voice; instead, the effect of violence is such that the interiorities of the actress emanate anguish, inhabiting a liminal space between resistance and subversion

"Mother-weights" and lost fathers: parents in South Asian American literature

That parent-child relationships should play a significant role within South Asian American literature is perhaps no surprise, since this is crucial material for any writer. But the particular forms they so often take – a dysfunctional mother-daughter dynamic, leading to the search for maternal surrogates; and the figure of the prematurely deceased father – are more perplexing. Why do families adhere to these patterns in so many South Asian American texts and what does that tell us about this œuvre? More precisely, why are mothers subjected to a harsher critique than fathers and what purpose does this critique serve? How might we interpret the trope of the untimely paternal death? In this article I will seek to answer these questions – arguably key to an understanding of this growing body of writing – by considering works produced between the 1990s and the early twenty-first century by a range of South Asian American writers

Effect of oxidants on olefin epoxidation catalyzed by a new nickel(II)-schiff base complex

1177-1180A new schiff base complex of nickel(II), NiL ( where H2L= N-(2- hydroxyphenyl) salicyldiimine} has been prepared in good yield by direct interaction of schiff base ligand, H2L and NiCI2 and characterized by physico-chemical analysis. Efficiency of the NiL complex towards catalysing epoxidation of olefins in presence of various oxidants vi z., NaOCI , KHSO5, H2O2 ,pyridine N-oxide (PyO), t-BuOOH, etc. , has been examined and it is found that the NiL complex can effectively catalyze the epoxidation of olefins in presence of NaOCI and KHSO5.</span

Ru^III(medtra)(H₂O)] (medtra=N-methylethylenediaminetriacetate) complex – A highly efficient NO inhibitor with low toxicity

Stopped-flow kinetic measurements were used to compare the reactivities of [Ru(medtra)(H2O)] (medtra3− = N-methylethylenediaminetriacetate) (1) and [Ru(hedtra)(H2O)] (2) (hedtra3− = N-hydroxyethylethylenediaminetriacetate) with NO in aqueous solution at 15 °C, pH 7.2 (phosphate buffer). The measured second-order rate constants (3 × 103 and 6 × 104 M−1 s−1 for 1 and 2, respectively) are three to four order of magnitudes lower than that for the reaction between [RuIII(edta)(H2O)]− (3) with NO. However, NO scavenging studies of complexes 1–3, conducted by measuring the difference in nitrite production between treated and untreated murine macrophage cells, revealed that despite being less kinetically reactive toward NO, the [Ru(medtra)(H2O)] complex exhibited the highest NO scavenging ability and lowest toxicity of compounds 1–3

Reactivity of polyaminocarboxylatoruthenium(III) complexes with serine and their protease inhibition

Reaction of [Ru(edta)(H2O)]� (edta4�¼ethylenediaminetetraacetate), [Ru(pdta)(H2O)]� (pdta4�¼propylenediaminetetraacetate) and [Ru(hedtra)(H2O)] (hedtra3�¼N-hydroxyethylethylenediaminetriacetate) with S-serine (Ser) was studied spectrophotometrically and kinetically. Serine protease inhibition studies were performed with the three complexes using the serine protease enzymes chymotrypsin and subtilisin with azoalbumin as substrate. Results are discussed in terms of the reactivity of the Ru-pac (pac¼polyaminopolycarboxylates) complexes with serine. The order of protease inhibition efficacy of the Ru-pac complexes is [Ru(pdta)(H2O)]�>[Ru(edta)(H2O)]��[Ru(hedtra)(H2O)], in good agreement with the observed reactivity of Ru-pac complexes with serin