The Author is Dead, Long Live the Author! Postmodern Metanarrative and the Performance of the Author Function

This research paper critically examines the meta-narrative text The Master of Petersburg, a novel by Nobel laureate J.M. Coetzee, which has the figure of the author at the centre of its narrative structure. In his fictions, Coetzee is not shy of dislodging what Roland Barthes calls ‘reality effect’ in order to critically assert the role of the authorial figure; this is also to be seen in the novel Slow Man where Coetzee ruptures the realist texture of the narrative by introducing the figure of Elizabeth Costello who enters the text, as well as the life of Paul Rayment an amputee, as the author figure who is responsible for her creation i.e. Paul Rayment himself. At the same time Coetzee in order to explore the issues of writing at its ethical dimension, transforms some realist tropes at his disposal. For instance, in Elizabeth Costello, Coetzee with a brilliant manoeuvre plays on the trope of epistolary novels and presents the novel in a form of a series of lectures delivered by Elizabeth Costello, an Australian author of international fame. But in a brilliant ironical move, Coetzee through the performance of the authorial voice breaks the realist structure of the Novel. The paper will, however, primarily focus on the novel The Master of Petersburg (1994), which is a meta-narrative in which Coetzee actively interrogates the ethics of writing as in this novel he places the fictively re-imagined figure of Dostoevsky in Petersburg in late 1868, after the murder of his step-son Pavel. In this novel like his earlier novel Foe(1986), Coetzee examines the process of artistic creation and ethics involved in the event of writing, as Coetzee in his novel evokes a mix of historical factors and fictive characteristics which inspired and featured in Dostoevsky’s novel The Devils. Through a close examination of the interstitial spaces between the two novels, this paper explores the figure of the author and its performance in postmodern fiction. The author as the figure has caused much debate in the postmodern fiction and narrative theory. Post Roland Barthes’s declaration ‘author is dead’ many deconstructionist and narrative theories have debated the relevance of author figure in fiction, and the meta-narrative and self-referential nature of postmodern literature make these debates even more potent. This paper seeks to explore the debate concerning the author figure from Bakhtin, Barthes, Bennet and Foucault and try to understand the implications which the author figure has in a postmodern text through a close examination of Coetzee’s The Master of Petersburg.</jats:p

Linguistic nationalism in early-colonial Assam: The American Baptist Mission and Orunodoi

This paper will attempt to map the emergence of linguistic nationalism as a direct offshoot of the language debate in early-colonial Assam. In 1836, Bengali was made the language of courts and schools in Assam. Ten years later, the Baptist Mission at Sadiya started publishing a monthly magazine called Orunodoi. Orunodoi gradually became a critical instrument in the effort to reinstate Assamese as the language of the province’s courts and schools. How did the emergent public sphere react to the debate on language? What was the power dynamic between an emergent native intelligentsia, the Baptist Mission and the colonial state in early-colonial Assam? What are the factors that prevented Assamese from being reinstated as the language of courts and schools in Assam until 1873? Was the debate on language merely about imposition of a ‘foreign’ language, or was the discourse more fluid with concerns like language standardisation operating as undercurrents? Can the language debate in early-colonial Assam be isolated as the first assertion of a sub-national identity based upon cultural and linguistic ‘uniqueness’? Through an analysis of some articles published in Orunodoi, read along with private letters and official correspondences of the American Baptist Mission in Assam, this paper will attempt to address some of these questions and recover the context of the debate around language in nineteenth-century Assam.</jats:p

SERVICE PRICING CHALLENGES ON SHARED PLATFORM: UBER INDIA VS DIDI CHUXING

One of the major outcomes of digitalization has been the advent of Platform based business models which are covered under the larger ambit of sharing economy. As resources in the digital age is being shared and focus of these new age companies are on building a new kind of business models, pricing becomes the key. Especially, service pricing and how the same will hold forth here in shared economy. The paper is an attempt to look at two contrast markets, China and India and to assess how the pricing is managed on shared platforms. For Didi Chuxing in China and Uber in India, the context of service pricing and how regulated versus unregulated markets operate. A conceptual framework at the end gives a possible direction to understand the dimension of service pricing in emerging markets.</jats:p

International Nosocomial Infection Control Consortium report, data summary of 50 countries for 2010-2015: Device-associated module

•We report INICC device-associated module data of 50 countries from 2010-2015.•We collected prospective data from 861,284 patients in 703 ICUs for 3,506,562 days.•DA-HAI rates and bacterial resistance were higher in the INICC ICUs than in CDC-NHSN's.•Device utilization ratio in the INICC ICUs was similar to CDC-NHSN's. Background: We report the results of International Nosocomial Infection Control Consortium (INICC) surveillance study from January 2010-December 2015 in 703 intensive care units (ICUs) in Latin America, Europe, Eastern Mediterranean, Southeast Asia, and Western Pacific. Methods: During the 6-year study period, using Centers for Disease Control and Prevention National Healthcare Safety Network (CDC-NHSN) definitions for device-associated health care-associated infection (DA-HAI), we collected prospective data from 861,284 patients hospitalized in INICC hospital ICUs for an aggregate of 3,506,562 days. Results: Although device use in INICC ICUs was similar to that reported from CDC-NHSN ICUs, DA-HAI rates were higher in the INICC ICUs: in the INICC medical-surgical ICUs, the pooled rate of central line-associated bloodstream infection, 4.1 per 1,000 central line-days, was nearly 5-fold higher than the 0.8 per 1,000 central line-days reported from comparable US ICUs, the overall rate of ventilator-associated pneumonia was also higher, 13.1 versus 0.9 per 1,000 ventilator-days, as was the rate of catheter-associated urinary tract infection, 5.07 versus 1.7 per 1,000 catheter-days. From blood cultures samples, frequencies of resistance of Pseudomonas isolates to amikacin (29.87% vs 10%) and to imipenem (44.3% vs 26.1%), and of Klebsiella pneumoniae isolates to ceftazidime (73.2% vs 28.8%) and to imipenem (43.27% vs 12.8%) were also higher in the INICC ICUs compared with CDC-NHSN ICUs. Conclusions: Although DA-HAIs in INICC ICU patients continue to be higher than the rates reported in CDC-NSHN ICUs representing the developed world, we have observed a significant trend toward the reduction of DA-HAI rates in INICC ICUs as shown in each international report. It is INICC's main goal to continue facilitating education, training, and basic and cost-effective tools and resources, such as standardized forms and an online platform, to tackle this problem effectively and systematically

International Nosocomial Infection Control Consortiu (INICC) report, data summary of 43 countries for 2007-2012. Device-associated module

We report the results of an International Nosocomial Infection Control Consortium (INICC) surveillance study from January 2007-December 2012 in 503 intensive care units (ICUs) in Latin America, Asia, Africa, and Europe. During the 6-year study using the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) U.S. National Healthcare Safety Network (NHSN) definitions for device-associated health care–associated infection (DA-HAI), we collected prospective data from 605,310 patients hospitalized in the INICC's ICUs for an aggregate of 3,338,396 days. Although device utilization in the INICC's ICUs was similar to that reported from ICUs in the U.S. in the CDC's NHSN, rates of device-associated nosocomial infection were higher in the ICUs of the INICC hospitals: the pooled rate of central line–associated bloodstream infection in the INICC's ICUs, 4.9 per 1,000 central line days, is nearly 5-fold higher than the 0.9 per 1,000 central line days reported from comparable U.S. ICUs. The overall rate of ventilator-associated pneumonia was also higher (16.8 vs 1.1 per 1,000 ventilator days) as was the rate of catheter-associated urinary tract infection (5.5 vs 1.3 per 1,000 catheter days). Frequencies of resistance of Pseudomonas isolates to amikacin (42.8% vs 10%) and imipenem (42.4% vs 26.1%) and Klebsiella pneumoniae isolates to ceftazidime (71.2% vs 28.8%) and imipenem (19.6% vs 12.8%) were also higher in the INICC's ICUs compared with the ICUs of the CDC's NHSN