Abstract
This work traverses through how women are objectified and devalued in our society. As far as our present society is concerned, there are signs of women progression but under the light of which, there lies the shadowing discrimination and subjugation of women. Incidents of threat and rape culture rapidly approaching the women fate, across various places on our country have been reported with instances. In multiple literary works these ideas have been portrayed. This work also takes account of some mentioned ones to study and analyse the position of women not only in our society but also on our planet.
Key words: Marginalised, Body of a woman, Projectivized, Object of desire, Humanity.
Woman as an object
In an essay titled ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’ (1975), Laura Mulvey pointed out:
“An idea of woman stands as lynch pin to the system: it is her lack that produces the phallus as a symbolic presence, it is her desire too make good the lack that the phallus signifies.”
It is quite fair to identify the quoted lines in the present context of the collection of the societal haemorrhage that shook the entire globe of the R.G Kar Medical College. It is presented as the culmination of developments in feminist activism, a critique of culture informed by semiotics, post structuralists, Marxists, psycho-analysts, and avant-garde poetics from a perspective of an activist and a theoretically engaged, practicing filmmaker.
The incident of an on-duty woman being raped and murdered to death at the Medical College has a lot to do with the ‘culture’. By Culture, I refer to, “Culture is the expression of class conflict and social relations that are structured by and through power relations.”
Cultural subduction
Marxism observes culture as the prevention to something from being seen or noticed of the actual existing social and economic conditions where cultural artefacts hide exploitative labour and ideology (a system of representations) convinces people that everything is alright. We see how the Abhaya Incident, where a female practicing doctor was brutally assaulted by a bunch of hoodlums, is constantly being suppressed in the higher degree of the society starting from the courts to the local police officers. The vague and sudden abuse of the 31-year-old woman on duty by the authorities is a prominent example of how power-relation works. State power is maintained through Repressive State Apparatuses (RSAs) as proposed by Louis Althusser, where the state uses the police, the army, law, courts and prisons as tools to suppress the statesmen. Here also the police, the army, law courts and prisons have operated through actual or threats of coercive force/ violence. The CBI, Supreme Court all are working with no conclusion of the above-mentioned situation which gives the understanding of the kind of suppression women go through time and again. We can relate to the ideological abuse that is being going on through the medias, newspapers which is termed as Ideological State Apparatuses (ISAs) by Louis Althusser which refers “ideology” is something that makes the common mass believe that torture or oppression is normal, which is said to be present in form of family, schools and such other institutions.
A Lacanian analysis
Women are constantly being made as an object of desire to and from every corner of the society. Women in workplace feel extremely uncomfortable for being that voyeuristic scenario. As the Lacanian psycho-analysis goes, a child gets aware of his/her genitals at the phallic stage only after oral and anal stage. The idea of Scopophilia is also marked by the Lacanian concept of mirror stage where the child recognizes itself in the mirror-first as a part, then as a whole; projecting itself as a complete self. The gaze of a child can be compared to the gaze of a spectator (male gaze) to derive the complete pleasure (identifying the self with the object of desire). Scopophilia henceforth is ordered by an active male and passive female division of labour that is embedded in almost every structure of male dominated society.
Woman on screen
Mulvey posits that the spectatorial pleasure is controlled by the male fantasy that limits woman’s agency. The spectacle which contains the erotic libidinal desire of the male characters is controlled by the male protagonist who is the bearer of the look. He acts as a ‘screen surrogate’ and he receives the desire of the audience and release it behind the screen into the darkness. The cinematic space is the three-dimensional space where the male protagonist is free to command and the time and space is recreated with an ‘Illusion of Depth/Depth of Field’ technique mostly used in Realist Paintings. The woman in real life especially in her ‘O’ther self gets to enter this cinematic (workplace) world where the voyeuristic gaze consumes her. The woman thus enters the Symbolic order by changing her sexual order. Thus, the female characters become the ‘Narrative.’ When this fetishistic Scopophilia (spectacle) becomes voyeuristic (the dangerous narrative) women has a large part to play in that time and space that previously she had not.
A Freudian discourse
The process of deriving pleasure is the ego libido and it is a mechanism that makes our life meaningful that is why the desire of meaning making continues. While, the formation of ego is a continual process where the Object, (here the victim) becomes the Subject, (herself). The idea of ego libido is estimated by the idea of Freud (mostly in his three essays) where it refers to the energy associated with the ego, which is concerned with reality and self-preservation. It equates the demands of the ‘id’ (instinctual desires) and the ‘super ego’ (that solidifies our ‘primitive ego’ recurring moral values). In the context of a violent crime in one of the most noted Medical College in Kolkata, we could analyse how the active male’s ego might have failed to regulate aggressive and sexual impulses, leading to a violent expression of libido. This reflects an inability to balance primal urges with societal norms and ethical considerations. Additionally, the victim’s experience highlights the profound impact of such violations on the psyche, potentially leading to trauma that affects the ego’s ability to function healthily. The societal response to the case also plays a role, as cultural attitudes toward consent and sexual violence shape the collective ego of the community, influencing how such incidents are perceived and addressed. Understanding these dynamics can shed light on the psychological underpinnings of both the crime and the societal reactions surrounding it. Hence, this idea of Freud is a self-preservative process where the ‘Self’ (ever evasive) is always in a want to become the ‘Other’ (the desire), preserving the Original Self.
Linkage with the current Incident
According to the media the news of the aforementioned incident repeatedly shows us the infidelity of the master which is the marker of modernity, progression, and emancipation of the Derivative Discourse: ‘a framework used to understand the development of nationalism in post-colonial societies’, based on which the colonial past of the societies complicates the process of nationalism’s evolution. According to the media she became aware of the corruptions that were going on at the mentioned college everyday and how she wanted to protest. It was found to be known (not completely as an evidence) that the practicing doctor had to go through threats, demolition, sexual assault and sadomasochism that reported night. Partha Chatterjee in his book ‘Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World: A Derivative Discourse’ said:
Nationalism which marks the modernity of Bengal vis-à-vis the nation is a derivative discourse because the spirit of nationalism is something we have learned from the Western Epistemology.
The practicing doctor who tried to stop the ongoing inhumanities such as peddling of drugs, selling of illegal medicinal goods, etc. tried to use the body of language of the master to fight back which reminds the conversation of Caliban to Miranda in The Tempest by William Shakespeare:
“Now I know your language and I know how to curse you.”
When the doctor showed the language of courage against the dark deeds of the hoodlums, they settled the former for good without any conclusive evidence. Unfortunately, the idea of victory of a woman remained unfulfilled. The complaint of this was lodged to the higher authorities including High Court and Supreme Court where the Supreme Court acts as the ‘Logos’ (the centre) where all the questions stop. (Fe)male, as the name suggest is seen from a male perspective and just as an entertainment for the men which Rousseau also commented. This is why women are still now being seen as a mere ‘Body’, a non-living thing. Neither the Courts nor the authorities are standing up for that physical body that is being gazed at. The increasing act of violence every day is the outcome of the loosely bound justice system where it takes almost a decade to conclude. The ‘Logos’ here acts ironically where it should work like God who supposed to provide justice but in reality, it is just extending dates.
Concluding Remarks
So, the idea of justice does not go parallelly with the idea of woman. Seeing through various lenses we can come to conclusion that the long there is the lack of moral education to uplift the standard of womanhood the long there would be such cases creating anxiety, doubt, anarchy among the people. The educated people should come forth then and to stand side by side educating the so called an educated persons with the tone underpinned with friendliness (not as a master rather as a friend) about what the position of women should be in our society and how we should treat them throughout our life.
Works Cited
- Althusser,L.(1970).Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses:Notes Towards an Investigation.Paris: La Pensée.Print.
- Chatterjee,P.(1993).Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World: A Derivative Discourse?: University of Minnesota.
- Freud,S.(1905).Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality.Print.
- Lacan,J.(1936,1949).The Mirror Stage as Formative of the I.Print.
- Mulvey,L.(1975).Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.Print.
- Nayar,Pramod K.( 2015).An Introduction to Cultural Studies.New Delhi: Viva Books Private Limited .
- Rousseau,Jean J.(1979).Emile, Or Treatise on Education.Trans. Allan Bloom. New York: Basic Books.
- Shakespeare,W.(2014).The Tempest.New Delhi: Bloomsbury.
- https://ebooks.inflibnet.ac.in./soc15/chapter/partha-chatterji-on-derivative-nationalism.
