Marxism and Ecocriticism

This Blog-post is a response to the thinking activity task on Four Theories - Marxism, Feminism, Ecocriticism, and Queer Theory given by our professor Dr.Dilip Barad Sir.

Marxism: 

The theory of Marxism is coined by German philosopher and thinker Karl Marx. The theory enriches the communal harmony of poor people. But the concern of such kind of theory is not just limited to study in the light of poor people but it strongly suggests the role of politics also. It is a critical study of the working class and their rights especially reflecting the economic relationship between master and worker. Some points are noticed under this theory by Karl Marx and his fellow-thinker Friedrich Engels:

• In the Marxist literary analysis, the evolving history of humankind, its social groupings and interrelations, its institutions, and of its ways of thinking are largely determined by the changing mode of its “material production”— that is, of its overall economic organization for producing and distributing material goods.
• Changes in the fundamental mode of material production affect changes in the class structure of a society, established in each era dominant and subordinate classes that engage in a struggle for economic, political, and social advantage.
• Human consciousness is constituted by an ideology that is, the beliefs, values, and ways of thinking and feeling through which human beings perceive, and by recourse to which they explain, what they take to be reality.

Applying Marxist theory :

Laadla Movie:

Laadla (Beloved Son) movie is a 1994 Hindi-language Bollywood film starring Anil Kapoor and Shridevi, directed by Raj Kanwar. The protagonist of the film Raj Verma urf Raju saved a textile mill owner Laxminarayan Jetley who offers him a job in his factory run by his ambitious adopted daughter, Sheetal. Because of her strong and angry nature toward workers and other business members, she grows enemies around her. The Capitalist idea is growing up when she decided who will be the next Union Leader of the factory. Raju raises his voice against the authority in the favor of the workers and their good treatment. But as the Capitalist world do they command them to do as per their instruction which should be followed by every worker.

Another thing that the capitalist ideology thinks that how to gain more profit in less time, in the movie. Sheetal brings the Machine which works like 400 workers at the time.

Sumed up:

The capitalist world only thinks about how to gain profit while Marxism comes up with Communism which neither chooses profit nor thinks about only the economic condition in the country. Is this possible to give up the profits that the corporate world gains to sustain economic stability? Probably not. Because the corporate world itself becomes only the KING of the company and the upcoming generation, not the hardworking people even if they just only get what they did work physically. The KING is work and won through MIND not BODY. 

Ecocriticism: 

The theory of Ecocriticism explore the study of the relationship between literature and the physical environment. . As M.H.Abrahms mentioned,

Ecocriticism was a term coined in the late 1970s by combining “criticism” with a shortened form of “ecology”—the science that investigates the interrelations of all forms of plant and animal life with each other and with their physical habitats. As an ethnologist and comparative literature scholar, Meeker helped to pioneer the critical discussion of ecocriticism in what he called “literary ecologies.” Following Meeker, Rueckert 1996 (first published 1978) actually coined the term “ecocriticism,” arguing for a way “to find the grounds upon which the two communities—the human, the natural—can coexist, cooperate, and flourish in the biosphere” (Oxfordbibliographies)

Some claims noted under this theory:

• The reigning religions and philosophies of Western civilization are deeply anthropocentric
• Prominent in ecocriticism is a critique of binaries such as man/nature or culture/nature, viewed as mutually exclusive oppositions.
• The extension of “green reading” (that is, analysis of the implications of a text for environmental concerns and toward political action) to all literary genres
• The analysis of the differences in attitudes toward the environment that are attributable to a writer’s race, ethnicity, social class, and gender. Analysis of the role attributed to women in fantasies of the natural environment by male authors, as well as the study of specifically feminine conceptions of the environment in the neglected nature writings by female authors
• A growing interest in the animistic religions of so-called “primitive” cultures, as well as in Hindu, Buddhist, and other religions and civilizations that lack the Western opposition between humanity and nature

As further M.H.Abrahms mentioned to relation with literature, is divided into four areas:

The 'outdoor environment' is a series of adjoining and overlapping areas which move gradually from nature to culture, along the following lines: 

• Area one: 'the wilderness' (e.g. deserts, oceans, uninhabited continents) (affected by global warming.(American transcendentalist writing of the nineteenth century was predominantly interested)  (in mountain ranges, prairies, colossal cataracts, and space itself)
• Area two: 'the scenic sublime' (e.g. forests, lakes, mountains, cliffs, waterfalls) Wordsworth's The Prelude (1805
• Area three: 'the countryside' (e.g. hills, fields, woods) James Thomson's The Seasons (1730), Thomas Gray's 'Elegy in a Country Churchyard' (1751), and William Cowper's The Task (1785)
• Area four: 'the domestic picturesque' (e.g. parks, gardens, lanes) 

Here are some of my views regarding this concern: 

Imagine, if there is a turning point where animals live with materialistic things and humans live with only nature then what happens? We are living in a safe zone? What we are doing with health and the environment? Is this ok to ask only humans about the concern of nature saving? Very big NO. The putters every time give people only advice to save the environment but they do not actually do. The laymen use such things and command like they have actual concern towards nature but the behind scenes the hypocrisy we can say is only gaining the many. Here Marx's capitalism also can be noted. On the other hand, we have the people like Dashrath Manjhi known as Mountain Man.  When his wife died in 1959 due to injury caused by falling from a mountain and due to the mountain he was not able to reach the hospital in time, he decided to carve a path of 110 m long (360 ft), 9.1 m (30 ft) wide and 7.7 m (25 ft) deep through a ridge of hills using only a hammer and a chisel.

Culture and nature and vice versa also took an important part in this theory. India is a religious country in World Wide. The majority believe that rivers as goddesses and mountains as gods and pollute the river in the name of God by worshiping them.