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Reference: Basu Thakur. (2015). Postcolonial Theory and Avatar. Pre-Peer Paper Review for the Postcolonial Application Paper 1: Collecting Passages for the Theoretical Categories of

Reference:
• Basu Thakur. (2015). Postcolonial
Theory and Avatar.

Pre-Peer Paper Review for the Postcolonial Application Paper 1: Collecting Passages for the Theoretical Categories of Subjection Production, Knowledge Production, and othering the Other.

While you exercise your investigative viewing and attentive listening skills for your selected Postcolonial Film, you will want to have some key features of the theoretical categories in mind. While Basu Thakur is not explicit in providing his definitions of his theoretical categories, he  does give a sense of what we should be looking for in the following description: "Postcolonial theory, whether employed to analyze a film or a short story, must remain acutely aware of the mechanism of subject-production, knowledge making, and the framing of otherness through foreclosure, disavowal, and repression" (Basu Thakur, 161; emphasis mine). Now, accumulating a list of passages for each of these theoretical categories serves a number of helpful purposes:

1) From your selected passages, you can formulate your own definitions of what you believe each theoretical category means.

2) You can use your definitions as a basis for locating other key features from passages which fit under each category.

3) You can use the key words and phrases in the selected passages to clarify, to explain, and to give dimensionality to your definition.

4) You can use the key words and phrases of the passages in order to fit the theoretical category to a particular scene in your selected film.

5) You can better explain how the film creates its own meaning through the key words and phrases of the selected passages.

6) You can have a large portion of your paper prepared through organized and structured secondary research.

Here is an example of the process for Knowledge Production with the following passage:

"The other is the heterogeneous, risky, vernacular dispensation of the Other that remains unrecuperable in and defiant of the West's cognitive-nominative maps" (Basu Thakur, 38; emphasis mine).

Now, I render the meaning of the key phrase 'cognitive-nominative maps' as the West's process of thinking, naming, and recording/establishing fact with the help of my dictionary and some imaginative play with the meanings of words. I determine this key phrase as part of knowledge production and then place it in the theoretical category as a 'mechanism' of power of the West over the non-West. However, there are some portions of the passage which also need some ferreting out. The use of the big 'Other' and the little 'other' in the passage. Basu Thakur describes the big 'Other' as "representing the symbolic identity of the native constituted as different from the West" (i.e.  the tame) and the little 'other' "which represents all that is enigmatic, radical, and unsymbolizable in the non-West" (i.e. the wild) and then concludes this implied analogy with the governing principle of "[t]he Other is an attempt to domesticate otherness" or to make it familiar or homely (Basu Thakur, 38).

Therefore, the two key features of 'cognitive-nominative maps' and 'domesticat[ion]'  can be placed under the theoretical category Knowledge Production and may be used as part of my definition. An example of my working definition of Knowledge Production might be: The West's process of creating 'cognitive-nominative maps' for the purpose of 'domesticating' the non-West. By using the words 'process' and 'purpose', I try to capture what I believe Basu Thakur means by 'mechanism' in the descriptive phrase above. Now, I have a pretty good definition with some key features to apply to scenes from my film. However, the fitting of the key features to the scene may not be perfect, so I need to keep looking so that I have a store of passages to choose from so that I might make the best fit.

Should you have difficulty getting started, you can look to the index of our text, Postcolonial Theory and Avatar, under the subjects of knowledge-production, Other, and subject-production for how and where the terms are used: context and page numbers.

For our Pre-Peer Review, please have at least Three Passages for each theoretical categoryand a working definition for each. Please print out four copies of your prepared document. You will give one copy to each member of your group and one copy to me. It is very helpful for your group and for you if you italicize and bold your key words and phrases in your passages. I also would like to see your thinking process which I model for you above. Remember that the more you apply yourself to this task the better your discussion in your paper will be, so I encourage you all to give it your best effort.

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