MY-DENTITY/MY-NESS/SVATVA

Categorized research-works of Debaprasad-21

MY-DENTITY/MY-NESS/SVATVA

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# Debaprasad Bandyopadhyay *

^ দেবপ্রসাদ বন্দ্যোপাধ্যায় ^

ABSTRACT

What does it mean by the word “our”/”my-ness”/“my-dentity” or possedness(svatva) in the context of four Ls: Language, Labour, Land and Love ? The author of this paper has dealt with only two Ls: Language and Labour taking his cues from Raghunatha Siromoni and Karl Marx.  My-dentity  as a category does not depend on the exchange value as ascribed by the market economy, therefore the author has paraphrased “fit for use” (viniyogayogyata) as “use value” and it eradicates the self-other differences in the context of my-ness. The author is not talking about I-dentity or I-ness, but on my-dentity or my-ness, i.e., what “I” possesses or what belongs to “me”—my ownership, endowment, possessed-ness or rather entitlement . Thus this paper is a psychoanalytic shift from the individual ego to the possession of ego as imagined and symbolized. This paper starts with some problematic questions: Do “I” possesses something or something is imposed upon my I-dentity or as my “own” following certain rules of socio-cultural or politico-economic legitimacy? As a homo sapiens, except my supposed genetic endowment, do I have something as my “own”? Do I have my ownership of four Ls in the context or locus of this planet or universe? Then what is about the legal and market entitlement as proposed by Amartya Sen?  Without questioning the stipulated value ascribed to a currency note, Sen puts “etc.” at the beginning of the exchange process .This is the paradox of his framework as it leads to fallacy of infinite regress. The author elaborates his arguments by following age old dialogic forms. He concludes his paper by following Derrida and by introducing the concepts of Anti-Grammar, n-glossia, Bhasa-samavaya.

 (S)talker had anticipated the incidence of the secret moments of eco-enemy primitive accumulation and thus he acted with his theoretical tools before Singur-Nandigram incidence. He started with these two quotations from Karl Marx:

“From the standpoint of higher economic form of society, private ownership of the globe by single individuals will appear quite absurd as private ownership of one man by another. Even a whole society, a nation, or simultaneously existing societies taken together, are not the owners of the globe, its usufractuaries, and like bona partes familias, they must hand it down to succeeding generations in an improved condition.”–Karl Marx, 1894/1959: 776

“The person, who by virtue of the title of portion of the globe has become the proprietor of these natural objects will wrest these surplus-profit from functioning capital in the form of rent.” –Karl Marx, 1894/1959: 773

Then he switched over to the concept of svatva (possessedness)  as proposed by Kana Raghunatha. He argued in his padarthatatvanirupanam—

“ Another new category is possessedness (svatva).

Objection: That is nothing but being fit for use as one wishes.

Answer: Not precisely, for one may use food belonging to others.

Objector: One is not enjoined not to eat food belonging to others.

Raghunatha: You see, you must already understand possessedness in order understand such an injunction. Possessedness is a property that belongs to people when they receive gifts and that they lose when they give things away.”

To summarize, svatva as a category does not depend on the exchange value as ascribed by the market economy, therefore (s)talker was paraphrasing “fit for use” (viniyogayogyata) as “use value” and it eradicates the self-other differences in the context of my-ness.

He was then not talking about I-dentity or I-ness, but on my-dentity or my-ness, i.e., what “I” possesses or what are (being) belonged to me—my ownership, endowment, possessed-ness or rather entitlement or in other word, private property. Following navyanaiyayika term, one may call this category as svatva. Thus this project was a psychoanalytic shift from the individual ego to the possession of ego as imagined and symbolized within certain domain of order.

This project starts with some problematic questions:

§  Does “I” possess something or something is imposed upon my I-dentity or as my “own” by following certain rules of socio-cultural or politico-economic legitimacy?

§  As a homo sapiens, except my supposed genetic endowment, do I have something as my “own”? Do I have my ownership of four Ls: Land, Language, labour and Love in the context or locus of this planet or universe ?

Then what is about legal entitlement as proposed by Amartya Sen (1981: 1-2)? An entitlement relation applied to ownership connects one set of ownerships to another through certain rules of legitimacy. It is a recursive relation and process of connecting is repeated.”

Amartya Sen then cited an example of private ownership from the market economy and elaborated an exchange of commodity by using money-sign, which is mere a signifier that metaphysically makes unequal as equal and I really do not know the sufficient and necessary conditions behind such equation of exchange. Without questioning the stipulated value ascribed to a currency note, Sen put “etc.” at the beginning of the exchange process. The origin of entitlement starts with “etc.”, i.e. “ityadi” (iti+adi, iti means the “end of a process or state or an event”, on the other hand adi means the “origin”) is put at the “adi” or origin. This is the paradox of his framework as it leads to fallacy of infinite regress.

NEOLOGISMS:  my-dentity or my-ness, Anti-Grammar, n-glossia, Bhasa-samavaya

For detailed discussion, kindly follow hyperlinks (blue-colored titles):

·         2013. “Language: From I- Dentity to My-Dentity”. S. Imtiaz Hasnain, Sangeeta Bagga-Gupta and Shailendra Mohan Alternative Voices: (Re)searching Language, Culture, Identity eds.. Newcastle, UK: Cambridge Scholar publishing. (pp. 158-73) ISBN-10: 144384716X | ISBN-13: 978-1443847162  Download (.pdf)

·         2006. “স্বত্ব নিয়ে সমস্যার নিবেদন”. (Problems of Possession).Baromas, Vol XXVIII, October ’06. (pp. 217- 22) Reprinted in Interaction. Nov. ’09. (5-11)  Download (.pdf)

·         2006. “আমার বলে রইল না আর কিছু?” Sen, Ashok ed. Baromas. Vol. 28 (pp.90-5) RN 34830/78.  Download (.pdf)

·         2001. “Identity Confusion”. Frontier. Vol.34.No.17 (pp. 6-8). November 18-24, 2001. Kolkata.RN 16516/68.  Download (.pdf)