The Psychology of Silence – The story of Bharat Debaprasad Bandyopadhyay দেবপ্রসাদ বন্দ্যোপাধ্যায়

diaforia n°5:
Debaprasad Bandyopadhyay
By diaforia
Debaprasad Bandyopadhyay (Kolkata, West Bengal, India) is the guest of the new issue
of diaforia (you can download the cartilage HERE). His The Psychology of Silence – The
story of Bharat we are happy to publish inside diaforia is a summarized and translated
version of a Bangla pseudo-novel, initially published in Kalodhvani, [ed. Prasanta
Chatterji] 13:1, October 2005. It was also spread through John Cage’s mailing list Silence
in September 2006. You can read the beginning of the novel on the cartilage whereas you
may download Bharat’s FULL story HERE. Like Debaprasad says “It could be defined
as a Silence-fiction narrative”.
Debaprasad Bandyopadhyay is a linguist by training who obtained a Ph.D in 1996 and
has been recently promoted to Assistant Professor after an extensive period as a Junior
Lecturer (1999-2011). He’s quite a maverick figure within the academic realm whose
tribes and intellectual clans he prefers to shun, thus refusing to be part of its social
structure. He aspires to share wisdom and not mere knowledge despite of his many
published articles.
An extended interview with the writer about his novel will be upped on this blog soon.
Technical info:
150 copies, dimensions: 14×32 cm, printed on 140 gr. (ane)Kanta paper.
diaforia #5
Debaprasad Bandyopadhyay (Kolkata, West Bengal, India) è l’ospite del nuovo numero
di diaforia (pdf della cartilagine scaricabile QUI). Il suo racconto La Psicologia del
Silenzio – La storia di Bharat che siamo felici di pubblicare su diaforia è una versione
riassunta e tradotta di un racconto Bangla, inizialmente pubblicato in Kalodhvani, [ed.
Prasanta Chatterji] 13:1, nell’Ottobre 2005. È stata inoltre diffusa attraverso la mailing
list di John Cage Silence nel Settembre 2006. Nella cartilagine potrete trovare l’inizio del
racconto la cui versione COMPLETA può essere scaricata QUI. Come dice Debaprasad
“Si potrebbe definire come un racconto di Silence-fiction”.
Linguista autodidatta, dopo aver conseguito il dottorato nel 1996 Debaprasad
Bandyopadhyay è da poco stato promosso al rango di Assistente dopo un’intesa attività di
Junior Lecturer (1999-2011). Figura atipica nell’universo accademico di cui rifugge i clan
e i circoli di intellettuali, ha al suo attivo diverse pubblicazioni il cui ambizioso scopo
però vorrebbe essere quello di diffondere saggezza più che semplice conoscenza.
A breve seguirà su questo blog un’estesa intervista allo scrittore intorno al suo racconto.
Caratteristiche tecniche:
150 copie, dimensioni: 14×32 cm, stampate su carta 140 gr., tipo (ane)Kanta.
Questo articolo è stato inserito il martedì, 26 luglio 2011 alle 16:52 and tagged with
cartilagine, silence e pubblicato in Linguistica. You can follow any responses to this
entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
Debaprasad Bandyopadhyay
The Psychology of
Silence
The story of Bharat
(Summarized and translated version of a Bangla pseudo-novel, published in
Kalodhvani, [ed. Prasanta Chatterji] 13:1, October, 2005)
diaforia July 2011

Index
Canto I 1
I.1 Investigation into the docile body of Bharat . . . . . . . . . . 1
I.2 Bharat's Personal History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
I.3 The last medical intervention . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Canto II Transitional phase: when Purana reappeared 5
Canto III A new searching 7
III.1 Mitra's searchings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
III.2 Bharat's diary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Canto IV Remedy? 11
IV.1 The ultimate diagnosis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
IV.2 The ultimate remedy? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

Canto I
I.1 Investigation into the docile body of Bharat
What happens to you Bharat? Why are you not speaking? Pancajani was
feeling the heat of nuclear-radiation when the SPET was going on; an isotope
was localized in the left side of Bharat's brain by inserting a catheter to his
vein to nd out the causes behind the dumbness of Bharat.
Bharat was not speaking . . . Several expensive diagnostic procedures
were executed. When Bharat initially stopped speaking, Pancajani took him
to an ENT-specialist. It was diagnosed as Aphonia. However the Laryn-
goscopy test failed to detect the actual cause behind Bharat's non-speaking.
Therefore, ENT-specialist referred him to a neurologist.
The physician stroke through the earlier diagnosis and suggested a pos-
sibility for Spasmodic Disphonia or, he thought, it might be a case of Global
Aphasia. There might be something unusual in Bharat's left hemisphere,
especially in the Broca's Area: a supposed zone in the frontal lobe, which
is responsible for our speaking. The neurologist suggested a series of tests:
Cerebral Angiography, Electroencephalogram (EEG), CT Scan of the head,
MRI of the head, Skull X-ray etc . . . Nothing was \abnormal", but, in the
meantime, Bharat's body was ruptured, scortched, blooded . . .
Doctor's conjecture was then that it was a case of Cerebral Motor Apha-
sia. He put an acronym under his diagnosis: AUO (Aphasia of Unknown
Origin). Health Care Provider was searching for origin { causes and e ect,
e ect and cause, cause and e ect.
He initially prescribed a medicine: Pentoxyphylin; afterwards it was sup-
plemented by Amphetamine { the remedies for non-speaking! Though, to
the doctor, the etiology of Bharat's non-speaking was still unknown.
2
After PET (Positron Emission Tomography), now it is a time for Single
Photon Emmission Computed Tomography (SPECT or less commonly known
as SPET). That test discovered a peculiar phenomenon: quite contrary to
the determination of earlier diagnosis, though there was an \intense neural
activity" in the frontal lobe of Bharat's brain, the parietal lobe was totally
inactive.
What would be the next step for Pancajani for curing his husband,
Bharat? The limit of Medical Insurance was exhausted; the expensive tests
penetrated the docile body of Bharat. Bharat, from now on, like Ulysses,
could not return to his initial phase, thanks to the violent medical tests.
Pancajani was feeling the su ocating warmth of nuclear bombs at the
moment of medical nuclear tests on the blooded body of Bharat.
Bharat was then referred to a neuro-psychiatrist. He suggested a blood-
test to judge the level of lithium and sodium in Bharat's blood though noth-
ing was \abnormal" in his blood. His prescribed medicines then were: Amit-
ryptilin and Alprazolam SR.
Despite such tests and regular intakes of di erent experimental medicines,
Bharat did not return to the non-silent zone of speaking! Bharat is now
su ering from DOMP. What is that?
I.2 Bharat's Personal History
At the moment of intervention of a neuro-psychiatrist, Bharat was just like
a dead body { he was neither speaking nor moving.
The neuro-psychiatrist was curious about Bharat's personal life, child-
hood con guration, family history, etcetera, though he, as a busy physician,
did not have enough time to listen to Bharat's story from his peer group
and on the other hand, Bharat's friends did not have time also as they had
already rejected him { not for his non-speaking, but for his reduced \market-
value".
Bharat, though an ordinary junior lecturer in Linguistics (for the period
of 18 years) in an international academic institute, was once invited to attend
a prestigious non-residential fellowship to execute a book-project on Chom-
I.2 Bharat's Personal History 3
skian hypothesis on linguistic creativity and his salary was reduced for some
unknown reasons. Dejected Bharat was merged with huge debt as he lost
almost hundred thousand Indian currencies for transporting his family from
one place to another.
From then on, friends were avoiding Bharat and he begun to su ering
from persecutory paranoia as he imagined a big conspiracy around him.
Bharat was a regular writer in a political weekly, where he raised his voice
against statist, religious or economic discrimination and those papers were
referred in the parliament. According to Bharat's fantastic imagination, it
were those political writings that were responsible for his degradation in that
governmental institute. Bharat, as Pancajani reiterated it to the doctor, then
questioned Pancajani, \How could it be possible Jani, my salary is reduced
when I'm awarded?"
The neuro-psychiatrist found the following facts about Bharat from his
family:
1. Pertussis (whooping cough) at the age of 2
2. Ear-wax blockage at the age of of 6 and Otitis Media (an in
amma-
tion/infection of the middle ear) at the age of 26
The physician tried to relate these organic failures { throat and ear prob-
lems { with Bharat's silence. He found the fact that Bharat was su ering
from wax blockage at that time, when he was living beside a ball press factory
that used to emit almost 100 db per pulse. All the State apparatuses (Local
Municipality, Pollution Control Board, Directorate of Factories, Department
of Health Hazards, etc) did not pay any heed to Bharat's appeal to stop that
noise and Bharat had lost his faith in welfare state.
Moreover, there was a religious organization of vaisnavas (akhra) beside
the Bharat's
at. They're singing kirtanas (a type of dramatic singing in
Bengal) through 24 hrs. In certain occassions, they're using 11 loudspeakers
to spread their musical messages. Therefore, Bharat and Pancajani used to
wear ear-plugs to avoid two types of unwanted noises. And it was also found
in his family history that his grandpa had become dumb and was lost in the
crowd after the great Indian partition in 1947.
The Health Care Provider tried to relate all these incidences to Bharat's
\disease" by all his faith in deterministic cause and e ect theory. His ques-
4
tion was: is it an organic failure or a functional failure?
However, he also cut a sorry gure in curing Bharat. Pancajani was
crying and blaming Bharat for playing a role of a malingering silent man.
How could Pancajani run the family?
I.3 The last medical intervention
The concluding diagnosis of the neuro-psychiatrist was Anxiety Neurosis.
Bharat was su ering from anxiety, therefore Bharat was not speaking { and
it's a case of repression. He referred Bharat to a psychoanalyst. Psychoana-
lyst was frustrated with Bharat's non-speaking as it was impossible for her to
execute behavioral therapy without any response from a non-speaking person.
Whatever may be the disease's name, Bharat's condition was not im-
proved but it was worst than ever. Lastly, when Mitra, a non-practicing
anti-psychiatrist and a friend of Bharat, came to Pancajani's home, rst
word he pronounced was an acronym, DOMP: Diseases of Medical Progress
{ Bharat's body was ruptured by the repeated medical interventions and
Mitra said, \I am now unable to communicate with Bharat as he is living
within silence. How did it start?"
\It's a long story, Mitra. He was totally alienated with his academic
institute. He was not doing anything according to the demands of the aca-
demic market, e.g., he is not developing a speaking-machine as requested by
his institute. He had even refused to go to foreign countries. He wanted to
prove that a new theoretical work { a paradigm shift { could also be possible
in without being stamped by a foreign institute. He is a fool { he projected
himself as a third world local subaltern academician with his own's voice.
He was not following any model-theoretic approach to his work; instead, he
was sabotaging the existing model. He was not a part of any data-collecting
academic team also. He was spoiling his time by writing in his mother tongue
in non-referred magazines. He had no connections with local political par-
ties as he hated patron-client shoe-licking relationship . . . How could he get
promotion?"
\Yes, as a friend of Bharat, I know all these facts. However, please tell
me Pancajani, the moment, from which he started his non-speaking . . . ",
said Mitra.
Canto II
Transitional phase: when
Purana reappeared
Bharat was sitting in front of a TV. He was watching \Animal Planet" { a
lioness was attacking a pregnant deer. She jumped and grasped her. The
TV screen was full with blood.
Bharat stopped speaking { an absolute \pathological" silence . . . He was
silent as if he was a corpse.
Bharata the Matter - A zombie in the Jambu-island
Once upon a time, there was a king in the island called Jambu. He was
Bharata, son of Risabhadeva. Being aggravated by his family and kingdom,
he shunned o all the bondages and went to jungle for contemplation. One
day, when he was meditating, a pregnant deer jumped into his lap to pro-
tect herself from the attacking lioness. And she died by giving birth to a child.
Bharata had begun to rear that child. That deer was his everything {
sage Bharata had become a deer-fetish. And the king-turned-sage Bharata,
as it was told by the Purana, in the next birth, would become a deer.
During his deer-life, Bharata practiced sexual austerity and cultivated
knowledge-system and in the next birth, he would become a Brahmin. How-
ever, he shunned o ritualistic practices as well as all types of daily per-
formances including interactive acts { thus he had achieved complete rei ca-
tion. For his complete \transcendental" silence, he was famed as Jarabharata
(Bharata the Matter). However, Purana told us, Bharata was a very know-
6 Transitional phase: when Purana reappeared
ledgeable person.
One day, the king Rohu, sitting in a palanquin, was passing through
Bharata's hamlet and wanted to replace one of his tired palanquin-bearers.
He got Bharata and engaged him in bearing the palanquin. Bharat was un-
able to carry the palanquin as he was obese (thanks to his non-activity) as
well as a zombie. The king Rohu was angry and rebuked Bharata. Bharata
then initiated an epistemological discourse with the king regarding the status
of master and servant.
In this non-puranik time, Bharata had become Bharat, though a thinking-
person, he was told by his authority to build up archive or to act as a surveyor
{ that is the \real" work of so-called third world local subaltern academi-
cians. They cannot contribute their epistemological voices in the realm of
the \Theory" . . . Bharat had become dumb.
Bharata the Matter had become reincarnated Bharat in kaliyuga . . .
Diachronic facts reappear in a genealogical synchrony . . . This country,
Bhaarat1, now follows the name of Bharata { it was named after him.
1India
Canto III
A new searching
III.1 Mitra's searchings
Mitra, a former anti-psychiatrist-(a la Laing)-turned Lacanian psychoanalyst,
was searching Bharat's diary, threadbare notes and even the search history
and favorite items in the internet account of Bharat. And he found aston-
ishing facts: Bharat collected large material on silence from the internet. He
put asterisk marks on the Virginia University site on silence especially the
celebration of the day of silence; he also gathered information about the use
of the phrase \conspiracy of silence" by Marx and Engels from the Marxist
Archive. He referred to the Commission for Historical Clari cation and its
subsequent the Memory of Silence Document of Guatemala. Was he \inter-
nationalizing" his individual silence?
As reported by frustrated Pancajani, in the phase of gradual inclination
towards silence and when Bharat was disturbed by the local real estate devel-
opers as well as local party members, he was then interested in silent music.
Apart from listening to Rabindrasangit or Tagore's songs and Indian classical
songs, he was also interested in John Cage, the No-Music of Dieter Schnebel
and Gerd Zacher. He was collecting the minimalist white paintings of Robert
Ryman and Robert Rauschenberg. Perhaps, he was su ocated with his dis-
cipline { linguistics, a discipline on visible speaking only. Bharat's di erent
scrap notes had revealed his claustrophobic existence within the mainstream
linguistics.
8 A new searching
III.2 Bharat's diary
(These notes were re-represented by Mitra in so-called \rational" language
and in chronological order for the therapeutic convenience)
My father was teaching me grammars of my mother tongue, Sanskrit
and English in my school days, I had seen the blooded body of language.
My language-body was ruptured by the fragmentary, procedural, and
prescriptive rules of the grammar. If any Homo Sapiens can create
in nite sets of sentences out of nite sets of words, why should we teach
grammar? Is it for the \sale"-bration of a standard language controlled
by the language-managers, language-police, and language-judges?
They are searching authentic meaning { they are etymologist; they are
creating deterministic genealogy of arbitrary signs { they are philolo-
gists. I had to cram all these trashes { phonetic laws, etc. Is it Linguis-
tics as proposed by Saussure and Chomsky? I am getting the obnoxious
smell of stale words from my University's Linguistic Department.
I am reading Chomsky now. He negated the behavioral interpretation
of language acquisition, but we are living within the prison/black box
of behavioral control. I wish to ask some questions to Chomsky. From
where does the ideal creative speaking subject speak? Where is the
locus of ideal speaking subject? What about the individual history
of such ideal speaking subject? Does the outside in
uence in the for-
mation of the inside Language Acquisition Device? What happens to
transcendental Cogito (as postulated in Cartesian Linguistics), when
it is subjected to the outside sociality? (Here I am inclining towards
Psychoanalysis { to the construct of \psyche" rather than that of cog-
ito as I am emphasizing on the society-psyche interface). The basic
question is: what are the basic di erences between the constructs like
psyche or Cartesian \Cogito"? The transcendental Cogito, as it is con-
structed in Chomskian linguistics, cannot escape internalization of the
\violent outside"1. The alchemy of inside and outside is crucial at the
moment of constructing creative speaking subject. The Language Ac-
quisition Device, the constructed inside, may or may not be crippled
1In the context of ecological entitlement, scarcity of natural resources and the subse-
quent primitive accumulation of it, we all are competitors instead of comrades; we are
trying to grasp the resources so that others might not able to get it. This is the source
of others' violence. Or, it is better to quote Freud here: \Su ering comes from three
quarters: from our own body; from the outer world, which can rage against us with the
most powerful and pitiless forces of destruction; and nally from our own relations with
other men." Freud (1930 : 28) [Debaprasad Bandyopadhyay]
III.2 Bharat's diary 9
by the outside sociality. However, Chomsky did not bother to consider
the in
uence of the outside at the moment of constructing and rep-
resenting the ideal creative inside. [Mitra thought that Bharat might
be exemplifying/posing himself as an instance for his anti-Chomskian
hypothesis: \Crippled Creativity"]
Linguistics is a meta-speaking on speaking { meta-symbolic order on
the symbolic order. At the moment of speaking, I do not need to
know the constitutive algorithmic principles of meta-symbolic order
that was inserted into our super-ego as Language-managers/-judges/-
police. Silence is an-other in this meta-symbolic order. I want to reject
this order of control. I am tired of the speaking game. [Mitra got the
clue for his diagnosis from this word: \reject"]
My institute gives me a work to do: Computational Linguistics. Com-
puter should speak as if s/he is a human being. Linguistic data must be
tted according the dictums of available software algorithm. Whatever
may be the human linguistic order of things (either being an n-nary
system or a system following some procedural or non-algorithmic rule
instead of a constitutive rule), it must follow the available binary pro-
gram. In addition, when the program is \fully" executed, computer
pretends as if s/he is a market (wo)man: s/he can repeat/translate
stereotypical sentences etc. Could anyone prove the following equa-
tion: speaking subject = f (binary machine) or viceversa? Perceiving
body as a machine is a violence.
Thanks to John Cage, I got a silent zone for my future academic per-
formances. I am coining a term, silenceme (like phoneme, morpheme,
lexeme . . . ) { nothing can be called as silence, but there is silence,
our chosen silence . . . However, there is no absolute transcendental
silence. Nevertheless, who will hear this in the disciplinary technology
of meta-symbolic order?
When, in Linguistics, intonation pattern of speech is attested by ma-
chine (not by using trained ears of the musician, who can make notation
of music as well as speech) by surveying a sample population in a lab-
state, a crucial variable of that particular community is totally ignored.
That is their cultural audio-exposure to the, as Cage called them, un-
intended sounds or non-discursive sonorities (that is, the noises, music,
and rhythm of the habitat or the non-discursive sounds in which the
particular population inhabits). It is not possible to gauge the intona-
tion pattern of a particular speeching community without noticing this
10 A new searching
context-speci city of unintended sounds/non-discursive sonorities.
Now, non-coercive dialogue without any manipulation is totally impos-
sible. What can I do? Academic interactions are also impossible in the
age of \specialists". It is better time for me as I'm reading poems on
silence by Indian subaltern scholars of the middle ages: Kabir (15 C)
and Dadu (17 C). Apart from Sartre, Wittgenstein, Derrida, I am now
also going through some indigenous works on silence.
I still remember the rst line of the song sung by a Baul in a lo-
cal train, \When silence would swallow non-silence . . . ". The song
was composed by an illiterate person Lalon (a saint/baul, 19th. C.
Bengal). [Mitra noted Bharat's reading list; he was referring to S.N.
Ganguly's Culture, Communication and Silence (Philosophy and Phe-
nomenological Research, XXIX: 2. 1968), Shefali Moitra's Feminist
thought, Androcentrism, Communication and Objectivity (2002) and
Kalidas Bhattacharya-Shefali Moitra correspondences on silence]
Canto IV
Remedy?
IV.1 The ultimate diagnosis
Let me tell you something about Mitra. After reading Laing, he once de-
veloped a peculiar approach to his therapeutic procedures. He practiced
anti-psychiatry and then he read Foucault's work on madness { after that,
he turned to Lacanian psychoanalysis and had become a strong supporter
of Ashis Nandy. He did not believe in absolute \scienti c universal truth"
or international norm for categorizing mental diseases as according to him,
everything is a representational fact { facts were represented according the
perspective-dependant perceptions of human observer in the context of cer-
tain space and time. We are just playing with only contingent constructed
\truths".
Bharat and Mitra had some interactive compatibility. Mitra knew the
epistemological position of Bharat, as there was an academic mutual intel-
ligibility in between them. Mitra was especially interested in Bharat's anti-
Chomskian hypothesis on Crippled Creativity.
Now it was a turn for Mitra to diagnose Bharat. He said it is repudiation
{ a case of rejection, not of repression. Bharat was rejecting the entire sym-
bolic order and there was no visible metaphoric or metonymic supplement
for the hole (the absence of symbolic order) that was created in his psyche.
It was a complete hole without any trace of so called \normal" speaking.
Therefore, though Mitra categorized it as Psychosis or foreclosure following
Lacan, he wanted to put the name of the disease under erasure. Naming dis-
eases, the categorizations, order of things { everything was undecided. Mitra
was su ering from acute aporia { he was living within the (un)truth-room of
12 Remedy?
decidable undecidables (facts/ ction). He could not make any topographical
map of Bharat's mind. What would be the remedy then?
\Don't disturb Bharat's truth room, his own little box of silence. Leave
him in his own truth-room. Let us try to enrich his truth-room instead of
tting him in a so-called normal Procrustrean bed", thus spoke Mitra.
IV.2 The ultimate remedy?
A reproduction of Ryman's painting (untitled) was hanging in the wall by
defeating the logic of optics. Bharat was sitting by erecting his spinal cord.
A nameless bud was put in front of him. The Branches1 was played in the
CD. Sometimes after, it was Bergman's Silence, which was shown to Bharat.
When Bach's Goldberg Variation was played at the moment of lesbian ten-
sion between two sisters in the lm, Bharat was activated. He was massaging
his breasts, the result of his adolescent Gynecomastia. Bharat then hugged
Pancajani in front of Mitra. Nietzsche appeared to him in the lm: rst, for
the licensed (im)morality due to the death of god and then for the historical
construction of \soul", \ghost", \specter" { the inner self { due to internal-
ization of outside threat and violence. The last word of the lm was hadiek
{ none knew that language, however we were told that the meaning of that
word was soul.
At this moment, Bharat had changed his sitting position { he was kneel-
ing down { his posture was just like an animal. He was massaging his breasts.
Frustrated Pancajani, disturbed by Bharat's act, took Mitra to another room
of her
at. Pancajani is expecting a super-woman, a heroine from Mitra.
When they are involved in intercourse, Pancajani heard a voice { the voice
of Brecht's Galileo: \Unfortunate is the country that needs a hero to be res-
cued". Pancajani refused to participate further . . . The compatible rhythm
between Mitra and Pancajani was broken.
Mitra then put a DVD of City Lights and at the moment of the last scene
of the movie, when Chaplin biting the rose-stick was recognized in retrospec-
tion by the visually cured lady, Mitra again played John's Branches in the
recorder. Bharat was astonishingly viewing the big close up of Chaplin and
1A John Cage composition devised with the aid of the Chinese I-Ching, the Book of
Changes, involving plants to be played
IV.2 The ultimate remedy? 13
hearing the Branches.
A convulsion occurred in the body of Bharat. He was witnessing the bud
{ that was blossoming. Bharat was hearing the sounds of blossoming. He
was then hearing the sub-sonic sounds . . . He was shouting a word, sphota
(something equivalent to \spark"), a key term in Bhartrihari's linguistic
philosophy.