Baul: A Spiritual Quest and a Response to Lacan’s Concept of Lack and Real

Munni Deb Mazumder

Abstract


Bauls, the minstrel folk originally from Bengal, are known for their music loaded with the philosophy of body and soul and they are detached from any kind of institutional practices or orthodoxies. Their captivating music is their medium to get united with their ‘moner manush’ (soul-mate). This paper aims at exploring the possible inherent implications of the term ‘baul’ to reveal the fact that there is always a baul resides in us, consciously or unconsciously. The paper also intends to confront the issues that the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan has raised in his analysis of ‘lack’ and ‘real’.

Keywords


Baul, Spiritual Quest, Lacan’s Concept

Full Text:

PDF

References


Barry, Peter. Beginning Theory: An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory. 2nd Edn. New Delhi: Viva Books Pvt. Ltd. 2008. Print.

Basu, Buddhadeb. Charles Baudelaire: Tar Kabita. Kolkata: Dey’s Publishing. 1988. Print.

Das Gupta, Shashibhusan. Obscure Religious Cults, Calcutta: Firma KLM.1995. Print.

Gupta, Mahendranath (“M.”); Dharm Pal Gupta. Sri Sri Ramakrishna Kathamrita. Kolkata: Sri Ma Trust. 2001. Print.

Lacan, Jacque. “The Insistence of the Letter in the Unconscious”, reprinted in Modern Criticism and Theory, ed. David Lodge. Longman.1988. Print.

Marcia, J.E. “Development and Validation of Ego Identity Statuses”, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 3. Print.

Openshaw, J. Seeking Bauls of Bengal, Cambridge University Press, 2002. Print.

Smith, Joseph H. ed. “Introduction”, The Literary Freud: Mechanism of Defense and the Poetic Will. New Haven: Yale University Press. 1980. Print.

Svetasvatara Upanishad 2:5, 3:8. Chicago Address: Swami Vivekananda. Kolkata: Advaita Ashrama. 2004. Print.

Wright, Elizabeth. Postmodern Encounters: Lacan and Postfeminism. Cambridge: Icon Books Ltd. 2000. Print.






Copyright (c) 2014 Munni Deb Mazumder

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

 

All published Articles are Open Access at  https://journals.pen2print.org/index.php/ijr/ 


Paper submission: ijr@pen2print.org