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Victorian (pen-in-cheek)
Vignettes
Tales (not so tall) of Timmy, the (not so very polite) Malaya Hall Cat in London
Author:
T. Wignesan Binding: Paperback
(pp: 223) ISBN: 978-81-8253-107-9 Availability: In Stock
(Ships within 1 to 2
days) Publisher: Cyberwit.net Pub. Date:
2008 Condition: New
Description:
The
Victoria Institution, a secondary school founded
in
Kuala Lumpur
in 1893 by the British administration in close
collaboration with the leaders of the three major
communities: Malay, Chinese, and Indian in the
capital, comes closest to upholding the British
public school tradition in the region. Widely recognised
as the "premier school" of the country,
its established traditions and ties have stood, it
might be said, the test of times. The
overwhelming role of former alumni in public life
attests even today - though the school has lost
its former pre-Independence reputation - to
time-honoured British educational policies. This
collection of eleven vignettes by a former pupil
of the school who rebelled against this
"strict inflexible tradition" as
interpreted and transmitted by the local staff, who
had not themselves wholly and intrinsically
imbibed the spirit of the colonial tradition,
borders on satire, expressed in a rebellious debunking
attitude towards his fellow alumni who
mistakenly or otherwise assumed the importance of
their nurture in an older, well-grounded heritage,
both in Malaysia and in England where many or some among
them went to qualify later on. To this end,
Wignesan has even, sometimes, recourse to
ribald language and humour, but always with tongue
in cheek. The vignettes also sketch a veridical toile
of times gone-by when other socio-political standards
held sway in a land still in the making, so to
speak. His insights into his fellow-school mates
and the long-arm reach of a government over its
young in a foreign territory all speak of a
Kafkayesque microcosm and makes one wonder if inculcated
intrinsic cultural values may triumph over a
closed-circuit world of political shenanigans. An
air of earnest light-heartedness pervades
this collection of vignettes, especially the
"not so tall tales" related by Timmy,
the Malaya Hall cat in London; perhaps this
approach might make what is most unpalatable
to the indigene who were/are somehow
deprived of an intellectual life and make them now
more willing to accept criticism or adopt the chastening
habit of being auto-critical.
POIETICS :
Disquisitions
on the Art of Creation
Author:
T. Wignesan Binding: Paperback
(pp: 214) ISBN: 81-8253-104-8 Availability: In Stock
(Ships within 1 to 2
days) Publisher: Cyberwit.net Pub. Date:
2008 Condition: New
Description:
What is Poietics?
The subject of “poietics” (la
poïétique in French),
with its origins
in the Greek word poïein (“to
make with the intellect”), deals with the
science and/or the art or philosophy of creation.
To French academics working in the field, the
subject has variously meant one thing as a
definition and another as a programme of research
- from Valery’s probes into the making of a poem
to Passeron’s involvement with the creator’s
relations with the objet
d’art during the creative act.
In this book, the author attempts to lay the
foundation either for the formulation of a theory
or, contrariwise, for the impossibility at
arriving at any such formulaic circumscription on poietics.
His “Disquisitions on Poietics” serves as a
theoretical inquiry into the subject at large
without, however, limiting itself to the fine
arts. The author adopts an open-ended approach to
the concept of creation. To him, the preparation
of an elaborate dish in the kitchen is as worthy
of attention as the Big Bang itself. As for tools,
he does not exclude the methodology of
experimentation in the laboratory or the
theoretical calculations and observations of the
exact sciences as perfectly valid means by which
to unravel the mysteries of creation. The author
“created” and edited the first academic
bi-lingual journal on the subject:
The Journal of Comparative Poietics/Revue de Poïétique
Comparée in 1989, and in which appeared
articles by Henri Morier, René Passeron, Eric
Mottram, José Augusto Seabra, Ananda K.
Coomaraswamy, Germaine Prudhommeau, Andrew Greig,
Clive Bush, and T.Wignesan.
Preface
Twenty three
of the thirty-one propositions of the "Disquisitions
on Poietics", together with the articles
on the poïetics of the "pantun", in
French, and the "Yijing" first
appeared in the Journal of Comparative
Poïetics, Vol. II, n° 1 (Paris), 1992. The
article on "Gerard Sekoto" and the
account of "Aintinai: la théorie de cinq
paysages" appeared in JCL, Vol.
I, n° 2 & 3 (Paris), 1991. An earlier version
of the propositions XXIV to XXXI of the
"Disquisitions on Poïetics" first
appeared in Breaking Out: A Critical
Miscellany in 1999. Here, in this volume,
the disquisitions have been brought up to date and
revised. The Mobipocket eBook version does
not contain the same number of articles or some of
the arguments either.
The second
part of the book consists of seven
articles/critiques and an interview - on various
subjects and whose main purpose was to examine the
nature of creativity through each of the topics
discussed. As such, what follows the disquisitions
proper has been entitled: Further
Explorations into the Art of Creation.
Even if the
author has found it necessary to debunk the way
the subject of poïetics has been treated and/or
managed in France (cf. Chapter I: "The Exotic
in Aesthetics: A Case Study of Poïetics as the
Science and Philosophy of Creation"), and
almost subscribes - with certain mostly
unexpressed reservations - to a heretical overview
of the subject’s future research possibilities,
he is nonetheless aware of the intrinsically
fundamental properties of the ontological approach
he has undertaken right from the start and which
over time has led him to exploit the subject for a
more general and encompassing overview of life as
revealed by the ancient Chinese Canon of
Changes, the Yijing.
The insights
he has gained by a long and personal experience of
this book has convinced him of the validity of his
convictions and propositions. The substratum of
his ideas is therefore to be found in the basic
concept of the unfolding year in temperate climes.
No book that can foretell the future and advise
the inquirer on how to avoid disaster may be
ignored. He is convinced that countless
generations of Chinese have by the application of
rigorous scientific method and inquiry obtained
the results that have been fused into the imagery
and dicta of the hexagrams and moving lines of the
book. It is only by patiently sifting through
observable phenomena and collating an infinite
number of data, made available through minute
observation of Nature in all its unfolding,
paradigmatic and cyclical aspects, have these
savant Taoists been able to put together a concise
statement of the science and/or philosophy of the
course of human life on Earth. That the language
in which these repetitive behavioural patterns are
couched sometimes or mosttimes eludes
proper evaluation and interpretation is a matter
for education and application. Nothing
is for free in life. If one wants to benefit from
advice, one has first to be able to find the right
wavelength which enables one to listen with
humility. And this is no easy chore as far as the
book is concerned. And, unfortunately for some,
the wondrous music of poesy may even then fall on
hardened ears!
In the Yijing,
the ancient Chinese had already expounded, as far
as the author is concerned, the secrets of the
very art of creation which takes the world for its
laboratory and life in all its forms as the
vehicle of its art form. The present book on
poïetics can only serve as a signpost for the
very first and ultimate book on the
subject.
T.Wignesan
Paris, July 5,
2007
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