Daijiworld Media Network - Mangalore (VA)

Mangalore, Apr 7: Fr Jerome Stany Marcel D’ Souza SJ has been awarded the Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) under Mangalore University for his thesis at the 28th annual convocation on Tuesday April 6.

Fr Stany is the administrator of St Aloysius Evening College and is a chairperson of the department of Konkani and teaches also in Kannada department of St Aloysius College. He is the superior of Asha Kiran at Sylveliz Kripa, Pumpwell, a Jesuit Study house for degree scholastics.

His thesis is a study of vacanas, works of Shivasharanas (a twelfth century socio-religious movement from Karnataka) from the perspective of empowerment. The basic argument of the thesis is that rereading leads to personal and community empowerment. Hence the study has two major concepts: rereading and empowerment.

Rereading is a method of reading. As the name suggests it refers to revisiting a text. Text here can mean many things. It can be any communicative activity, a literary work, context and the like. Rereading is not understood chronologically, i.e. visit a text after a certain time. It refers visiting the text with new questions, methods and problems. It can be an on-going process. Rereading in the research work adds another dimension - reading from the perspective of the poor, downtrodden and the marginalized.

Taking cue from Paolo Freire empowerment is understood in an integral way in the study. It emphasizes mainly the socio-cultural empowerment. In other words, the study assumes that if a person is able to question one’s social settings, especially the unjust ones, one is enabled or empowered. The study has based its methodology on the thoughts of Paolo Freire, Gramci, Gadamer, Habermas, Derrida, Foucault and many subaltern studies. With this methodology it explores the empowerment the Shivasharanas experienced and expressed in the field of language, work, caste, gender and spirituality, especially their mysticism. 

Because of the enormous size of vacanas the study selected the vacanas of low caste men and women and focused on their unique of way of reading. It explores their redefinition of language, work, caste, gender and spirituality. This process of Sharanas indeed helped a multitude of people, especially from the low caste and class, to redefine their identities on the platform of equality and justice. They spoke and participated in the production of social discourse and action.