Category Archives: Theory

Bad ideas, Government, Language, Politics, Theory

Of Cloaking, Colouring and Varnishing: Prasanta Chakravarty

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Guest post by PRASANTA CHAKRAVARTY

“Then leave Complaints: Fools only strive
To make a Great and honest Hive.
T’enjoy the World’s Conveniences,
Be famed in War, yet live in Ease
Without great Vices, is a vain
Eutopia seated in the Brain.”

Bernard Mandeville (The Grumbling Hive, 1705)

Salutary falsehoods for a promising end, anyone? Try telling this to the ever righteous Anna Hazare or to the followers of Vaclav Havel, whose campaign assurance to ‘live in truth’ in the year 1989 so moved his virtuous flock. There is a politics of virtue and then there is realpolitik – or so we are told. Or is virtue above politics and vice below? What the deuce marks the ambiguous space in between?! That is what has been relentlessly, and ruthlessly, scanned by two masterful recent additions to the canons of contemporary Western political philosophy: Martin Jay’s The Virtues of Mendacity: on Lying in Politics and David Runciman’s Political Hypocrisy: the Mask of Power, from Hobbes to Orwell and Beyond.

At one level, both scholars acknowledge and emphasize the dangers of the ‘ethical turn’ in political studies.

Continue reading Of Cloaking, Colouring and Varnishing: Prasanta Chakravarty →

Bad ideas, Ecology/Environment, Everyday Life, Government, Law, Left watch, Movements, Politics, Technology, Theory

When Openness is Unfreedom (alternatively, when data is unfreedom) – Part II

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This is the second post in the series that I began in October. I want to thank Rasagy Sharma for prompting me to put down the second post in this series.

This evening, Rasagy raised a question on twitter about whether the effort of a developer to make the database of the Indian railways downloadable is ‘official’ or not? As Rasagy later explained, the downloadable database is a list of trains, stations and the railway timetable. This list has has been made available in various downloadable formats (such as .csv, .pdf, etc) to encourage developers/interested persons to make web/mobile based applications. Rasagy’s question was more in the nature of checking the legality of  the act of putting this information/database on another website when it is explicitly copyright of the Indian Railways (as declared on their website). He argued that cities such as New York and some countries across the world have made this information ‘open’, meaning available to the ‘public’. Hence, it is unreasonable for this government entity i.e., the Indian railways, to be ‘closed’ about reuse of this information by private entities and individuals.

Continue reading When Openness is Unfreedom (alternatively, when data is unfreedom) – Part II →

Capitalism, Culture, Everyday Life, Metropolis, Mirror Worlds, Politics, Theory

A Rickshaw Ride in Kolkata: Waled Aadnan

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Guest post by WALED AADNAN

“Amar naam Chatterjee!” My name is Chatterjee! sounds like a proclamation from a fiery leader of the masses at a public rally, but it came from a rickshaw wallah plying his trade in the dusty bylanes of North Calcutta and addressed to no one in particular.

As I sat on his rickshaw, the frail old man launched into an indignant tirade against the ruling political party, whom he branded as a group of turncoats, insisting vehemently and repeatedly to nothing but the evening breeze that he had always been a Congressman.

Yes, he defended, petrol prices have been rising, but surely the bosses in Delhi would admit to that! What is the point of protesting about that in an insignificant meeting of rickshaw wallahs’ union? His tone of uncompromising understanding of world affairs drew me to listen to him, rather than plug in my earphones and switch off the world. Continue reading A Rickshaw Ride in Kolkata: Waled Aadnan →

Bad ideas, Culture, Language, Politics, Theory

‘The Quality of Mercy’: Kindness and Compassion in Higher Education: Prasanta Chakravarty

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Guest post by PRASANTA CHAKRAVARTY

There is a moral compass that every freshman must inculcate, says Harvard College Dean Thomas Dingman. To that end, Dean Dingman has asked incoming Harvard students to sign the ‘Class of 2015 Pledge,’ a solemn testament that reflects a set of distinctive values: “That message serves as a kind of moral compass for the education Harvard College imparts. In the classroom, in extracurricular endeavors, and in the Yard and Houses, students are expected to act with integrity, respect, and industry, and to sustain a community characterized by inclusiveness and civility.” The document goes on to hope that entryways and yards will be places where everyone can thrive and where the “exercise of kindness holds a place on a par with intellectual attainment…we want to have an environment in which people can flourish academically.”

Continue reading ‘The Quality of Mercy’: Kindness and Compassion in Higher Education: Prasanta Chakravarty →

Debates, Movements, Politics, Theory

On Populism – A response to Partha and Aditya: Gyan Prakash

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Guest post by GYAN PRAKASH

In following the discussion on the Anna Hazare phenomenon, I have found the references to populism very interesting.  In response to Partha, Aditya reminds us that populism should not be dismissed as non-political or anti-political. Partha clarified that he does not regard Anna Hazare’s populism as anti-political but as anti party-politics and anti government.  Team Anna narrowly defines politics as the domain of party politics and the government, which it then identifies with corruption. Om Puri’s rant and Kiran Bedi’s vaudeville performance expressed this sentiment.  Politics means netas, who are corrupt.  References to 2G, CWG, Kalmadi, and various land scams refer to politics in this sense.  Such a definition of politics allows the claim that the gathering at Ramlila was non-political or beyond politics.  Anna as a saintly Gandhian figure who does not seek office, and the status of Kiran Bedi and Kejriwal as civil society members, contributed to the representation that the mobilization of the “people” transcended politics.

Continue reading On Populism – A response to Partha and Aditya: Gyan Prakash →

Debates, Movements, Politics, Theory

Populism and the Anna Hazare Event: Swagato Sarkar

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Guest post by SWAGATO SARKAR

I have been trying to make sense of the Anna Hazare event. I agree that it was historical, but was it a tragedy, or a farce? The swift exchange between Partha Chatterjee (PC) and Aditya Nigam (AN) and their reference to Ernesto Laclau and ‘populism’ have given me a familiar frame to enter into the debate around the event. Here, I will concentrate on the question of populism and its normative status. However, unlike PC and AN, I have got nothing to offer to ‘the Left’ (Independent or Dependent), because I am not a leftist, rather one who likes sitting on the fence on a nice arm-chair and this piece will perhaps bear an imprint of that position. Also, apologies are due to the readers of Kafila as I have not read, just browsed through, the two pieces written by Shuddhabrata Sengupta, which have been wildly popular – if Facebook is an indicator – and have been referred to by both PC and AN. Therefore, I might be repeating what Sengupta has already said.

Continue reading Populism and the Anna Hazare Event: Swagato Sarkar →

Capitalism, Debates, Politics, Theory

Our Corruption, Our Selves: Arjun Appadurai

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This is a guest post by ARJUN APPADURAI

Partha Chatterjee and Shuddhabrata Sengupta rightly argue that “corruption” is indeed a new Indian label for “the lives of others”. The East German Stasi also surely saw their vigilance as directed against the politics of “the enemies of the people”, except that in their case the state and the party were seen to contain all the good people, with the bad people choosing to remain in the unmobilized parts of civil society. Hence the pro-Hazare gatherings certainly have some of the disturbing echoes of mass rallies under Hitler and Stalin with the working and middle-classes adoring a mediocre and Chaplinesque figure who promises a new wave of moral cleansing. Continue reading Our Corruption, Our Selves: Arjun Appadurai →

Bad ideas, Debates, Government, Movements, Politics, Theory

In the Ruins of Political Society – A Response to Partha Chatterjee

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Partha Chatterjee’s post, following on Shuddha’s Hazare Khwahishein… is something of an eye-opener for me. I will not enter into a debate with him on his reading of Shuddha’s post as Shuddha and I have had our long online and offline exchanges and I have learnt immensely from these exchanges, even if a core of disagreement persists. I do think, however, that Partha is mistaken in thinking that this is the first time the question of corruption has been discussed on Kafila or elsewhere but since I am not interested in discussing that question here, I will leave that matter aside. I think I have said pretty much what I wanted to say on the movement and the myriad issues related to it and so I am no more interested in going over that territory all over again. Interested readers can see the Kafila archives if they so wish.

What has been an eye-opener for me is the way a certain other Partha Chatterjee has emerged, as soon as his theories were brought face to face with the hurly-burly of politics. The imprint of this other Partha is clearly evident in every word and sentence of this post, but most clearly in the concluding sentence where he claims that the indepdent Left has ‘its populist moment in Nandigram’. This sentence encapuslates the gist of our disagreements. It was this assessment that led Partha to write the essay, ‘Democracy and Economic Transformation‘ where, in some elliptical fashion, his own discomfort with popular politics  found expression. That is when he extended the definition of ‘political society’ to say that it was the sphere of ‘management of ‘non-corporate capital’ (of course, by capital and government). That Partha links his discomfort over the Anna Hazare movement to his discomfort over Nandigram, is in my view, a sign of the fact that his idea of ‘political society’ lies in ruins, that it collapsed at the precise moment of its encounter with the popular.

Continue reading In the Ruins of Political Society – A Response to Partha Chatterjee →

Bad ideas, Debates, Movements, Politics, Right watch, Theory, Violence/Conflict

Reading Ur-Fascism in our times

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When people are marching to barricades, I go back to my library . I know that streets across India are now re-educating many of us and we are keen to get enrolled in this university of action. Yet I want first to understand this moment of action we are being advised to be part of.

Continue reading Reading Ur-Fascism in our times →

Debates, Excavation, Left watch, Mirror Worlds, Theory

A Few Lessons on Marxism and Politics

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“At a certain point in their historical lives, social classes become detached from their traditional parties. In other words, the traditional parties in that particular organizational form, with the particular men who constitute, represent and lead them, are no longer recognized by their class (or fraction of a class) as its expression” – Antonio Gramsci, Prison Noteboooks, International Publishers, New York, 1971, p. 210. Emphasis added)

This is how Gramsci, sitting inside Mussolini’s fascist prison, began his now celebrated discussion of the ‘crisis of hegemony’. I cite this here apropos of the discussion that has gone on some of the previous posts by Monobina Gupta, Sankar Ray and myself on the CPM/Left in West Bengal, in the course of which, I have been accused of ‘coming out’ as a supporter of the Trinamool Congress, which some have also termed as a fascist or even ‘super-fascist’ organization! Clearly, these gentlemen neither know the history of fascism nor indeed of Marxism. Fed on pamphlets of a certain marxist catechism, they have learnt only one thing: the division of the world into two camps where ostensibly, battle lines are permanently drawn between parties that apparently have a ‘mandate from heaven’ of bearing a particular class character, either bourgeois or working class. I hope none of those who have learnt their ‘dialectics’ or their ‘historical materialism’ from marxism-made-easy pamphlets of Emile Burns, Maurice Cornforth and Stalin will jump to pronounce Gramsci a postmodernist who denies this supposed ‘class essence’ of parties . (I am told though that these too are passe now; ‘cadres’ these days are not meant to read beyond party resolutions and ‘theoretical’ essays of Prabhat Patnaik, whose own world has stopped with Michal Kalecki).

Continue reading A Few Lessons on Marxism and Politics →

Bad ideas, Debates, Theory

Thinking about ‘the Contemporary’: Between Interdisciplinarity and Indisciplinarity

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[An earlier version of this note was presented as keynote lecture for the Arts Faculty Seminar on Interdisciplinary Research in Humanities, Benaras Hindu University, 9-10 September 2010]

It cannot be emphasized enough how critically important the theme of the Seminar is – especially for us in India today but more generally in the world at large. We need to think of the idea of interdisciplinarity in much more fundamental and radical ways today if we are to even begin to meet the intellectual challenges posed by ‘our contemporary’.

Before I proceed, let me also clarify that the term ‘indisciplinarity’ in the title of my talk, is not simply there for its shock-value. I believe that we are today at the threshold of a fundamentally new condition where there is a serious question mark over old knowledges and disciplines as they emerged in the course of the last few centuries. Continue reading Thinking about ‘the Contemporary’: Between Interdisciplinarity and Indisciplinarity →

Culture, Debates, Ecology/Environment, Left watch, Movements, Theory

Reflections on Sudipta Kaviraj’s ‘Marxism in Translation’

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[The following is a revised version of some comments made during a discussion with Sudipta Kaviraj at the Centre for the Study of Developing Socoeties, Delhi on 21 October 2010. Kaviraj made a presentation based on a recent essay of his ‘Marxism in Translation: Critical Reflections on Indian Political Thought’ (published in Political Judgement: Essays in Honour of John Dunn, Eds Raymond Geuss and Richard Bourke) to which some of us responded. AN]

It is interesting to revisit, with Sudipta Kaviraj, the field of ‘Indian Marxism’. It is an abandoned field, a piece of haunted land where no living beings go – at least not in their senses. What is more, it is a field that ‘Indian Marxists’ themselves are afraid of revisiting. It is their past – the land of the dead, of unfulfilled ancestral spirits, where the ghosts of yesteryears hang like betaal from every tree. The terror of this forbidden territory has redoubled, after the collapse of socialism. It is as if some deep secrets of the past lie buried there which they would rather not bring back to life, for fear of what might be revealed to them of their own selves. It is strange but true that Marxists who swear by history are perhaps as afraid of it as anybody else.

Read the full post in Critical Encounters.

Debates, Everyday Life, Genders, Sex, Theory

The disappearing body and feminist thought

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Presented at conference organized by  Department of English (Delhi University)  February 14, 2011. The title of the  conference was “Postfeminist Postmortems?  Gender, Sexualities and Multiple  Modernities”.

Cross-posted on Critical Encounters

To paraphrase Anthony Appiah’s famous and oft-quoted question – Is the post of postfeminist the post of postmortem? That is, as in postmortem, does “post” mean definitively over, after, having transcended, gone beyond? To those who would answer “yes”, those privileged young women who float through their empowered lives in the wake of over a century of feminist struggles but disown their own heritage, to them I can only say – I’ll be a post-feminist in post-patriarchy. Or – not for a long time yet, baby.

But my answer to that question is “no”. I understand the post of postfeminism in the sense that Laclau and Mouffe understand their postmarxism. That is, post-feminist as indicating “having passed through” that body of thought; having lived through, experienced, feminist theory and politics in such a way that the terrain one now inhabits has been decisively transformed; but also post-feminist in the sense that in the course of this passage new objects have been configured that the old feminism could not have seen, or recognized.

It is in this kind of postfeminist moment that I locate my presentation today.

Continue reading The disappearing body and feminist thought →

Debates, Movements, Politics, Theory

dissenting dialogues – New Social Justice Magazine on Sri Lanka

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dissenting dialogues, a new social justice magazine on Sri Lanka was just launched. The introduction and the list of articles in the first issue are listed below. The entire magazine can also be downloaded

Introducing dissenting dialogues

Debates on the causes and consequences of the 30-year war in Sri Lanka, and its end in May 2009, continue to evoke heated exchanges in some quarters and a disempowered silence in others. A year and a half later, it is time to engage in an open discussion that is truly reflective. While there are both continuities and discontinuities from before, during and after the war, there is clearly a renewed need for dissent and dialogue to broaden and transform the debate. Continue reading dissenting dialogues – New Social Justice Magazine on Sri Lanka →

Culture, Debates, Politics, Theory

Dilemmas of ‘Right of Nations to Self Determination’: Rohini Hensman

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Guest post by ROHINI HENSMAN

The hectic discussion over the Kashmir meeting in Delhi in October entitled ‘Azadi – The Only Way’ has made it urgent to revisit the debate between Lenin and Luxemburg on the right of nations to self-determination. Lenin, starting from his experience in imperialist Russia, insisted on the right of nations like the Ukraine to self-determination (in the sense of their right to form separate states), contending that denial of this right would merely strengthen Great Russian nationalism. In a colonial situation, Lenin was surely right. When a country is under foreign occupation, all sections other than a very small number of collaborators want to be free of the occupiers, even if there are sharp differences between these sections. A striking example is RAWA (the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan) which, despite speaking for a section of the population which is sorely oppressed by the Taliban, and continuing to fight against it, nonetheless shares with the latter the goal of ending the occupation by US and NATO forces. In such situations, the right of an occupied nation to self-determination makes sense.

Continue reading Dilemmas of ‘Right of Nations to Self Determination’: Rohini Hensman →

Countryside, Debates, Left watch, Movements, Politics, Theory

“Nobody Can Stop The Revolution”

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Over the weekend, a number of journalists received the following statement from Ganapathy; General Secretary of the Communist Party of India (Maoist). In the text, Ganapathy clarifies the Maoist stance on a broad range of topics – particularly Kashmir, the Commonwealth Games, the Ayodhya Verdict, Mamta Bannerjee in Bengal, Obama and the North East.

However, the fact that the questions are posed by an obviously sympathetic “interviewer” and our inability to send any follow-up questions means that, I personally, treat this as a policy document rather than an “interview”. To get a quick newsy sum-up, you could read my report for The Hindu.

I felt it would be interesting for our readers to go through this text to get a sense of “What Maoists Want”.  As a reporter, I am only too aware of how Maoist politics is severely under-reported as opposed to their military tactics.

As neither the Maoists, nor Mr Ganapathy are currently in a position to defend their views on Kafila; I have disabled comments on this post. Afzal’s acerbic (and spot on) comment has changed my mind. Have allowed comments on this piece.Hopefully, this document shall serve as a reference point for further discussions on the Maoist movement.

Continue reading “Nobody Can Stop The Revolution” →

Capitalism, Countryside, Ecology/Environment, Politics, Scams, Theory

A Twist in the Tale, Or, the New Copernican Revolution

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Even as the rejection of Vedanta’s application to mine in Niyamgiri is being widely hailed as a victory for tribal rights, there is of course one set of very predictable voices, which has leapt in to start damage control for their corporate heroes. Thus one such cheerleader of Capital tells us that the ‘real twist’ in the script is that the ‘denial of bauxite mining in Niyamgiri’ can mean disaster for the future of a poor region and a poor state!

On the other hand, a statement by the Campaign for Survival and Dignity – a platform of tribal and forest dwellers’ organizations from all over the country has hailed the decision, arguing that: “The project’s main problem was that it violated the Forest Rights Act’s provisions requiring ‘recognition of habitat and community forest rights’ and the consent of the gram sabha prior to taking forest land. This sounds like technical legalisms. But the basic point is that, under the law, the Dongria Kondhs have the power to protect and manage their forests and lands. Simple, but unprecedented; it has never happened before.”

For our scribe however, the “really nuanced” stories of Niyamgiri are not those of the tribals and forest dwellers. They come from “the likes of Raju Sahu who came from Bihar to Kalahandi 10 years ago and runs four tea/food stalls on the state highway that links Lanjigarh – where Niyamgiri and the Vedanta factory are situated – to Bhawanipatna, the district HQ”.  Sahu apparently told our journalist-investigator that his business has more than trebled in the last four years since Vedanta started operations there. This is true for any big economic enterprise that gets set up – a large number of small businesses sprout up around it. There would be as many stories about poor people who benefited from the life that grew up around say, giant public sector units – the end of which is celebrated by these cheerleaders of Capital.  Will the perishing of those small businesses as a fall-out of the closure of PSU’s be accepted by our nuanced story-teller as a justification for the continuation of PSU’s? Never. For we know that there are always different standards for judging the merits of corporate marauders. You can tell even before you start reading a column by a Shekhar Gupta or a Tavleen Singh or a Saubhik Chakrabarti, what is coming – be it Niyamgiri, Bhopal and Union Carbide, the loot of the Commonwealth Games or the studied silence on matters relating to DIAL and GMR. And sometimes, just sometimes, we happen to know why…

Continue reading A Twist in the Tale, Or, the New Copernican Revolution →

Capitalism, Debates, Ecology/Environment, Theory

Socialism of the New Century: Sunil

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Guest post by SUNIL

[Sunil is the national vice-president of Samajwadi Jan Parishad. This  article was written for a special issue of Janata weekly. The essay is an important statement from one of the leading activist-theorists of the socialist movement (i.e. non-Marxist socialism) which does not simply disavow the marxist legacy but engages with that experience as an essential component of socialist practice. AN]

The tussle between capitalism and socialism as alternative visions of human society is not yet over. It is like the old fable of the race between a hare and a tortoise. At times one seems to be the winner. At other times the other seems to be leading. Capitalism is like the hare of the story. It looks fast, impressive and dynamic but after some time it is tired and resting with its own contradictions. In the end, we know it is the tortoise of socialism which will prevail. But that end is yet to be arrived at.

Capitalism looked supreme and unchallengeable in the later decades of the past century. With the disintegration of USSR, reverting of China, Vietnam and many other communist countries to the path of capitalism, and downfall of social democracy in Europe, there was no challenge to capitalism. Thus ‘end of history’ was arrogantly announced. Market fundamentalism of Reagan and Thatcher varieties started ruling over the world. But soon many crises arrived. Ecological crisis with the dangers of climate change and global warming on the one hand, and the global financial crisis with the worst recession since the thirties on the other, shook the faith in the supremacy and immortality of capitalist civilization. Added to these were the growing crises of hunger, malnutrition, homelessness, violence and war. The number of hungry people in the world kept growing and crossed the figure of 100 cores in the first decade of the twenty first century i.e. every sixth person on the earth today remains underfed and starved. This is perhaps the biggest and the most glaring failure of capitalism. Even after more than two centuries of the industrial revolution and miraculous progress of science and technology, it is unable to fulfill even the most basic need of the humankind.

Continue reading Socialism of the New Century: Sunil →

Debates, Left watch, Movements, Politics, Theory, Violence/Conflict

The Rumour of Maoism

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This essay has been published in the current issue of Seminar (No. 607, March 2010).

In his classic Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency in Colonial India, Ranajit Guha outlines a certain methodological imperative for the historian who wanted to ‘get in touch with the consciousness of [peasant] insurgency’ when access to it is barred by the discourse of counter-insurgency that structures official records. How does one look beyond this discourse of the state that frames the archives in order to gain access to the voice of the rebels? Guha’s solution was relatively simple: Counter-insurgency, he argued, derives directly from insurgency and is so determined by the latter that ‘it can hardly afford a discourse that is not fully and compulsively involved with the rebel and his activities.’1

Unlike British Marxist historian E.J. Hobsbawm who had tried to track the story of ‘social bandits’ through a somewhat problematic reading of folklore,2 Guha warned that ‘folklore relating to peasant militancy can be elitist too’, for many singers and balladeers belonged to upper-caste families who had fallen on hard times and were, therefore, often suspicious of the revolt of the lower castes or tribals. Guha underlined that though the records of the colonial state and its police officials registered the voice of those hostile to the insurgents – including landlords and usurers – they could not avoid being shaped by the will of the insurgents. His conclusion therefore was that the presence of rebel consciousness could be read in the body of evidence produced by the discourse of counter-insurgency itself.

The burden of Guha’s argument was that in order to decode the language of counter-insurgency, it was often enough to simply reverse the values in the terms used by the official discourse: thus ‘badmashes’ simply meant peasant militants and not ‘bad characters’; ‘dacoit village’ would indicate an entire village involved in the resistance and ‘contagion’ would most likely refer to the solidarity generated by the uprising.

Those were happier days from the historian’s point of view. For the peasant and tribal insurgencies that Guha was discussing were organic struggles which drew their leadership from amidst the peasants or tribal communities themselves. Whether it was Sidhu Kanoo, Birsa Munda or Titu Mir – the leadership of the movements and their ‘ideologies’ derived directly from the world of the tribals. The context of colonial India was also, in a significant sense, quite clearly polarized and the possibility of written records being produced from a multiplicity of sources was simply out of the question. It may, therefore, be possible to follow Guha’s suggestion and merely reverse the values in order to get a sense of that other discourse. Continue reading The Rumour of Maoism →

Politics, Theory

Democracy and the Communist Party: Aniket Alam

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This is a guest post by ANIKET ALAM

This paper, rather preliminary note towards a full paper, attempts to look at the troubled history of democracy (both as a concept as well as a practice) and parties claiming affiliation to Marxism-Leninism. It tries to understand the historical paradox of parties and movements influenced by Marxism being among the more important contributors to democratising our world, but States ruled by parties owing allegiance to Marxism denying democratic rights to their own citizens. It then tries to identify some of the reasons for this large democratic deficit.

But before I begin, two short points about the structure of the paper may be in order. First, I have been fairly hesitant to write on this topic. I can hardly lay any claim to expertise on theoretical debates among Marxists as well as on the details of the history of countries ruled by communist parties. That apart, I am also conscious of my weakness in political theory, specially that relating to democracy and related ideas of liberty and representation. Therefore, the stress will remain more on the historical experience rather than the theoretical arguments. Second, and following from my hesitation laid out above, this paper is basically structured around three writings by two Marxists: Karl Marx himself , and Rosa Luxemburg. You may say I am merely paraphrasing them, or you may say that they are the burqa I wear during this excursion into unfamiliar territory.

Continue reading Democracy and the Communist Party: Aniket Alam →

Culture, Debates, Theory

Of SubTerrains and Seismology: Notes on the Contemporaneous in India

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Guest post by MOHD. SABIH AHMED

Of SubTerrains and Seismology: Notes on the Contemporaneous in India [1]

If the starting point of an enquiry is to investigate into the larger ambit of cultural production in which a notional unity of ‘contemporary art’ is one formation, the study of alternative systems/networks/formations would not suffice merely as mapping them as ‘alternative art’ in the same field. Instead, the demand would be to trace the contexts that give rise to a necessity for peculiar and disparate kinds of alternatives, and how certain cases instigate the field, maybe even risk rearranging the very conceptual and pragmatic constituents of that field.

This paper is a series of ponderings, questions, and a hesitant proposition regarding the above-mentioned, as much as it is an exposition on the state of affairs of that notional unity that is ‘Contemporary Art in India’. Continue reading Of SubTerrains and Seismology: Notes on the Contemporaneous in India →