Political Aesthetics of the Nation (original) (raw)
Related papers
Aesthetic politics in contemporary India
Focaal
Michiel Baas. Muscular India: Masculinity, mobility & the new middle class. New Delhi: Context, 2020. Alice Tilche. Adivasi art and activism: Curation in a nationalist age. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2022. Sanderien Verstappen. New lives in Anand: Building a Muslim hub in Western India. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2022.
Book review: Nationalism has been one of the most debated, contested and discussed concepts within the precincts of Indian history and society. Issues of nation, national identity and nation-building have served as recurrent topics in public discourse in India well over the past century. The basic source of the huge compendium of literature pertaining to the theme 'nationalism' in India has been mainly the " written sources ". This " over-reliance by historians on written sources " has naturally led to an exclusivist and elitist understanding of the narrative of Indian nationalism. But interestingly, the esoteric nature of nationalism in India has also expressed itself through myriad vehicles of expression ranging from posters, movies and paintings to mobile display of ideologies like processions (coming under the rubric of visual iconography). This stress on " visual imagery " has helped to reach out to the strata of Indian society beyond the ken of literacy. This vast non-elitist Indian society has recorded their perception and values with the help of visual iconography. Picturing the Nation explores visual representations of India from the late nineteenth to the late twentieth centuries. It offers the readers native versions of imagination and analyses of the same. As stated above, literature on visual imagery and its relationship with nationalism has been sparse. This edited volume is an analytically precious and academically rich text which will surely plug this gap to a considerable extent and at the same time stimulate scholars to come up with many more such works. Broadly speaking, the book provides an in-depth and holistic analysis of the close interaction between the two juxtaposed areas in India, nationalism and culture in its various forms. This anthology focuses on the idea of nationhood that circulates in public sphere in India, especially through visual articulation. In the words of the editor, " this volume embodies a revisionist historical agenda ". In other words, the book successfully tries to capture the dynamics of formation of national identity and consciousness with the help of imagery in different forms from the late nineteenth century...
The Visual Regime of (Neo)liberal India A Case Study of Kingdom of Dreams.docx
In our everyday living we are surrounded by a world of visuals and we are socialised into appropriating these visuals with certain meanings and values as per the dominant visual regime. As consuming citizens of the (neo)liberal economics, we tend to take these visual narratives for granted or non consequential, especially in context of entertainment hubs. While a similar incorrect narrative would be contested, and refuted in school textbooks or as state national icons. This is because the entertainment hubs thrive on the pretext of the freedom of political incorrectness that the consumers are aware of. However, the visual narratives in such hubs, though silent and without explicit description, have a significant potential to propagate dominant narratives and social prejudices that get reproduced in different economic and political praxis. In this paper, I attempt to investigate the politics of visual narrative produced in the consumption patterns of (neo) liberal India through the case of Kingdom of Dreams (entertainment hub). For this purpose, I draw on my ethnographic accounts and photographic evidence of KOD, conducted in February 2017. The observations show that the globally mediated picture of India still thrives on early nationalist accounts of art being dominated by patriarchal, heteronormative and Brahmanical, Hindu religious motifs of spirituality leaving out contributions of other religious civilizations and minorities. The case also reveals the strictly economical relation state establishes with its citizens using these entertainment hubs as quasi agencies and how Bollywood with its aspirational consuming actors is in turn appropriated as the idealcultural identity for the consuming citizen.
Hindu Modern: Considering Gandhian Aesthetics
Public Culture, 2011
This article analyzes the Gandhian legacy in contemporary Indian art practices, including photography, architecture, and film, and investigates the possibilities and impasses of a specifically Gandhian modern aesthetic practice. Situating a specific set of artistic projects in relation to the rise of Hindu fundamentalist politics in contemporary India, the article then proposes the ways in which the possibility of a Gandhian modern aesthetic has been increasingly submerged in the broader politics of constructing a universalist, Hindu modern political aesthetic. Finally, turning to Hind Swaraj, the article proposes an alternative understanding of the emergence of this Hindu modern by examining Gandhi's particular articulation of the relation among ethics, aesthetics, and politics.
Canvases of Political Competition: Image Production as Politics in Tamil Nadu, India
In this article, I explore the production of political images in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. The state is known for the ubiquitous presence of banners, murals and posters in its public spaces, featuring prominent politicians and actors. It is commonly argued that these images help to convey the heroic or exclusive status of political leaders. However, such images are actually produced by party workers and therefore do not simply transpose status and image. Instead, political supporters praise their leader via these images and act as ‘kingmakers’ in constructing reputation and power. Simultaneously, by putting political images on display, supporters also authorise their own power. While praise is important in showing a person's dedication to a political party, the images, in the motivations of their producers, are suffused with ambivalence and competition as well. Hence, I argue, political image practices are not representative of politics, they are politics.
Theory and praxis in Indian Aesthetic tradition: Some Post-colonial Musings
Transcending psychological inhibitions caused by colonial encounter in the comprehension of the past is a daunting task in aesthetic discourses, given the fact that colonial paradigms are difficult to erase and contemporary public spaces of art like Museums, as argued by Edward Said are colonial projects. India's perceptions related to the creation, nature, and evaluation of arts has gone a sea change in the colonial period which created a sort of alienation towards the manifestation of indigenous culture among the colonial subjects. Apart from this, the nature of performance, display, patronage venue, audience and space all underwent far reaching transformations in the process. Leela Gandhi demonstrates that in its reflexive modality, post colonialism holds out the possibility of thinking our way through and out of the historical imbalances and cultural imbalances produced by the colonial encounter.1However, in the retrieval of traditional discourses, distortions are bound to happen when using modern terminology , especially as Aesthetics itself happens to be a non indigenous discipline. Despite these severe methodological constraints, the present paper proposes to explore the relationship between the aesthetic theory formulated by thinkers like Abhinavagupta and praxis related to the creation, experience and evaluation of art forms like the performance arts , painting and sculpture in Precolonial India. The paper will focus on the extant and limitations of the inter relatedness with a view to bring to the fore the tensions involved and the insights they could yield in contemporary attempt to make sense of theory and praxis.Apart from the theoretical works, the sources which are being consulted would comprise self reflexive statements of multi faceted artists like Kalidasa who have occasion to deal with art in its various manifestation in the representation of life. It is hoped that such an exercise will be of some use in the comprehension of tradition and for some sort of self reflexivity in contemporary times especially in addressing issues of identity of Indian art. Needless to say, the paper distances itself from any type of exhortations to 'return to the past' as the present writer feels that tradition in its most creative phase is always dynamic and experimental. Tradition is only one of the resources for the creative spirit.. It is indeed a daunting task to locate the conventional precolonial discourse which could be the exact counterpart of modern aesthetics which would discuss problems related to theory and praxis. Natyasastra , the seminal and iconic text of performing arts of India is virtually an encyclopedia of Indian arts in which the center piece is dramatic performance, but which incidentally discusses allied arts like music and dance. In one way, it is the edifice on which the entire aesthetic thought of India is built. Texts like 1 1 Leela Gandhi, Post Colonial Theory, p.176.