After Conversion. Cultural Histories of Modern India. (original) (raw)
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The XXII Sukhalata Rao Memorial Lecture School of Women's Studies, Jadavpur University, 2023
I do not pretend to be a scholar of the person whose name has become an annual feature of the School's commemora�ons-however, I will relate much of this talk, to the ques�ons that con�nue to haunt us-ques�ons from her life, her prac�ce and legacy., as they do for many underrepresented persons whose way of being was representa�on. As a woman, simultaneously benefi�ng from and bridled by benevolent patriarchy, her story today is a reminder of the privileges and unprivilege at the intersec�ons of colonialism, patriarchy, caste and class, and the legacies of these systems of oppression, that we con�nue to be enmeshed in, to this day. Slide 2 In this presenta�on, I draw from images that I took while in Kolkata and San�niketan in early 2020, before Covid struck, when I was hosted by Dr Dhawan and the School of Women's Studies as Visi�ng Professor. Some of you may recognise the images of protest in and around the campus at the �me, enactments of the freedom of expression against the imposi�on of laws which would have adversely impacted ci�zenship in India. Other ques�ons were raised then too on your walls; those which I found compelling and enriched my own understanding of the ethos and thinking of the �mes within the campus. For this talk, I'd like to highlight freedom of expression (which is a human right not limited to academia, but is also one of aspect of our academic freedoms to protect) and ci�zenship. In this case it was the poli�cs (big P) of who and who is not counted as ci�zen or a na�on; there is of course also poli�cs in terms of the poli�cs of par�cipa�on, belonging, inclusion of academic ci�zenship, who and what is ideal, and the rights, du�es, freedom and posi�oning not extended to all. Slide 3 Most of the images I will show today, including the one on the �tle page, are those I took when visi�ng the town of San�niketan with fellow scholar of higher educa�on, Madhuparna Karmakar. As with this work, they are photographs of the detritus in and around the art school of that university-artworks, some finished, some incomplete or discarded, some in process, made over �me by ar�st-students. I am myself an ar�st, though most of my form these days is through words not pain�ngs or prints; I studied pain�ng then contemporary art, and eventually taught fine art prac�ce at university in my country of South Africa. Since moving into the field of Higher Educa�on Studies, I also have studied how formal art educa�on at university level-such as that experienced by these makers-has such an important role in the forma�on of future ar�sts; but as with all university educa�on, that role comes with problema�cs in terms of sociocultural forma�on: that selec�on of who gets in involves both inclusion and exclusion; that par�cipa�on
Anachronistic Reflections: Of Critical Humanities
We live in destitute postcolonial times. These are destitute times for thought and reflection. Destitution in matters of thinking concerns the inability to know what questions to ask, what inquiries to pursue. Our ailing public institutions – the universities of higher learning – have given up the imperative to think; they have abandoned the persistent need to reflect on the nature and purpose of the university. Expediency seems to norm the governance of the university today. This paper, written in a moment of institutional crisis, sketches the predicament of working in the double bind of teaching and research in institutions and discourses which are colonial European legacy. The paper affirms the need to respond to this legacy from the discredited locations of receptions (called jatis, in the Indian context).
Academic confrontations at the end of high modernity
Materialele conferintei "Lecturi in memoriam acad. Silviu Berejan", 2021
Academic novel is by definition a cultural enterprise, but it can properly surprise the hostility of an extremely hierarchical environment. Concepts, ideas and archetypes are preserved and melted in the literary substance even with the help of irony and pastiche. Or, better said, irony and pastiche are means of avoiding the hostility of a milieu blocked in stereotypes and snobbery. Kingsley Amis’s novel ”Lucky Jim” absorbs modernist cultural ingredients in order to demythologize them in a postmodern fashion. Anyway, it seems that the process of demythization implies the subsequent process of re-mythization. The cultural heritage is unavoidable in the last phase of postmodernism. In 1975 we can hardly speak about cultural aphasia. The individual with a postmodernist Weltanschauung plays the satirical role of the knight errant in search of falsified (dragonized) modernist mentalities and cultural options. This paper will analyse the risks and methods of demythization and the reverse p...
Current Anthropology, 2022
Why write? The spaces of intellectual dissidence once provided by universities-promoting disinterested inquiry, encouraging critical analysis, challenging conventional wisdoms-are increasingly controlled, if not squeezed out. A lethal mix of neoliberalism, authoritarianism, and right-wing populism is unfolding in different combinations around the world, and one of its key targets of attack is intellectual freedom. It is pressing for academics as writers to ask, What is our purpose? Who is our reader? How do we navigate the tensions between the constraints of academic evaluation criteria and the compulsions of writing for wider publics, scholarly fidelity and activist commitments, writing as scholars and producing journalism or fiction? This article reflects on these questions through the writing of the book Nightmarch, an anthropologist's account of the spread of the Naxalites, a Marx-, Lenin-, and Mao-inspired guerrilla struggle among Indigenous people in the heart of India. The backdrop is the rise of neoliberal audit cultures in UK universities sapping writing of its vitality and Hindu nationalism in India clamping down fiercely on debate, deliberation, and critique, with human rights activists and intellectuals imprisoned as alleged Maoists or "urban Naxals." The overall aim of this essay is to contribute to opening the space for intellectual dissidence and ignite scholarly relevance beyond academia.
Speculations from the Borderlands of Knowledge and Survival in the Academy
Annual Review of Critical Psychology, 2018
In October 2017, a List of Sexual Harassers in Academia (henceforth, LoSHA) was anonymously crowd-sourced, naming more than 70 men, mostly in the humanities and social sciences across India. The LoSHA was first circulated on Raya Sarkar's Facebook profile, who linked it to a larger MeToo movement (Shankar, 2017). However, the LoSHA was an eruption in academic discourse in India; there were numerous debates almost immediately after the list was curated, with students, faculty, and noted feminists in higher education institutions thinking through the prevalence, ethics, morality, and legality of sexual harassment in Indian academia. In this paper, I discuss the complexities of complaint and silence, knowledge, and feminism in the academy as they tie to sexual harassment in the wake of the LoSHA. In doing so, I attempt to think through what it means to survive as a woman in the university where sexual harassment and misconduct is structurally maintained.
at any time, allowing me 48-72 hours to respond. I'm happy to meet by appointment, and especially happy to hold office hours after class, either on campus or in a café in the Claremont Village.
Several years ago I was transfixed with horror at the sight of a book cover. The title of the book read: "The Last Professors." I felt as if I had been reading my own obituary, printed in bold letters to make the message crystal clear: you had better pack your bags and book a cheap ticket to an academic scrap heap because we do not want you here anymore. 'What on earth happened to my profession?' I asked myself. Are we all doomed to early retirement and swift oblivion? Fortunately, what Frank Donoghue, the author of the book, argues is not so melodramatic although his claim definitely deserves closer inspection. He is mostly concerned with how the growing pressure on universities to become corporate institutions imperils the status of tenured professors. It seems that soon they will have to adapt or die out.