It is relatively uncontroversial today to assume that the decade was marked by intense political ... more It is relatively uncontroversial today to assume that the decade was marked by intense political crisis and social change, and that emergent cinematic trends registered—here directly and powerfully, there through subterfuge and over-coded iconography—the prevailing structures of feeling. Even a cursory trawl through the filmic archives of those transitional years heaps up, on the one hand, images of unparalleled despair/desperation over the republic’s thwarted hopes; and on the other, flamboyantly wrought vignettes that affirm a sense of desire/aspiration predicated on the heterotopic possibilities of a new materialism. The texts refract diverse constellations of critique and social refashioning at work, and it is futile to search for a common visual style, narrative regularity, or form of cognition/action on the screen. This essay focuses on the new cycle of domestic middle-class melodramas that emerged within Hindi cinema during the 1970s, especially those associated with the dire...
This article examines some aspects of the fraught relationship between the reform/defence of Hind... more This article examines some aspects of the fraught relationship between the reform/defence of Hinduism and the activities in India’s heterogeneous public domain by studying a connected set of texts/issues from three distinct historical conjunctures: (i) the Malayalee poet Kumaran Asan’s celebrated poem Chintaavishtayaaya Sita [Sita Immersed in Reflection] (1919) in the context of backward caste demands for inclusion and equivalence under colonial rule; (ii) the Dravidian leader E.V. Ramasamy Periyar’s polemical interpretations of Hindu epics and patriarchal theism between the 1950s and 1970s in the context of Dravidian counter-nationalism as well as the juridical provisions restricting the freedom of expression in order to protect religious sensitivities; and (iii) the American artist Nina Paley’s feminist animation film Sita Sings the Blues (2008) which was sought to be suppressed by Hindu activists but has been acclaimed widely and distributed for free by the film-maker over the internet. Each of these initiatives involves a “new” interpretation—or what Derek Attridge terms “act of reading”—of the epic Ramayana from a gendered perspective; and this article examines how each of them signals transformations in public life and political subjectivities as a consequence of these re-articulations.
A significant counterpoint to the subaltern impatience and revolt that characterized popular Hind... more A significant counterpoint to the subaltern impatience and revolt that characterized popular Hindi cinema of the 1970s was the staging of middle-class civility and desire, away from the generic conventions of the ‘masala-Social.’ This paper argues that this new desire for modernity was supplemented with a determination to secure it, and necessarily involved fresh forms of engagement and disengagement with
Agrarian South: Journal of Political Economy: A triannual Journal of Agrarian South Network and CARES
Brahma Prakash (2019). Cultural Labour: Conceptualizing the ‘Folk Performance’ in India, New Delh... more Brahma Prakash (2019). Cultural Labour: Conceptualizing the ‘Folk Performance’ in India, New Delhi: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-01-9-949081-3, 352 pp., Hardback, ₹1,195.
New Agendas, New Mandates Susie Tharu Satish Poduval Pavan Kumar IT may already be a truism to s... more New Agendas, New Mandates Susie Tharu Satish Poduval Pavan Kumar IT may already be a truism to say that higher education is in crisis in our time. Along a whole gamut of dimensions (ranging from the tortured lives of 5 per cent of the Indian eighteen-year-olds who may hope for entry into its precincts and the 95 per cent who as yet may foster no such aspiration, empty classrooms, demoralised teachers, and rapidly changing job markets, to budgetary allocations that have changed the macro-economic planning of tertiary education into a farce), institutions are crumbling, certitudes wearing thin. But what exactly constitutes this crisis? How might it be analysed? What does it imply for students, planners, teachers, administrators, for the existing disciplines and curricular formations?
Postcolonial Piracy: Media Distribution and Cultural Production in the Global South, Eds. Lars Ec... more Postcolonial Piracy: Media Distribution and Cultural Production in the Global South, Eds. Lars Eckstein and Anja Schwarz, London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2014.
It is relatively uncontroversial today to assume that the decade was marked by intense political ... more It is relatively uncontroversial today to assume that the decade was marked by intense political crisis and social change, and that emergent cinematic trends registered—here directly and powerfully, there through subterfuge and over-coded iconography—the prevailing structures of feeling. Even a cursory trawl through the filmic archives of those transitional years heaps up, on the one hand, images of unparalleled despair/desperation over the republic’s thwarted hopes; and on the other, flamboyantly wrought vignettes that affirm a sense of desire/aspiration predicated on the heterotopic possibilities of a new materialism. The texts refract diverse constellations of critique and social refashioning at work, and it is futile to search for a common visual style, narrative regularity, or form of cognition/action on the screen. This essay focuses on the new cycle of domestic middle-class melodramas that emerged within Hindi cinema during the 1970s, especially those associated with the dire...
This article examines some aspects of the fraught relationship between the reform/defence of Hind... more This article examines some aspects of the fraught relationship between the reform/defence of Hinduism and the activities in India’s heterogeneous public domain by studying a connected set of texts/issues from three distinct historical conjunctures: (i) the Malayalee poet Kumaran Asan’s celebrated poem Chintaavishtayaaya Sita [Sita Immersed in Reflection] (1919) in the context of backward caste demands for inclusion and equivalence under colonial rule; (ii) the Dravidian leader E.V. Ramasamy Periyar’s polemical interpretations of Hindu epics and patriarchal theism between the 1950s and 1970s in the context of Dravidian counter-nationalism as well as the juridical provisions restricting the freedom of expression in order to protect religious sensitivities; and (iii) the American artist Nina Paley’s feminist animation film Sita Sings the Blues (2008) which was sought to be suppressed by Hindu activists but has been acclaimed widely and distributed for free by the film-maker over the internet. Each of these initiatives involves a “new” interpretation—or what Derek Attridge terms “act of reading”—of the epic Ramayana from a gendered perspective; and this article examines how each of them signals transformations in public life and political subjectivities as a consequence of these re-articulations.
A significant counterpoint to the subaltern impatience and revolt that characterized popular Hind... more A significant counterpoint to the subaltern impatience and revolt that characterized popular Hindi cinema of the 1970s was the staging of middle-class civility and desire, away from the generic conventions of the ‘masala-Social.’ This paper argues that this new desire for modernity was supplemented with a determination to secure it, and necessarily involved fresh forms of engagement and disengagement with
Agrarian South: Journal of Political Economy: A triannual Journal of Agrarian South Network and CARES
Brahma Prakash (2019). Cultural Labour: Conceptualizing the ‘Folk Performance’ in India, New Delh... more Brahma Prakash (2019). Cultural Labour: Conceptualizing the ‘Folk Performance’ in India, New Delhi: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-01-9-949081-3, 352 pp., Hardback, ₹1,195.
New Agendas, New Mandates Susie Tharu Satish Poduval Pavan Kumar IT may already be a truism to s... more New Agendas, New Mandates Susie Tharu Satish Poduval Pavan Kumar IT may already be a truism to say that higher education is in crisis in our time. Along a whole gamut of dimensions (ranging from the tortured lives of 5 per cent of the Indian eighteen-year-olds who may hope for entry into its precincts and the 95 per cent who as yet may foster no such aspiration, empty classrooms, demoralised teachers, and rapidly changing job markets, to budgetary allocations that have changed the macro-economic planning of tertiary education into a farce), institutions are crumbling, certitudes wearing thin. But what exactly constitutes this crisis? How might it be analysed? What does it imply for students, planners, teachers, administrators, for the existing disciplines and curricular formations?
Postcolonial Piracy: Media Distribution and Cultural Production in the Global South, Eds. Lars Ec... more Postcolonial Piracy: Media Distribution and Cultural Production in the Global South, Eds. Lars Eckstein and Anja Schwarz, London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2014.
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