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Paper short abstract

This paper addresses polarisation as a force behind caste-based discrimination, intensified by the globally networked Hindu nationalism. It proposes curatorial intervention as a methodological juncture of art and anthropology to investigate conceptual-sensorial modes of anti-caste mobilisation.

Paper long abstract

Caste is a contemporary and global form of hereditary segregation. With ancient roots in South Asian societies, caste has been reinforced by colonialism, relocated and reinvented in the diaspora, and remediated as online content. The polarising effects of caste-based discrimination, casteism, have increased on a transnational scale since Hindu nationalism rose to power in India during 2014. Nonetheless, groups and individuals among the oppressed intensify their interrogations of caste and its intersections with racialisation and patriarchy. Within the art field, Dalits form curatorial collectives constituted as network practices of research and production. While these conceptual-sensorial emergences are delegitimate in the South Asian and South Asian diaspora contexts dominated by brahmins and white westerners, they provide generative alternatives to the success stories of the solo artist, curator or scholar.

This paper will argue for the benefit of studying the existing collaborations between artistic, curatorial and scholarly practices within the Dalit curatorial collectives through art anthropology curating as a single post-disciplinary research field influenced by different training heritages. The proposed methodology curatorial intervention forms a parallel to the collectives it investigates, and it challenges the illegitimacy of the claim to embody transdisciplinary knowledge and experiences of artistic, anthropological and curatorial practices. This position engages with alternatives to polarising effects of casteism as well as of strict disciplinary categorisations, and with ethical and epistemological implications of the researcher’s intervention in anti-caste mobilisations imagining futures of social justice.