Paper short abstract:

In MF Husain’s Hindi autobiography Em. Ef. Husen kī kahānī apnī zubānī people and places become a catalyst for manifestations of the self in art and in literature. I introduce this verbal and visual autobiography as a series of sketches of a performative self surfing the world in space and time.

Paper long abstract:

This paper analyzes MFHusain's Hindi autobiography Em. Ef. Husen kī kahānī apnī zubānī, drawing from Elizabeth Grosz's notion of the body as a socio-cultural artifact and the exterior of the subject bodies as psychically constructed (Space, Time and Perversion 1995: 103-110), as well as from Rosi Braidotti's concept of nomadic identities, insofar they don't belong anywhere and belong everywhere (Nomadic subjects 1994, Nuovi soggetti nomadi 2002). Bodies and spaces are envisioned as "assemblages or collections of parts" in constant movement, crossing borders and creating relationships with other selves and other spaces. People and places become a catalyst for manifestations of the self in art -MF Husain being foremost a painter- and eventually also in literature. I introduce MFHusain's verbal and visual autobiography as a series of sketches of a performative self surfing the world in space and time. My research questions are, among others: How does MFHusain construct or deconstruct the self though crossings and linkages? How is the self performed inside and outside private and public spaces? How is the complex (sometimes even contradictory) relationship between self and community portrayed? How does MFHusain's performative self become the core of socially inflected images, such as the collage of social and community relations that constitute rural and urban spaces? How are bodies inflected by class, race, and gender produced and reproduced in MF Husain's visual and verbal autobiography? How does this autobiography articulate notions of (imagined) community/ies, nationalism, transnational subjectivity, nostalgia?