Click the star to add/remove an item to/from your individual schedule.
You need to be logged in to avail of this functionality.
Log in
- Convenor:
-
Mallika Shakya
(South Asian University, Delhi)
- Location:
- 102b
- Start time:
- 15 May, 2014 at
Time zone: Asia/Tokyo
- Session slots:
- 1
Short Abstract:
This panel will discuss whether and how anthropology can borrow from critical readings of fiction and poetry to theorise alternative ideas on nationalism and regionalism. We invite papers on South Asia along with papers on pan-African, European, Asian and American movements.
Long Abstract:
Although today's familiar national emblems date only as far as half a century, the kitsch of nationalism now glosses over centuries old sensibilities of pan-national and trans-national affinities in many parts of the world. The fixity of boundary that the nation-state requires and its coercive definition of the normalcy of citizenship cannot cope with nomads and rebels. Today's social science discourse on nationalism lacks the stamina or vocabulary to express the pain and suffering of those pushed aside as 'others.'
This panel will bring together papers that read alternative nationalisms in popular fiction and poetry. For example, in writing about new nation Bangladesh, prominent South Asian poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz echoed what Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore had said an entire century ago that exclusionary nationalism interrupts the South Asian way of thinking and being. Early pan-Africanists Franz Fanon and W.E.B. Dubois have penned fiction and poetry contesting colonial nationalism. Closer to Europe, James Joyce's Ulysses depicted Cyclop as a 'one-eyed' nationalism that needed slaying for humanism to prevail. Can literary genres offer the corpus necessary for anthropologists to explore alternative views on nationalism?
This panel invites critical readings of fiction and poetry scrutinizing nation-states for their histories of exclusion. What have poetry and fictions been saying about a transborder way of life, and ideological, economic or social nomadisms that have roots deeper than modern nationalism? How are pre-nation memories reconciled within nationalist discourses? What kinds of alternative imaginations populate literary genres? How can anthropology borrow from these imaginations?
Accepted papers:
Session 1Paper short abstract:
This paper examines the possibilities of Kashmiri cultural memories (explored in the film Harud and many Kashmiri writings) for anthropological studies to look beyond the political nationalisms that inevitably entrench conflict zones like Kashmir.
Paper long abstract:
The story of Bollywood films on Kashmir, of which the most recent instance is Lamhaa (2010), is normally saturated with political jingoism, and their subject always moulded in political languages of India, Pakistan, Hindu, Muslim, Kashmiriyat, etc. The Kashmiri-directed film Harud (released in India in 2012) was a breakthrough with this tendency: its quiet story-telling carefully avoids political nationalism(s), and concentrates on the day-to-day world of a Kashmiri boy, which is unfolded through his personal eyes. Instead of the competing marks and remarks of 'national', the film is filled by the Kashmiri cultural memories of inert everyday life, army banks, crackdowns and silent protests by the parents of 'disappeared' persons. The resulting subject of the film, composed of the images of such cultural memories, is quite different from the typical political subject of Kashmir, which is always the contested site of the different national ideologies. The subject of such cultural memories — which is located at the intersections of social, political and personal, and which is, according to the director of the film, a subject of resistance — is nonetheless politically non-judgmental. This paper examines the implications of such Kashmiri cultural memories, expressed in the film Harud and many recent Kashmiri writings including hip-hop lyrics, to the anthropological object-making in case of exploring the conflict zone like Kashmir.
Paper short abstract:
This paper examines how anthropological research and contemporary fiction of displaced Kashmiri Pandits in Kashmir challenge the dominant narrative of forced migration in India. Anthropologists and fiction writers are attuned to the uncertainty of forced migrant experiences, unlike nation-states.
Paper long abstract:
Since the partition of India in 1947, the condition of forced migration has been foundational to the narrative of the Indian nation-state and a subject of scholarly and artistic interest. Yet, how do these different approaches relate to each other in contemporary India? The paper will take the case of the Kashmiri Pandits, the Hindu minority of Kashmir, who were displaced from their homes and became Internally Displaced Persons with the start of the current conflict in Kashmir in 1990. The narrative of the Pandits is over-determined by the history of the conflict and contemporary state discourses which regard the displaced as both in need of assistance and as deviants to the national order. The current narrative of the Pandit exodus critically denies the voices of the Pandits, while favouring that of politicians and bureaucrats.
This paper draws upon anthropological research of displaced Kashmiri Pandits and the work of Sidhartha Gigoo, a Kashmiri novelist and film maker, to see how ethnographic and literary accounts challenge the current narrative of forced migration of the Kashmiri Pandits. The paper will then critically explore how these materials relate to each other. I argue that anthropologists and fiction writers can learn much from each other as they are attuned to capturing the 'uncertainty' of forced migrant experiences, unlike contemporary discourses on forced migration expressed by nation-states and political parties.
Paper short abstract:
I propose to read a selected body of novels penned by BP Koirala and Parijaat – two leading political and literary figures of twentieth century Nepal – in trying to understand the everyday aspects of belonging and borders.
Paper long abstract:
Applying an anthropological lens to fiction, this paper discusses everyday aspects of belonging and borders in twentieth century Nepali novels. Although Nepal was unified as a nation-state over two and half a century ago, it went through several popular uprisings after 1950 questioning what it means to be a Nepali. I propose to read a selected body of novels penned by two of Nepal's prominent writers - BP Koirala and Parijaat in trying to understand its national dilemmas.
BP Koirala's novels explore the dilemmas of humanity in complex circumstances. His novel 'Hitler and the Jew' is about how a South Asian Arya man may comprehend Holocaust, which was not a crime he committed but still an outcome that evoked the self-entitlement Brahminism legitimises. 'Sumnima' deals with civilizational contrast between Brahminic and tribal ways of life. 'Teen Ghumti' explores Brahmanic normalcy through the eyes of a woman waiting for her democratic activist husband to return from jail.
Parijaat's 'Shirishko Fool' depicts the struggles of an old Gorkha soldier to come to terms with the paradoxes of homeland, friendship and love, as he returns from the battlefields of the second World War serving the British.
Koirala and Parijaat were both leading political figures of their times. Koirala briefly served as the Prime Minister of Nepal in the 1950s. Parijaat inspired a leftist writers' movement Raalfa in the 1970s. Their fictions were not used for their politics even if humanity, belonging and borders seem articulated more meaningfully in their fictions than in their politics.
Paper short abstract:
Alternative ideas on what it means to be Cape Verdean have co-existed over time, placing the archipelago in multiple regional contexts. In this paper I analyse nationalist discourses produced by the members of Claridade, a movement that wielded great impact on the literary scene in Cape Verde.
Paper long abstract:
Discourses about national identities are never fixed and consensual. They constitute a field of debate in which different positions are continually articulated. It has been so in the case of Cape Verde. Alternative ideas on what it means to be Cape Verdean have co-existed over time. In particular, various connections have been drawn between Cape Verde and other nations, placing the West African archipelago in multiple regional contexts. In this complex symbolic field, different feelings of belonging may be triggered, bringing different affinities to the fore and sketching transnational scenarios as diverse as the African continent, the Atlantic world, and the Community of Portuguese Language Speaking Countries (CPLP). In this paper, I analyse nationalist discourses created in the very heart of the Claridade, a movement that wielded considerable impact on the literary scene in Cape Verde between the 1930s and the 1960s. During a time marked by a rigorous censorship regime, Claridade constituted an important medium for claiming Cape Verde's autonomy. The vocabulary crafted by the representatives of this movement was crucial for the symbolic consolidation of the young nation-state - although their main ideas have been continually challenged by competing projects. Observing the symbolic inclusions and exclusions produced by these discourses, we may better understand the elaborate construction of a nation and its position in the world.