|
Showing 1 - 10 of
10 matches in All Departments
This book is the first inter-disciplinary engagement with the work
of Maqbool Fida Husain, arguably India's most iconic contemporary
artist today, whose life and work are intimately entangled with the
career of independent India as a democratic, secular and
multi-ethnic nation. For more than half a century, and across
thousands of canvases, Husain has painted individuals and objects,
events and incidents that offer an astonishing visual chronicle of
India through the ages. The 13 articles in this volume - written by
distinguished artists, curators, anthropologists, historians, art
historians and critics, sociologists and scholars of post-colonial
literature and religion - critically examine the artistic statement
that Husain has presented on the self, community and nation through
his oeuvre. It engages with the controversies that have erupted
around and about Husain's work, and situates them in debates around
the freedom of the artist versus the sentiments of the community,
between 'virtue' and 'obscenity', between an 'elite' of
intellectuals and the 'common man', and between a 'work of art' and
a 'religious icon'. Correspondingly it considers how India has
responded to Husain: with affection, admiration and adulation on
the one hand, and hostility and rejection on the other. This book
is more relevant than ever before in light of the debates that have
arisen over Husain's self-imposed exile for the last few years
following a spate of violent attacks on his home and exhibitions in
India, and his recent decision to forfeit his Indian citizenship.
It will be of interest to those studying art history, sociology,
anthropology, cultural studies, and politics, as well as to a wide
spectrum of readers interested in contemporary issues of identity
and nationhood.
Mohandas K. Gandhi has been described as 'an artist of
non-violence,' crafting as he did a set of practices of the self
and politics that earned him the mantle of Mahatma, 'the great
soul.' His philosophy and praxis of satyagraha, non-violent civil
disobedience, has been analysed extensively. But is satyagraha also
an aesthetic regime, with practices akin to a work of art? Is
Gandhi, then, an artist of disobedience? Sumathi Ramaswamy explores
these questions with the help of India's modern and contemporary
artists who have over the past century sought out the Mahatma as
their muse and invested in him across a wide range of media from
painting and sculpture to video installation and digital
production. At a time when Gandhi is a hallowed but hollow
presence, why have they lavished so much attention on him? A
hundred and fifty years after his birth, Gandhi is hyper visible
across the Indian landscape from tea stalls and government offices
to museums and galleries. This is ironical given that the Mahatma
appeared to have had little time for the visual arts or for artists
for that matter. Yet fascinatingly, the visual artist has emerged
as Gandhi's conscience-keeper, reminding others of the meaning of
the Mahatma in his own time and today. In so doing, these artists
also reveal why this most disobedient of 'modern' icons has grabbed
their attention, resulting in a veritable art of disobedience as an
homage to one of the twentieth century's great prophets of
disobedience.
Empires of Vision brings together pieces by some of the most
influential scholars working at the intersection of visual culture
studies and the history of European imperialism. The essays and
excerpts focus on the paintings, maps, geographical surveys,
postcards, photographs, and other media that comprise the visual
milieu of colonization, struggles for decolonization, and the
lingering effects of empire. Taken together, they demonstrate that
an appreciation of the role of visual experience is necessary for
understanding the functioning of hegemonic imperial power and the
ways that the colonized subjects spoke, and looked, back at their
imperial rulers. Empires of Vision also makes a vital point about
the complexity of image culture in the modern world: We must
comprehend how regimes of visuality emerged globally, not only in
the metropole but also in relation to the putative margins of a
world that increasingly came to question the very distinction
between center and periphery. Contributors. Jordanna Bailkin, Roger
Benjamin, Daniela Bleichmar, Zeynep Çelik, David Ciarlo, Natasha
Eaton, Simon Gikandi, Serge Gruzinski, James L. Hevia, Martin Jay,
Brian Larkin, Olu Oguibe, Ricardo Padrón, Christopher Pinney,
Sumathi Ramaswamy, Benjamin Schmidt, Terry Smith, Robert Stam, Eric
A. Stein, Nicholas Thomas, Krista A. Thompson
During the nineteenth century, Lemuria was imagined as a land that
once bridged India and Africa but disappeared into the ocean
millennia ago, much like Atlantis. A sustained meditation on a lost
place from a lost time, this elegantly written book is the first to
explore LemuriaOCOs incarnations across cultures, from
Victorian-era science to Euro-American occultism to colonial and
postcolonial India. "The Lost Land of Lemuria "widens into a
provocative exploration of the poetics and politics of loss to
consider how this sentiment manifests itself in a fascination with
vanished homelands, hidden civilizations, and forgotten peoples.
More than a consideration of nostalgia, it shows how ideas once
entertained but later discarded in the metropole can travel to the
peripheryOCoand can be appropriated by those seeking to construct a
meaningful world within the disenchantment of modernity. Sumathi
Ramaswamy ultimately reveals how loss itself has become a condition
of modernity, compelling us to rethink the politics of imagination
and creativity in our day."
Why and how do debates about the form and disposition of our Earth
shape enlightened subjectivity and secular worldliness in colonial
modernity? Sumathi Ramaswamy explores this question for British
India with the aid of the terrestrial globe which since the
sixteenth century has circulated as a worldly symbol, a scientific
instrument, and not least an educational tool for inculcating
planetary consciousness. In Terrestrial Lessons, Ramaswamy provides
the first in-depth analysis of the globe's history in and impact on
the Indian subcontinent during the colonial era and its aftermath.
Drawing on a wide array of archival sources, she delineates its
transformation from a thing of distinction possessed by elite men
into that mass-produced commodity used in classrooms worldwide the
humble school globe. Traversing the length and breadth of British
India, Terrestrial Lessons is an unconventional history of this
master object of pedagogical modernity that will fascinate
historians of cartography, science, and Asian studies.
Through an exploration of subjects such as Gandhi impersonators,
performance artists, and ritual participants, Mimetic Desires makes
an intervention toward understanding the phenomenon of
impersonation and guising in South Asia and the world. This volume
defines impersonation as the temporary assumption of an identity or
guise in social and aesthetic performance that is perceived as not
one’s own, and guising as sartorial and kinetic play more
generally. Interrogating the legitimacy of the purported dialectic
between the "real/original" and "fake/dupe," Mimetic Desires
refutes the ordering of identity along the lines of a binary or
dichotomy that presupposes the myth of an original identity. By
peeling back the layers of performative masks to reveal the process
of the masquerade itself, we can see that those with the most
social capital are often those with the most power and
opportunities to impersonate "up" and "down" social hierarchies.
The book’s twelve chapters disclose sites and processes of
sociopolitical power facilitated by normative markers of social
status relating to race, ethnicity, gender, caste, class, and
religion—and how those markers can be manipulated to express and
enhance individual and group power. The first comprehensive study
to focus on impersonation in South Asia, Mimetic Desires expands on
previous scholarship on impersonation and guising in vernacular
theatre, dance, public processions, and religious rituals. It is
particularly in conversation with the robust scholarship on gender
performance in South Asia’s theatrical and dance forms. Mimetic
Desires explores some of the contexts and forms of impersonation in
South Asia, with its remarkable array of performing arts, to gain
insight into the very human and quotidian practices of
impersonation and guising.
Why would love for their language lead several men in southern
India to burn themselves alive in its name? "Passions of the
Tongue" analyzes the discourses of love, labor, and life that
transformed Tamil into an object of such passionate attachment,
producing in the process one of modern India's most intense
movements for linguistic revival and separatism. Sumathi Ramaswamy
suggests that these discourses cannot be contained within a
singular metanarrative of linguistic nationalism and instead
proposes a new analytic, "language devotion." She uses this concept
to track the many ways in which Tamil was imagined by its speakers
and connects these multiple imaginings to their experience of
colonial and post-colonial modernity. Focusing in particular on the
transformation of the language into a goddess, mother, and maiden,
Ramaswamy explores the pious, filial, and erotic aspects of Tamil
devotion. She considers why, as its speakers sought political and
social empowerment, metaphors of motherhood eventually came to
dominate representations of the language.
Empires of Vision brings together pieces by some of the most
influential scholars working at the intersection of visual culture
studies and the history of European imperialism. The essays and
excerpts focus on the paintings, maps, geographical surveys,
postcards, photographs, and other media that comprise the visual
milieu of colonization, struggles for decolonization, and the
lingering effects of empire. Taken together, they demonstrate that
an appreciation of the role of visual experience is necessary for
understanding the functioning of hegemonic imperial power and the
ways that the colonized subjects spoke, and looked, back at their
imperial rulers. Empires of Vision also makes a vital point about
the complexity of image culture in the modern world: We must
comprehend how regimes of visuality emerged globally, not only in
the metropole but also in relation to the putative margins of a
world that increasingly came to question the very distinction
between center and periphery. Contributors. Jordanna Bailkin, Roger
Benjamin, Daniela Bleichmar, Zeynep Celik, David Ciarlo, Natasha
Eaton, Simon Gikandi, Serge Gruzinski, James L. Hevia, Martin Jay,
Brian Larkin, Olu Oguibe, Ricardo Padron, Christopher Pinney,
Sumathi Ramaswamy, Benjamin Schmidt, Terry Smith, Robert Stam, Eric
A. Stein, Nicholas Thomas, Krista A. Thompson
Through an exploration of subjects such as Gandhi impersonators,
"God-men," performance artists, and participants in ritual
enactments of sacred stories through dance and theatre, Mimetic
Desires makes an intervention toward understanding the phenomenon
of impersonation and guising in South Asia and the world. This
volume defines impersonation as the temporary assumption of an
identity or guise in performance that is perceived to be not
one’s own, regardless of whether this assumption is deliberate,
intentional, and conscious or not. Interrogating the legitimacy of
the purported dialectic between the "real/original" and
"fake/dupe," Mimetic Desires refutes any ordering of identity along
the lines of a binary or dichotomy that presupposes the myth of an
original identity. Guising captures sartorial and kinetic play more
generally. By peeling back the layers of performative masks to
reveal the process of the masquerade itself, we can see that those
with the most social capital are often those with the most power
and opportunities to impersonate "up"—and "down"—social
hierarchies. The twelve chapters in Mimetic Desires disclose sites
and processes of socio-political power facilitated by normative
markers of social status relating to race, ethnicity, gender,
caste, class, and religion—and how those markers can be
manipulated to express and enhance individual and group power. The
first comprehensive study to focus on impersonation in South Asia,
Mimetic Desires expands on previous scholarship on impersonation
and guising in vernacular theatre, dance, public processions, and
religious ritual. It is particularly in conversation with the
robust scholarship on gender performance and trans-kothi-hijra
engagement in theatrical and dance forms in South Asia. Mimetic
Desires explores some of the contexts and forms of impersonation in
South Asia, with its remarkable array of performing arts, to gain
insight into the very human and quotidian practices of
impersonation and guising.
|
|