Nationalism in/and Indian Media as a Discursive Discourse

*Plenary talk delivered at the International Seminar on Reinventing Nationalism, Secularism and Plurality: Media Discourses and Deconstruction at Gauhati University on November 11 2017 at 12.00 noon-2.00 pm

In this plenary talk, I will proceed in three sections Firstly, I will introduce the concepts I will be using to engage with the topic of nationalism, discourse and Indian media. I am not invoking the logic of prefixing a term such as media to the discursive entity, discourse. Discourses subsume everything, minor and major, including what media seek to engage with.

I am not going to be tied to the linear approach indicated in the theme of the seminar. I will prefer to subvert the order of terms in the theme. This disordering of the terms in the topic is deliberate to call attention to the concepts of enlightened cynicism (Peter Sloterdijk,1987) and discursive discourse (Michel Foucault,1972). Stuart Hall’s concept of articulation as a site of contestation and resistance is also dealt with in this part. In the second stage, I will introspect and explore the Kittlerian and McLuhanian conceptualisations of communication discourses and media. These can also be read as what Hall posited as contestations and resistances. In the third part, I will allow these concepts to come alive in the context of what transpires in India as nationalism and plurality and as discursive discourses in the company of Indian media.

Section I

Nationalism as Cynicism

One eminently relevant concept to engage with the contemporary versions of hyper nationalism of the rightists in India and their media partners is the notion of Peter Sloterdijk which posits cynicism as enlightened false consciousness. I invoked this in my earlier readings of how media and public partnership  for the nationalist project was forcibly sought by Mrs Gandhi through authoritarian methods during the period of Emergency in India.

Times have not changed for the better for the nation and its nationalist projects. The enlightened false consciousness is the cocoon of cynicism which binds us all in its innards when we imagine our nation and its spirit, nationalism. As Sloterdijk says we did learn the lessons time and again for the past several decades, but we are unable to put them into practice for the cause of the nation and nationalism. “Cynicism is enlightened false consciousness. It is that modernized, unhappy consciousness, on which enlightenment has laboured both successfully and unsuccessfully. It has learned its lessons in enlightenment, but it has not and probably been not able to, put them into practice. Well-off and miserable at the same time, this consciousness no longer feels affected by any critique of ideology; its falseness is already reflexively buffered” (Sloterdijk,1987).

Nationalism as a Foucauldian discourse?

What did Foucault say about the discursive discourses? They are, according to Foucault, “practices that systematically form the objects of which they speak. In addition, discourses are not about objects; they do not identify objects, they constitute them and in the practice of doing so conceal their own invention” (Foucault, 1972: p. 49).

The Foucauldian notion of discursive discourse is relevant to engage with the ways in which nationalism has been constructed in India, in the Western mould, as an appendage of the neo-coloniality and neo-liberalism for the good part of the post-Independent period. The current rhetoric of “nationalism” of the BJP kind is no different from the nationalist project of the Congress party, particularly during Mrs Gandhi’s Emergency regime. The only difference is the purpose, location and role of the “foreign hand”, (“foreign hand” became a frequent target of attack by Mrs Gandhi, whenever she was getting restless with her opponents). During her period, the “foreign hand” was outside India and was working as an “anti-national”/”anti-Indian” to foment trouble in India. Now, the “anti-national” is an average Indian, who ends up  questioning the logic of “foreign hand” behind Indian Government’s policy decisions! In both cases, the discourse of nationalism impinges on the discursive power of the prevailing political machinations to control and contain individual subjects through the constitution of pseudo-knowledge of the national interests and nation, all for the sake of self-seeking power relations.

Nationalism as an Articulation 

Stuart Hall said: “By the term ‘articulation’, I mean a connection or link which is not necessarily given in all cases, as a law or a fact of life, but which requires particular conditions of existence to appear at all, which has to be positively sustained by specific processes, which is not ‘eternal’ but has to be constantly renewed, which can under some circumstances disappear or be overthrown, leading to the old linkages being dissolved and new connections—re-articulations—being forged. It is also important that an articulation between different practices does not mean that they become identical or that one is dissolved into the other. Each retains its distinct determinations and conditions of existence. However, once an articulation is made, the two practices can function together, not as an ‘immediate identity’ (in the language of Marx’s ‘1857 Introduction’), but as distinctions within a ‘unity’. (Hall, 1985, pp. 113-114)”

The contemporary challenges posed by the rightists’ discourses on “anti-nationalism” and “nationalism” can also be addressed in the company of Stuart Hall’s notion of articulation. Articulations and re-articulations of nationalism and anti-nationalism have been continually renewed since early part of last century, when the strategies and approaches of M K Gandhi to nationalism was deeply contested by Rabindranath Tagore, Subhas Chandra Bose and Bhagat Singh, among others. However, these contestations and resistances also renewed Gandhian nationalism as much as they helped to expose it.

Nationalism as an “Historical Error” 

When I wrote about the “historical error” for an article titled “100 Years of Indian Cinema: Whose Cinema? Whose Centenary? – The Politics of Temporal Film Historiography,”  to draw attention to the politics of temporal film historiography in India,  I quoted Ernest Renan’s words about nationalism. They are relevant here too. “Forgetting, I would even go so far as to say historical error is a crucial factor in the creation of a nation, which is why progress in historical studies often constitutes a danger for [the principle of] nationality.” (Ernest Renan, 1882)

The constitution of discourses on nationalism in India rests on the constitution of “historical errors” during different periods of the formation of such discourses. The site of discursiveness is the site of histories of errors as regards nationalism. One famous “historical error” which sustains the history of independence struggle is the “historical error” Indian text books embody in the erasure of Vellore mutiny of 1806 as the first major flash point of independence struggle and the elevation of the second mutiny, which happened 51 years later in Meerut (1857), as the “first” mutiny.

Section II

In this section, I wish to explore the notions of Kittler and McLuhan to aid in the identification of Indian Media as Discourse Networks (Kittler,1992). According to Friedrich Kittler, “Discourse networks are made of technologies and institutions that allow a given culture to select, store and produce relevant data” (Kittler, 1992, 369). I would like to stress here that Indian Media also exist as extensions of Indian orality. Indian media are becoming invisible, in a sense, if one believes in the following words of McLuhan. “As a result, precisely at the point where a new media-induced environment becomes all pervasive and transmogrifies our sensory balance, it also becomes invisible” (McLuhan, 1969). Our senses, driven by the engine of orality, are made to address the media content produced in the media rooms, where Indian orality reigns supreme, in a perfect manner. It is a typical made for each other situation. But this results in a great disadvantage to the true interests of Indian democracy and nation, as the media become invisible in the cause and effect chain. They exist in the noises of its orality engine. They exists in the silences as muted collaborators of anti-democratic elements. They exist in all these avatars in invisible modes even as they “transmogrifiy our sensory balance”, to draw the McLuhanian logic, through a multi-modal attack on the people, nation and the Constitution, without being aware of the consequences.

Section III

In this section, we need to rethink Indian media as an impossible entity. We need rethink or locate them as Un-Indian, just as any other universal category that gets defined as either an extension of technologies  or as discourse networks. They are also subsisting at the same time  in a very weak state as Indian with all the trappings of contestations and resistances of the articulations and re-articulations Stuart Hall theorised.

As mentioned earlier, we need to rethink nationalism and pluralism as both universally conditioned discourses as well as the typical discursive entities of Foucauldian scheme.

Let us first engage, in particular, with how nationalism and pluralism are to be related as Foucauldian discourses. Let us answer the question, What is in the archive, statements and epistemes of contemporary India/Indian media?

Archive in the case of Indian media refers to the set of practices that have /been constituted/constituting what we refer as Indian press, Indian journalism, Indian media, Indian television, Indian radio, Indian films etc., These practices may exist at four levels with the conditionality of limitations I) expressibility ii) conversations iii) public memory and iv) reactivation. In 2017, there are a billion limitations on the expressibility of the people and other actors who cause the discursive discourses. There are similar limitations on the conversations, public memory and reactivation of the first three.

Indian media are as silent as a stone in not addressing these limitations in contemporary times. The past decades, since 1990s, have been as traumatic as the past few years, past few months, past few weeks, past few days, past few hours, past few minutes, past few seconds for the marginalised Indians. From a point of cynicism as enlightened false consciousness, the Indian media can not be blamed as as it can not constitute  a collective subjectivity, a unified Lacanian subject. Likewise, the Indians can not also be blamed as they also lack the unified whole, a collective Lacanian subjectivity. This, however, does not absolve the failures of Indian media.

Two important questions have to be raised here. What becomes of the discourses on nationalism, secularism and pluralism when they are freed from the prefix, Indian? What becomes of the discourses on the same when they are tied with the prefix, Indian? The answers are not to be found in full in the following paras,but more questions, tied to the above, will be raised as we proceed further in understanding the discursive discourses at work. It is appropriate now to invoke the Foucauldian tool of archive.

The Foucauldian archive, in the case of Indian media, is busting at its seams as there are thousands of innards or internal archives as well as a few major archives that seek to exist as many sets of practices as there as collective and group identities in the 600+ districts and as many as more than half a million villages. There are as many sets of practices as there are castes, religions, social, cultural, political, geographic affiliations. The Foucauldian archive exists as a Deleuzian rhizome, with unparalleled heterogeneity and ceaseless connections, as well.  As it is a rhizome, it is an expanding universe. How to locate the fixed entity, with a homogenous face, such as nationalism in an expanding universe of a rhizomatic archive?

The Foucauldian archive is constituted by its statements, the contextual, non-speech categories. They are the powerhouses of discursive discourses that are raring to seek formations of myriad kinds.

The statements in the case of Indian media refers to the non-speech acts at four levels i) objects ii) common viewpoint iii) constant set of concepts iv) common themes, All these four anchors were seen as hypotheses by Foucault. The objects of discourses are nationalism, secularism and pluralism as far as this topic is concerned. But as the statements of the archive are working as rhizomatic entities there are more than one statement to engage with the objects of the present discourse. They in turn lack a common view point. They can not be approached with a constant set of concepts and they also fail to work with common themes. They are losing their ground as common entities as swiftly as the sands that are caught in a desert storm.

Like statements, epistemes exist as  important determinants of the nature and quality of the Foucauldian archive. In the present case, the bodies of knowledge systems the constituents and extensions of print culture in India have created to engage in discursive discourses on caste, religion, family, nationalism over the past 461 years, 264 years of Indian journalism, 100+ years of Indian cinema, nearly 50 years of Indian television, nearly 100 years of Indian radio and 25+ years of Indian internet media are the epistemes we need to pay close attention, if we wish to map the discursive discourses on nationalism and Indian media in a rigorous manner. These epistemes may have their discontinuities, ruptures and fragments. They may not be constants.

The episteme of Orality. This is the only constant. The episteme that seeks to condition our discourses on media and non-media planes is the episteme that can not be constituted without the norms of orality. It is an episteme that refuses to yield to the logic of modernity, democracy, secularism and nationalism. It is an episteme that successfully aids journalism to fail in India. It is an episteme that seeks to constitute the discourses on nationalism, secularism, pluralism and nationalism as discursive with the Foucauldian laws of external, internal and access related ordering of discourses.

Likewise, the notion of articulations by Stuart Hall is also eminently useful to engage with our problem at hand, how to rethink/reinvent the notions of nationalism, secularism, pluralism. Articulations is the notion of Hall which seeks to provide linkages and connections with the multiple sites even as the identities of the individual sites are made to remain distinct. The articulations of the meta nationalism of India and the nationalisms of the linguistic/geographic/historical entities can co exist even as their articulations can be seen as sites of resistances and contestations. The absence of Indian media at the local/regional/linguistic/geographical/cultural levels is a point of introspection. There is only an invisible, mis-recognised plane that stands in for Indian media at the imaginary, national level. It is a site that is rootless in the innards of the nation. There are no media with resources at the fringes of the nation or its innards to pose a counter to the imaginary, national media at the centre. For pluralism to aid nationalism and nationalisms of the multiple kind to flower in India, even as the nationalism of the state requires some adrenalin to plod on, we need a larger, creative Un-Indian face for Indian media. This Un-Indian face is not a negation of the idea of the nation, Indian nationalism or pluralism, but a discursive strategy that is required for these entities to be reborn.

When this International seminar commemorates the “50 Years of Media and Communication Education in India’s North East”, I find the relevance of the Foucauldian logic in reading the theme of the seminar, Reinventing Nationalism, Secularism and Plurality: Media Discourses and Deconstruction and what the event seeks to commemorate. What becomes of the conference when the word media is displaced by a deliberate erasure or replaced with a universal marker Journalism to co-exist with another universal marker, Communication. The need to rethink critically this conference’s thematic framework is also embedded, I think, even though I am not sure whether the politics of semiotics was caused inadvertently or otherwise. I am referring to the colours which contain the words/terms in the banner on the dais. The colour red is a signifier of the call for rethinking what it encapsulates. Colour saffron stands for contemporary notions of hyper-nationalism. Colour blue is the colour of the dalit parties in India and captures the spirit of pluralism and secularism. Colour black is the colour of deconstruction, a black hole of lost true meanings of all the words encapsulated in other colours.

There is more to the topic as thoughts to be gathered, shared, articulated and reconfigured. But, time is a discursive entity as well, trying to stop us mid way.  Our thoughts and their traces in our actions ought to be captured later to rewrite past and present trajectories of discursive discourses of nationalism, pluralism and their primary, secondary, tertiary and invisible definers/entities.

Thank you.

References

1.Foucault, Michel, 1972. The Archaeology of  Knowledge and the Discourse on Language. Pantheon.

2.Hall,Stuart, 1985. “Signification, Representation and Ideology: Althusser and the Post-Structuralist Debates”, Critical Studies in Mass Communication, 2:2.

3.Kittler, Friedrich, 1992. Discourse Networks 1800/1900, Stanford University Press.

4.McLuhan, Marshal, 1969. Understanding of Media, McGraw Hill.

5.Renan,Ernest, 1882. “What is a Nation?”, Talk delivered at the Sorbonne on March 11th, 1882. Available at  http://ucparis.fr/files/9313/6549/9943/What_is_a_Nation.pdf

6.Sloterdijk, Peter, 1987. Critique of Cynical Reason, University of Minnesota Press.

 

Spatiality and Materiality in University Class Rooms

This note will introduce the linkages between the spatiality and materiality of class rooms or what the doyen of sociology of education, Willard Waller dealt with as the “school”. Waller became famous, belatedly i.e more than 30 years after the publication of his classic, The Sociology of Teaching (1932). The book embodies the spirit of the Chicago School of Sociology and the troubled times of the 1930s’ society and its impact on what Waller’s dubs as “small societies” (Schools).

Bakhtin and Gramsci: Original Thinkers?

 

Concluding remarks of Dr G Ravindran on Antonio Gramsci and Bakhtin on the second day of the two day seminar on Bakhtin and Gramsci by Prof.Craig Brandist on April 16-17 2014 at the Thanthai Periyar Hall, University of Madras

We should thank Prof.Craig for a very different classical approach. He provided a huge context, but used only a few slides. He succeeded in contextualising how Gramsci’s thoughts were influenced by this huge canvas of Russian thoughts. As before, as in yesterday’s session,what I like most in Prof.Craig’s approach is his cautious approach.He is a scholar who wants to be cautious about the main “sacred objects”. According to Prof.Craig we should not misread what gave birth to these “sacred objects” We need not forget the history of these “sacred objects”, that is to say, what caused Bakhtin to emerge and what caused Gramsci to emerge.

அந்த அளவில் இந்த இரண்டு நாள் அமர்வுகள், பக்தின் பற்றியும், கிராம்சி பற்றியும் ஒரு புதிய பரிமாணத்தில் நம்மை சிந்திக்க வைத்திருக்கின்றன. இரண்டாவது முக்கியமான விடயம், பேராசிரியரின் உரைகளில் அவர் எடுத்துக் கொண்ட இந்த தலைப்புகளையும் மீறி அவர் புதியதாக பல புதிய அறிஞர்களை அவர்களது பரிமாணங்களை அறிமுகப்படுத்திய பாணி வியப்புக்குறியது. இன்றையு அமர்வில், கிராம்சியினுடையு பண்பாட்டு மேலாதிக்கம் சார்ந்த கருத்தியல் பார்வைகள் எவ்வாறு ரஷ்ய அறிஞர்களால் விதைக்கப்படுகிறது என்று பேசும் பொழுது அவர் முதலில் குறிப்பிட்ட ஒரு முக்கியமான அறிஞர், பார்ட்டோலி . ரஷ்யாவில் 19வது நூற்றாண்டில் இயங்கிய மொழியியல் அறிஞர். இவர் ஆய்ந்தது எவ்வாறு மொழி சார்ந்த innovations ஒரு கூட்டத்திலிருந்து இன்னோரு கூட்டத்திற்கு போகிறது when conflicts between national languages and minority languages happen.இதை ஒரு முக்கியமான விடயமாக பார்ட்டோலி பார்த்தார் என்று பேராசிரியர் குறிப்பிட்டார். மேலும், ரஷ்யாவில் கடந்த காலத்தில், முக்கியமாக 1905ல் நடந்த வரலாற்று சம்பவத்தை நாம் மறக்கலாகது என்று பேராசிரியர் கிரேய்க் குறிப்பிட்டார். முதல் முறையாக ஒரு ஆசிய நாடு (சப்பான்) ஒரு அய்ரோப்பிய நாட்டை (ரஷ்யா) போரில் தோற்கடிக்கும் நிலை ரஷ்யாவில் பல பாதிப்புகளை எற்படுத்துகிறது. டராட்ஸ்கி புதிய கருத்தாக்கத்தை வைக்கிறார். அக்டோபர் புரட்சி நடக்கிறது. இந்த புரட்சியாளர்கள் எவ்வாறு முன்று குழுக்களாக பிரிந்து தங்கள் வாத, பிரதி வாதங்களை வைக்கிறார்கள் என்று பேராசிரியர் கிரேய்க் சொன்னார். அப்புறம், போல்ஷ்விக் என்று அழைக்கபட்ட கூட்டத்தினருக்கும், மென்ஷிவிக் என்று அழைக்கப்ட்ட கூட்டத்தினருக்கும் இடையே நடந்த மோதலைப் பற்றி குறிப்பிட்டார். இதன் ஊடே, புரட்சியின் முக்கியமான கதாநாயகனான லெனின் எவ்வாறு இருபது ஆண்டுகளுக்கு முன்னால் மேல் குறிப்பிட்ட பண்பாட்டு மேலாதிக்க சிந்தனையை தெளிவுப்படுத்துகிறார் என்றும் கூறுகிறார். அவர் லெனின் சொன்ன அந்த வார்த்தைகளை நீண்ட மேற்கோளாக காட்டிய விடயம் உங்களுக்கு நினைவிருக்கும். இந்த மேற்கோள் liberalism என்ற விடயத்தை லெனின் எவ்வாறு பார்த்தார் என்பதை சுட்டுவது. இரண்டாவதாக, அவர் குறிப்பிட்ட முக்கியமான நபர், பாக்தேனேவ். பாக்தேனேவ் குறிப்பிட்ட மொழி சார்ந்த விடயம் பேராசிரியரால் முக்கியமானதாக பார்க்கப்படுகிறது. மொழி சார்ந்த விடயம் எவ்வாறு உற்பத்தி தளங்களின் மூலதனமாக ஆகிறது என்று பாக்தேனேவ் பார்த்ததாக கிரேய்க் குறிப்பிட்டார். Proletariatம், bourgeioisம் எவ்வாறு இதை வேறு விதமாக பார்க்கிறார்கள் என்பது பாக்தேனேவ் பார்வையில் புதிய கருத்தாக்கமாக உருமாறுகிறது. உதாரணத்திற்கு. பூஷ்வாக்கள் இதை ஒரு commodity exchange பார்வையில் பார்க்கிறார்கள். Proletariat இதை வேறு விதமாக பார்க்கிறார்கள் என்றார் பாக்தேனேவ்.

இவற்றை எல்லாவற்றையும் விட, எது விஞ்சி நிற்கிறது என்றால் பாக்தேனேவின் hegemony சார்ந்த பார்வை.. இது கிராம்சி பின்னாளில் கையிலேடுத்த, செம்மைப்படுத்திய, செப்பனிட்ட ஒரு முக்கியமான கருத்தியல் தளம், அதனுடைய ஆழமான வேர் ரஷ்யாவில் விதைக்கப்பட்டது என்பது பலருக்கு தெரியாது. Hegemony பற்றி பல அறிஞர்கள், பல்வேறு தளங்களில் பேசிக் கொண்டு வரும் பொழுது, புக்காரின் என்ற அறிஞர் வெகுவாக அடுத்த கட்டத்திற்கு இதைக் கொண்டு போனதாக பேராசிரியர் சொன்னார். அந்த பண்பாட்டு மேலாதிக்கத்தை எவ்வாறு நாம் பார்க்கலாம் என்று புக்காரின் தெளிவாக, 1920களில் குறிப்பிட்டதாக பேராசிரியர் கூறினார். அதே கால அளவில், லெனின் மறைந்துப் போகிறார், அதாவது 1924ல். 1925ல் சோவியத் நாட்டின் பொதுவுடமை கட்சி புதிய பொருளாதரக் கொள்கையை அறிவிக்கிறது. அப்பொழுது, முதலாம் உலகப் போரினால் எற்பட்ட விளைவுகளுக்கு பதிலாக அவர்கள் limited, regulated market economyஜ அறிமுகப்படுத்துகிறார்கள். அப்பொழுது ஒரு முரணான நிலை எடுக்கப்படுகிறது. அதாவது, தேசிய மொழி எதுவாக இருக்கலாம், சிறுபான்மையினர் மொழி எந்த தளத்தில் இருக்க வேண்டும் என்பதைப் பற்றிய பிரச்சனை அது. தேசிய மொழியை எவ்வாறு வளர்த்தேடுக்கலாம் என்பது பற்றிய ஒரு தீர்க்கமான பார்வை அவர்களுக்கு வருகிறது. அவர்கள் அப்பொழுது வித்தியாசமாக சிந்திக்கிறார்கள். இந்தியப் பார்வையில் இருந்து பார்த்தால், அது வித்தியாசமாக இருக்கும். 1960களில் நடந்த மொழிப் போர் எவ்வாறு இந்தியாவில், தமிழ் நாட்டில் பார்க்கப்பட்டது என்பதை நண்பர்கள் அறிவீர்கள். ஆனால், 1920களில் ரஷ்யாவில் இந்த மொழி சார்ந்த விடயத்தை வித்தியாசமாகப் பார்த்திருக்கிறார்கள். இதை மேலாதிக்கப் பார்வையில் அவர்கள் எவ்வாறு பார்த்தார்கள் என்றால், “நாம் எடுத்த உடனே ரஷ்ய மொழியை national languageஆக அறிவிக்க கூடாது. முதலில் நாம் இதை மறுக்க வேண்டும். ரஷ்ய மொழி தேசிய மொழி என்பதை மறுக்க வேண்டும். இரண்டாவது கட்டத்தில், நாம் சிறுபான்மை மொழிகளை வளர்த்தேடுக்க வேண்டும். ஒரு கால அளவிற்கு பிறகு, இந்த எல்லா மொழிக் கூட்டத்தினர்களும் ஒரு சம அளவிற்கு வரும் நிலையில் அவர்களாகவே ரஷ்ய மொழியை தேசிய மொழியாக எற்றுக் கொள்வார்கள்“. அந்த காலத்தில் ரஷ்யாவில் பண்பாட்டு மேலாதிக்க சிந்தனை எவ்வாறு மொழி சார்ந்து இயங்கியது என்பதை இவ்வாறு பேராசிரியர் சுட்டிக் காட்டினார்.

பல அளவுகளில், இந்த காலக் கட்டத்தில், ரஷ்யாவில் இயங்கிய அறிஞர்கள் பின்னாளில் எழுந்த முக்கியமான விவாதப் பொருட்களுக்கு காரணக்கர்த்தாக்களாக இருந்தார்கள் என்பதை சுட்டிக் காட்டும் பொழுது, பேராசிரியர் கிரேய்க் எட்வர்ட் செய்துனுடைய கருத்தாக்கமான orientalism எவ்வாறு இங்கு விதைக்கப்படுகிறது என்று சொன்னார். நீங்களேல்லாம் எட்வர்ட் செய்துனுடைய Orientalism என்ற நூலை வாசித்திருப்பிர்கள். இந்த நூலுக்கான அடித்தளமும் ரஷ்யாவில்தான் விதைக்கப்படுகிறது. நிக்கோலாய் மார் என்ற மொழியியல் அறிஞர் இந்திய சார்ந்த மேற்கத்திய பார்வைகளை ஒரு கருத்தியல் விமர்சனத்திற்கு உள்ளாக்கினார். பின்னாளில், இந்த விடயத்தை செய்த் தனது படைப்பில் புகுத்தினார் என்பதையும் பேராசிரியர் விளக்கினார். இதில் நீங்கள் முக்கியமாக பார்க்க வேண்டியது, நேற்று அவர் சொன்ன முக்கியமான வாசகத்தைதான் இன்றும் அவர் சொல்லாமல் சொன்னார். அதாவது “பக்தின் ஒரு original thinker இல்லை”. அதுதான் நேற்று நமக்கு புலப்பட்ட விடயம். அதே மாதிரி, “கிராம்சியும் ஒரு original thinker இல்லை”. அவர்கள் original thinkersகளாக இயங்கியிருக்கலாம், ஆனால், அவர்களின் பின்புலத்தில் வரலாறு சார்ந்த காரணிகளாக இயங்கிய இந்த முக்கியமான நபர்களையும் நாம் கணக்கில் எடுத்துக் கொள்ள வேண்டும் என்றார் பேராசிரியர். கிராம்சியைப் பற்றி நினைக்கும் பொழுதும், அவரைப் பற்றி புரிந்து கொள்ள நினைக்கும் பொழுதும், பக்தினைப் பற்றி நினைக்கும் பொழுதும், அவர்கள் பின்னால் இருக்க கூடிய நீண்ட நெடிய பாரம்பரிம் சார்ந்த அறிவு தேடலை, பல அறிஞர்கள், பல தளங்களில், பல வரலாற்று நிகழ்வுகள் சார்ந்து அவர்கள் எவ்வாறு எதிர் கொண்டார்கள் என்பதையும் நாம் புரிந்து கொள்ள வேண்டும் என்பதை விளக்கினார். இந்த அளவில் எனது மொழியாக்க உரையை முடித்துக் கொள்கிறேன்.

On Antonio Gramsci

Introductory remarks of Dr G Ravindran on Antonio Gramsci on the second day of the two day seminar on Bakhtin and Gramsci by Prof.Craig Brandist on April 16-17, 2014 at the Thanthai Periyar Hall, University of Madras

________________________________________________________________________________

Prof.Craig Brandist is Professor of Cultural Theory and Intellectual History at University of Sheffield, UK. He teaches Critical Theory, Bakhtin Circle, Research Methods in Modern Languages and European Cinemas.

________________________________________________________________________________

“Good morning. அனைவருக்கும் வணக்கம். Today we are continuing the seminar with another interesting session by Prof.Craig. Today’s session would introduce us as lucidly as possible, as he made it yesterday, to the contributions of Antonio Gramsci and how we need to look at his contributions.

பேராசிரியர் தனது உரையை தொடங்குவதற்கு முன், மாணவர்களுக்கு தமிழில் கிராம்சியைப் பற்றிய அறிமுகம் தேவைப்படும் என்பதால், சுருக்கமாக அவரைப் பற்றி சொல்கிறேன்.அந்தோனியோ கிராம்சி இத்தாலியில் பிறந்தவர். 46 ஆண்டுகள் தான் உயிருடன் இருந்தார். ஆனால் அவர் ஒரு பெரிய அறிவுப் புரட்சியை செய்ததாகப் பார்க்கலாம். Classical marxism என்ற தளத்தை அடுத்தக் கட்டத்திற்கு கொண்டு போக உதவியவர் அவர். உடல் ரீதியாக பல இன்னல்களுக்கு உள்ளானவர். அவரது முதுகெலும்பு வளர்ச்சியின்மையால் அவரால் எந்நேரமும் நிமிர்ந்து நடக்க முடியாத நிலை. மேலும் பல உடல் ரீதியான பாதிப்புகளுக்கு அவர் உள்ளான போதும், அவரது தந்தையார் வேலையை இழந்த போதிலும், அவருக்கு சரியான நிதி ஆதாரங்கள் கிடைக்காத போதிலும், படிப்பை தொடருவதிற்கு அவர் சிரமப்பட்ட போதிலும், அவர் அக்காலத்திய இத்தாலியில் நிகழந்த அரசியல், சமுகப் பிரச்சனைக்களுக்கு ஊடே தன்னை ஈடுப்படுத்திக் கொண்ட காரணத்தினால், இடது சாரி கட்சி காலுன்றிய அந்த காலத்தில், அதனால் ஈர்க்கப்பட்டு, அதன் கருத்தியல் சார்ந்து அவர் இயங்க தொடங்கி, பின்னாளில் அதன் தலைவராகவும் அவர் உருவெடுத்தார். ரஷ்யப் புரட்சிக்கு அடுத்தக் கட்டமாக என்ன நடக்க வேண்டும், மற்ற அய்ரோப்பிய நாடுகளில் இந்த புரட்சி எவ்வாறு பரவ வேண்டும் என்பதைப் பற்றி தீர்க்கமான பார்வையைக் கொண்டிருந்தார். செவ்வியல் மார்க்சிய வாதம் ஏன் பயன்படாது என்ற கேள்விக்கான பதிலை 1920களிலே அவர் புரிந்துக் கொண்டிருந்தார்.

இந்தியாவில் மார்க்சியம் வெகுவாக பரவவில்லையே என்று நாம் ஆதங்கப்பட வேண்டும். ஏன் அப்படி ஆதங்கப்பட வேண்டும் என்றால், இந்தியாவில் உள்ள இடது சாரி கட்சிகள் தங்களை ஒரு சிறிய எல்லைக்குள் சுருக்கி விட்டனர். மார்க்சியத்தை எந்த அளவிலும் வளர விடக் கூடாது என்று நினைத்தவர்களில்/நினைப்பவர்களில் முதலாளித்துவக் கட்சிகள் முதலிடம் வகித்தால், இடது சாரிக் கட்சிகள் தங்கள் செயல்பாடுகளால் அந்த நிலைக்கு ஆதரவு அளிப்பது ஒரு சோகமான உண்மை. மார்க்சியம் இந்தியாவில் வளராததற்கு காரணம் என்ன என்று என்னைக் கேட்டிர்கள் என்றால், நான் சுட்டிக் காட்டக் கூடிய முக்கியமான காரணம், நமது மார்க்சியத் தோழர்கள் என்று தான் கூறுவேன் (ஒரு சில ஆளுமைகளைத் தவிர்த்து). முதலில், அவர்கள் மார்க்சைப் புரிந்துக் கொள்ளவில்லை. மார்க்சியத்தை வெகு மக்களிடம் பரப்ப அவர்கள் பெரிய முயற்சிகளை எடுக்கவில்லை. மார்க்சியத்தை அவர்கள் அடுத்தக் கட்டத்திற்கு, அய்ரோப்பிய நாடுகளில், கிராம்சி மாதிரியான ஆளுமைகள் கொண்டு போன அளவிற்கு, இவர்கள் சிந்திக்கவில்லை. இந்திய சமுக யதார்த்தமான சாதீயத்திற்கு எதிராக மார்க்சியத்தின் கருத்தியல் பரிமாண வளர்ச்சிக்கு வித்திடவில்லை. இவர்கள் இன்றும் வர்க்க ரீதியாகவும், சாதீயா ரீதியாகவும், ஒரு சிறிய வட்டத்திற்குள் தங்களை நுழைத்து, அந்த வட்டத்திற்குள் இருந்து ஒரு பெரிய புரட்சியை உருவாக்க, வளர்ச்சி சார்ந்த நிலையை நோக்கி தாங்கள் பயணிப்பதாக நினைத்துக் கொள்ளும் utopian நிலையில் இருக்கிறார்கள்.

இரண்டாவது, ஏன் இங்கு மார்க்சியம் காலுன்றவில்லை என்றால், கிராம்சி முன்வைத்த பண்பாட்டு மேலாதிக்க சக்தியாகவே இவர்கள் உருவேடுத்து விட்டார்கள். இன்றைக்கு இந்தியாவில் இருக்க கூடிய வெகு மக்கள் ஊடகங்களை இயக்கும், மூலதனம் சார்ந்து இயங்க கூடிய முதலாளிகளுடன் திருமண உறவு வைத்துக் கொண்டு இயங்கும் பலரில் இடது சாரி கட்சி தலைவர்களும் அடக்கம். அவர்கள் பெயரை நான் சொல்ல விரும்பவில்லை. போன தலைமுறை மார்க்சிய தலைவர்கள் இப்படி இல்லை. ஈ.எம்.எஸ் இப்படி இல்லை. ஆனால், இந்த தலைமுறை மார்க்சிய தலைவர்கள் எதைப் பற்றியும் கவலைப்படாமல், அவர்களையும் எமாற்றிக் கொண்டு, நம்மையும் எமாற்றிக் கொண்டிருக்கிறார்கள். இதிலே notable exceptions இருக்கிறார்கள். தமிழ் நாட்டில் நல்ல உதாரணங்கள் உண்டு. அய்யா நல்லக்கண்ணு மாதிரியான உன்னதமான தலைவர்கள் இருக்கிறார்கள். இனி இவர்கள் பிறப்பார்களா என்று எண்ணக் கூடியத் தலைவர்கள் இவர்கள். கடவுளைக் கூட பார்த்து விடலாம். ஆனால், பெரியவர் நல்லக்கண்ணு மாதிரியான மார்க்சிய தோழர்களை இனி வரும் காலத்தில் பார்க்கவே இயலாது. ஒரு மனிதர் இப்படித்தான் இருக்க வேண்டும், அவர் இருக்கிறாரா, கடவுளை ஒத்த மனிதர் இருக்கிறார, அவரை நான் பார்க்க வேண்டும் சார் என்று கேட்டிர்கள் என்றால், அவர் இருக்கிறார். தியாகராய நகரில் தான் இருக்கிறார். அவர் appointment எல்லாம் யாருக்கும் தர மறுப்பதில்லை. இங்கு அருட் தந்தை குழந்தை இருக்கிறார். அவரது நெருங்கிய தோழர். அவரிடம் அனுமதி வாங்கி தருவார். நல்லக்கண்ணு அய்யா அவர்களை பார்த்தீர்கள் என்றால், கிராம்சியை வேறு பார்வையில் பார்ப்பீர்கள். மற்ற இந்திய இடது சாரி தலைவர்களை வேறு பார்வையில் பார்ப்பீர்கள்.

இந்த அற்புதமான மனிதர் கிராம்சி, 46 வருடங்களே வாழ்ந்த இவர், உடல் ரீதியாக, பொருளாதார ரீதியாக பல சிக்கல்களுக்கு உட்பட்டு இருந்தாலும், மார்க்ஸ் செய்யாத ஒரு புரட்சியை, அறிவு சார் புரட்சியை கிராம்சி செய்ததாக நான் பார்க்கிறேன். கொச்சையாக சொல்ல வேண்டும் என்றால், மார்க்ஸ் எங்கே கோட்டை விடுகிறார் என்றால், அடிப்படை பொருளாதார வாதத்திலிருந்து அவர் வெளியே வர மறுக்கிறார். முதல் முறையாக, புதிய மார்க்சிய வாதிகளான, பிராங்பர்ட் அறிஞர்களும், மற்றும் கிராம்சி போன்றோர்களும் இந்த புதிய மார்க்சிய வாதத்தை கட்டமைக்கின்றனர். அடர்னோ, ஆர்க்கைமர், பின்னாளில், அல்துசர் அதை வளர்தேடுக்க ஒரு பாதையை போட்டு தந்தவர் கிராம்சி. Hegemony, ideology, historicism இவைப் பற்றிய ஒரு புதிய தாக்கத்தை எற்படுத்தியவர் கிராம்சி. முதலாளிகள், மூலதனம் சார்ந்து இயங்குபவர்கள் எவ்வாறு மக்களை, சமுக அங்கங்கள, பண்பாட்டு ரீதியாக, கருத்தியல் ரீதியாக, தங்கள் பக்கம் வைத்திருக்கிறார்கள் என்பதைப் பற்றிய கருத்தியல் விளக்கத்தை அளித்தவர் கிராம்சி. இன்றைக்கும் நீங்கள் தமிழ் நாட்டு சூழலில் ஒன்றைப் பார்க்கலாம். ஒவ்வோரு தேர்தலிலும் நாம் நடிகர்களை சார்ந்து, அவர்கள் கருத்துகள் சார்ந்து இயக்கப்படுகிறோம். திரைக்கு வெளியே நமக்கும் அவர்களுக்கும் எந்த வாழ்வியல் தொடர்பும் கிடையாது. ஆனால், வெகு மக்கள் ஊடகங்கள் இவர்களின் செல்வாக்கை பிரகாசமாக வெளிச்சம் போட்டு அறிமுகப்படுத்தும் காரணத்தினால், இந்த நடிகர் இவருடன் சேர்ந்தால் இது நடக்குமா என்று நம்மை யோசிக்க வைப்பதுதான் கிராம்சி சொன்ன cultural hegemony. ஒரு சராசரி மனிதர், தினமும் கஞ்சிக்கும், கூழுக்கும் கஷ்டப்படும் நபர், ஒரு புரட்சி நடிகரைப் பார்த்து தன்னிலை மறப்பது ஏன்? வெளிப்படையாக சொல்ல வேண்டும் என்றால், அந்த காலத்தில் எம்ஜியார் ரசிகர்கள் ஏன் அவர் பாடத்தை பார்த்தார்கள், இந்த காலத்தில் ரஜினி ரசிகர்கள் ஏன் அவர் படத்தை பார்க்கிறார்கள், விஜய் ரசிகர்கள் ஏன் அவர் படத்தை பார்க்கிறார்கள் என்றால், இதில் கிராம்சி விளைவு இருக்கிறது. கிராம்சியின் விளைவு இல்லையேன்றால், எம்ஜியார், ரஜினி, விஜய் எல்லோரும் தோற்று விடுவார்கள். அவர்கள் படங்கள் ஒடும் அரங்கங்களில் ஆள் இருக்காது.

That is one interesting example I work with in my area of research in film studies. Without this powerful logic introduced by Gramsci, Indian theatres would be empty. You may have Sharukh Khan on the screen, MGR on the screen, Vijay on the screen, but you may not have any audience.

இது தான் பண்பாட்டு ரீதியாக நம் மனதில் விதைக்கப்பட்ட மேலாதிக்க சிந்தனை விளைவு. அவர்கள் கடவுளாக உருவகம் பெறுவதற்கு முன், நாம் அவர்களை கடவுளாக மாற்றுகிறோம். எவ்வாறு மாற்றுகிறோம்? இந்த வெகு மக்கள் பண்பாட்டு தளங்களை கட்டுப்படுத்தும் மூலதனம் சார்ந்து இயங்குபவர்கள் நமது மூளையில் உட்கார்ந்துக் கொண்டு பண்பாட்டு மூளைச்சலவை செய்வது தான் இந்த மாற்றத்திற்கு காரணம்.

கிராம்சி 1926ல் சிறையில் அடைக்கப்படுகிறார். 1934ல் மருத்துவ மனையில் சேர்க்கப்படுகிறார். அதற்கு பிறகு இரண்டு வருடங்கள் தான் உயிருடன் இருக்கிறார். இதற்கு முன், ரஷ்யாவில் நடந்த துர்பாக்கிய சம்பங்களும் மார்க்சியத்தின் “தோல்விக்கு” காரணம் ஆகின்றன. பேராசிரியர் அதைப் பற்றி விளக்குவார்.

We misread marxist history because of these so called “violations” by the Stalinist regime. நாம் எல்லோமே முடிந்து விட்டதாக ஒரு மாய பிம்பத்திற்கு வந்ததற்கு காரணம், இந்த ஸ்டாலின் என்ற தவறான மனிதர் லெனினுக்கு பிறகு ஆட்சிக்கு வந்தது. மேலும், இதோட கதை முடிந்து விட்டது, இனி மேல் கதை தொடராது என்று நாம் நினைத்ததும் ஒரு காரணம். We should read it as an aberration or “violation” within the system.

இதையும் மீறி, கிராம்சி இத்தாலியில் நடக்கும் விடயங்களைப் பற்றி மாஸ்கோவிற்கு கடிதம் எழுதுகிறார், “இங்கு நடப்பது சரி என்று தோன்றவில்லை,” என்று. ஆனால், மாஸ்கோவில் இருந்த அவரது முகவர் அக்கடிதத்தை கொடுக்க தவறுகிறார், வேண்டும் என்றே. கிராம்சிக்கு இத்தாலிய பொதுவுடமை கட்சியிலேயே ஆதரவு இல்லையேன்று இதன் மூலம் தெரிகிறது.

நாம் வரலாறை மேலும் கவனமாக, விரிவாக, பரந்துப்பட்ட பார்வையில் பார்க்க வேண்டும். கேள்விகள் எழுப்ப வேண்டும. இந்தியாவில் ஏன் மார்க்சியம் வளரவில்லை? பொதுவுடமை கட்சிகளை நாம் ஏன் வேறு பார்வையில் பார்க்க வேண்டும்? வெகு மக்கள் ஊடகங்கள் நமக்கு செய்யும் அநியாயங்கள் யாவை? சராசரி வாழ்க்கையில் நாம் சந்திக்கும் இன்னல்களுக்கும் கிராம்சி சொன்ன கருத்தாக்கங்களுக்கும் என்ன் தொடர்பு? இவற்றைப் பற்றி நம்மை சிந்திக்க வைக்க இந்த அமர்வு உதவி செய்யும் என்று நம்புகிறேன். Now I invite Prof. Craig to deliver his lecture.

Reading Sila Nerangalil Sila Manithargal and Uthiripookal with Sigmund Freud and Kopperuncholan (கோப்பெருஞ்சோழன்)

The following points are for discussion and debates regarding the application of Freudian notions of pleasure and death drives, his theory of psychosexuality and tripartite mind in the context of Sangam age (circa 300 BC) king Kopperuncholan and the films, Sila Nerangalil Sila Manithargal and Uthiripookal.

There are too many ways to engage with them. I will start with understanding our films differently with two notions of Freud – pleasure drive and death drive, with characters from Sangam age and Sila Nerangalil SIla Manithargal (hereafter SNSM) and Uthiripookal (hereafter UP).

Freud’s pleasure drive principle is tied with the stages he mentions as crucial for child’s development. These stages are oral, anal,phallic,latency and genitals. His theory is known as psychosexual theory and has been seen as controversial by many and unacceptable by others then and now.

However, his theory holds water to relate to disorders at the individual and societal orders and also to relate to them in film narratives where characters live their roles as abnormal entities?

The Freudian theory of psychosexuality is applicable to the chronological order of child’s development and how the progression in this order by the child is related to the development of the Id (unconscious), Ego (conscious) and Super Ego (socially conscious), three parts of the mind he envisions. These parts do not refer to parts of the brain.

These stages are the oral stage (0-1 year), anal (1-3),phallic/oedipal (3-6), latency (6-12) and Genital (12 onwards). According to Freud, if the needs of the child are not met at any of the stages, negative effects occur in adulthood. The oral stage is about the suckling behaviour of the child, the anal stage is about the toilet training related behaviour, the phallic stage is about the child’s understanding of his sexuality vis a vis the father and mother. The latency stage is where the sexuality related identities submerge. The last stage is about the reemergence of the sexuality related needs.

Eros and Thanatos are Greek Gods of Love and Death respectively.

In both SNSM and UP, we find narrative contexts which require Freudian principles of pleasure and death drive to read them critically and differently. Freud’s death drive principle was also influenced by the effects of the deaths caused by the First World War and the personal loss he suffered with the death of his daughter, Sophia.

One person who made/make the lives of Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysts/feminists happy with his films as fodder for analysis is Hitchcock as the narratives in many of  his films are patriarchal narratives. Many feminist scholars believe that they are told from the point of view of a misogynist. Misogynists are those who dislike women. This is not to say that he was deliberately making films which became fodder for film feminists. He was working within a patriarchal society that was home to another patriarchal system, the Hollywood. I think it was the coming together of these forces in his narratives, besides the remarkable mastery he wielded over the medium in seeking perfection and control over all the elements in his frames, shots and scenes, which helped him to complete his homework for the film feminists! You do not require film feminism to discover the patriarch, Hitchcock. On the other hand, film feminism requires Hitchcock to discover itself. Here is what Tania Modelski, a film feminist, tell us about Hitchcock’s connections with film feminism. “in Film Studies, Hitchcock is often viewed as the archetypal misogynist, who invites his audience to indulge their most sadistic fantasies against the female. Some critics have even argued that Hitchcock’s work is prototypical of the extremely violent assaults on women that make up so much of our entertainment today. . . . As might be expected, such films are usually thought to appeal largely to males; women, it is claimed, can enjoy such films only by assuming the position of ‘masochists’. Rape and violence, it would appear, effectively silence and subdue not only the woman in the films – the one who would threaten patriarchal law and order through the force of her anarchic desires – but also the women watching the films: female spectators and female critics.”

How to apply the Freudian notions of pleasure principle and death drive to SNSM and UP? This may require a long lecture. However, here is my short take on the possibilities in this regard.

Uthiripookal’s lead character’s death was caused as much by the crowd which pushes him near the water body as by the pleasure drive and death drive that conditioned his deeds in his domestic and public space. His companions, who chat with him under the tree, in the school and in other public spaces, in fact are also the collaborators with their own versions of the pleasure and death drives, in contributing to the pleasure and death drives of the lead male character. Pleasure is not sexual alone and death is not the physical death alone, if we extend the Freudian logic further. Pleasure is both sexual and the expression of the repressed emotions against the favourite targets of the abnormal character. Similarly, death can be physical and emotional.

Death drive is not only about end stage of human development, death, but the emotional deaths suffered by the person as well as the emotional deaths of others he causes. The pleasure and death drives are in effect the fall out of the unmet needs of the child during the five stage of psychosexual development. Several characters suffer emotional deaths because of the pleasure drive of the leading male character of UP.

Unlike UP, the lead male character in SNSM does not die, but becomes the cause of the emotional death of the lead female character. Every other male character, except the writer, joins the leading male character, to chase, monitor and contribute to the emotional death of the female character.

In mainstream/commercial film narratives, the narrative triangle is constituted by the pleasure driven male and female characters (hero and heroine) and the pleasure and death driven male and female characters (the villains). The narrative triangle has to be reconstituted on the basis of the competitions between the divergent purposes of the characters as linear with two poles, the hero and the heroine. In non-mainstream/new wave films, we do not find heroes and heroines and their villains in a straightforward manner. It is difficult to conceive of the characters played by Lakshmi and Srikanth in SNSM as that of hero and heroine. The same is true of the lead characters in UP.

தமிழக தத்துவ மரபில் இரண்டு முக்கிய பிரிவுகள் உண்டு – வேத மரபை, இயக்கத்துக்கு காரணம் கடவுள்கள் என்ற கருத்தியலை மறுதலித்து பேசிய ஆசீவிகர்கள் உருவாக்கிய/வளர்த்தேடுத்த, ஊழ் அல்லது நியதி கோட்பாடு. இயக்கத்திற்கு அடிப்படை பொருள்களின் அணுக்கள். அவை நான்கு பூதங்கள் என்று சொல்லப்படும் நிலம், நீர், தீ, காற்று இவற்றை இயக்கும் பாங்கு – ஆகூழ் (பொருளின் மாறி வரும் நிலை) போகுழ் (பொருளின் கழியும் நிலை). பொருளின் அடிப்படையான அணுக்கள் அழிவதில்லை. ஆனால், பொருளின் தன்மையும், இயக்கமும் மாறி வருகின்றன. இது தான் ஆசீவிக பிரிவினரின் ஆதி தமிழர்களின் ஊழ் கோட்பாடு அல்லது நியதி கோட்பாடு. இரண்டாவுது, வினைக் கோட்பாடு. இது தமிழ் பொளத்தர்கள் மற்றும் சமணர்களால் வளர்த்தேடுக்கப்பட்டது. எல்லா செயல்களுக்கும் எதிர் வினை உண்டு. நல்லது செய்யின், நல்லது நடக்கும், தீயன செய்யின் தீயன நடக்கும். அதிலிருந்து தப்ப முடியாது. இயக்கங்களுக்கு காரணம் கடவுள், அணுக்கள் அல்ல என்ற கருத்தியலை ஆரம்ப நிலையில் வளர்தேடுத்தன. ஆனால், பின்னர், வினையை மறுபிறப்பில் இருந்து தப்பும் நிலையோடு சேர்த்தன. தமிழ் ஆசீவீக மரபு ஊழ் மற்றும் வினைக்கு மறுபிறப்பு மற்றும் இறைவன் என்ற கற்பிதங்களை சேர்க்கவில்லை. கணியன் பூங்குன்றனாரின் 192வது புறநானுறு பாடலும், குறள் 380ம் மேற்ச்சொன்ன கோட்பாடுகளுக்கு ஆதாரங்கள். “யாதும் ஊரே ; யாவரும் கேளிர் ;

தீதும் நன்றும் பிறர்தர வாரா ;

நோதலும் தணிதலும் அவற்றோ ரன்ன ;

சாதலும் புதுவது அன்றே ; வாழ்தல்

இனிதுஎன மகிழ்ந்தன்றும் இலமே; முனிவின்,

இன்னா தென்றலும் இலமே; ‘மின்னொடு

வானம் தண்துளி தலைஇ, ஆனாது

கல்பொருது இரங்கும் மல்லற் பேர்யாற்று

நீர்வழிப் படூஉம் புணைபோல, ஆருயிர்

முறைவழிப் படூஉம்’ என்பது திறவோர்

காட்சியின் தெளிந்தனம் ஆகலின், மாட்சியின்

பெரியோரை வியத்தலும் இலமே;

சிறியோரை இகழ்தல் அதனினும் இலமே.” ________________________________________________________________________பொருள்

எல்லா ஊரும் எம் ஊர்

எல்லா மக்களும் எம் உறவினரே

நன்மை தீமை அடுத்தவரால் வருவதில்லை

துன்பமும் ஆறுதலும்கூட மற்றவர் தருவதில்லை

சாதல் புதுமை யில்லை; வாழ்தல்

இன்பமென்று மகிழ்ந்தது இல்லை

வெறுத்து வாழ்வு துன்பமென ஒதுங்கியதுமில்லை

பேராற்று நீர்வழி ஓடும் தெப்பம்போல

இயற்கைவழி நடக்கும் உயிர்வாழ்வென்று

தக்கோர் ஊட்டிய அறிவால் தெளிந்தோம்

ஆதலினால்,பிறந்து வாழ்வோரில்

சிறியோரை இகழ்ந்து தூற்றியதும் இல்லை

பெரியோரை வியந்து போற்றியதும் இல்லை.

ஊழிற் பெருவலி யாவுள மற்றொன்று

சூழினுந் தான்முந் துறும்.

பொருள்

இயற்கை நிலையை மாற்றி மற்றொரு செயற்கை நிலையை அமைத்திட முனைந்தாலும், இயற்கை நிலையே முதன்மையாக வந்து நிற்பதால் அதைவிட வலிமையானவையாக வேறு எவை இருக்கின்றன?

Sigmund Freud comes alive in my lectures on Communication Theories and Philosophies as well as Film Studies. In recent times, I have been working with a disparate group of Eastern and Western Philosophers ranging from Buddha, Confucius, Tirumoolar, Vallalar, Deleuze, Focault, Merleau Ponty, Lacan, Giddens, Zizek, Irigaray and Kristeva, among others.

Notwithstanding the attractions of working with these scholars’ notions and their applications to classes in Film Studies and Communication Theories and Philosophies, I am more inclined to uncover the pre-Freudean philosophical, literary and aesthetic trajectories in Sangam literature, Bhakti Movement literature and Chola Bronzes/Sculptures.

I am sure that these provide more than enough pointers of common threads between contemporary Freud/Lacan inspired film studies and what we take for granted in our uncritical readings of Sangam literature, Bhakti Movement literature and Chola bronzes/sculptures.

A few questions that I pose in my classes include i) How to connect the Freudian notion of bisexuality with the philosophical notion contained in the Chola bronze masterpiece, Arthanariswarar, in Egmore Museum and ii) How to connect contexts drawn from Sangam Poems/Age with the Freudian concepts of Eros and Thanatos (Pleasure vs Death Drives). I would engage with the second question in the following paragraphs to drive home the reasons for considering two unlikely companions,Sigmund Freud and Kopperuncholan (கோப்பெருஞ்சோழன்), as my favourite communication teachers.

Sigmund Freud became famous not only for his original thoughts on what drives human minds and bodies, but also his attempts to revise his own notions. One concept, which he proposed in his famous book, “Beyond the Pleasure Principle” (1920), “Death Drive” or “Thanatos” became a subject of frequent revisions by him.

It was originally proposed as an oppositional construct of “Eros”, the instincts which help us to create and sustain human life. The death instinct/drive, according to Freud, is what pushes human beings to pre-states of existence. He famously said: ‘The aim of all life is death…inanimate things existed before living ones’ (Freud 1920).

There are interesting and hard to believe examples from Sangam classics to connect with Freudian psychoanalysis. The wide spread practice of “forced passing away” of ordinary and extraordinary individuals to states of “preexistence” or inanimate states occur as references to the attempts of Kings and Commoners to be charmed by death instincts/drives, not as an expression of failure, but as an expression of their moral authority over “Eros”.

One such person is the Sangam age King, “கோப்பெருஞ்சோழன்“, who resolves to express his unhappiness over the acts of his subjects and asks for the installation of the “நடு கல்” (a simple stone memorial for the person who died in war, conflict or due to fast undo death acts). Disturbed by the act of the king, one of his close friends and court poet, பொத்தியார் also wanted to follow suit, but was advised by the king not to do so as his wife was expecting a child. பொத்தியார் , however, returns to join the king and wants a “நடு கல்” for himself also after his wife delivers a child.

The king’s another friend/poet with the same name, பொத்தியார் also embarks on the “death drive” and demands a “நடு கல்” after embarking on a fast unto death act.

The king had a great friend/fan, பிசிராந்தயார், whom he never met and was in Pandya kingdom. As “கோப்பெருஞ்சோழன்” was on his death bed, he wanted a “நடு கல்” for his great friend also as he felt that his friend should not be disappointed on hearing the news of his passing away into the state of pre-existence or life before life or life after death in the state of “நடு கல்“.

When his subjects wondered, how பிசிராந்தயார் would come from the distant Pandya kingdom, “கோப்பெருஞ்சோழன்” emphatically said: “He will come, reserve a “நடு கல்” for him as well.” (Puram Poems 212,215 and 216).
Remember that there were brilliant practitioners of Freudian Psychoanalysis even in the pre-state of the non-emergence of Freud during Sangam age!

Freud probably gave vent to his position as a universal subject of a long running civilizational thread in matters of the conflicts between pleasure and death drive, more so in the Sangam period.

Shanghai Leads Asia, as Before, in Linking with Other Countries in Matters of Communication

The Shanghai International Studies University (SISU) and the State Council Information Office hosted the Asian Deans’ Forum in Journalism and Communication during November 30-December 01,2006 at Shanghai. One conventional way to relate to the power of a spatial site is the size. Asia, China and Shanghai fit well in this logic to express their contemporary merits powerfully. The size matters in China when it comes to the number and categories of Universities. There are more than 2000 Universities, excluding the elite 211 institutions which are part of the 211 project. The Universities belong to 15 categories ranging from National, Normal, Comprehensive, Provincial, Municipal, Military etc.,

The conference was no different in terms of the scale of organisation and the vision China has for Asia in matters of Journalism and Communication education. Prof.Guo, Dean, School of Journalism and Communication, SISU led the grand event with his sincere and professional approach, without losing his cool. According to him, the objective of the Forum was to “engage leading Asian scholars in constructive dialogues to respond to the opportunities and challenges created by the new media and to bring out fresh insights into the function and development of Asian journalism and communication and the advancement of the Asian Community in the new media environment.”

The opening and closing sessions were brimming with a unique Chinese character. The opening session more than a typical conference inaugural that we are used in other parts of Asia. It had a good mix of officials and academics holding forth on the objectives of the conference. The speeches were very short and to the point. The closing session had no officials on the dais. The academics from China and other Asian countries summed up the salient points of different academic sessions.

I was fortunate to spend ample time with two senior communication scholars. Prof.Kaarle Nordenstreng from Finland and Prof.Irfan from Turkey. I managed to get their versions of history of Journalism and Communication as academic fields.

The first day sessions were held in a hotel and we moved to the School of Journalism and Communication,SISU, on the second day (December 01, 2016). It is a sprawling campus on the outskirts of Shanghai (60+ Kms). The size of the buildings of the individual schools was larger than any of the large main administrative or academic wing of an Indian state/central University. For instance, the building which houses the School of Journalism and Communication is larger than the main administrative building of University of Madras.

There was an interesting exhibition showcasing the equipment of the past used by the faculty and students of the School in the foyer. There was a typewriter, Pentax 1000 SLR camera and a beta recorder, among other vintage equipment. A huge television screen had a frozen image of Fidel Castro.

The conference was made to register itself as a landmark event by the School of Journalism and Communication, thanks to the very professional approach of nearly 100 student volunteers. We normally struggle to find good student volunteers on that scale.

Chinese conferences are about documenting the group of delegates visually through very innovative methods to enable the hosts and participants to nurture their memories with the help of calendar size prints of group photos. Prof.Kim from South Korea, one of the frequent visitors to Chinese Universities said in a lighter vein that he does not have wall space in his house to accommodate the group photo prints he has collected in China. The group photo was made possible by a drone-enabled camera.

The most substantive highlight of the conference was the presence of a delegates from all regions of Asia – from Mongolia to Turkey. The icing on the cake was the revealing presentations on the state of affairs in Journalism and Communication education in countries small and big – from Cambodia to China. There were very articulate pleas for getting away from the Western modes of engagements and getting closer to Asian ways of engagements in Journalism and Communication research and education.

Thiruvalluvar as a Leit Motif of Tamil Critical Communication Studies

Great communicators of the past and present have their locations in their approaches to resolving social crises of their times. Buddha excelled in communication because of his third perspective about the causes of human suffering and social inequalities his times harboured. In a different temporal context, Ilango Adigal excelled in epic narrative style, because of his vision to provide a unifying narrative context for the subjects and rulers of the three Tamil kingdoms – Chera, Chozha and Pandya dynasties. Neelakesi excelled as a great women character in the epic, bearing her name, for her rhetorical prowess and intellectual acumen to hit not just the bull’s eye, but decimate the bull to the point of shredding. She was a ghost as a being, to begin with, but her becoming becomes a possibility when a Jain saint succeeds in stoping animal sacrifices in the cremation ground where ghosts had their meals. Angered by the pangs of hunger, Neelakesi strikes terror as a furious ghost. When her attempts fail, she takes the form of a seductive women to teach a lesson to the saint. She  was subjugated by the teachings of the Jain saint and eventually turns as an rhetorical anti-missile to destroy the religious construct of Sunyavada tradition of Buddhism.

Manimekalai excelled as a narrative character for her communication prowess rooted in her travails as a woman traveller. It was a world where being and becoming were problematic both for her and her fellow travellers, The travel becomes fortunate for those who were touched by her generosity to feed them and she felt fortunate enough in the company of a magical material entity that was more compassionate than humans.

Kambar excelled in communication for his ability to pre-conceive a narrative strategy that defied the conventions of inter-textual adaptations and devised his own style of cultural subversion of the original, to render the original as one of the texts and the adaptation as the new text for a new group of readers. Kambar’s encoding/decoding notions predate Stuart Hall’s (1980) notions by more than 1000 years.

Closer to contemporary times, Bharathi excelled in appropriating the centuries old Tamil literary tradition more as a subversion than as an assimilation. His communication strategy was more as a powerful interlocutor of the masses’ yearning for liberation as well as a personification of the masses. Bharathi is remembered even today as we tend to see his voice of liberation as our voice of liberation.

Periyar excelled as a communicator par excellence of  last century as his speeches and writings were shorn of the alliterative, ornamental and political rhetoric of his disciples such as Anna. Periyar spoke from his mind, not from his heart. As a rationalist, he never failed to mention in his speeches that the audience should not trust his words alone, they should use their reason to relate to his words and opinions and come to a conclusion. His speeches and writings represent possibly the most original ideology to emerge from Tamil Nadu during the last century. His ideology was meant to liberate the Tamils from their worlds of dogmatic superstition, unbridled casteism, slavery of women and the ignorance borne of illiteracy. His vision of progress was not tied to atheism alone, as many mistakenly portray him. His vision was rooted in a critical communication context. A context where he had his diagnosis in place which pointed the causes for the backwardness of Tamils in the direction of religion, caste, patriarchy, feudalism and illiteracy for the lack of social justice. He had no inkling of the difference Frankfurt school founders, in particular, Horkheimer envisioned between theory and critical theory. Theory is a summation of the explanatory statements about the relationship between causes and effects. Critical theory seeks to go beyond the explanatory function and seeks to factor in a role for theory as a change agent, in particular as a change agent of the society, culture and politics.

Periyar’s communication strategy was rooted in this logic of early critical theorists. He wanted to go beyond writing, talking and conceptualising ideologies to relate to social, cultural and economic inequalities of his times. He wanted true social, economic and cultural liberation for the people of Tamil Nadu. That’s precisely the reason why he did not believe that the independence from British would help in the social liberation of Indians. He did not believe in the power of electoral politics either and wanted to stay as a social reformer. Because of this, he scored well on all important parameters of effective  communication.

What are the important parameters of effective communication. The prerequisites for effective communication at the personal, group and mass communication levels include what can be termed as six Cs and three Ss.  The six Cs are clarity, conciseness, continuity, credibility, critical thinking ability  and commitment. The three Ss are substance,structure and style. The ordering of priorities in respect of the six Cs and three Ss differ among different ace communicators and their periods of existence. In the case of Buddha and Periyar, critical thinking, commitment and clarity led other parameters. In the case of both, substance took a lead over style. In the case of Anna, style took a lead over other parameters.

In the long history of Tamil intellectual tradition, which has its roots in what is widely accepted as the oldest available and the most cerebral classical Sangam age text, Tolkappiyam, one person’s communication strategy remains unique and unparalleled. The person is Thiruvalluvar and his treatise is Thirukural. In his magnum opus, Thirukural, we find in the major and minor units of analysis such as the entire body of work (Thirukural), the divisions or content categories (அறத்துப் பால், பொருள் பால், காமத்துப் பால்) and the chapters (அதிகாரங்கள்), very perfect adherence to the golden rules of effective communication.

The six Cs can not work in a structural, content and stylistic vacuum. Similarly the three Ss can not win without the six Cs. They are as interdependent as nail and skin. At the commonsensical level of understanding, communication ought to be communication. Communication ought to be effective as well. Is it superfluous, then, to talk of effective communication? The reason we stress on the effect of effectiveness when we speak of effective communication is a two fold reason. This is more like stressing the visual in visual communication and aural in aural communication. This is meant to uncover the potential of any act/context of communication to be inherently effective, if the rules of effective communication. This is also meant to convey the possibility that communication ought to be communication, to be effective.

Communication is a challenging everyday construct wherein what is transacted fails or succeeds depending on the communication context’s adherence to the six Cs and three Ss. Communication becomes effective when the adequacy level goes up and the inadequacy level comes down, depending on how the three Ss and Six Cs are deployed by the communicator. Communication is a state of being. We communicate all the time in our states of being. We communicate effectively when we allow ourselves and our audience to enter states of becoming.

Great communicators such as the ones mentioned above allowed themselves and their audience to be in changing states of becoming with their own communication strategies. Among them, Thiruvalluvar towers above the rest as he marshals the best possible effective communication contexts in every major and minor unit of analysis and categories one may employ to analyse his work from a critical communication perspective.

There are misconceptions about the critical communication perspective as well just as there are misconceptions about communication and what it has to include, effective communication. The major misconceptions are: i) critical communication perspective ought to have its location only in the critical theory traditions of the Frankfurt school ii) critical communication perspective ought to have its locations in both Frankfurt school’s theoretical tradition as well as what caused its birth, the need to rediscover marxism for the peculiar crises of Western Europe during the early part of last century because of the two World Wars, iii) critical theories of the Frankfurt school are now rather inadequate as the challenges before the World during this century are different from that of the 20th century, v) critical theories are inadequate in the face of critical philosophies of the West and the East which evolved over centuries. Likewise, one may find what appears as a perfect theoretical conception to deal with a contemporary or past crisis also as a misconception. If only the critical thinking ability of the person works in a ceaseless manner to see every state of theoretical or philosophical adequacy as essentially inadequacy, then the canvas of conceptions become mis conceptions and vice versa to promote critical understanding of the issues at hand.

Moreover, all the misconceptions, however, open up a great possibility to think that they can be the basis of a new conception of critical communication perspective, if only they are able to get out of their small circles of enquiry and embrace a larger circle that can accommodate all their visible and invisible essentialist positions as well as other positions which are yet to be captured by their theoretical radars. Their states of being have to be transformed as states of becoming.

In the history of human knowledge, the states of becoming were first revealed in the rhetorical duels of Indian and Tamil philosophers. This philosophical tradition became a very powerful interlocutor of the duels between the proponents of the Vedic tradition and those who took it upon themselves the need to counter the Vedic tradition with a strong sense of social reform. The works of the 24 Thirthankarars and Buddha represent the tradition of the later. The Vedic tradition had social discrimination and the law of the originary cause, the God, as its basis. Fate could be reversed, according to its conception, not because the law of Karma, wants it that way, but because of the ritual potential of the Vedic tradition to reverse Karma’s negative effects as positive.

The philosophical tradition of Ajivikam went a step ahead and propounded that the law of nature was the only law which defined the states of being and becoming. The classical works of Sangam period have their ideological basis in Ajivika philosophy. Buddhism and Jainism differed with this conception and took a reformist position against rituals, but still believed in the power of God and not the law of nature.

If all these conceptions can be also construed as misconceptions, as they remain essentialist to the core, they reveal their true states of being and becoming only in the critical perspectives of  Thiruvalluvar. Communication becomes non-essentialist and effective when the communicator becomes well aware of the past,present and future possibilities of social and audience formations. Communication becomes effective when all the conceptions are simultaneously contested or read as conceptions and misconceptions and a way out is suggested in the form of a new conception that seeks to abandon the conventional dialectical approach in favour of the meta plane that pits countless number of dialectical approaches in fray against each other and against the very state of such a being as a discursive discourse of the highest order. There is a limit in any discourse and the limit is no different in the discursive discourse as well. The limit becomes obvious because of the visible and tangible planes of duels or countless number of axes. The limit becomes obvious because what is not visible and tangible.

Thiruvalluvar becomes aware of this and his Kurals are evocative of the limits of their states of being as discourses and discursive discourses as well as their states of becoming as they are making their presence and absence felt as communication contexts in a wider network of possibilities of conceptions and misconceptions with their own sub networks.

If one subscribes to the idea of the limit in terms of the number of Kurals (1330) or the number of words they contain (12000), there is a conception of the structure of his work in terms of the number of couplets, divisions or categories that contain them, but there is also a misconception here when we seek to have a new conception that every couplet harbours as many observational or intellectual positions as there are words or at least factor in the obvious that every couplet is in essence a sum of two ideas, two antithetical positions, then there is a theoretical possibility of reading the limit of every couplet as twosome and the entire body of work as 2660 different observational positions.

If we ascribe the dimension of critical thinking to these 2660 positions, then the limit is defined by the number 7980 as the 2660 observational positions are multiplied by a three positions of critical thinking, the first perspective (subjective), the second perspective (objective) and the third perspective (critical). This is also not the actual limit. The actual limit is inconceivable as the states of becoming are exponential and can not be captured by the limit that we indicate by numbers such as 1330, 2660 or 7980. For instance, if we seek to push the limit further than 7980, then we need not go further than the first visible count, that is 1330. 1330 Kurals are about 1330 contexts of everyday life contexts or the possibilities for human beings in these everyday life contexts. This gets us the possibility of a number higher than 7980 as we can indulge once again in a new order of multiplication, 7980×1330=10,613,400. If you multiply this number with the individual contexts of 7 Crore people of Tamil Nadu and more than 120 Crore population of India, the number edges towards 742 million possibilities and 1200 million possibilities of engagements with Thirukural. This is to point at a great possibility that there can be more than 1200 million ways of conceptions and misconceptions, even as we read Thirukural, purportedly written as a single conception or even as a misconception. Reading Thirukural as a misconception? Yes, that is a possibility too as every conception is countenanced by its misconception. There are as many million possibilities for Thirukural to exist as a misconception in the mind of  one who seeks to get dismissive about the entire project of Thiruvalluvar. This can be further multiplied depending on the macro contexts of countless number of cultures, societies and geographies in our world.

(to be continued)

Some Benjaminian Reflections on the Students’ Upsurge and Police Violence in Tamil Nadu

The brute vengeance shown by the Tamil Nadu (henceforth TN) police across the state towards the  peaceful demonstrations by hundreds and thousands of youth on Monday 23,2017 bears all the marks of a political state gone awry.

What could happen in a totalitarian state happened in a democratic state on that tragic day for the protesters as well as hundreds and thousands of citizens in different parts of the state. The fury of the police violence was more pronounced on the marginalised communities such as the fisherfolk and the urban poor in areas such as Nadukuppam, Mattankuppam, Rutherpuram and Vysarpadi.

I am wondering whether TN police would have had the courage and mindset to enter the locales of the socially mobile upper and middle classes in  Besant Nagar, RA Puram, Adayar and Anna Nagar to beat the residents, abuse the women and children and set on fire their vehicles in the name of taking on the protesters. What prevented them from going beyond the narrow lanes of Mattankuppam to enter the main roads around Parthasarathy temple in the name of chasing the protesters?

I am reminded of the brutality of the Czarist forces on innocent civilians in St.Petersburg on January 22 1905, which became the flash point of events leading to the 1917 Soviet Revolution. It was a bloody Sunday. What happened in Tamil Nadu on January 23 2017 was a bloody Monday. The brutalities in both cases bore the marks of a state gone awry.

How to relate to TN Police’s attack on protesters and marginalised communities such as the fisherfolk and the urban poor in areas such as Nadukuppam, Mattankuppam, Rutherpuram and Vysarpadi in the city of Chennai and other major protest venues such as Alanganallur (Madurai), Coimbatore and Erode with the theoretical prism of Walter Benjamin and contrast it with the brutal attacks by police on blacks in US ghettos such as Ferguson and Palestinians in West Bank?

The Benjaminian cues are provided by the Slovenian philosopher, Slavoj Zizek. Writing about the violence by the police on the blacks in Ferguson, a suburb outside St.Louis, Zizek said:”In U.S. slums and ghettos, police effectively function more and more as a force of occupation, something akin to Israeli patrols entering the Palestinian territories on the West Bank. …When police are no longer perceived as the agent of law, of the legal order, but as just another violent social agent, protests against the predominant social order also tend to take a different turn: that of exploding “abstract negativity” – in short, raw, aimless violence. ” (Zizek,2015).

Walter Benjamin was the first to define acts of violence both as violence and non-violence. According to Walter Benjamin (1921/1986), violence comes in two versions. Mythic violence and divine violence. Mythic violence arises out of the processes of law making and law preserving. War between two countries to settle border issues may result in new laws that binds their new territories. Law preservation refers to attempts by the state to honour the new rights for both parties.Benjamin alludes to what Anatole France said: “In its majestic equality, the law forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets and steal loaves of bread.”

Benjamin argues that police violence is one that comes into existence when the two versions of mythic violence are suspended. It constitutes its own territory in the guise of affirmation and reaffirmation of the state power. In the case of the police states, the police violence exists for the sake of its own preservation as the law, the law that was not born in the usual processes of law making and law preservation.

The divine violence, on the other hand, refers to what Benjamin calls as “lethal, but without spilling blood”. Here, we need to remember that the Benjamin logic excludes and includes violence as bloody and non-bloody.

Says Benjamin, “If mythic violence is lawmaking, divine violence is law-destroying; if the former sets boundaries, the latter boundlessly destroys them; if mythic violence brings at once guilt and retribution, divine power only expiates; if the former threatens, the latter strikes; if the former is bloody, the latter is lethal without spilling blood. …Mythical violence is bloody power over mere life for its own sake, divine violence pure power over all life for the sake of the living. The first demands sacrifice, the second accepts it.” (Benjamin,1921/1986, p.297)

In the Benjaminian logic, the divine violence, i.e the non-bloody kind, was made possible when nearly one million people gathered on the sands of Marina and other parts of Tamil Nadu to vent their long-held antipathy towards the failures of the law making and law preserving acts of the state headquartered in New Delhi and Chennai.

For instance, the harsh measures on common people such as demonetisation by the government at the centre  demanded sacrifice. More than hundred commoners died in their acts of sacrifice at the alter of demonetisation since November 08 2016. The law making and law preservation as pillars of mythical violence ensured “bloody power over mere for its own sake,” without caring for the welfare of the people.

The acts of governments at the centre, state and the higher courts of India were taking the same route of mythical violence with regard to the cultural right of people of Tamil Nadu and the important interfaces between farmers, men, women, children, their everyday life practices, environment, farms and native cows/bulls.  Jallikattu is not another agrarian sport, it embodies all these interfaces. From a post-colonial, late capitalism perspective of the governments at the centre, state, higher courts and international and national animal rights activists, Jallikattu is misread as a bull-taming sport of Tamil Nadu. From the perspective of those who did not understand the rhizomatic contexts of the students’ upsurge, the protesters were working with single agenda, lifting the ban on Jallikattu. They refused to understand that it was a rhizomatic protest with as many agendas as there were protesters.

The monumental show of solidarity by students, youth, women, rich, poor and the elderly during Jan.16-23 2016 at the sands of Marina beach, Chennai and different parts of the state accepted the Benjaminian sacrifice for the sake of pure power over all life (not just the right to stage Jallikattu, but a life free of political corruption, unhealthy beverages, culturally threatening corporate state and its collaborators, demanding justice for farmers, fishers etc.,

What followed the divine violence (non-bloody kind) of the hundreds and thousands of people in Marina beach, Alanganallur and Coimbatore was the unleashing of the police violence that was born in the suspension of the law making and law preservation domains and became law itself, in the company of the collaborators such as corporate media, who refuse to be on the side of the people and chose to be on the side of the sources of police violence, religious rightists and the weak law makers and law preservers.

The police state emerges when the police violence makes a mockery of the two pillars of mythical violence and makes its birth outside the domain of the suspension of law making violence and law preservation violence.

Based on my readings of the happenings in Tamil Nadu since the year of National Emergency, 1975, I can say emphatically that the TN police has been raring to make TN a police state for the past the four decades, beginning with the rule of Karunanidhi’s first term as Chief Ministership, followed by MGR and Jayalalitha. All the three made the TN police a villain of the fundamental rights of Indian citizens whenever they chose to exercise their right to divine violence, an acceptance of a sacrifice in a non-bloody way.

I am reminded of a host of riots, mass deaths and mass imprisonment made possible by police violence outside the domains of mythical violence. The 1992 Vachathi police brutality against tribals, the 1999 Thamirabarani killings of dalits (which included women and children), the Paramakudi riots of 2011, the Idinthakarai police atrocities of 2012 are but a small sample of the brutal counters of TN police to the non-bloody acts of the protesters.

However, the brutal attacks on protesters on Jan 23 2017 across Tamil Nadu pushes the above mentioned ones poor markers of comparison. I went to see the fisherfolk of Nadukuppam today (25 01 2017) and was shocked to see hundreds of small shops in the fish market gutted in fire, reportedly caused by the police, according to women who manned these shops.

The women and children bore the fury of the police marching into their homes and smashing people and things on the way, according to the victims. The police, according to these women, used phosphor to ignite their fish market and vehicles.

They are deeply traumatised by what they term as “police atrocities and lawlessness” in their area on January 23 2017. They showed their bandaged wounds and deep cuts on their bodies. Men, women, children and the elderly, none were spared, according to these women. They said they were more emotionally disturbed by the tag police used to brand them, “anti-socials”. They said, we only provided water to those students, who wanted it and were fleeing from police attacks on them.”We did not do any harm to anyone.”

According to the fisherfolk, the students had a very peaceful protest for eight days and fed everyone, including the fisherfolk and the policemen/women. One elderly women (aged 70) said “I lost fish worth Rs.4000 in the fire. I have two daughters and their children to support. I too was attacked by the police with small granite stones, which are not available in our area. The police brought them from elsewhere. The police were throwing some powder and vehicles and our shops were gutted.” Two elderly women in their 80s and 90s said they were almost trampled by the police who entered the house. They said they had their share of beatings too.

A young mother said that her one year old child is yet to recover from the trauma of the police atrocity inside her house and has been crying since then. Police picked everyone on their brutal marches, including workers who were returning home. One young person with deep cut and eight stitches and a swollen hand said he was returning home that day after work and the week’s salary of Rs 3000. The police thrashed him and took his money and cell phone and hauled him to the station.

All the women and the elderly men said they are scared to go to sleep and are always on the lookout for more police attacks. They said the able bodied men have left for safe places outside the city for the fear of being caught by the police. It was heart wrenching to hear the horrors of police violence in an area that is only three kilo metres from the state government’s head quarters, Fort St.George. This is emblematic of the interstice where the conventions of mythical violence fail and the police violence becomes the law, the law beyond the law, the rule of law as enshrined in India’s Constitution.

One can also draw into this discourse what ordinary citizens experienced on their morning and afternoon encounters with the hundreds of policemen/women who kept them immobile in traffic for the sake of functioning as the efficient convoy police for the CMs, who represented the domains of mythical violence. Many a time, the police booed the commoners away and abused and yelled at them, when they were veering away from the commands of the police. The Tamil poet Bharathidasan defined social progress at the point where the erasure of monarchy paves way for people’s rule. People’s rule has been more a misnomer than a reality in TN, thanks to the trap of the police state. All the regimes during the past four decades were according top priority to the police sector in matters of housing, vehicles etc., without doing any performance audit. All the leaders of the regimes had their favourites to execute their verbal and non verbal orders.

Police state is the one that suspends the rights of the citizens and leverages the rights of the rulers. Police states do not exist only in totalitarian, one party systems. They can exist in India. They can exist in Tamil Nadu. They can exist in USA. They can exist anywhere where the linkages within the domains of mythical violence are overpowered by the police violence. This has been proved time and again.

Police state is the one where police violence comes in the most brutal form of violence against law and the subjects of law, the people.

On December 01,2015 when Chennai faced a deluge, the hundreds of Chennai cops were standing in pounding rains on the Chief Minister’s convoy route every ten feet. It is needless to say here that Chennai’s citizens were drowning in their hundreds across the city at this hour. This is a typical trajectory which caused the birth of both the Bloody Sunday and the Bloody Monday referred earlier.

Police state is the one where the officers who become members of Indian Police Service and their juniors in different cadres become a single organism baying for the blood of the weaker, marginalised and vulnerable sections of the society and their benefactors, the rights groups which seek to provide them support and relief.

The unwarranted remarks of the Coimbatore Police Commissioner in a recent press meet urging protesters to severe links with those who  use the term “Thozhar” (Comrade) and his manner of linking such an act with reference to  democratic organisations he listed as “extremists” (The Hindu,2017) is the hallmark of verbal police violence. The repeated recourse to police inspired news narratives by Tamil television channels in their coverage of the 2017 Tamil Nadu youth protests is the hall mark of what aids police violence.

The violence the TN police let loose on the poor fisherfolk in Nadukuppam, the downtrodden in Vyasarpadi and the peaceful protesters on Marina, Alanganallur and different parts of the state has to be condemned by every citizen of this nation, if we wish to prove to the perpetrators of police violence that police violence is antithetical to the spirit of Indian constitution.  Martin Luther King, who was inspired by Mahatma Gandhi said famously, “Hate begets hate; violence begets violence; toughness begets a greater toughness. We must meet the forces of hate with the power of love…

We deserve, as citizens of India, more waves of non-bloody divine violence as the youth of Tamil Nadu enacted for eight days during January 16-23,2017.

We deserve zero tolerance towards police violence. We have to lend helping hands to the millions of the poor and marginalised Indians who are still struggling for their food, shelter education and fundamental rights.

References

1.Benjamin, Walter (1921/1986), “Critique of Violence” in Reflections:Essays, Aphorisms and Autobiographical Writings, Schocken Books, New York.

2.The Hindu, (2017), “Extremists Incited Violence” Available at http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/Coimbatore/Extremists-incited-violence-police/article17089008.ece

3.Zizek, Slavoj (2015), “Divine Violence in Ferguson,” The European, Available at http://www.theeuropean-magazine.com/slavoj-zizek/9774-slavoj-zizek-on-ferguson-and-violence

Understanding the Long History Through a Short Journey: The Coexistence of Foucauldian Epistemes in Japan

In his 1966 book, The Order of Things (which had his first English translation in 1970), Foucault engages with the historical markers of separation of knowledge system and classifies such a separation with three kinds of epistemes: i) Renaissance episteme ii) Classical episteme and iii) modern episteme.

What is an episteme? Episteme, according to Foucault refers to what exists “…in any given culture and at any given moment…” And “there is always only one episteme that defines the conditions of possibility of all knowledge, whether expressed in a theory or silently invested in a practice. (Foucault, 168).

The Korean/Gaya Journey – April 20-26 2016

Professor Shin Dong Kim, one of the long time colleagues and a rare academic in South Korea, has been steadfast in internationalising the landscape of Korean Communication Studies since early 2000s. He was one of the architects of a unique international conference organised by the Korean Association of Broadcasting and Telecommunication Studies (KABS), a vibrant association of academics and professionals. The association had its Spring 2016 conference in the culturally important city, Jeonju during April 22-23 2016.

The conference venue was in Chonbuk National University. The university  witnessed historic student protests in the wake of the May 18 1980 uprisings against the then military dictatorship, according to Dr.Seong Hyoun Lee, Sejong Institute, Korea,who chaired the first session of the conference on April 22 2016.

A Modest Board of Chonbuk National University, Jeonju (Pl.do not compare this with our University arches!)

(L to R) Peng Huaxin, Elira Turdubaeva and Nello Barile

The registration corner/desk was different from the Western ones. There were typical Korean cultural motifs and the process was hassle free

Venue of the International Session. Spring 2016 KABS conference was the first one with International sessions

Peng Huaxin taking a critical dig at the Chinese Mobile Internet Images

As in many contemporary communication conferences, social media research was omnipresent

With Professor Shin during the conference dinner at Le Win Hotel, Jeonju, on April 22 2016

(L to R) Trace Cabot, Michael Prieler, Yeon Ju Oh and Elira Turdubaeva during the conference dinner at Le Win Hotel on April 22 2016

There were quite a number of enthusiastic young scholars from China, who had very forthright as well as predictable presentations. Notable among them was Mr Wang Shuo, a PhD scholar from Renmin University of China. He had a good presentation on the discursive practices of Chinese television talk shows with reference to “Mr Zhou Live Show.” Another interesting paper from China was presented by a young faculty member from the Shenzen University, Dr Peng Huaxin, who examined critically the relationship between mobile internet images and social expressions. He dealt with the aspects of body politic, power deconstruction and class struggles with reference to mobile internet images.

Dr Nello Barile, who teaches sociology of media at the ILUM University, Milan,Italy/Franklin University,Switzerland, made a substantive presentation linking semiotics and what he called as open branding of politicians. In his presentation, he was examining the case of the Italian Prime Minister, Matteo Renzi. I had a chance to read Nello’s review of Claudio Giunta’s book “Being Matteo Renzi” and the review helped me to appreciate the charismatic and suave Nello’s fascination for an equally charismatic young Prime Minister of Italy, Renzi.  About the book, Nello says: “Giunta analyzes two essential ontological aspects of the Renzi phenomenon. The first is the idea that “things” and “facts” become increasingly evanescent, or evaporate altogether, under the spell of Renzi’s communicative skills  (like Negroponte’s atoms transformed into bytes). The second  is the plastic nature of the political leader’s identity, its ability to mold itself to the identities demanded by those whom some have called the ‘look at me generation”.(http://en.doppiozero.com/materiali/commenti/being-matteorenzi).

Dr Elira Turdubaeva, who chairs the Journalism and Mass Communication programme at the American University in Kyrgyztan, explored the dimensions of gatekeeping by the media in her country.

Dr Michael Prieler, Associate Professor, Hallym University, explored in a co-authored paper the images of elderly in 432 East Asian television advertisements in Japan, Korea and Hong Kong and pointed to their linkages with the legacy of Confucius.

Dr Trace Cabot’s (Research Associate, Hallym University) paper was complex to relate to even though it dealt with US primaries. He made a good case against the use of “pop esoterica” attempts by US media, which according to him are working against serious participation by lay people who can not relate to the expert knowledge systems deployed by the media.

There were a countless number of other interesting papers in the Korean sessions which I missed. The manifold attractions of Korean publications at the Registration counter stood testimony to that. Dr Nello took a copy as a souvenir and was flaunting it too!

I visited Hallym University, Chuncheon, one of the efficient private university systems in Asia and South Korea, to give a talk to Prof.Shin’s students on April 25,2016, after my return from Busan. The “Gaya Journey” (read below) was so enticing, I missed the temporal moorings and ended up missing the last Chuncheon bus at 7.10 pm. One kind Korean passenger, well versed with English, offered to help me out and asked me to take the last bus (8.00 pm) to Wonju, a nearby city. He advised me to explore the possibility of connecting from Wonju to Chuncheon after reaching Chuncheon. I took a chance, but the small city of Wonju was already in sleeping mode when my bus reached around 12.00 midnight. I looked around and asked for directions to a nearby motel. Another kind Korean, a taxi driver, asked me to look at the nearby building, which had the sign, MOTEL. I checked in and requested the person in the reception to message Prof.Shin that I reached Wonju and would take the morning bus to Chuncheon. Room fares in Korea are three to five times lower than Indian rates and three to five times clean as well. The bus journey from Wonju and Chuncheon provided good glimpses of the scenic beauty of South Korea as well as the rural environs. Prof.Shin came to the Chuncheon bus station to receive me and drove me to Hallym University around 12 noon.

The Lecturer’s multimedia console in the Communication Lecture Hall, Hallym University

Trying to fix the video issue

Communication Lecture Hall, Hallym University

In the Hallym University Cafeteria

Entering Hallym University

During the stay, I had interesting conversations with Prof.Kim on his current research interest in studies on “mobility” in the new contexts provided by China. Prof.Shin Dong Kim caused one of the earliest waves of locally grounded mobile phone communication studies in Asia nearly a decade ago. I found it very interesting talking about “mobility” as a current denominator of the unprecedented scales/ formations of human beings in the birth and transformation of cities like Shenzen. As he was driving me to his University for a talk to his students, we engaged in a good conversation on travels as processes and travels as functional pursuits. He reminded me of the travelogue by Johann Goethe’s travelogue, “Italian Journey 1786-1788” and said it is an example of a traveller experiencing the process of travel instead of the purposeless travels we make in modern times between points of departure and arrival. I did experience travel as a process to connect with the incredible “mobilities” of our ancestors when I took off from Jeonju in a late afternoon bus to the second largest Korean city of Busan on April 23 2016 evening.

In Busan, I checked into the Plus Motel late in the evening. Took a walk, found a grocery shop, picked some fruits for dinner and went to bed. Next day morning (24 04 2016), I took a metro train to Sasang station to take the Busan-Gimhae Light Transit train to Gimhae city. As I entered the train, I could hear children calling their parents “appa appa”. “amma-amma”. As soon as I headed out of the station, I was surprised to find a festive atmosphere in the air, as it was the time for annual”Gaya Festival,” and once again I could hear children calling their parents “appa appa”. “amma-amma”.

Gaya Festival, Gimhae, April 24 2016

Children calling their parents, “Amma, Appa” as they enjoy their kite flying on the mound which was the major excavation site related to Gaya history

Geumgwan Gaya Gimhae’s history dates back to AD 42 when King Suro was making history

Plaque at the entrance of King Suro’s tomb

Queen Heo Hwang’s tomb

An elderly Korean praying at Queen Heo Hwang’s tomb

Plaque at the entrance to Queen Heo’s tomb

Yin/Yang symbol at the entrance door of King Suro’s tomb

Yin/Yang motif from a Tamil Nadu temple pillar

Yin/Yang motif in South Korean Flag

Gaya flowers in Gaya are nothing but the flowers borne by our Kaya trees. There was a group of folk drummers in the festival grounds whose beats and movements reminded me of the drum beats of our students’ theatre group, Muttram. I found my way to the local museum which showcases the artefacts excavated from the region. I did not seek any help from locals and wanted to experience travel as a process as I was working with a local map to find my way to the tombs of King Suro and Queen Heo of the ancient Gaya kingdom. My travel was meant to be a process-centric experience and not tied to see Gaya’s historic sites as my points of arrival. I was trying to relate to the similarities in the words and cultural practices of Tamils and Koreans and trying to look at them from the perspective of ancient travellers from Tamil Nadu and Korea and the “cultural mobilities”they caused to themselves and the people they met and traded with.

I was experiencing the mind of Queen Heo Hwang-Ok, who is widely believed by Koreans to be a princess from India. She married King Suro, the legendary ruler of Gaya kingdom as I was looking at her tomb. I reached her tomb after a long walk through the streets filled with Filipino workers enjoying their weekend. Even as I found commemorative stones bearing the names of “Agarwals/Mishras” in the garden abutting the tomb of Queen Heo Hwang, the children in the water hole in the garden were calling their parents “appa appa”. “amma-amma” as they were requesting them to help them drink water from the fountainhead which had fish as the motif. On seeing an Indian in me, the care taker in the vicinity was proud to point in the direction of the commemorative stones bearing the names of “Agarwals/Mishras” from India’s Uttar Pradesh state installed a decade ago. I was interested in testing the knowledge of the Korean caretaker about linkages between Tamil and Korean and asked him the Korean word for referring to grass, he said “Pull”, same as in Tamil. I asked him about words to refer to parents, he said, “appa”, “amma.”

Homer Hulbert’s 1905 book “Comparative Grammar of the Korean Language and the Dravidian Languages of India”

I read Homer Hulbert’s 1905 book “Comparative Grammar of Korean and Dravidian” recently, thanks to Orissa Balu, who managed to get a copy from USA. Many in North India, the Indian diplomats who get posted in South Korea, who wish to connect with the “ancient mobilities” between India and Korea through the marker of “Ayuta” as “Ayodhya” have probably not read this seminal work. In his preface, he acknowledges his debt to another wizard of 19th century’s fascination with comparative grammar, Robert Caldwell. The last major work on the lexical connection between Tamil and Korean was a paper by Morgan Clipphinger in the journal, Korean Studies,vol.8.1984. After “presenting over four hundred Korean Dravidian cognate pairs”, Clipphinger (1984,pp.1-3) says emphatically that “any connection between Dravidian and Korean must be closely tied to the migration of the peoples of Asia, a subject that is still not clearly understood. …In short, the evidence suggests that at a very ancient period, Dravidian and Korean shared a common heritage, and this heritage was reinforced much later by migrations to the Korean peninsula, perhaps in the later years of the first millennium B.C.”

Following Hulbert and Clippinger, Jung Nam Kim (President of the Korean Society of  Tamil Studies) presented an interesting paper in the Classical Tamil Conference, Coimbatore, in 2010 entitled “Similarities between Tamil and Korean Languages.” Here is his interview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGSrEAW0c_A. The lexical evidence that points to the connection between Korean and Dravidian/Tamil could not have started its journey from Hindi heartland, to say the least.  From the concrete lexical evidence available, Queen Heo Hwang-Ok can also be read as a significant evidence of “ancient mobilities” between Tamil Nadu and Korea and the most likely source of the more than 400 pairs of cognates that point to the similarities between Korean and Tamil.

It is unfortunate that the Korean wave in manufacturing in Chennai was not leveraged to study the “ancient mobilities” between Korea and Tamil Nadu by either TN universities or the TN government.

However, there are good samaritans in TN and South Korea to get us the correct perspectives on the “ancient mobilities” between Korea and Tamil Nadu/India.

The present Consul General of the Consulate General of South Korea in Chennai, Mr Kim Kyungsoo is an ardent admirer of the ancient “mobilities” between Tamil Nadu and Gaya Kingdom. He has already inspired the successful completion of an international conference on the subject.

Here is what he says on the subject, in his official web page. “I instinctively turn my head often on the streets towards the girl calling “Appa Appa” without knowing that she was calling her father and not me. Also, I have a strong affection towards children who whimpers to their mother crying “Umma”. Similarities between Korean and Tamil has been documented by the missionary Hilbert who loved Korea more than Koreans did. He helped to send a secret envoy to Hague by gaining the trust of the first emperor Kojong. People here call grass from the field as “pull” which has the same pronunciation as Korean grass. Also mowing the grass is called as “beda” that has the same meaning in Tamil as “bedu”. “Iri wa” in Korean refers to come here that is “inge wa” in Tamil. People in South India has similarities with Korea. Unlike Delhi, rice is the main portion of food here in Chennai. It is quite interesting to see farmers transplanting rice here that is similar to farmers transplanting in Korea. Also, rice-based foods similar to Adirasam, Kozkukkattai are eaten in Tamil Nadu. Gilli Danda, hanging a straw rope on the door when a baby is born, and women with hair style of buns and ribbons here reminds me of Korean mothers and old ladies.” (http://ind-chennai.mofa.go.kr/english/as/ind-chennai/mission/greetings/index.jsp)

The experience of the “Korean/Gaya Journey” provided me an opportunity to present more than 300 photos I took  during the journey to another admirer of the ancient “mobilities” of Tamils and their counter parts in different parts of the world, Thiru Orissa Balu. Orissa Balu has an interesting mix of plans to do justice to the ancient “mobilities” of Tamils and Koreans.