Gantis article points out that Bollywood filmmakers who see themselves as cultural translators assume a position of authority because they claim to be able to mediate between the Hollywood form and the desires of the local 'masses' while implicitly ranking themselves in a position of power, since they can appreciate both. This sounds similar to the power gained by Mazzarella's cultural mediators. The question I want to ask here is, how self-conscoius are powers that are held in these ways? To what extent does a power structure perpetuate itself (again, like Warner's public) in a way subtle and implicating, and outside the full self-consciousness of the individuals that speak it?
It reminds me of Sara Dickey's ethnography of domestic service in South India. Dickey found that both servants and employers had morally charged, oppositional identities and accused the other of creating conditions that caused their own behaviour. Servants accused employers of being not altruistic enough for instance, and employers of servants being too demanding. If both groups here agreed in some sense that it was the role of the employer to be paternalistioc and altruistic, and the role of th servant to be a humble beneficiary, this has disturbing implications for how hegemonies perpetuate themselves. For the people speaking they appear to be true, they cannot imagine life in any otehr way. They dont speak the discourse, the discourse speaks them, in Heidiggers terms, "Language Speaks Man".
How does social change happen then? I guess it happens because althoughn history is a myth it feels completely real to us. So when things change (do things always change? why do we only notice certain changes and not others?) we react and change the discourse. This is a good question for Warner. How do modern public discourses give up their power and adapt to change?
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
Hum Aapke Hain Kaun and the perpetuation of class-marked identities.
Uberoi makes an argument in this articvle about the way in which HAHK played a key role in creating the neoliberal, business-minded upper-class Indian citizen as the safekeeper of Indian tradition, reconciling any contradictions posed by their transnational business involvements and elite social position with a type of intrinsic, from-the-heart Indianness. This speaks to Appadurai's arguement about the anxietioes posed by the era of globalization to ethnicity slipping in and out of national cracks, and the consequent need to create a new national ethnos suitable to the period of neoliberalism.
When I first read this article, I saw it as a hegemonic, oppressive attempt by the Upper classes to retain their dominance, as such I agreed with the kinds of NGO accounts that charge the 'upper classes' and governemnt with jointly victimizing the poor.
However, after re-reading Warner's article, I wonder if the process is as self-conscious as that. It is possible that the upper class discourse is generated out of particular constraints and a view of the public that it wholeheartedly believes, as a public discourse, it is generative of the conditions that produce it. Here both upper and lower classes are victims and agents of a mutually dialectic discourse. The forms of 'whole' and 'dialectic' are both crucial to modern ideology. What does one make then of a person who watches HAHK and leaves unaffected? Are they interpellated or can their conscious resistance to the totalizaing impulse of the whole help them to laugh it off and leave?
Uberoi makes an argument in this articvle about the way in which HAHK played a key role in creating the neoliberal, business-minded upper-class Indian citizen as the safekeeper of Indian tradition, reconciling any contradictions posed by their transnational business involvements and elite social position with a type of intrinsic, from-the-heart Indianness. This speaks to Appadurai's arguement about the anxietioes posed by the era of globalization to ethnicity slipping in and out of national cracks, and the consequent need to create a new national ethnos suitable to the period of neoliberalism.
When I first read this article, I saw it as a hegemonic, oppressive attempt by the Upper classes to retain their dominance, as such I agreed with the kinds of NGO accounts that charge the 'upper classes' and governemnt with jointly victimizing the poor.
However, after re-reading Warner's article, I wonder if the process is as self-conscious as that. It is possible that the upper class discourse is generated out of particular constraints and a view of the public that it wholeheartedly believes, as a public discourse, it is generative of the conditions that produce it. Here both upper and lower classes are victims and agents of a mutually dialectic discourse. The forms of 'whole' and 'dialectic' are both crucial to modern ideology. What does one make then of a person who watches HAHK and leaves unaffected? Are they interpellated or can their conscious resistance to the totalizaing impulse of the whole help them to laugh it off and leave?
My favorite readings for this class were Michael Warner, Arjun Appadurai, Tejaswini Ganti, Particia Uberoi, the article about the use of Muszak technology in malls, and Barry Dornfeld.
I think the Warner article was the most suggestive to me because his idea about the publics has very concrete implications, he suggests that public discourse doesnt just describe the world but create it, in line with a modern ideology. This is very suggestive, it makes me think twice for instance, before saying anything because of the formative power my words may have. In the context of our college campus this suggests that student discourse about the campus as a place where "Fun Comes to Die" actually creates those conditions, in the situation of postcolonies that continue to experience infrastructural breakdowns and bureaucratic delay, it suggests that the popular habit of complaint about these issues may have a role to play in creating their reality.
To use his own example of the 'Wassup' ad, while it appeared to describe a thing that people ssaid often, it had the effect of actually creating the conditions that it seemed to describe, because people began saying 'Wassup' all the time afterwards.\
The article 'Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy' was the first article of Arjun Appadurai's that I have read. It was extremely helpful for its brutal dismissal of old paradigms of thinking and its quick, imaginative sketching of the contours of a new way to think about social science research in the context of globalization and the kinds of multiplicities it produces.
The article about the music played in malls and its role in creating particular ways of being for the people that enetred the mall was useful for the same reason as Warner.
In general, the above articles provided paradigmatic frameworks and broad conditions to keep in mind when studying the social sciences in the time of globalization; as such they have a wide application and I will probably use them again in the future.
I think the Warner article was the most suggestive to me because his idea about the publics has very concrete implications, he suggests that public discourse doesnt just describe the world but create it, in line with a modern ideology. This is very suggestive, it makes me think twice for instance, before saying anything because of the formative power my words may have. In the context of our college campus this suggests that student discourse about the campus as a place where "Fun Comes to Die" actually creates those conditions, in the situation of postcolonies that continue to experience infrastructural breakdowns and bureaucratic delay, it suggests that the popular habit of complaint about these issues may have a role to play in creating their reality.
To use his own example of the 'Wassup' ad, while it appeared to describe a thing that people ssaid often, it had the effect of actually creating the conditions that it seemed to describe, because people began saying 'Wassup' all the time afterwards.\
The article 'Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy' was the first article of Arjun Appadurai's that I have read. It was extremely helpful for its brutal dismissal of old paradigms of thinking and its quick, imaginative sketching of the contours of a new way to think about social science research in the context of globalization and the kinds of multiplicities it produces.
The article about the music played in malls and its role in creating particular ways of being for the people that enetred the mall was useful for the same reason as Warner.
In general, the above articles provided paradigmatic frameworks and broad conditions to keep in mind when studying the social sciences in the time of globalization; as such they have a wide application and I will probably use them again in the future.
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