CONTEMPORARY INDIA: Technology and the New City

Course Description:

The term ‘citizen’ has two overlapping meanings: as the bearer of political/juridical rights and a more diffuse sense of belonging, to a collectivity or an existing social order. The question of citizenship, statutory or anticipated, moreover has a special resonance with the city. The idea of the peasant mutating into the industrial worker in order to become a true citizen of the nation, for example, was an underlying theme of much of modern European social thought. The imagined move from a status of subordination to full citizenship was, of course, also the motive force of the anti-colonial struggles of the 18th to 20th centuries. A further fact to keep in mind is that the largest cities in the world today, especially those that grew most rapidly in the second half of the twentieth century, are not Western cities.

Our course will examine concepts of citizenship and the new urban spaces that emerged, along with the crucial third term of the triad, technology. Moreover in the new grid of electronic capital, as the globe is re-drawn by virtual lines, the histories of the global South are being flattened out in very specific ways. The pervasive NGO culture of our times with its impatient philanthropy and electronic databasing needs more than ever to be ‘supplemented’ by the skill of slow and patient reading that is the unique mandate of Literature. Through our analyses of some of the new institutions and megacities in India(/Asia/ the East), we will try to understand the ways in which cities are being re-imagined in the late-twentieth century and the new struggles over democracy and equality they represent.

Required texts: 1. Stuart Hall and Bram Gieben, eds., Formations of Modernity: Understanding Modern Societies Book 1, Cambridge: Blackwell & The Open University, 1993. 2. Gayatri Spivak, Death of a Discipline, NY: Columbia, 2003. 3. Mary E John, Pravin Kumar Jha & Surinder Jodhka, eds. Contested Transformations: Changing Economies and Identities in Contemporary India, ND: Tulika Books, 2006.

Tentative Syllabus Outline:

[Readings have been suggested week by week. A dossier of all the articles/chapters listed below will be made available to students at the beginning of term. Additional reading material will be provided during the course of the term.

There are especially two important campus events around which further readings/ activities will be suggested: the Martin Luther King week and the Lannan Symposium. The course will incorporate themes/ ideas/ reference material/ resource persons from both these significant markers of intellectual life at GU and weave them into the broad structure of the course indicated below.

Additionally, some weeks have both a film as well as an essay scheduled. The film will typically be screened in the second class of the week. It will be preceded by the critical essay suggested, in the first slot.]

1. Introduction to major themes and ideas of the course; Reading: Stuart Hall, “Introduction,” Formations of Modernity Reading: “Introduction,” Contested Transformations & Selections from Sanjay Subramaniam, The Career and Legend of Vasco da Gama

2. Reading: Selections from Eric Hobsbawm, Age of Revolutions Screening: Philippe Monnier, dir, Tale of Two Cities (2001)

3. Reading: Selections from Raymond Williams, The Country & the City Screening: Fritz Lang, dir. Metropolis (1927)

4. Introduction to Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space & Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life Introduction to Walter Benjamin & the ‘ways of seeing’ debate. Reading: Selections from The Arcades Project

5. Reading: Peter Wollen, “Modern Times: Cinema/ Americanism/ The Robot,” Raiding the Icebox: Reflections on Twentieth Century Art Screening: Charles Chaplin, dir, Modern Times (1936)

6. Intro. to political theorist Partha Chatterjee; Reading: “Our Modernity” & “Intro,” Texts of Power. Screening: Satyen Bose, dir, Chalti Ka Naam Gaadi (1958)

7. Reading: Selections from Sumanta Banerjee, In the Wake of Naxalbari Screening: Satyajit Ray, dir., Pratidwandi, (1970)

8. Discussion of the ‘language question’ in India/ SRC(1955): Reading: Selections from M.Madhava Prasad, “Introduction,” Cine Politics: Film Stars and Political Existence in South India Screening: R.Krishnan & S.Panju, dir, Parasakti (1952)

9. Reading: Sudipta Kaviraj, “The Failure of the Passive Revolution” Screening: Shaji Karun, dir, Piravi (1989)

10. Reading: Partha Chatterjee, “Are Indian Cities Becoming Bourgeois?” Screening: Ram Gopal Varma, dir, Rangeela, (1995)

11. Reading: Selections from Arvind Rajagopal, Politics After Television Screening: Anand Patwardhan, dir, Ram ke Naam (1992 )

12. Reading: Surinder Jodhka, “ Looking Back the Khalistan Movt,” EPW 36.16.(2001):1311-18. Screening: Gulzar, dir, Maachis (1996)

13. Gayatri Spivak, “The New Subaltern,” Vinayak Chaturvedi, ed., Mapping Subaltern Studies and the Postcolonial Screening: Vishal Bharadwaj, dir, Omkara (2006)

14. Ashish Rajadhyaksha, “When was Bollywood,” Indian Cinema in the Time of Celluloid Screening: R.Balki, dir, Cheeni Kum, (2007)

15. Introduction to the SARAI(/CSDS) project: Reading: Selections from Sarai Readers Recapitulation and Revision