[Urbanstudy] Re: Nangla Machi
shveta at sarai.net
shveta at sarai.net
Mon Apr 10 21:44:02 IST 2006
Dear Sanjay,
As long as a quote can compel you to adress your communication to one
intended, rather than be dismissive, I am satisfied ;) Your claim to
better reading, incidentally, is humbly accepted :)
However, who is quoted surely is not reason to dismiss the question
being asked :) So, I will again clarify any confusion regarding the
question at hand, so that hopefully it will not be elided over YET again
(intriguing as that will be) :
- In your relationship of over an year at Nangla Maanchi, are silent,
despairing, anguished, suffering subjects all that you met?
- If not, where do they figure in your account and framework for talking
about a space that is for you, as a researcher, an "other"?
- That is, I am curious about what concepts you as an anthropologist
have for writing about "another space"? (Please, I would be delighted if
you could share some of your own concepts on the list rather than
pointing all of us to a library...)
- And therefore, I am curious about how you engage with lives, utterances,
occurances, which fall outside the frame in which you seek to frame a
space.
- Relatedly, before thoughts on State and enumeration appear (and how we
are all complicit), how does an anthropologist think through "friendship"
in a space ""peopled with subjects he is researching""?
- OR is it that these questions fall in the realm of "impossible to
communicate"?
- Did your conceptual position about writing the lives and your encounter
change over the time?
I'm also curious... what happens to subjects that refuse - through their
own speech acts - to fit into the framework propped up by their silences?
best
shveta
On 3:45:38 pm 04/10/06 Sanjay Srivastava <sanjays at deakin.edu.au> wrote:
> Dear Shveta and Anant
> I don't quite know how to respond since I am not very clear about the
> term 'communicative despair', and, how we got from what we were
> discussing to Nietzsche. Though, in as much I understand what is
> being said in relation to the latter, I wonder if Nietzsche thinking
> is a good guide to how one should regard 'others': his own attitudes
> towards non-Europeans might bear close reading. Anyway, since I might
> be completely wrong about what is being said, and why Nietzsche (and
> not, for example, Rahul Sankrityayan...) is appropriate here, I will
> have to leave it as is, and think about it some more.
>
> Re. the 'speechless subject', the points Anant makes about 'speech'
> and 'speechlessness, seem, in as much they touch upon an area where
> 'politics' isn't as black and white as we might assume, important.
> Though, on a connected issue, I guess 'messiness' as a strategy of
> dealing with, say, a very powerful state, has both plusses and
> minuses for the poor: so while getting enumerated by state agencies
> has its problems, sometimes it can also be a powerful strategy of
> making claims upon it, particularly for the poor.
>
> I can only say that a number of different things are happening in
> Nangla, and I am certainly not equipped to deal with all aspects.
> Different people come with different ways of dealing with the issue,
> and what might make for a complex picture of 'what's happening' are
> the different accounts. I don't , for example, view accounts of
> violence as competing (or, displacing) others that might cover
> another aspect. Regards, Sanjay
>
> Quoting urbanstudygroup-request at sarai.net:
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> > 1. Re: Re:Nangla Machi (anant m)
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> ---
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> > Message: 1
> > Date: Mon, 10 Apr 2006 04:18:25 +0100 (BST)
> > From: anant m <anant_umn at yahoo.co.uk>
> > Subject: Re: [Urbanstudy] Re:Nangla Machi
> > To: shveta at sarai.net, Sanjay Srivastava <sanjays at deakin.edu.au>
> > Cc: urbanstudygroup at sarai.net
> > Message-ID: <20060410031826.51856.qmail at web25702.mail.ukl.yahoo.com
> >
> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
> >
> > hi all
> > I am a little puzzled by this debate. at first i thought the
> > issue was just that the word 'state' in sanjay's posting could be
> > read in two different registers (as he himself clarified) state as
> > an ensemble of institutions, hierarchies, spatiotemporal fixities.
> > i am not sure that the such a state could still be said to be
> > responsible for the eviction of nangla machi and for the mine
> > disaster in seby's home town in exactly the same way. but, then
> perhaps yes. the second register which was the intended one when sanjay
> > said 'we are all the state' is the one in which the state is a
> > disposition towards certain micro practices of seeing, of
> > annunciation, of exercising everyday power, etc.
> > but as these exchanges continue, i am beginning to wonder if
> > after all neither of these is adequate to understand what is going
> > on in 'our' nangla machi. if i were to be there, like many of us,
> > i would take an unambiguous stand against the 'state' (as in the
> > first register), i would be self reflexive as it would seem
> > necessary from the second register but still, there is something
> > that remains elusive here. how and why are we assuming that
> > 'speechlessness' and 'lack of illumination' are positions of
> > powerlessness ? those tropes seem to go hand in hand with the
> tropes of 'outsiders' and 'insiders'. there isnt anything transparent
> > and obvious about these metaphors is there ? speechlessness can be
> > as much a tactical move as the desire to keep something concealed
> > from the probing light. if our deployment of these images is not
> > innocent of power, as we all seem to be constantly reminding
> > ourselves, then doesnt it beg the question: what sort of politics
> > are we desiring to engage in here by assigning power to speech
> > and perhaps by extension to writing ?
> > anant
> >
> > shveta at sarai.net wrote:
> > Dear Sanjay,
> >
> > The mode of address of the posting reminded me of a quote from
> > Friedrich Nietzche - "The truth is that there is nothing noble in
> > being superior to somebody else. The only real nobility is in being
> > superior to your own former self and realizing that there are
> > others"
> > Still trying to work out the possible communicative despair
> > produced by the oscillating position between suffering speechless
> > subjects (some are disappearing) and the world of total complicity
> > of "we are all state".
> >
> > bestest
> >
> >
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