[Reader-list] identity and dispossesion

[jeebesh at sarai.net]

While attending the Documenta conference a problem kept on disturbing me. 

The clashes between irreconciliable views are increasingly giving rise to a 
massive annhilation of population and ideas.

How do irreconcilable or incompatable cosmologies begin a dialogue.  Or can 
there be a position outside these identities? Further is it possible to have a 
dialogue without slipping into a larger identity (`national`, or vague `we are 
all the same humanism` - these positions can only work with a high degree of 
enforced historical amnesia). Finally, what can be the possible vantage point 
from where you can imagine a possible aufheben?

Yesterday a small sound byte from a film suddenly opened a new door to this 
predeliction. Prof J.P.S. Oberoi, while explaining the possible philosophical 
underpinning of the complex matrix of overlapping lived practices and 
cosmologies found in many subaltern subcultures said that the equality maybe 
arises out of shared notions of incompleteness, what one owes to the world and 
in dispossesion, i.e not as haves but as have-nots of culture.

What struck me was the simplicity of the formulation and its ability to allow a 
radically different way of entering a dialogue. I am yet to workout the 
implication of this mode of thinking but maybe some of you can give it a try...