[Reader-list] Ways of Life and Transgressions

[inder salim]

Dear Danny
thanks for this wonderful reflection. you have brought a freshness to
the debate, and you are not late.

there is nothing to apologise.

AND yes, you can comment on  M.F.Hussain. if you are interstested in
anything that is debated as post-colonial , here and in the west even.
 Also because  i feel i can talk aboiut Picasso as smoothly as a
westerner would, so can you on Hussain, in spite of the fact that
Hussain is not a great artists as Picasso is, but Hussain isa
post-colonial aritst, and denying him absolutely would tantamount to
'hurt' of some other kind.

in many senses that one we are truly global, so we understand each
other, appriciate each other, and even the form, even the style is
similar in many cases than one. The diffrence is disappearing. We are
unfortunately creating a difference through a range of 'hurt'
inflicted on the other. That way  the situation is quite complex as
'we are caught in the labyrinth of paradoxes', i quote Micheal
Focualt.

 i have not  read ' righting wrongs'  by Spivak , but the title itself
speaks about the sadness of our times.

But what is intersting for all of us perhaps, is the fact that we we
live, and we keep on living in whatever society there is available. we
make a culture to tick, a song that speaks about a memory, a
generation that changes,but at the same times drags on with the
strange porridge of a past.

what we are ?
 i love life, in spite of the terrible state of affairs around the
world. a world full of pain and mess, in spite of the fact that our
personal and private problems often push mars our forward thrust, but
we emerge, and for that reason alone we need to know the other, and
realize the self.

enough  for the day

love
is


On Thu, Sep 11, 2008 at 4:13 PM, Danny Butt <db at dannybutt.net> wrote:
> Dear Inder, all
>
> My sincere apologies for the delay in responding. I've been suffering
> my own "hurt" of an entirely different kind (flu virus). It is, of
> course, completely incommensurable with the scale of hurt that accrues
> when a culture puts in place ideologies to move others to the less
> than human. Nevertheless, it is a very useful space for someone like
> myself (white, male, native English-speaking - a  kind of unofficially
> anointed inheritor of this "global" a previous generation created) to
> consider the question of a hurt which arises from an external force,
> which is then somehow internalised. That's not to say that I've been
> colonised by the virus, but my own agency is sort of productively
> hobbled :).
>
> I really can't comment too much on Husain, but I would like to
> acknowledge your statement (also acknowledged by Aarti) that "The
> question of 'hurt' is truly democratic." Increasingly, I see the
> questions you and Aarti raise as critical ones to address in the
> question of democracy and the public sphere. Without the ability to
> acknowledge the hurt, pleasure, freedom, unfreedom of others
> (regardless of one's own situation), democracy is always tenuous. The
> various attempts to embed a level of respect for the rights of others
> in the rule of law is certainly an important enterprise. But as
> Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak ("Righting Wrongs", 2004) approvingly
> quotes Ronald Dworkin ["Taking Rights Seriously", 1978]:
>
> "the right to concern and respect is fundamental among rights in a
> different way, because it shows how the idea of a collective goal may
> itself be derived from that fundamental right. If so, then concern and
> respect is a right so fundamental that it is not captured by the
> general characterization of rights as trumps over collective goals,
> except as a limiting case, because it is the source both of the
> general authority of collective goals and of the special limitations
> on their authority that justify more particular rights. That promise
> of unity in political theory is indistinct in these essays, however.
> It must be defended, if at all, elsewhere.'"
>
> A slightly abstract description, but as Spivak notes: "To take his
> statement here as a final solution to the entire problem is to
> ''confuse the force of his [argument] for its range,''.... Where I
> find Ronald Dworkin altogether inspiring is in his insistence on
> principle rather than policy in hard cases. The range of this
> insistence has an elasticity that can accommodate the force of my plea
> to the dominant."
>
> Perhaps here we sense the need for a kind of openness or indeterminacy
> to be held between principle, policy, and affect. (This is the kind of
> indeterminacy I felt Aarti was surfacing in her post). It is certainly
> a space which holds increasing importance in my own work.
>
> All the best,
>
> Danny
>
> --
> http://www.dannybutt.net
>
>
>
>
> On 6/09/2008, at 2:48 AM, inder salim wrote:
>
>> Dear  Danny Butt,
>>
>> Here in India we are made to believe that M.F. Huaain's paintings have
>> angered Hindus. If so, we are merely gulping down the throat what is
>> being offered to us.  I believe, people on the List and elsewhere,
>> need to express their emancipated views while dealing with
>> subjectivities which are exclusively aesthetic in nature. It quickly
>> lapses into communsalism and hate.
>>
>> how  ' this causes this' gets inverted with the passage of time is too
>> interesting to read.  It could be seen even then , but needs a
>> 'creative eye' .  Picasso is just a example, of knowing how European
>> colonialism of Africa might have caused, let us say a Gurenica, to
>> happen much earlier before the world war 2nd which made picasso to see
>> Civil war in Spain and other such things.  Here, this also will be
>> interesting to note that Picasso was 'high jacked' by the market, and
>> the subject 'death' danced a la aesthetic.  Here, it is also note
>> worthy that Picasso also worked his compositions  from the war
>> photographs in the press and also from the African masks. Picasso
>> himself says, that he does not know whether he is a good artist or
>> not, but he is a good craftsman. I think he was clear to a large
>> extent, and he had to courage to abandon his successful style at the
>> stage of a career when very few artists dare to do so.
>>
>> On the contrary Hussain  had little choice when he began to kiss ' the
>> modern'  That was OUR  fate, and we continue to reel under the impact
>> of that 'modern' which was promoted as global as the same time.   So
>> post colonial, which has its own dynamics, depth and relevance, like
>> Bollywood is not merely a derivate of Hollywood, Indian modern
>> paintings  too are not simply Western, but something which we can own,
>> even in the absence of a coherence. Hussain has indeed worked overtime
>> to bring that Indian into the form which was seen purely as modern.
>> That truly is, and nothing more.
>>
>> Even if we enter a new phase of post-modern / art-now kind of Indian
>> art scene,  we cannot simply  can not say that Indian modern art,
>> (painting and sculpture) does not exist.  Because any representation
>> of India, even with some pretension  of the modern, offends the Hindu
>> nationalists, The paintings which have caused this anger in some
>> fanatic hindus can be seen through this perspective. This is also
>> speaks the darker side of democracy in a post colonial free India.
>> This anger is part of the process that brought down a 400 year old
>> mosque   by these hindu fanatics, jut to come to power in the centre.
>> They managed it, and are not out of race this time again. So defending
>> Hussain is so urgent for a modern democratic and secular citizen
>> living in India.
>>
>> That is that. Your response,  with passage from Lauran Bernat to
>> Aarti's question on HURT is really profound and demands a sincere
>> discourse. Please forward  his complete article.
>>
>> The question of 'hurt' is truly democratic.  This is how Aarti puts it
>> lucidly  "that it posits a horizon of desire that is unachievable for
>> the people it uses for the ad" .   Our progress in the modern  has no
>> space for hurt, perhaps because it posits its being in the machine
>> exclusively. This modern machine thing has simultaneously given
>> monopoly over ' the hurt' to  religious believers only.  That is
>> indeed undemocratic. To expand the definition of 'hurt' we need to
>> enter  a  word like 'environment'. A tree, a river, a simple identity,
>> a simple dignity of the individual can be seen as environmental, only
>> if there is some challenge to the value judgment unleashed by the
>> capitalists.  How else  "we are to fashion any sort of language to
>> deal with the violence of the present". I quote Aarti again.
>>
>> So, Art that is overwhelmingly part of the capitalist investment, and
>> is bereft of that urge to challenge the horizon of desire that has no
>> space for the people that it uses it, and no space for the earth that
>> uses it.  To quote  Tee Bee Di "Hmm.. Who is not an artist? "  I feel
>> everybody, only if there is a radical thought in place.
>>
>> The question of 'hurt' is therefore,  political, and can not be seen
>> only in the so called acts of profanation of the sacred.  It is quite
>> ironical that how people are so close to the realities of mythologies
>> which are so distant, and so distant to the realities that is
>> intimate.
>>
>> How  has  all this happened?
>>
>> With love
>> inder salim
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Fri, Sep 5, 2008 at 3:43 PM, Danny Butt <db at dannybutt.net> wrote:
>>> Kia ora all
>>>
>>> I've also been learning a lot from the recent discussion, as I try to
>>> map these conversations back onto the very different cultural
>>> histories (though equally fragmented perhaps, if less recently as
>>> bloody) here in Aotearoa New Zealand.
>>>
>>> Having seen a huge retrospective of Picasso's work (and collection)
>>> close to my hometown recently, I couldn't help but be struck by the
>>> fact that while it might be true that, as Yousuf says, "Picasso
>>> probably never had people killing each others angered by his
>>> paintings", it is nevertheless equally true that his work is
>>> unthinkable without the death that accompanied the European
>>> colonisation of Africa and the Pacific. The works in his collection
>>> acquired from those regions seem to take on additional significance
>>> when read in light of that history. So perhaps the question of time,
>>> where we sequence events and consequences to say "this causes this",
>>> becomes inverted and displaced in situations where the affect seems
>>> to
>>> precede the event of production. In some respects, when hurt is
>>> experienced, the potential of that hurt seems to have been structured
>>> in advance.
>>>
>>> This was just one of the thoughts brought to mind by Aarti's very
>>> productive questions. While I am not really fluent enough in the
>>> specific issues which prompted this discussion to comment more
>>> specifically, I would like to share a quote from a writer that I have
>>> learnt a lot from about the issues Aarti raises, which I think does
>>> speak to the recent discussions on the list.
>>>
>>> "The exposed traumas of workers in ongoing extreme conditions do not
>>> generally induce more than mourning on the part of the state and the
>>> public culture to whose feeling-based opinions the state is said to
>>> respond. Mourning is what happens when a grounding object is lost, is
>>> dead, no longer living (to you). Mourning is an experience of
>>> irreducible boundedness: I am here, I am living. He is dead, I am
>>> mourning. It is a beautiful, not sublime, experience of emancipation:
>>> mourning supplies the subject the definitional perfection of a being
>>> no longer in flux. It takes place over a distance: even if the object
>>> who induces the feeling of loss and helplessness is neither dead nor
>>> at any great distance from where you are. In other words, mourning
>>> can
>>> also be an act of aggression, of social deathmaking: it can perform
>>> the evacuation of significance from actually-existing subjects. Even
>>> when liberals do it, one might say, "others" are ghosted for a good
>>> cause. The sorrow songs of scandal that sing of the exploitation that
>>> is always "elsewhere" (even a few blocks away) are in this sense
>>> aggressively songs of mourning. Play them backward, and the military
>>> march of capitalist triumphalism (The Trans-Nationale) can be heard.
>>> Its lyric, currently crooned by every organ of record in the United
>>> States, is about necessity. It exhorts citizens to understand that
>>> the
>>> "bottom line" of national life is neither utopia nor freedom but
>>> survival, which can only be achieved by a citizenry that eats its
>>> anger, makes no unreasonable claims on resources or control over
>>> value, and uses its most creative energy to cultivate intimate
>>> spheres
>>> while scrapping a life together flexibly in response to the market
>>> world's caprice."
>>>
>>> Lauren Berlant, "The Subject of True Feeling: Pain, Privacy, and
>>> Politics", in Austin Sarat and Thomas R. Kearns (eds.) Cultural
>>> Pluralism, Identity Politics, and the Law. Ann Arbor: University of
>>> Michigan Press. 1999.
>>>
>>> (In the notes for this paragraph Berlant references Douglas Crimp and
>>> the politics of AIDS in the US: "Crimp is especially astute on the
>>> necessary articulation of sentimentality and politics: because
>>> processes of legitimation cannot do without the production of
>>> consent,
>>> and empathetic misrecognition is one tactic for creating it. The
>>> question is how, and at what cost, different kinds of subjects and
>>> contexts of empathy are imagined in the struggle for radical social
>>> transformation.")
>>>
>>> I'd be happy to forward a PDF of Berlant's article to anyone who is
>>> interested in these questions of subjectivity, affect, and public
>>> recognition.
>>>
>>> Cheers,
>>>
>>> Danny
>>>
>>> --
>>> http://www.dannybutt.net
>>>
>>> On 4/09/2008, at 9:09 PM, Aarti Sethi wrote:
>>>
>>>> A few thoughts on an interesting discussion.
>>>>
>>>> One term I think that has remained unexamined in this discussion is
>>>> "hurt"
>>>> or "sentiment". By this I mean not an assessment of whether that
>>>> hurt is
>>>> justified, valid etc, who is to decide whether this offends or not,
>>>> whether
>>>> this is offensive or not, the relative self-sufficiency of value
>>>> systems and
>>>> speaking across them. But the inherent value of hurt as a positive
>>>> force in
>>>> itself. Let me try and explain what I mean.
>>>>
>>>> Why is "hurt sentiment" a bad thing in itself? Can having one's
>>>> sentiments
>>>> hurt, sometimes quite badly, not be a positive force? Might it not
>>>> impell me
>>>> to re-think, or think, about my sentiments in a manner that is
>>>> creative?
>>>> Maybe those sentiments are better discarded. Maybe my outrage alerts
>>>> me to a
>>>> violence I have been commiting without realising it. Maybe if more
>>>> people's
>>>> sentiments were outraged a little more forcefully, then we would be
>>>> living
>>>> in a far more democratic and tolerant world.
>>>>
>>>> Further, I do not see why only religious communities have a monopoly
>>>> on
>>>> sentiments which can then be hurt. As a feminist, my sentiments are
>>>> assaulted on a routine and regular basis. As someone who believes
>>>> in a
>>>> version of social justice and equality, once articulated by, but not
>>>> only
>>>> by, Marx for instance, my feelings are continually trampled over. As
>>>> someone
>>>> who believes in a secular vision, the discussions on this list
>>>> offend me
>>>> everyday. However i do not see this being taken very seriously.
>>>> And it
>>>> needn't, that is the point. It is up to me to alchemize this
>>>> outrage, hurt,
>>>> sadness in a manner that enables me to live and act in the world.
>>>>
>>>> This is actually how we live our lives generally. My mother, or
>>>> father, or
>>>> lover, or friend might say something that hurts me terribly. Not
>>>> always is
>>>> this clarified, discussed, put in its right perspective. All our
>>>> lives are
>>>> all littered with silent archives of hurts we have never expressed.
>>>> There is
>>>> no heroic moment in which resolution is sought for hurts. And no one
>>>> can do
>>>> this for anyone...
>>>>
>>>> The recent Vogue advertisements doing the rounds, around which there
>>>> has
>>>> been some discussion on this list, have hurt the sentiments of many
>>>> people.
>>>> A few years ago another set of advertisements for brand equity in
>>>> which two
>>>> tribal women are shown discussing the tans they have got in Monte
>>>> Carlo to
>>>> an accompanying snide and contemptous copy which said something
>>>> about how
>>>> advertisers need to accurately reach their consumers, also outraged
>>>> many of
>>>> us. Having thought about this, I realised that though both the Vogue
>>>> ads and
>>>> the brand equity ads trouble me, they do so in different ways.
>>>>
>>>> The Vogue ads can be read in one of many ways - that it posits a
>>>> horizon of
>>>> desire that is unachievable for the people it uses for the ad. In
>>>> some sense
>>>> then the frisson of the ad derives from the discrepancy in what is
>>>> desired
>>>> and what is possible. Further it assumes that their horizon of
>>>> desire will
>>>> follow the trajectory laid out by Vogue. But most interesting to me
>>>> is that
>>>> both Vogue and the critics work with a fixed definition of poverty
>>>> in the
>>>> first place, and  certain trajectory of the direction a life can
>>>> take.
>>>>
>>>> The second set of ads function on precisely the opposite principle.
>>>> Rather
>>>> than positing an eventual horizon of desire, they deem a present
>>>> life as
>>>> failed, and urges us to recognise its failure. It presumes and makes
>>>> me
>>>> complicit in a social consensus in which we can use languages in a
>>>> manner as
>>>> if we are all agreed on the terms in operation.
>>>>
>>>> Can you see the difference in both ads? They both trouble me deeply,
>>>> but
>>>> they trouble me in different ways. How is this at all useful, or
>>>> valuable? I
>>>> think it is. I think to be able to carefully work through how and
>>>> why and in
>>>> what ways something arrives to me and what it disturbs is a critical
>>>> thing,
>>>> if we are to fashion any sort of language to deal with the violence
>>>> of the
>>>> present.
>>>>
>>>> with regards
>>>> Aarti
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Wed, Sep 3, 2008 at 11:00 PM, inder salim <indersalim at gmail.com>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> dear yousuf
>>>>>
>>>>> thanks for response.
>>>>>
>>>>> no i dont agree that people are killing each other because Hussain
>>>>> painted this or that, People want to kill people and there is
>>>>> always
>>>>> an  excuse available. We will always not blame people for that
>>>>> because
>>>>> people have ceased to be people with their existential choice to
>>>>> be '
>>>>> being-in-itself'. Prime symbols of our society have  perhaps
>>>>> cultivated bad tastes because of a deep bourgiouse-captilist-
>>>>> fascist
>>>>> leanings. We are indeed in a deep mess.  For example, Sudhir Kakkar
>>>>> talks about how unresolved sexuality has a deep relationship with
>>>>> violence.  Now who is the culprit. At least Artists are trying to
>>>>> heal
>>>>> themselves. let them, even if people are not healed...
>>>>>
>>>>> about what is good to society ? Stalin's USSR did this mistake and
>>>>> killed lot of intellectuals poets and artists, Theortically what,
>>>>> poets are artists were doing at time had little relevance to the
>>>>> times
>>>>> ' of bolshivik ' but in the end we can see how wrong was that
>>>>> policy
>>>>> of actually believing what is good for society and what is not.  We
>>>>> need to provide a space to everything for everybody.
>>>>>
>>>>> People like TV reality and  other such heaps of trash....., how
>>>>> much
>>>>> we can carry is seriously with us, you know better, at least i cant
>>>>> take the popular bullshit of saas Bahu and bootnath serials.
>>>>>
>>>>> About market and art  via ' conspiracy of art' we already know
>>>>> Hussain
>>>>> sahib is not in a great spiritual health. But a fanatic has  no
>>>>> right
>>>>> to dislodge something which is already dislodged by the Tusnami of
>>>>> sheer profitalbity of americansim..
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> love
>>>>> is
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> On Wed, Sep 3, 2008 at 8:34 PM, Yousuf <ysaeed7 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>>>>>> Dear Salim
>>>>>> You are right, an artist should never have to explain. But Picasso
>>>>> probably never had people killing each others angered by his
>>>>> paintings. But
>>>>> (as we have discussed earlier on this theme) if you are doing an
>>>>> art for
>>>>> public, would you not be concerned if the public appreciates it? No
>>>>> one is
>>>>> born appreciating high art - we acquire a tastes for everything.
>>>>> The point
>>>>> is, whose responsibity is it to inculcate the appreciation of art
>>>>> in
>>>>> society? If its a Madhubani painting done on the facade of my
>>>>> village house
>>>>> by my mother, its very much there in my genes. But if it is a horse
>>>>> by
>>>>> Hussain kept in a gallery to which I have no access, somebody has
>>>>> to do a
>>>>> bit of explaining on why such art is distanced from social reality
>>>>> (which
>>>>> actually is not, but the market has made it look so).
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Yousuf
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> --- On Wed, 9/3/08, inder salim <indersalim at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> From: inder salim <indersalim at gmail.com>
>>>>>>> Subject: Re: [Reader-list] Ways of Life and Transgressions
>>>>>>> To: reader-list at sarai.net
>>>>>>> Date: Wednesday, September 3, 2008, 7:14 PM
>>>>>>> Picasso said, if it is possible to explian, it is futile to
>>>>>>> paint.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> even if i we gnore picasso, who is an old hat in modern art
>>>>>>> now, let
>>>>>>> alone hussain sahib who is immensely supported by
>>>>>>> investors, and 'post
>>>>>>> colonialism' as theoritical justificaioin to do
>>>>>>> whatever he or we
>>>>>>> sometimes  are doing which can pass as derivate at the
>>>>>>> best.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> what is education or what is not , what is offensive or
>>>>>>> what is not,
>>>>>>> is difficult to explain, if one chases the text, and its
>>>>>>> meaning
>>>>>>> profoundly...
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> what we forget also is the fact that what we see are
>>>>>>> phtographs of the
>>>>>>> the original
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> .and is photogaphy representing real, if so then we have
>>>>>>> truly
>>>>>>> disappeared from the face of this earth. and it does not
>>>>>>> matter if
>>>>>>> there is hussain or not,
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> there is book by Jean Baudilard ' conspiracy of
>>>>>>> art'
>>>>>>> which speaks  the contemporary art practices , and that
>>>>>>> makes us feel
>>>>>>> that the whole world is in fact a piece of modern art work
>>>>>>> , and we
>>>>>>> are not there, simple not part of it.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> the question of relevance of hussain in our social
>>>>>>> structures is open
>>>>>>> to this sort of criticism,
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> but not once it lands as amunition in the hands of
>>>>>>> fanatics.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> love
>>>>>>> is
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
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>>
>>
>>
>> --
>>
>> http://indersalim.livejournal.com
>> _________________________________________
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>
>
>
>
>
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