[Reader-list] VIII Theory Praxis Workshop in Pune

[Chintan]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Anand Vijayan

http://fctworld.org/8th%20Theory%20Praxis%20Course.htm

*VIII Theory/Praxis Course*

*June 14-July 10, 2010*

*Venue: Department of English*

*University of Pune*

The Forum on Contemporary Theory has been conducting an intensive course in
Theory/Praxis since 2003 for the benefit of scholars across disciplines
interested in new developments in Theory and their application. The Course
includes intensive textual readings in specific areas, supported by seminars
and talks on broader but related issues. The Course will be held in the
University of Pune from June 14 to July 10, 2010.

COURSE OUTLINES

The Course is organized around the following topics to be discussed in-depth
by the core faculty, supported by public lectures and mini-seminars by the
invited scholars.

1) *Matters of Life & Death *(Faculty: Costica Bradatan)

The recent resurgence of the phenomenon of “suicide bombing” has starkly
reminded us of the important political functions that a dying body can
perform. From the Buddhist monks who immolated themselves in Vietnam in
early 1960s to Jan Palach, who did the same thing in Czechoslovakia in 1969,
from the Japanese kamikazes during the WWII to today’s suicide-bombers, the
ways in which one’s violent death can be turned into an expressive political
gesture have been as different as have the ultimate goals sought through
such an act. However, despite its persistence and shocking occurrences, this
type of voluntary death hasn’t yet received the theoretical treatment it
deserves; social and political theorists are still to come up with a
comprehensive and interdisciplinary understanding of the dying body as a
carrier of political, ideological and religious messages.

This course has been born precisely out of the felt need for such a broader
understanding of the body and the political functions it can perform in
radical situations. The primary theoretical premise on which the course is
based is Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s insight that the “use a man is to make of
his body is transcendent in relation to that body as a mere biological
entity.” Drawing on this insight, we will be looking at various practices
through which a body can be made to transcend itself.

The course is dedicated to exploring the body as the locus of a number of
fundamental experiences: the experience of a living (embodied) being,
“thrown into the world,” of living in limit-situations (torture, starvation,
physical degradation), the experience of finitude and imperfection, of
overcoming one’s natural fear of death, finally the experience of
self-transcending and re-signification through dying a violent voluntary
death. We will be discussing several types of such voluntary death:
martyrdom, self-immolation as a form of political protest, suicide-bombing
and the kamikaze pilots.

In terms of textual resources, we will be analyzing texts on the
phenomenology of the body (Merleau-Ponty), on the phenomenology of death and
dying (Heidegger, Landsberg and Michelstaedter), as well as scholarly
literature on the posthumous significance that a “martyred body” can acquire
in radicalized contexts (Girard). We will also examine fiction literature
(Lev Tolstoy), literature by Nazi camp survivors such as Primo Levi and Jean
Améry, as well as personal diaries left behind by Japanese kamikaze pilots.
Finally, in order to make our approach more intuitive and, at the same time,
more interdisciplinary, we will be watching and discussing a number of films
on the subject by such major directors as Bergman, Pontecorvo, Benigni, and
Iñárritu.

Course Structure

• Session I: The Body as a Philosophical Problem; the Body and the World;
Being-in-the-World.

o Readings: Merleau-Ponty, *Phenomenology of Perception*, pp. 77-232;
Heidegger, *Being and Time, *pp. 149-224.

o Film viewing: *21 Grams *(Dir. Alejandro González Iñárritu)

• Session II: Death as a Philosophical Problem; Living with Death; Death and
(the Quest for) Authenticity; Death, Irony and Humor

o Readings: Heidegger, *Being and Time*, pp. 279-311; Tolstoy, *The Death of
Ivan Ilyich*; Michelstaedter, *Persuasion and Rhetoric*, pp. 7-57

o Film viewing: *The Barbarian Invasions *(Dir. Denys Arcand)

• Session III: Overcoming the Fear of Death; Self-Transcending; Dying as a
Rite of Passage; Death and Meaning

o Readings: Plato, *Apology; *Landsberg, “The Experience of Death”;
Michelstaedter, *Persuasion and Rhetoric*, pp. 61-100

o Film viewing: *The Seventh Seal *(Dir. Ingmar Bergman)

• Session IV: Marked for Death; Torture and Resistance; Scapegoating;

o Readings: Améry, “Torture,” pp. 21-40; Girard, *The Scapegoat, *pp. 1-75

o Film viewing: *The Battle of Algiers *(Dir. Gillo Pontecorvo)

• Session V: Dying vs. Death; the Body in the Concentration Camp; Death and
Annihilation

o Readings: Améry, “At the Mind’s Limits,” pp. 1-20; Primo Levi, *Survival
in Auschwitz *

o Film viewing: *Life is Beautiful *(Dir. Roberto Benigni)

• Session VI: Making the Most of the Dying Body. Various Political Uses of
the Body; Narratives of Martyrdom

o Readings: Girard, *The Scapegoat, *pp. 100-148; Emiko
Ohnuki-Tierney, *Kamikaze
Diaries*; Luke Allnutt, “A True Martyr”

o Film viewing: *Paradise now *(Dir. Hany Abu-Assad)



*2) *Can Subaltern Studies Speak? A Critical Reading of Three Decades of
Discourse on and of Subalternists and Subalternity (Faculty: Arjuna
Parakrama)

While detractors would admit that the subalternist intervention in colonial
historiography and cultural studies was both important and influential,
ardent acolytes will concede that there’s been a decline in both interest
and interesting new work in the field. This course seeks to examine the ways
in which subaltern studies has perceived itself and has been understood by
others during the past three decades, in order to better predict its future
trajectory. Thus, subaltern theory will be subjected to a discourse study,
the assumption being that its reception and reproduction, both complex
discursive processes, are (mis)appropriations of power/knowledge in
globalised space.

Since the public inauguration of Subaltern Studies in the early 1980s, and
particularly with Ranajit Guha’s “manifesto” in *Subaltern Studies I:
Writings on South Asian History and Society *(1982) this loosely-knit group
of Indian historians and cultural theorists enjoyed a two-decade-long wave
of popularity in Indian and Anglo-US academe. Many imitations and
applications were spawned during this period, even the inner circle of the
Subaltern Studies Collective grew to around 15 amidst much soul-searching
[See Hardiman 1986], and included adherents in the most prestigious US and
Australian universities. Caricature accounts had US graduate students
looking for subalterns in every nook and cranny, and the crudest
misunderstandings degenerated into celebrations of primitivism and the
romanticizing of marginality.

To risk a generalization that this course will unpack, at a more serious
level the British and US responses to Subaltern Studies have been markedly
divergent because each sees different aspects as its core content. While the
first response dealt almost exclusively with colonial historiography, this
was quickly followed by a literary critical appropriation of Subaltern
Studies which gradually became the one of the trendiest methodologies in US
English Departments. Throughout this period the definition of the term
“subaltern” came under constant scrutiny and regular revision, a discursive
arena that will be meticulously mapped in our readings.

Subaltern Studies’ origins as a critical engagement with Marxism is
well-known. Hence, serious opposition to Subaltern Studies has most
consistently come from the traditional left which argues that revolutionary
struggle is being diverted to over-nuanced abstractions and obscurantist
theory. A related major strand of criticism exemplified by members of the
Cambridge School held that the Subalternists have nothing new to offer which
either (British) Marxists and/or Indian historians had not discussed
earlier. A rising antagonism from within India, including by a few former
members of the Collective such as Sumit Sarkar, has critiqued what it
perceives as the post-structuralist turn of later subaltern work. However,
the early excitement, both pro and con has diminished, and during the last
five or so years the output and interest in Subalternity has reached a low
ebb, prompting some critics to express the view that it was merely a fad
whose heyday was irrevocably past. We will track these changes in terms of
their over-arching conceptual ramifications in the context of the global
financial crisis and the rise of ethno-nationalist conflict and
reconstitution of new social movements.

This course seeks to map the trajectory of subaltern studies as well as
critical responses to it over the past three decades, in the attempt to
theorize future roles for this intellectual movement. Of particular interest
in this regard will be the detailed examination of subaltern studies
relationship to Marxism and postcolonial theories in the current
conjuncture. The unabashedly elite status of subaltern scholars and the
disciplinary privileging of India (even within South Asia) will also be
scrutinized to identify how this gets played out in their analysis and
presentation.

As a capstone exercise, participants will be invited to present a
preliminary analysis of a contemporary intervention of struggle or
resistance that they feel strongly about from a subaltern perspective, which
includes the use of alternative sources and methodologies to mainstream
research.

Course Structure

• Session I: Subaltern Studies and the Critique of Colonial Historiography:
New Wine in Old Bottles?

o Readings: Selections from Guha, Ranajit *Elementary Aspects of Peasant
Insurgency*, *Dominance without Hegemony*, and Guha and Spivak (eds.) *Selected
Subaltern Studies*. Essays by Chandravarkar, Brass and Bayley in *Mapping
Subaltern Studies *

o Creative Expression: *La Nouba des femmes du Mont Chenoua *[Film by Assia
Djebar]

• Session II: Subaltern Studies and Marxism: Fellow Travellers or
Incommensurable Alternatives?

o Readings: Essays by O’Hanlon, Washbrook, Prakash (Response), Lazarus &
Varma

o Creative Expression: *Genesis *[Film by Mrinal Sen]

• Session III: Subaltern Studies and Postcolonial Theory: Orientalism
Revisited, Eurocentrism Reinscribed

o Readings: Lazarus & Varma, Prakash, Spivak “Can the Subaltern Speak?”

o Creative Expression: Kanafani “Men in the Sun” [See Bibliography]

• Session IV: The Literary Appropriation of Subaltern Studies: Spivak and
Subaltern Sources

o Readings: Selections from Spivak, Gayatri *In Other Worlds*, *Other Asias*,
and the interviews

o Creative Expression: Devi, Mahasweta “Draupadi” and “Stanadayini” [English
translation by Gayatri Spivak contained in *In Other Worlds*]

• Session V: Synthesizing the Contribution of Subaltern Studies to Present
Struggles: Public Debates and Private Wars

o Readings: A collection of critical essays and responses from the *Economic
& Political Weekly *in the 1980s and 90s, James C Scott.

o Creative Expression: Selected Film Documentaries

• Session VI: *Whither Subaltern Studies Tomorrow? Subjects, Approaches,
Saturation of an Area *

o Readings: Chatterjee (Selections), Gunawardena, Pandian, Arnold
(Selection)

o Creative Expression: *Abaa *(Sri Lankan Film by Jackson Anthony)

• Session VII: *Participant Presentations and Discussion: How is Subaltern
Theory Useful Today?*



*COLLABORATION AND ORGANIZATIONAL DETAILS*

The eighth Theory/Praxis course is jointly organized by the Forum on
Contemporary Theory, Baroda and the Department of English, University of
Pune. The program will be conducted by a core faculty and invited speakers
for a period of four weeks. Study material will be made available to the
participants after their registration; the participants are expected to have
gone through the material before the commencement of the Course. Each
participant is required to make at least one formal presentation during the
course, which will be evaluated by a member of the core faculty. Both
faculty and participants are expected to stay together in the same venue for
greater interaction and exchange between them.

*PARTICIPATION CRITERIA*

Participation in the Course is mainly open to scholars in the humanities and
social sciences, preferably those working toward research degrees, but
post-graduate students and post-doctoral scholars in these disciplines and
scholars from the disciplines outside the humanities and social sciences
interested in inter-disciplinary studies can also apply. Maximum number of
participants to be selected is *35*.



*REGISTRATION FEE*

Each participant is required to pay a registration fee of *Rs.7000*/ (Rupees
seven thousand only) to the Forum on Contemporary Theory through a bank
draft drawn on a bank in Baroda. The registration fee is non-refundable. The
fee will take care of his/her board and lodging, cost of course material and
other related expenses. The participants will not be paid by the organizers
for their travel.



*DEADLINE FOR APPLICATION*

The last date for receiving application for participation is *April 5, 2010*.
The application may be sent to Director, Centre for Contemporary Theory,
Baroda. Selection for participation will be made by *April 20, 2010. *Selected
candidates are required to send the bank draft favoring Forum on
Contemporary Theory before *May 5, 2010*. Course material will be mailed
only after receiving the registration fee.



*CORE FACULTY *

*Costica Bradatan a) *is Assistant Professor of Honors at Texas Tech
University. He has also taught at Cornell University, Miami University, as
well as at several universities in Europe (England, Germany, Hungary and
Romania). Currently (2009-2010) he is a Solmsen Fellow at the University of
Wisconsin-Madison’s Institute for Research in the Humanities. Bradatan has
held research fellowships at, among others, University of Wisconsin-Madison,
University of California Los Angeles, and the Newberry Library in Chicago.
His research interests include Continental philosophy, history of
philosophy, East-European philosophy, and philosophy of literature. His work
has appeared in English, Romanian, Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch and Polish.
Bradatan’s most recent book *The Other Bishop Berkeley: An Exercise in
Reenchantment *was published with Fordham University Press in 2006. He is
also the author of two other books (in Romanian): *An Introduction to the
History of Romanian Philosophy in the 20th Century *(Bucharest, 2000)
and *Isaac
Bernstein’s Diary *(Bucharest, 2001), as well as of several dozens of
scholarly papers, essays, encyclopedia entries, book translations and book
reviews. He has co-edited (with Serguei Alex. Oushakine) *In Marx’s Shadow.
Knowledge, Power and Intellectuals in Eastern Europe and Russia *(Lexington
Books, 2010) and guest-edited two special journal issues: one on “Philosophy
as Literature” for *The European Legacy *(Summer 2009) and another on
“Philosophy in Eastern Europe” for *Angelaki *(forthcoming)*. *



*Arjuna Parakrama b) *is currently Visiting Professor at the School of
Language & Linguistics of the National University of Malaysia. He was
Professor of English (Cadre Chair) at Sri Lanka’s oldest and most
prestigious university, the University of Peradeniya, from 2004 - 2009. He
has also served in the United Nations in Nepal and elsewhere as an expert on
(post)conflict development and human rights, and has a parallel existence
working with multiply marginalized communities in Sri Lanka’s war-ravaged
“border villages”. Professor Parakrama was a Fulbright New Century Scholar
in 2007/8, a Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Council on Ethics & International
Affairs (2000/1), a Senior Fellow at the US Institute of Peace (1999/2000)
and a Guggenheim Research Grantee (2002). Among his publications are three
books, *De-Hegemonizing Language Standards *(Macmillan, 1995), *Language and
Rebellion *(Katha, 1990) and Collected Poems (2002) and a monograph *Social
Cleaving: Resistance and Loss within a Bereaved Culture *(2004). His current
research interests include anti-languages, extra-linguistic value systems
embedded within everyday language, collective trauma and social cleaving in
(post)conflict societies, and subaltern discourse.





*RESIDENCE *

Accommodation for outstation participants is made in the Guest House of the
University of Pune

*ATTENDANCE*

The participants are required to attend all the sessions and to stay until
the end of the program in order to get the certificate of participation.

*APPLICATION FORMAT *

The following format may be used for the application:

*Name*

*Address (including telephone no. and email ID)*

*Institutional Affiliation*

*Date of Birth*

*Department*

*Teaching Experience (indicate number of years also)*

*Academic Qualifications*

*Areas of Research and Teaching*

*Publications, if any*

*Specific Research Topics, if any*

*Whether Registered for Research Degree?*

*Whether participated in any Course organized by the Forum? If participated,
when?*

*A Brief Statement (200 words) about what you expect to gain from the Course
*

*Names and Addresses of Two Referees*

*Signature*

*Date*

*ADDRESS FOR CORRESPONDENCE*

*Prafulla C. Kar*

Director, Centre for Contemporary Theory

C-304 Siddhi Vinayak Complex,

Behind Vadodara Railway Station (Alkapuri Side)

Faramji Road,

Vadodara- 390007

Tel: 0265- 2320870

Email: prafullakar at gmail.com

Website: www.fctworld.org

*Bajrang S. Korde *

Local Coordinator

Professor & Head

Department of English

University of Pune

Tel: 020-25690648/25601332

Mobile: 09422518108

E-mail: korde at unipune.ernet.in



Link to Home Page <http://fctworld.org/index.htm>*
*