[Reader-list] INVITE: CMCS, TISS Student Seminar: Speaking the Unspeakable: 19 December 2011

[Shilpa Phadke]

The Annual Student Seminar of the Centre for Media and Cultural Studies,
TISS Mumbai.

Frames of Reference

Speaking the Unspeakable The 'act' of speaking calls the world into being;
what is not said does not exist. Meanings are moulded, refashioned and
regurgitated to suit the established order of things. In the process of
resistance and negotiation of power, they set the limits of our thought and
imagination. The ‘unspeakable’ refers to non-articulation, an exclusion
from the peculiar process of the creation of meanings. It is not just that
which is not spoken, but that which ‘ought’ not to be spoken, an exclusion
even from resistance.

In art, literature, media, culture and politics, the ‘unspeakable’ is
compelled to assume the form of the ‘incognito’. It surfaces at moments of
rupture, through modes that speak to the realm of affect, emerging within
the spaces of the non-rational and the deviant. It follows that much is at
stake in maintaining a distance from the nebulous regions of what is
neither seen nor heard. What governs the unspeakable? What grids of
exclusion are used to define the unspeakable? What disciplinary mechanisms
work to reproduce the site of the unspeakable? Whose politics makes it
unspeakable? Is the distinction between the speakable and unspeakable more
amorphous than we imagine? How does the unspeakable manifest itself in the
everyday and in the realm of art and culture? How are certain arenas and
speech deemed to be unspeakable as in the case of sexuality for instance?
How does the law engage with the unspeakable in relation to hate speech or
accusations of obscenity for example?

This seminar calls for papers that will interrogate that which is
unspeakable in the various worlds around us and seek to understand the
production and reproduction of the unspeakable. The seminar will also look
at voices that are not heard because they transgress the codes that govern
the articulation of the speakable.


Date: 19 December 2011

Place: Conference Room, Main Campus, Tata Institute of Social Sciences,
Mumbai


Programme:

10 am Welcome – Anjali Monteiro, Chairperson, CMCS.

Introduction to Seminar, Anurag Mazumdar, Ufaque Paikar, Mridula Chari and
Shruti Ravi, Shivani Gupta, Co-ordinators.



 10:15-11:30 am : Panel 1 *Unspeaking Marginal Invisible*

*Humour from the ghetto-at the wits end:* Vartikka Kaul, Jawahar Lal Nehru
University, New Delhi.

*Tracing Dalit women in Malayali literary public sphere:* Deepika Alex,
Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai.

*Silence of the riots : Delhi and ’84: *Aakriti Madhvani, University of
Delhi, New Delhi.

*Discussants : Shazia Nigar and Nithila Kanagasabai*



 Tea : 11:30-11:45 am



 11:45 am-1:00 pm : Panel 2 *Counter Cultures: Contemplating Subversions*

*Dalit Chetna and aesthetics:* Sneha Sharma, University of Delhi, New
Delhi.

*Away from keyboard:* Nandita Roy, Jadavpur University, Kolkata.

*Nation and its creation: *Ufaque Paiker, Tata Institute of Social
Sciences, Mumbai.

*Discussants : Shweta Ghosh and Shivani Gupta*



 Lunch : 1.00-2:00 pm

 2:00-3:15 pm : Panel 3 *Rethinking Sexualities: Mythical and Fictional
Narratives*

*Siva beyond ascetic: *Ditilekha Sharma, Tata Institute of Social Sciences,
Mumbai.

*Hindi TV serial women and sex:* Neha Chaturvedi, University of Delhi ,
Delhi.

*Taboo and transgression: *Anamika Purohit, University of Mumbai, Mumbai.

*Discussants : Aakriti Kohli, Sujatha Subramanian and Shruti Ravi*



 Tea : 3:15-3:30 pm



 3:30-4:45 pm : Panel 4 *Engaging Kolkata: The City and its Sub-texts*

*Fantasy and land questions in urban Calcutta:* Debjani Bhattacharya, Emory
University, USA.

*The surprising piece of empty land: *Somdatta Bhattacharya , Jadavpur
University, Kolkata.

*Slowness in the city: *Anurag Mazumdar,Tata Institute of Social Sciences,
Mumbai.

*Discussants : Arpita Chakarborty and Mridula Chari*



 4:45-6:15 pm : Panel 5 *Film-making: Cultures, Ideologies, Practices*

*Absence of film sound in film theories:* Shubham Roy Chaudhry, Jadavpur
University, Kolkata :

*Testifying the limits of letter:* Debatiya Bhattacharya, Jawahar Lal Nehru
University, New Delhi.

*Displacing sex from the city:* Shweta Radhakrishnan, Tata Institute of
Social Sciences, Mumbai.

*Real politik as unspeakable: *Shahina Rafiq, University of Calicut,
Calicut.

*Discussants : Amol Ranjan and Nithya Menon*