[Reader-list] CALL FOR PAPERS: "Ruptures:South Asian Islam and the Caste Question"

[arshad amanullah]

Dear All,

Many greetings.

The Patna Collective will organize a conference captioned “Ruptures:
South Asian Islam and the Caste Question” on 1-2nd December 2012 in
New Delhi. Those interested may send in their paper abstracts as soon
as possible.

The field of ‘Caste and Islam’ has recently drawn attention as a
critical site for academic reflection and political articulation. The
enactment of the ‘pasmanda’ identity and the articulation of a
counter-discourse by subordinated Muslim caste groups, especially in
Northern parts of India,  have led to the relative destabilization of
mainstream ‘Muslim’ discourse and the posing of novel questions on
identity, politics, deprivation, culture and theology. Also, the
political framing, sense of belonging or representative strategies in
any movement have to necessarily engage with an ‘excess’, a discursive
outside, which may refer to a number of complex claims and
trajectories that both threaten and enable the constitution of the
discourse in the first place. The political pitching of a movement,
that strives to condense a range of meaningful elements, is also often
caught between the crisscrossing domains of the everyday/social. Thus,
the recent circulation of pasmanda discourse has persuaded the
academia to consider ‘caste’ as an entry point to the study of Indian
Islam. Interestingly, the application of caste analytics to the study
of Islam has also been attempted in recent times in other South Asian
jurisdictions, like Pakistan and Nepal for instance, with very
enriching results. All these developments make Muslim caste an
extremely interesting site for reflection with multiple
theoretical/explanatory possibilities.

Details about the conference are available at:

                  http://tpcindia.wordpress.com/events/call-for-abstractspapers/


Many thanks,

Best regards,

Khalid

------------------------
Khalid Anis Ansari

The Patna Collective, New Delhi

Doctoral Fellow, University of Humanistic Studies (UVH),
Utrecht, The Netherlands

http://khalidanisansari.blogspot.in/