[Reader-list] SAU Sociology Seminar: Filmic desire and call center stories

[Diya Mehra]

The Department of Sociology, South Asian University cordially invites you
to a seminar

 

What’s love got to do
with it? Filmic desire and call center stories

                               

By Dr. Mathangi Krishnamurthy, Dept. of
Humanities and Social Sciences

IIT Madras

 

Wednesday, 30 October 2013, 2.30 PM, FSI Hall, Ground Floor,
South Asian University, Akbar Bhawan, Chanakyapuri, New Delhi 110021

 

 

Abstract: In this paper, I attempt a reading of
call center stories when told, acted, and lived through the medium of film and
celebrity culture. Examining workers’ motivations, desires, and aspirations in
relation to working in the call center industry, I isolate narratives that
speak specifically to Indian popular culture. In the process, I seek to outline
the affective density of popular film, the sense that it permeates lives far
deeper than symbolism, metaphor, or synecdoche. Using Rene Girard’s
theorization of desire, I attempt to read the ways in which the “mimicry” of
public culture structures and grounds desirous action. This research follows
dramatic tellings, keywords, and key figures in order to outline a theory of
filmic desire. Ethnographic research for this project was conducted in the city
of Pune, India between 2004 and 2008. This paper forms an important corollary
to the author’s larger project on the world of the Indian call center and its denizens.