Death and the Automobile
Priyasha Mukhopadhyay The driving force behind every nation’s story of progress is a motor car In his introduction to Paul Virilio’s Speed and Politics Benjamin Bratton writes of how a history of compensating for the vulnerability of the human body has led to universal prosthetisation of various kinds and to various degrees: from the military tank that in its ability to assault, destroys the concept of territorial boundaries, to the sports shoe. Transforming the possessors into “metabolic bodies,” these come together to supplement the human in the drive towards efficiency, excellence and logistical power.[i] This is a universe in which everything is a machine. The ubiquity of the mechanical in everyday life has forced us to reexamine not only the nature and extent of our reliance on such objects, but also how technological encounters shape our understanding of contemporary subjectivity. Thinking through the relation between the human and the machine is not a new gesture; widespread industrialisation in Europe ensured that the machine was a tangible presence in most nineteenth and early twentieth century documents. Critical studies however, even history indeed, mostly limit themselves to the uncovering of technophobia[ii] – horror at the debilitating effects of long hours of work in factories, the gradual isolation of the human subject from the need for human contact, the fascist undertones of the production of something as loved as Volkswagen cars in Nazi Germany.[iii] This article is an attempt, alternatively, to rethink technophilia in one of its most historically violent forms, Futurism. Taking as its focus the body of the machine, it will examine the manner in which manifestos written by its prime proponent, F.T. Marinetti, evolve an oppositional political and aesthetic mythology, one that is dependent not on the mere interactions between the human and the non-human, but on a complex set of processes by which the ideal human is, in its essence, not human at all. In writing the machine into (paradoxically) this futurist history, I am not critiquing or attempting to thwart the inevitable mechanisation of human existence, but trying to understand how such transformations and interactions can become coherent models of political and social action. I will thus make a preliminary attempt to trace how it becomes symbolic of the uncertain and scattered ways in which we “do” politics, and in turn, what politics does to us. As Fast as You Can Casually thrown before its readers is the following scene from Mario Morasso’s The New Weapon (1905): “Here is something heroic; a man seated on a rigid seat, like a barbarian king, with his face covered by a hard visor, like a warrior, with his body leaning forward almost to provoke the race and to scrutinize – not just the course, but destiny. With his hand secure on the inclined steering wheel, with all his faculties in a state of vigilance, he seems truly the lord of a whirlwind, the tamer of a monster, the calm, absolute sovereign of a new force, he who stands straight in a vortex. “(qtd. in Poggi 10 ) The focus here is the driver of the racing car, the “man seated on a rigid seat.” Rather than being a symbol of middle-class affluence, the car is instead thrown into an imaginary space of multiple contexts: there is war that the driver-warrior is prepared for; his hand is “secure,” his body leaning forward, alert and ready for combat with skill and precision that ensure that he alone is “the tamer of a monster.” Language deceives us here; on a first reading, the monster and whirlwind seem to be self-evidently the car being driven. In such a scheme of things, the man quickly becomes emblematic of humanity’s conquest over the machine, able to control it with a firm grip of the steering wheel. What makes this passage extraordinary, and anticipatory of how Futurism was to revolutionise the man-machine relation, is the manner in which the act of control transforms the man into something other than himself, superhuman. Standing in the vortex of mechanical strength, he is not merely “the sovereign of a new force,” he is that new force. Morasso’s novel was published five years before F.T. Marinetti’s “The Founding and Manifesto of Futurism” appeared in Le Figaro, bringing in its wake the call for the destruction of tradition, metallisation and the pure power of speed. These are not all incidental players in the configuration of the manifesto, but rather, seem to draw from a seemingly insignificant event in Marinetti’s life: his Fiat collided with a bicycle and skidded into a ditch. He was left unscathed, but in the manifesto, this is replayed as the moment when Marinetti is “transformed” into a Futurist; nothing less than a miraculous moment of religious baptism: I gulped down your bracing slime, which reminded me of the sacred black breast of my Sudanese nurse. . . . When I climbed out, a filthy and stinking rag, from underneath the capsized car, I felt my heart—deliciously—being slashed with the red-hot iron of joy! (50) At one level, the accident reveals what Jeffrey Schnapp calls Futurism’s delight in “trauma-thrills,” modern forms of the sublime that derive from the excitement that lurching towards the limits of death and pulling back creates (4). The accident changes Marinetti; he will keep looking for opportunities to recreate this experience throughout his life and writing (a point I will return to later in this article). This transformation is undeniably psycho-somatic: the slashing of the red-hot iron through Marinetti’s heart is both literal and metaphorical, and in the process, solders the fragmented parts of his self together to make him the very object that is most likely to survive the encounter, a machine. This is addressed more clearly in a section of a later work, Le Futurism (1911), “The Multiplied Man and the Reign of the Machine”: This inhuman and mechanical type, constructed for omnipresent velocity, will be naturally cruel, omniscient, and combative. He will be endowed with unexpected organs: organs adapted to
Bandmaster @ Cossipore
Akhlaq Dorjee Chanda (Poems dedicated to Tushar Roy) Factory Tagore Juggling oranges and eggs. Plus, tables for 17 memorised At such tender age? Remarkable acumen. Nothing surprises you anymore. At Dokkhini they teach you to be surefooted. *********************** Rigor Mortis Mensa and pauses. Strange premonitions. Can’t possibly be biological? Is it figurative—can’t put my fingers onto? But freedom, ah free free—how strange would that month be After all these years of bloody conquests. ***************************** Sukanta Majumdar Nurtures a very sensitive ear. Patience and practice. Has composed a trillion soundscape collages so far. A master archivist. As I walk past Hindustan Park to Purnadas Road (An insightful place Bhaipo! Charcoaled and Bistroed) I think of Sukanta’s ears. Flapping out. Does he rinse his drums with tepid water? Every morning? Somewhere he mentioned unobtrusiveness. Is he good enough to get at the bottom of this trompe l’oeil. ************************ Kalyaniyashu A deadly wish. Can you imagine such a Kantian greeting? It’s these kind of exchanges that leads to chronic whooping cough. Besides, I am not Kalidasbabu and you hardly Shefali. ***************************** Ancien Regime To err on the side of liberals just happens to be the best available option. Lets collaborate. ************************ Returning From America Is cakewalk: if you stop listening to ghawre pherar gaan And sundry such enormous commitments, Shonai Or begin to love Agha Shahid Ali far too much for comfort Instead concentrate on rules: Rules sustain. Rules devour Like taking and giving daily, routine upper cuts Here and there, off hand, casual Tearing apart beleaguered loved ones with more longing. Morphine endures. ***************************** Caterpillar Nocturnal. Tubular and hairy. Three pairs of true legs. And million muscles in unison—wiggling in and out. Detecting vibrations. At specific frequencies. Soft body, head capsule hardened. Leading manufacturer of construction and mining equipments. *************************** Petticoat Strings on the Side Those who deal in more complex ideas than class, caste or status Must notice which side of the waist the lady ties her petticoat knot. Elementary aspects of oligarchy. *********************** Bongolokkhi Super Lottery Hazar wares. Muchi-bazar. Queer eelish, still in throes Vermilion: Rangajawba Bussing days, passing posts Bulk is good, Shivaratri? Rules bequeath: Partition In transit, relentless First at left, smelling right? Color of dawn shefalika In memory, in pursuit Would that come, fanfare? Ticketing week once again Greenish tinge, trance afloat Tripling crores, how about? Next fortnight, sure shot. Punching bag, Baba sweats. Punching slot, Baba lives. ************************* Bandmaster @ Cossipore Caberina Sarah Temple Firm, slack living pore Longs for those sure strokes. Remember bandmaster? Casting recaster. Moving moved. Piping hot. He shall start at 7 dot. Thursday nights magic moon Sarah Temple, will you swoon? Drimiti drim, at his bid Off counter selling weed. Sax-cello lustre Remember bandmaster. ****************************** Akhlaq Dorjee Chanda is a poet and a soccer player working from Dibrugarh, Assam. adminhumanitiesunderground.org
Darling of a Pigmy Size: Parenting, Child Care and Child-at-Risk
Aryak Guha The Image-Event “A two and a half year old boy banging his head on the floor whenever he sees his mother is a very disturbing scene, but that is precisely what Abhigyan Bhattacharya used to do, forcing the Norwegian authorities to take him and his sister Aishwarya into their custody.” Thus starts an article published in The Hindustan Times (27th April, 2012, e-paper), a newspaper owned by the largest mass media conglomerate in India[1], reporting on the recent controversy surrounding Abhigyan and Aishwarya Bhattacharya. The Norway-based Child Welfare Services (called Barnevernet, afterwards CWS) had taken these kids, ‘minors’ of 2.5/3 and 6 months/1 year[s] (variously reported in newspapers) respectively, into custody in May 2011 citing lack of proper care by their biological parents. National media waxed hysteric on this sensitive issue – call it a ‘scandal’ or heart-rending tale – turned into a daily melodrama with images of distressed, tearful parents and grandparents transmitted ‘live’ or printed on front pages, not to mention the bonny faces of the siblings themselves. Many of these, significantly, were ‘file‘ photographs showing the smiling kids, mostly the son, in the arms of either of the parents (again, more often the father). The high visibility of the whole affair reached a climax of sorts when the then premier citizen of India, Ms. Pratibha Patil, a lawyer and a women’s rights activist herself[2], ‘personally’ stepped in to persuade the Norwegian state authorities to restore the custody of the siblings to their parents. The siblings’ paternal grandparents had personally urged Ms. Patil to look into the matter following what then appeared to be a diplomatic cul-de-sac between two embassies even after repeated requests from Indian authorities including Mr. S. M. Krishna, the Cabinet Minister of External Affairs (reportedly at the exhortation of Mamata Banerjee). The grandpa, appearing on a television channel with tears trickling down his eyes, urged all Indian nationals to provide support in the forlorn quest for his grandchildren, to hold them in his arms again, for nothing less would satisfy his pensive heart – in a manner reminiscent of Subhash Ghai-style lachrymose family saga. Going by the amount of desperate outcries of ‘family-nation(-al)’ citizenry against the ‘brutal’ measures of Norwegian authorities (the profusion with which age-old, stereotypical images of Nordic or Viking warlike barbarians were invoked to collapse with modern charges of racism is for anyone to see), the tears coming from a Hindu Brahmin senior citizen did strike an emotional chord after all, sympathies were duly ‘channelized’, and public pressure piled up to pose a national crisis. So much for tyranny of public emotion on display in the age of reality TV. High-level bureaucratic intervention and constant media glare over what could (or should, as some thought) have been a ‘personal’ affair was assisted by the fact that the NRI Bhattacharya couple, the father a geo-physicist and mother a homemaker, later accused each other of threat to (and even actual) physical assault and launched police diaries/FIRs, drawing in their respective parents in turn. The (paternal) uncle of the kids, chosen by the father as the kids’ rightful guardian in the face of allegation against the biological parents’ incompetence to provide fit benchmarks of rearing, added to the controversy by (apparently) declaring the kids’ then foster-parents (also ethnically Indian) as better candidates (than himself, a kin and doctor by profession) in the matter of parental care. By that point in time, print and electronic media in the two concerned countries (and outside) were being flooded with opinions on both sides of India/Norway and biological/foster parenthood – not to speak of ‘good/bad’ and implied ‘East/West‘ divide that often accompany such passionate public debates – or any permutation of these binaries. The common-sense ‘theory’ of cultural relativism, a familiar but important consideration in these matters – often favoring the parent/-country in this case as a prima facie look at English-language newspaper reports, editorials/op-eds, and exchanges in various blogs available in public domain would confirm[3] – was advanced by Anurup Bhattacharya (the father in question) when he was quoted by various newspapers as saying that the Norwegian authorities enforced their decision ostensibly since the parents fed the siblings by hand (with a probable hint at breast-feeding) and shared bed with them at night, by all means common practices in India/West Bengal. There was a particularly fervent article supporting the Indian case, by then a national cause, on Kafila. The bio-note at the end of this article described the author as “a lawyer and a mother” (with an oblique emphasis) and ended by urging Delhites to join a protest march in front of the Norwegian embassy. An open letter with a similar import has also been published in The Hindu on the last Independence Day, signed by several women dignitaries including ex-MPs and ex-Chairpersons of National Commission for Women. Both of these articles argue, if predictably, along certain Feminist lines placing (somewhat alarmingly) the immediate onus of child-rearing on the mother – here turned into a victim[4]. The latter is directed at two journalists reporting on the incident, accusing them of deliberate misrepresentation of the mother’s plight – not only hinting at having forsaken the nation-state but belied the most powerful imaginary of them all, the mother (or the act of ‘mothering’). For everyone familiar with the late 19th century Hindu cultural resurgence gaining necessary historical/historicist legitimacy in the context of anti-colonial struggle, this moral plea directs us toward a bad infinity. The ‘Nature’ of Nurture Parenting/Parenthood in an age of sperm, egg or womb donation and single or same-sex parents has become a jumbled affair on the whole. Things in India are, however, not so baffling – the transition of ‘joint’ family to nuclear units is pretty much the last important thing to have happened to the formally educated, white collar middle class. Hence, multiple models of parenting – social/communal (erstwhile joint family), legal (adoption), biological and moral – rarely appear exclusive of each other although single parent is an