The Multicultural Empire
Saroj Giri Unfortunately Niall Ferguson has managed to distract Pankaj Mishra from the main theatre of empire-building today which is more than just western superiority or domination. Both reify ‘western domination’, crediting it with an unmerited force and power. Apropos Pankaj Mishra’s attack on Niall Ferguson, ‘Watch this man’ (London Review of Books, Nov 3, 2011), what if the latter had responded by simply quoting the Indian Prime Minister about the benevolence of empire: “Our notions of the rule of law, of a constitutional government, of a free press, of a professional civil service, of modern universities and research laboratories have all been fashioned in the crucible where an age old civilization of India met the dominant empire of the day. These are all elements which we still value and cherish. Our judiciary, our legal system, our bureaucracy and our police are all great institutions, derived from British-Indian administration and they have served our country exceedingly well.” Colonialism, thus understood, was a ‘meeting’ and exchange, not a repressive imposition of structural violence. This is the Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh speaking at Oxford University in 2005. Singh is leader of the Congress party, the same party which spearheaded the ‘freedom movement’ with leaders like Gandhi and Nehru. When the ‘victims’ are so consenting and willing to embrace empire, why make things difficult for them (they need a face saver don’t they?) by making aggressive declarations of western superiority – but this is precisely what Ferguson does, even putting off some ‘liberal imperialists’. He laments, for example, that “the United States dare not call itself empire” – it does not occur to him that this bluster might just not be needed. Not speaking of itself formally as empire might be a better strategy and modality of functioning – not necessarily a weakness as Ferguson suggests. The old direct racism too is no longer the most crucial component of imperialism today. Mishra concurs: “hardly anyone is a racist in the Stoddardiansense today”. So if the prime modality of imperialism today is to function without calling itself empire or without ‘Stoddardian racism’, what sense does it make to take Ferguson so seriously? It just shows the failure or refusal to oppose empire in its new modality which is less about the schematic picture of ‘West versus the Rest’ and more about the west and the rest, as the Indian PM makes clear. Empire has become reflexive and the victim’s complicity is now assumed. The victim is the new victor – a vindication of empire. You might still have someone like Ferguson waxing eloquent about western superiority, but with the ‘colonized’ themselves taking up the task, Ferguson’s looks like one-upmanship. China and Gandhi might not have been given adequate space in Ferguson’s account, as Mishra argues, but they are not excluded in the actual functioning of empire. One can go through an entire imperialist trope here about the ‘great contributions’ of the ‘great civilizations’ of China and India. In any case, the ‘rising powers of the East’ are not interested in getting equal with ‘western civilization’ as such. Their rising power is more about a very bland, competitive approach – ‘it is good to be rich’, as they say in China. Or you have the popular ‘techlit’ Indian writer Chetan Bhagat prodding Gen Y to ‘forget history’ and leave that to corrupt politicians who needed something to fight over – instead focus on high growth and a strong India. Bhagat is hot among the new urban middle classes along with Thomas Friedman of ‘The World is Flat’ fame. Friedman is of course not very different from Ferguson in making big claims about the decline of the west and the United States not striking hard enough. Ferguson might think of the ‘work ethic’ as western but this is not the nineteenth century – Amy Chua for one counts this as what defines the Chinese today. The Indians too fervently claim this mantle. Ferguson’s narrative of western superiority and his language of empire are not welcomed by ‘liberal imperialists’ – who know that this will place US power on a very insecure and narrow footing, making those like the Indian PM difficult to include in the project. Even US military folks find it difficult to swallow Ferguson’s hawkishness, making light, for example of the report of tortures at Abu Ghraib. Unfortunately Ferguson has managed to distract those like Mishra from the main theatre of empire-building today which is more than just western superiority or domination. Ferguson as much as Mishra reify ‘western domination’ and give it a force and power which is not really false but is highly ideological. Ferguson seems to have successfully provoked a misdirected anti-imperialism – thus Mishra conflates Ferguson’s narrative with empire’s dominant idiom of functioning. And then it turns out, even this narrative cannot, as Mishra clarifies in his reply, be surely placed alongside Stoddardian racism: Ferguson “lacks the steady convictions of racialist ideologues like Stoddard”. This is not to say that opposing racism need not be part of challenging empire: it can and must be part of a good anti-imperialist politics – as any attempt to figure out why few blacks participate in the Occupy movement will make clear. However, focusing on older direct racism can also be part of another deeper attachment, which can undermine anti-imperialism. This is the unstated attachment to reflexive capitalism, reflexive empire which is all multicultural and accommodative – and feels discursively violated, wronged when someone expresses ‘extreme’ views. Mishra, focusing primarily on the ‘racism’ part rather than on the ‘empire-building’ part makes it appear as though the primary charge against Ferguson is about his being less-than-multicultural in focusing on western superiority, rather than the far more serious charge of being on the side of the 1%. Mishra did a good job cutting Ferguson down to size. But he ends up taking too much advantage of the dominant approach of political correctness, aiming mainly at shaming Ferguson. He claims the high ground within a supposed ‘right-thinking’ public sphere,
Lover, Lunatic or a Languishing Venereal Patient
Nikhil Biswas We credit the bravado of expressing our popping thoughts in immediate language smelling of fresh nascence. But in reality it is proven that the bravado is hollow, and worshiping that cleverness is devoid of the support of our soul. I have my doubts about something there. What about this affair of mutating thoughts into language of freshness? Would this be limited to the use of words pertaining to sex? Does nascent word mean the phallus or the vagina only? Admitted we have a false prejudice against this pair of words, it would still be refuted that novel nuance often wheels around these two subjects only. Sexuality is a strong and significant causality abounding our lives. Enough stress is given upon this subject, and it is justified. At least by the current standards of affairs. But the form of sexual exposure is reflected in life in many ways. Out of the same man becomes either a lover, a lunatic or a languishing venereal patient—this may entail sufficient scope for pondering, and actually there is so. There is no hypocrisy in realizing that scope. But it would be most lamentable if we exclusively consider words like vagina or sodomy as smart words and discard the rest as insipid. That would mean compromising with conscience. I would like to emancipate the repressed emotions, their transcendence, through newborn language or coinage. We shun with care our repressed reflections and continue to do so till now. That is a sign of unhealthiness. There must be an explosion within this unwholesome environment; but that by no means imply that I must use words like ‘the clitoris’ to ensure a ready-made flow of refreshing write-ups from the tip of my pen. I used the word ‘clitoris’ because some such words belonging to the same category have impacted my tympanum. They are just kicking up dust in a frenzied campaign to highlight my stance on sexuality. As if I have spelt out words of strength without the backing of truth. We should accept and practice what comes naturally to us. Otherwise the whole show would seem to be falsely made-up. If a brazen bunch of aphrodisiac words could solve the issue easily, there would have been nothing else to be done at all. I have no abhorrence or allergy for such words—but their usage call for right perspective, the right place and the right time. It contracts my soul to think of my repertoire full of only such words. The phallus and the vagina—these two are there; they will stay. The phallus stands for man. If the phallic symbol of the male is over-handled at the cost of his other attributes, there would be a phallic dominance—but we shall miss the stimulated upsurge of male vitality which unthrottles his entire torso like an epicentre of tremendous liveliness. I have a similar statement for vagina and the female form. The expression of art is not compartmental but holistic. Yet there is something more to be said regarding this topic. If the monumental totality of the whole can be glimpsed in some partial experience or expression, then such revelation is adorable. Puritanism in art and literature must be kicked out ruthlessly. That maniac mind of the middle class suffers much repression. To release that repression through powerful expressions would bring about the intricacies of the subconscious soul. A partial depiction of it might also become truthful. But the very thought that the whole thing has to have force, that too a bullying imposition, is unacceptable. Artists have progressed much regarding this matter through their paintings and these have remarkable integrity—that is to say, clarity of thought. But it is always depressing to think about the concept of coining particular words just for the sake of employing them. The words rape or orgasm or ye garrulousness of the coitus, all are acceptable words, but not for just using them. These may be used to express the signals from the soul. The words shall no longer be words then; they would convey passionate faith, furious rancour or vehement mistrust. That must not remain within the part and should spill over into totality—that is the earnest desire. I do wish to involve the whole body and mind. It is not possible to live with the phallus and the vagina only. There I believe that the phallus and the vagina are not at all individual entities. The vagina enshrine the total trust, the whelming hatred, the entire agony and the complete consciousness of woman. The vagina of the female is not only a unit but is inseparable from her whole and thus sprites forth in truth. If it was a lone unit only, it would have been limited to the pages of anatomy and physiology The truth of such places is not the truth of the whole soul. The vagina is true as a part of the female torso. Not as a separate entity; its affairs are as dynamic and drifting as of touch, smell and sound. Its conduct is made up of hate, love, jealousy and provocation. Envy, union, all are expressed, but that Is not the expression of its own. That expression transcends into the realm of truth due to its connection with the soul. The woman’s vagina is anxious, fiery, stable and conflictive. The dejection, anxiety, agony and ecstasy of the consciousness active in every single cell of her entire body is evident in the vagina. But sans that consciousness and the maze of veins that convey it, the vagina of woman is not meaningful. And the phallus of man is the male power manifest—sometimes melancholy, sometimes keen, enraged, restless, and sometimes else enthused at invited elation. But it is true only within the display of vitality to which it is related at root. It is not established as partial segment. The acute phallus is integrally linked with man’s potent power of will, his vigor of being, running fast inside his arteries as sanguine stream and throbbing inside his flesh
Beginnings, Beginnings, Beginnings: A Letter
A letter from Hans Ulrich Obrist to Hou Hanru Dear Hanru, Thanks so much for your message and many congratulations on your Lyon Biennale. This is an occasion to think about the Internet and John Brockman’s annual Edge question, which this year asks, “How has the Internet changed the way you think?” Some thoughts about this in order to resume our exchange, which I have tried to summarize in an incomplete A to Z PARS PRO TOTO ever PARS PRO TOTO. C is for Curating the World The Internet made me think towards a more expanded notion of curating. Stemming from the Latin word “curare,” the word “curating” originally meant “to take care of objects in museums.” Curation has long since evolved. Just as art is no longer limited to traditional genres, curating is no longer confined to the gallery or museum, but has expanded across all boundaries. The rather obscure and very specialized notion of curating has become much more publicly used since one now talks about the curating of websites and this marks a very good moment to rediscover the pioneering history of art curating as a toolbox for 21st-century society at large. D is for Delinking In the years before being online, I remember that there were many interruptions by phone and fax day and night. The reality of being permanently linked to the Internet triggered my increasing awareness of the importance of moments of concentration – moments without interruption that require me to be completely unreachable. I no longer answer the phone at home and I only answer my mobile phone in the case of fixed telephone appointments. “To link is beautiful. To delink is sublime.” (Paul Chan) D is for Disrupted narrative continuity Forms of film montage, as the disruption of narrative and the disruption of spatial and temporal continuity, have been a staple tactic of the avant-garde from Cubism and Eisenstein, through Brecht to Kluge or Godard. For avant-gardism as a whole, it was essential that these tactics were recognized (experienced) as a disruption. The Internet has made disruption and montage the operative bases of everyday experience. Today, these forms of disruption can be harnessed and poeticized. They can foster new connections, new relationships, new productions of reality: reality as life-montage / life as reality-disruption? Not one story but many stories……… D is for Doubt A certain unreliability of technical and material information on the Internet brings us to the notion of doubt. I feel that doubt has become more pervasive. The artist Carsten Höller has invented the Laboratory of Doubt, which is opposed to mere representation. As he told me, “Doubt and perplexity … are unsightly states of mind we’d rather keep under lock and key because we associate them with uneasiness, with a failure of values.” Höller’s credo is not to do, not to intervene. To exist is to do and not to do is a way of doing. “Doubt is alive; it paralyzes certainty.” (Carsten Höller) E is for Evolutive exhibitions The Internet makes me think more about non-final exhibitions and exhibitions in a state of becoming. When conceiving exhibitions, I sometimes like to think of randomized algorithms, access, transmission, mutation, infiltration, circulation (and the list goes on). The Internet makes me think less of exhibitions as top-down masterplans, but rather as bottom-up processes of self-organization like “do it” or “Cities on the Move”. F is for Forgetting The ever-growing, ever-pervasive records that the Internet produces make me think sometimes about the virtues of forgetting. Is a limited-life space of certain information and data becoming more urgent? H is for Handwriting (and Drawing ever Drawing) The Internet has made me aware of the importance of handwriting and drawing. Personally, I typed all my early texts, but the more the Internet has become all-encompassing, the more I have felt that something went missing. Hence the idea to reintroduce handwriting. I do more and more of my correspondence as handwritten letters scanned and sent by email. On a professional note, I observe, as a curator, the importance of drawing in current art production. One can also see it in art schools: a moment when drawing is an incredibly fertile zone. I is for Identity “Identity is shifty, identity is a choice.” (Etel Adnan) M is for Maps The Internet has increased the presence of maps in my thinking. It’s become easier to make maps, to change them, and also to work on them collaboratively and collectively and share them (eg, Google Maps and Google Earth). After the focus on social networks of the last couple of years, I have come to see the focus on location as a key dimension. N is for New geographies The Internet has fuelled (and been fuelled by) a relentless economic and cultural globalization, with all its positive and negative aspects. On the one hand, there is the danger of homogenizing forces, which is also at stake in the world of the arts. On the other hand, there are unprecedented possibilities for difference-enhancing global dialogues. In the long duration there have been seismic shifts, like that in the 16th century when the paradigm shifted from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic. We are living through a period in which the center of gravity is transferring to new centers. The early 21st century is seeing the growth of a polyphony of art centers in the East and West, in the North and South. N is for Non-mediated experiences. N is for the New Live I feel an increased desire for non-mediated experiences. Depending on one’s point of view, the virtual may be a new and liberating prosthesis of the body or it may threaten the body. Many visual artists today negotiate and mediate between these two, staging encounters of non-mediated intersubjectivity. In the field of music, the crisis of the record industry goes hand in hand with an increased importance of live concerts. P is for Parallel realities The Internet creates and fosters new constituencies, new micro-communities. As a system that
Portable No Fusion
Srimati Basu A friend recently posted on Facebook a picture of a summer meal from the Oh Calcutta restaurant (in their Delhi outlet), featuring their seasonal special: the Kalboishakhi, a deep-green, viscous cocktail of mango panna, spices and vodka. I haven’t had the chance to try it yet, but have posted it on my mental list of the improbable-yet-delicious concoctions that mark new tastes and new selves: nolen gur icecream with warm gur sauce; vodka pani-puris (I do realize that vodka is making too frequent an appearance on this short list); keema do pyaaza pizza; sticky, spicy and disgusting-sounding honey mustard chilli masala French fries. I should confess that am in fact a vocal opponent of “fusion” restaurants and “fusion” food, which (especially in my experience in the US) all too often present a mishmash of incongruent flavors, watered-down seasonings, and confusing juxtapositions. Witness the spam sushi popular in Hawaii, or “Indian pizza” in the Bay area which plops already abhorrent components (the ubiquitous “orange” food of Indian buffets such as navratan curry and aloo gobi) on to sad naan dough. In my cooking, I vastly prefer experiments re-creating classic mythical dishes or the well-kept secrets of regional specialties: a long day’s work over Julia Child’s Boeuf Bourguignon with buttered mushrooms and brown-braised onions was the perfect satisfying finish to having watched the film Julie and Julia. The Basa Gede base sauce we intently learnt at a cooking lesson in Bali opened up a range of local variations on a delicious theme. Unexpectedly finding Gonghura or red sorrel in our local Indian store, we could re-visit my favorite dish from last year’s trip to Hyderabad, Gonghura Mutton (yes, more favorite than even the Biriyanis). My favorite Indian things to cook are deeply embedded in memories of people and the places they are from: a family friend’s fish jhal with tomatoes and mustard (very different from my family formulae of the same); my maternal grandmother’s deviled eggs; a late uncle-in-law’s vindaloo from his old Goan friend; a Kashmiri aunt’s roghan josh. I have been known to have a meltdown or two at a local Indian restaurant’s “mix and match” formula of combining proteins and vegetables with random sauces, e.g. a tofu vindaloo, as if boiling substance x in liquid y is just the same as long-braising depth of flavors. This is not good behavior on the part of an anthropologist. When we swear our Levi-Straussian professional code (just like the one to Hippocrates, only ours is to the recently deceased French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss), we sign on for being enthusiastic champions of evolutionary innovation, no matter how many false starts and odd combinations result. [For example, I am going to grant the KFC Bacon Sandwich with Fried Chicken as “Bread” or the Doughnut “Bun” Burger high points for ingeniousness and low possibilities for widespread cultural adaptation.] Cultural isolation (and its “authentic” difference) is ultimately static, unproductive. Humans encounter all kinds of cultural stimuli, some by curiosity, some by contact, some by coercion. As I often remind my students who despair that the world is being overtaken by trashy monocultures and “losing” authenticity, humans respond actively rather than passively to their cultural stimuli, adapting to the things that seem convenient, commodious or even fun and challenging. The most triumphant example here is of course the hot chili pepper’s origin in the Americas and its rapid and enthusiastic adaptation, indeed efflorescence, in Asia. Tea has traveled with a vector going the other way. The curry powder of Kurrywurst and other related abominations (remember I’m an unrepentant judgmental anthropologist) are imagined as being of Indian rather than British origin. Music, clothing, language and religion travel similarly, and bi-directionally. Last year, a friend (terrific cook, Bengali restaurateur in Pune) and I were enthusiastically airing our mutual dislike of fusion food along the lines of the rant above when her husband (also terrific cook and restaurateur) reminded us of the “authenticity” of the Bengali food we were pompously lauding: the green chilies that Bengalis consider iconic and indispensable can at earliest have come to us through colonial contact, in this case the Portuguese. We could not imagine a formal Bengali meal without tomato chutney, but I remember my grandmother narrating that tomatoes were so new culturally in her childhood that they called them “biliti begun,” foreign eggplant. The basis of sandesh and other chchana-based sweets, pride of Bengalis, is Dutch cheese-processing techniques. The potato of the alur dom was transmitted worldwide by the Spanish, who called it “batata” from the (Haitian) Carib word for sweet potato (and the Arabic word batata carries this along, rather than being the origin). My personal favorite in Bengali cuisine, the posto genre, is an outcome of coerced and indentured opium cultivation in the eighteenth century, I learnt just recently from reading Amitav Ghosh’s Sea of Poppies. I could go on about other favorites: dhnyarosh/ bhindi/ okra from Africa; rum from the Caribbean; language and architecture and roasted breads and so much more from Central Asia…. Cultures and identities (and more recently, nations), in other words, live and thrive through each other, fluidly merging their imaginaries and their most intimate of material objects. Our culinary morsels are traces in these transactions: the Hawaiian spam sushi which marks a history of military supplies, and my attempts to recreate Gonghura mutton through a supply chain ending in Lexington, KY, no matter my opinion of their relative tastiness, are mirror images in re-fashioning history and memory. The Californian Julia Child’s interpretation of a French classic which inspired a blog and a movie seems to me to have no greater claim to authenticity than the ubiquitous baked yogurt recipe Bengalis commonly make in the US, which I have anointed “Diasporic bhapa doi” (you all know that one, mix a can of evaporated milk and a can of condensed milk with equal parts of yogurt, and bake); my version comes to me via my Marathi spouse who got it from his aunt in Indiana who got