The Humanities in Ferment: Strategizing for our Times, August 16-18, (MargH collaborates with NMML)
The Humanities in Ferment: Strategizing for our Times An International Conference organized by MargHumanities as part of its Global Humanities Initiative, in collaboration with the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library from August 16-18, 2012, at Teen Murti House, New Delhi, India. Day 1: August 16, 2012 9.00 am Registration 9.15- 10.00 am Welcome & Introduction Mahesh Rangarajan (NMML), Welcome address Brinda Bose and Prasanta Chakravarty, “Introduction: The Humanities in Ferment” (MargHumanities/University of Delhi) 10.00-11.30 am Keynote session Michael Levenson, (University of Virginia), “The University, the Human and the Humanities” Sukanta Chaudhuri (Jadavpur University, Kolkata), “The Humanities Today and Tomorrow: Changes and Challenges” 11.30-11.45 am Coffee 11.45-1.45 pm Interpretation Chair: Michael Levenson Rimli Bhattacharya (University of Delhi), “Reading Lies. In Many Tongues” Rita Felski (University of Virginia, USA), “Postcritical Reading” 1.45 – 2.30 pm Lunch 2.30- 4.30 pm Intellectual Histories Chair: Soumyabrata Choudhury Helen Small (University of Oxford, UK), “Distinction” Jairus Banaji (SOAS, UK), “Sartre, the Critique and the Interviews of 1969” 4.30 pm Tea Day 2, August 17, 2012 9.15 – 11.15 am Passages Chair: Rita Felski Swapan Chakravorty (National Library, Kolkata), “Desh: The History of an Idea of Bengal and the Study of the Humanities” Nicholas Allen (University of Georgia, USA), “The Humanities at Sea” 11.15 – 11.30 am Coffee 11.30– 1.30pm The Political Chair: Jairus Banaji Soumyabrata Choudhury (CSDS, Delhi), “Ambedkar contra Aristotle: A Contention about Who is Capable of Politics” Rajarshi Dasgupta (JNU, Delhi), “Factory Noise: Poetics and Technology in Ritwik Ghatak’s Film Ajantrik” 1.30 – 2.30 pm Lunch 2.30- 3.30 pm Praxis Chair: Moinak Biswas Suman Mukhopadhyay (Filmmaker/Actor/theatre director), “’That way madness lies’: Chaos and Calm in the Urban Contemporary” 3:30-3.45 pm Tea 3.45- 5.45 pm Reclamations Chair: Ajay Skaria Sophie Rosenfeld (University of Virginia, USA), “History as Philosophy for Our Times” Krishan Kumar (University of Virginia, USA), “’Civilization’ as a Concept for the Global Humanities: The Example of Arnold Toynbee” Day 3, August 18, 2012 9.15 – 11.15 am Ethics Chair: Sukanta Chaudhuri Ajay Skaria (University of Minnesota, USA), “Daya Otherwise: The Notness of Ahimsa” Milind Wakankar (CSCS, Bangalore), “Notes Toward a Critique of Historicity” 11.15 – 11.30 am Coffee 11.30- 1.30 pm The Digital Chair: Rajarshi Dasgupta Moinak Biswas (Jadavpur University, Kolkata), “Learning with Images in the Digital Age” Souvik Mukherjee (Presidency University, Kolkata), “Digital Humanities, Or, What You Will” 1.30-2.30 pm Lunch 2.30–4.30 pm Closing Panel Discussion: “Institutions, the Humanities and New India” Mahesh Rangarajan (NMML, New Delhi) Sukanta Chaudhuri (Jadavpur University, Kolkata) Simi Malhotra (Jamia Milia Islamia, New Delhi) Nandini Chandra (University of Delhi) 4.30 pm Tea **As a part of the Conference, a photography exhibition on The Travelling Tent Cinemas of Maharashtra will be brought to the NMML by Amit Madheshiya and Shirley Abraham, photographers/researchers who work out of Mumbai. ****************************************************************************** Nicholas Allen The Humanities at Sea The global economic crisis has made visible many pressures in culture and society that were veiled by the idea of constant progress in the late twentieth century. The European Union, to take one example, was to the major powers a balm for the atrocities of the first and second world wars; to the minor it was legal security against the ambitions of the powerful. The concert between large nations and small can be traced back into the history of empire. Ireland inhabits an exemplary position in this regard. A part of the British Empire it was a hub of the Atlantic world that opened on to the Americas. A colony with a history of famine and dispossession, the island was connected to global pressures of exchange and trade centuries before this latest recession destroyed much of a national identity that had seemed secure since independence. Ireland’s imperial history was buried quickly after 1922. The collapse of the Celtic Tiger, as the boom economy was known, has had the surprising effect of bringing this past back to life. Now that the story of nation has failed the monuments of an old world order have come back into view, not least because we are entering a decade of centenary commemorations of revolutionary events, events that had their influence on other parts of the British Empire, most notably India with regard to Home Rule and mass public protest. I would like to explore some of the ways in which creative work in the humanities has traced and drawn this global history of Ireland. This history extends to connection with other places including India, that other emerald isle. Using ideas of the sea as a connective metaphor I want to show some of the many ways in which art and literature can illuminate the hidden cost of cultural exchange. James Joyce approached this idea in his reflections in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, which was first published in 1916, the same year of the great rebellion that began the final movement towards independence. In A Portrait Joyce has his character Stephen Dedalus reflect on the word ivory and its consonants in other languages, as ivoire and eborio. This reminds the young man of his Latin schooling: India mittit ebur. If the world economy is made of an exchange of things, things make their world anew in the sequence of their transit. Small in scale, partitioned and caught between competing ideas of nation, empire and union, thinking about Ireland invites reflection on larger questions of culture and economy. With the humanities at sea in a rapidly changing contemporary world I will argue that our current crisis is a familiar mode with a long and