A MargHumanities-NMML Conference – Vernaculars Underground: Histories, Politics, Aesthetics
March 7th and 8th, 2014, at Teen Murti House, New Delhi Is it possible to create something of a larger platform for humanities studies by stepping outside of academia to think about it more rigorously, clearly, reflexively? Can we think about arts and literature through ways and means that are calm and raw, capricious and angry, and yet deeply analytical and sensual? Can we ponder and underline afresh the visceral and expansive political core that the humanities bequeath us along with an edgy sense of aesthetics, in these times of grandstanding, networking and spinning fashions? Is it at all possible to talk about literary movements in times of globalization, or are people who are passionate about the humanities destined to remain independent, sectarian and fractious? There are remainders and reminders. Around us. We just choose not to see them. Or we may be unaware of them, but certain people do exist in our part of the world—those who have been able to keep out of circuits of power and influence and be invested in local causes and commitments, and given their lives to full blooded love of literature. Not naively, but sometimes with a detached zeal. And sometimes with a sense of immediacy and urgency. On the one hand, they have kept their eyes and minds open so that they do not turn into provincial nativists. On the other, such people – and the movements or platforms that they represent – have also been able to keep their subtle, robust sense of internationalism outside of the cosmopolitan lure. These are expansive souls, who prefer working in little ways. They have paid a price for their convictions. Our academia and our festivals have been successfully able to keep them out of important venues and podiums. Political parties have been wary of their ways and methods. They have been persecuted and ostracised. Often they have lived strange lives—suspended. But indomitable souls that they are, they have been able to channel their endless energy into creative pursuits, in ventures hitherto un-thought of. Their silent commitment to the humanities is easily revealed when they wield pens to create poems touched by magic, when they talk and walk, when they come together to write a collective manifesto. They still believe in humour and tragedy. They meet personal and social conflict and antagonism headlong. They detest civility. They affirm life, above all. Small publications and committed people have their own politics and issues. It is a world of conflict. People who inhabit this world are canny and common, as everywhere. Coteries and groups, strategies and stratagems also mark this world. So, any such meeting about the humanities cannot be under the romantic assumption of a search for the alternative or end up being a misguided venture to seek authenticity of some sort. And that is the strength of the humanities. Literature, unlike the social sciences, takes into account our ‘wrong’ impulses and does not look for mukti or prematurely idealise any one form of representation. That route seems boring and self righteous to those who love literature. For them, it is important to mark out and seek passion, risk, conflict – and it is important to ask the difficult, sometimes incorrect questions. We have a lot to learn from people and groups who have tenaciously and tendentiously been hanging in there! Wryly, with wit, grit and zeal. Therefore we shall shun all forms of goodness. And eschew the podium and arc-light culture on March 7th & 8th at the NMML. We shall expend our energies instead on thrashing out some difficult questions about the world of little magazines, blogs and other minimal literary practices in contemporary South Asia. And drawing upon those debates, try and find entry points into larger questions of and about the humanities. We will have two days of literary and political adda —on the very nature and idea of underground literature in India and its prospects. As hinted above, one way to talk about the issue is to address the relevance and importance of little magazines and blogs that deal in literature and politics. The whole little magazine movement in various parts of the nation had a certain kind of approach: that of literary and political engagement. There were formal experiments in styling too; there is a serious aesthetic component in these ventures. Some print magazines from the 1960s and the ’70s continue to have a powerful impact on our lives. New forums and blogs have developed too with changing times. What has changed since the second half of the last century in small publications? What are the significant political-literary questions of our time for serious non-academic magazines? Often the editors and writers and practitioners of such ventures do not have a forum to reflect upon their craft and approach, at least not at the national level. Often their regional motivations are not discussed with their co-practitioners from other parts of South Asia. We hope to provide a little platform where we can exchange notes and tactics for future directions in the humanities, where we can have a serious give and take about our craft and job, but by looking outside of institutionalized academia for our concerns. We shall de-academize academia as we know it and as most of us practice it. We shall have editors, writers and bloggers from Uttaranchal, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, West Bengal, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Assam, Kerala, Delhi and Bangladesh at Vernaculars Underground: Histories, Politics, Aesthetics organized by MargHumanities in collaboration with the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi on March 7 and 8, 2014. Although we believe ideas and issues and fresh contours of literature and politics will emerge and develop over the two days through discussions and talks, MargHumanities hopes that some of the following issues will be addressed in the course of those conversations: How to bring back a sense of stout antagonism and desolation into literature and enthuse a generation. Without sloganeering. Consequently, what are the ways to embark upon and take on