Boundaries and Porosities: The Question of Method in the Humanities (Video Links)
Dear HUG Readers: Here are the freshly uploaded youtube links to the video clips of the first forum on ‘Boundaries and Porosities: The Question of Method in the Humanities’ —a collaboration between MargHumanities and the Department of History, Delhi University (April 6, 2015). —————————- Speakers: Satish Deshpande, Tista Bagchi and Soumyabrata Chowdhury Moderator: Prasanta Chakravarty The proceedings of the forum have been broken into 12 clips. The clips are not live on this page. So, you have to copy paste individual links to another window in order to view the proceedings. ——————————————- 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVQqs4DQmJ8 2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2gGgxeElWzM 3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVyY3ngKzt8 4. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrxOZRkngrU 5. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wkq3w5btCI 6. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjKvefa6SkU 7. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9yW0cwD_tM 8. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LqzhAVBXNYE 9. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7s9RpxCgjE 10. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kke76UiMu20 11. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_p2BZXxEioA 12. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVMeObKDA5s _____________ adminhumanitiesunderground.org
Cannibal Manifesto
Oswaldo de Andrade Cannibalism: An Introduction to “Cannibal Manifesto” The starting date for the Brazilian modernist movement, which advocated a return to the soil, is usually given as 1922, when the major impulse was given by the Week of Modern Art. This revolutionary approach was announced by a woman painter, Anita Malfatti, “the protomartyr of modernism,” whose forward-looking paintings in her second exhibition, in 1917, were derided by Monteiro Lobato (He claimed that she simply contributed her own “-ism” in her paintings where a horse and rider fall over: “I call this genre topple-ism”). But he himself had a great influence on Brazilian modernism’s most celebrated text, Oswald de Andrade’s “Cannibal Manifesto” of 1928. Also called the “Brazilwood Manifesto,” because it champions the use of native material and turns against artifice, this manifesto takes its name from the cannibalistic Tupi Indians of Brazil who disposed gastronomically of an unloved Bishop. It is outrageously satirical, reading in part: “Only cannibalism unites us… Tupi or not tupi, that is the question.” The manifesto shares the title of a Dada publication of two issues, Cannibale, whose lively primitivistic spirit is joined to the Russian Rayonists, with their Why-We-Paint-Our-Faces manifesto against the sophisticated and over-civilized society. Andrade’s preface to Seraphim Ponte Grande is another modernist manifesto that repudiates Modernism: “The Modernist Movement, culminating in anthropophagous measles, seemed to indicate an advanced phenomenon.” Elsewhere, he distinguishes between the two: “Simultaneity is the coexistence of things and events at a given moment.Polyphony is the simultaneous artistic union of two or more melodies which have the fleeting effect of clashing sounds as they contribute to a total final effect.” ————————————- Cannibal Manifesto Only Cannibalism unites us. Socially. Economically. Philosophically. The unique law of the world. The disguised expression of all individualisms, all collectivisms. Of all religions. Of all peace treaties.Tupi or not tupi that is the question. Against all catechisms. And against the mother of the Gracos. I am only interested in what’s not mine. The law of men. The law of the cannibal. We are tired of all those suspicious Catholic husbands in plays. Freud finished off the enigma of woman and the other recent psychological seers. What dominated over truth was clothing, an impermeable layer between the interior world and the exterior world. Reaction against people in clothes. The American cinema will tell us about this. Sons of the sun, mother of living creatures. Fiercely met and loved, with all the hypocrisy of longing: importation, exchange, and tourists. In the country of the big snake. It’s because we never had grammatical structures or collections of old vegetables. And we never knew urban from suburban, frontier country from continental. Lazy on the world map of Brazil. One participating consciousness, one religious rhythm. Against all the importers of canned conscience. For the palpable existence of life. And let Levy-Bruhl go study prelogical mentality. We want the Cariba Revolution. Bigger than the French Revolution. For the unification of all the efficient revolutions for the sake of human beings. Without us, Europe would not even have had its paltry declaration of the rights of men. The golden age proclaimed by America. The golden age. And all the girls. Filiation. The contact with the Brazilian Cariba Indians. Ou Villegaignon print terre. Montaigne. Natural man. Rousseau. From the French Revolution to Romanticism, to the Bolshevik Revolution, to the Surrealist Revolution and the technological barbarity of Keyserling. We’re moving right along. We were never baptized. We live with the right to be asleep. We had Christ born in Bahia. Or in Belem do Pata. But for ourselves, we never admitted the birth of logic. Against Father Vieira, the Priest. Who made our first loan, to get a commission. The illiterate king told him: put this on paper but without too much talk. So the loan was made. Brazilian sugar was accounted for. Father Vieira left the money in Portugal and just brought us the talk. The spirit refuses to conceive spirit without body. Anthropomorphism. Necessity of cannibalistic vaccine. For proper balance against the religions of the meridian. And exterior inquisitions. We can only be present to the hearing world. We had the right codification of vengeance. The codified science of Magic. Cannibalism. For the permanent transformation of taboo into totem. Against the reversible world and objectified ideas. Made into cadavers. The halt of dynamic thinking. The individual a victim of the system. Source of classic injustices. Of romantic injustices. And the forgetfulness of interior conquests. Screenplays. Screenplays. Screenplays. Screenplays. Screenplays. Screenplays. Screenplays. Cariba instinct. Death and life of hypotheses. From the equation I coming from the Cosmos to the axiom Cosmos coming from the I. Subsistence. Knowledge. Cannibalism. Against the vegetable elites. In communication with solitude. We were never baptized. We had the Carnival. The Indian dressed as a Senator of the Empire. Acting the part of Pitt. Or playing in the operas of Alencar with many good Portuguese feelings. We already had communism. We already had a surrealist language. The golden age. Catiti Catiti Imara Notia Notia Imara Ipeju* Magic and life. We had relations and distribution of fiscal property, moral property, and honorific property. And we knew how to transport mystery and death with the help of a few grammatical forms. I asked a man what was Right. He answered me that it was the assurance of the full exercise of possibilities. That man was called Galli Mathias. I ate him. The only place there is no determinism is where there is mystery. But what has that to do with us? Against the stories of men that begin in Cape Finisterre. The world without dates. Without rubrics. Without Napoleon. Without Caesar. The fixation of progress by means of catalogues and television sets. Only with machinery. And blood transfusions. Against antagonistic sublimations brought over in sailing ships. Against the truth of the poor missionaries, defined through the wisdom of a cannibal, the Viscount of Cairo – It is a lie repeated many times. But no crusaders came to us. They were fugitives from a civilization that we are eating up,
Salaam Boi-mela!
Utpalkumar Basu The 11:40 local. I was returning on it. Possibly this is the last train for returning to Kolkata from the suburbs. Wintry night. Biting chill. Only a few passengers in the dimly-lit compartment. The stations are even more deserted. The train could have just skipped these stations since there is hardly any boarding or alighting. I don’t think anyone will de-board our compartment ere the train reaches Kolkata. But, ah, presently from a tiny little unknown station, on hops a hawker. Brown trousers, blue pullover, monkey-cap—rolled-up as headgear.And a bundle of books with him. “Have you read these, anyone here?”—he begins to holler, and the compartment wakes up with a start. “Have you read Phoolbala Devi’s latest, yes, have you?”—as the train jumps over and clears a viaduct, the young man’s voice is deluged by tremendous noise. Yet a middle-aged man, lying onthe middle bunk, sits up—“Let me see. Here, come over.” We all know this game, don’t we? He is a player from the same team, masquerading as a passenger. This joker will take the first stab at the incense-stick bundle, locks and keys, combs and wallets.So that the interest of the others in these items is aroused. But today the wind is blowing in a contrary direction. I end up buying the first book from the young man’s collection. Title: The Badass Ghost (ভুতের মস্তানী). Price: Rs. 2.50. Colourful cover. Hazy picture. Scores of printing errors inside. But what incredible stories! So, I buy a few more books without batting an eyelid. In the Clutches of the Ghost (ভুতের পাল্লায়ে), The Ghost’s Music-Room (ভুতের জলসাঘর), Mysterious Murder on the Ship (জাহাজে আজব খুন)Daughter-in-law does the Mother-in Law in (বউ এর হাতে শাশুড়ি খুন)—the last one in poetry form. So, let me come to the main point. These are my best reads of 1988. I consider all these books collectively as one book. There are lots of thematic crossings and currents within the books. Just like one encounters in bot-tola books, there is a running familiar pulse—whether it is to do with some cooking manual or with as esoteric a subject as learning Santhali in 30 quick steps. These are, of course, superficial similarities. Within the literary entrails of Phoolbala Devi’s 2.50 rupee book, appear stories of class exploitation,of hunger and death, stories of spectres and apparitions—their foul smelling subtle bodies are enough to create havoc at the annaprashan (rice-eating ceremony) of the roy-bahadur’s grandson: “And in a sudden flash, the beggar’s hands turned longer and longer. And they became skeletal. Holding up and shaking Roy Sahab’s and Dutta Sahab’s necks, those hands were striking one head against the other and with a strange nasal twang, he said “Nasty, yeah! Nasty? First clear the nastiness within your souls. You fellows find it below par to hand over a morsel of food to the poor beggar, eh! You could not stop, could you? So much food has now vanished into thin air! Where are the missuses? Not in sight! No one came with an iota of help, eh?” [স্যাঁত করে ভিখারির হাত দুটো প্রকান্ড লম্বা ও হাড়ের কংকালে পরিনত হয়ে, দুহাতে রায়-সাহেব ও দত্ত-সাহেবের ঘাড় ধরে প্রবল ঝাঁকুনি দিচ্ছে; দুজনের কপালে- কপালে সজোরে ঠোকাঠুকি করছে, আর অদ্ভূত নাকি সুরে বলছে “ন্যাস্টি!না?ন্যাস্টি!আগে মনের ন্যাস্টি দূর কর|গরিব ভিখারীকে এক টুকরো খাদ্য দিতে আঁতে ঘা লাগে|রুখতে পারলিনে?অত গুলো খাবার উড়ে গেল উধাও হয়ে? মিসসেসরা সব কোথায়ে গেল?সাহায্য করলোনা একটুও!”(ভুতের পাল্লায়ে)] This is literature’s undergrowth. The life blood of the jungle—weeds. Ghentu flower and Babla thorns. These books you would find on trains, footpaths, at fairs unknown. But not at book fairs or festivals. Those who buy and patronize such books with the money that they save from their meagre salaries or bonuses—many of them cannot even read yuktakshars (dipthongs) properly. Still they buy these books because in these they find stories of human love and emotion, tales of doting parents, the heroism of the local ruffian, the undoing of scheming political netas. There is love—but very little. More of sordidness and suffering. But within the cloud, the sun does shine. And all these are the ghost’s accomplishment. This is the purana of the spectral world of infinitesimally mysterious humans who hover around us—but are not noticed so easily. A bit like the beggars. From where they arrive, where they disappear to—who knows. [Translation by HUG. Title Photograph: Aritra Chakraborti] adminhumanitiesunderground.org
Blood Is Remarkably Red Against Green
Viktor Shklovsky [ A short excerpt from A Sentimental Journey: Memoirs, 1917-1922. Viktor Shklovsky, a leading figure in the Russian formalist movement of the 1920s, borrows the title from Laurence Sterne. In the book he describes the travels of a bewildered intellectual through Russia, Persia, the Ukraine and the Caucasus during the period of Russian Revolution. A Sentimental Journey is also an important experimental literary work–a memoir in the form of a novel.] —————————– I took my milk home. I walked through the park. The foliage, the cool of the shade, the lawn, and –the sun. I walked along and thought absent-mindedly about my past. About Opoyaz. “Opoyaz” means “The Society for the Study of Poetic Language.” About something as clear to me as numerators and denominators. When you think, you get absent minded. I blew myself through absent-mindedness. This is how it happened. We didn’t have enough primers. And primers are indispensible. We needed them in case of retreat and we needed them to destroy the bombs that the Whites were dropping on us. Those bombs didn’t always explode. I had brought from Nikolaev some little white cylinders of German origin that I thought were primers. Mitkevich tried to assure me they weren’t. They actually did seem to have an aperture for a safety fuse, but it was too wide. You could stick your whole little finger in it and it was constructed in such a way that it was impossible to make the opening narrower. I asked one of the men to make me a safety fuse out of a smoke bomb and I went to the edge of the ravine to try it out. It was a nice day. The grass was green, the sky blue. In the distance there were some horses and a little boy. There were old trenches all around with dark holes at the bottom. What was inside those holes I don’t know—probably just darkness. I started to insert the fuse into the cylinder, which looked like a first-grader’s round metal pencil case—about the circumference of a three-kopek piece and about six inches long. The fuse was too small: it wouldn’t stay in the aperture. I wound paper around it and measured it to go off in two seconds. So I wouldn’t get tired of waiting. I lit a cigarette. A safety fuse is lit with a cigarette, not a match. Everything according to the rules. I puffed on the cigarette, picked up the cylinder and bent over it with the cigarette. What happened next I don’t remember in detail. Probably I accidentally lit the paper wrapped around the safety fuse. My arms were flung back; I was lifted, seared and turned head over heels. The air filled with explosions. The cylinder had blown up in my hands. I hardly had time for fleeting thought about my book Plot as a Stylistic Phenomenon. Who would write it now? It seemed as if the explosion were still resounding, as if the rocks still hadn’t fallen back to the ground. But I was on the ground. And I saw the horses galloping in the field, the little boy running. The grass all around was splashed with blood. Blood is remarkably red against green. My arms and clothes were all in shreds and holes. My shirt was black with blood and through the straps on my sandals I could see how twisted my feet were. The toes were out-of-joint and stood at various angles. I lay on my belly, shrieking. The exploding bomb had already finished its shriek. I clawed the grass with my right hand. I think the soldiers came running right away. They heard the explosion and said, “There it is. Shklovsky’s blown himself up!” They brought up a wagon. Fast. This was the wagon they used for potato expeditions. The men were badly fed, so they bought potatoes and cooked them at night. The platoon leader and Matveev, the big fellow, came running and started to lift me into the wagon. I was already coming to. The student named Pik came up, absolutely stunned. They put up in the wagon and stuck my linen hat with the soft brim under my head for a cushion. Mitkevich came up, as pale as when the bridge caught fire. He bent over me all out of breath. There was still a ringing in my eras. My whole body quivered. But i know how to behave. I doesn’t matter if I don’t know the proper way to hold a spoon at the dinner table. I said to him: “Take a report: the object given to me for purposes of experimentation proved to be too powerful for use as a primer. The explosion took place prematurely, probably because the outer covering of the safety fuse had been removed. Use regular primers!” Everything was done according to the rules, as in the best of families. There are rules about how a wounded man should behave. There are rules about what a dying man should say. I was taken to the hospital. ************************ One of my soldier students sat at my feet and kept feeling them to see I were getting cold. We got to the infirmary. After some trouble with the orderlies, everything proceeded in customary fashion. I lay there and sadly began to recognize things. I was put on a table and soaped. The flesh on my bones was quivering. Now that I hadn’t seen before. A fine tremor agitated my body. Not just the arms, not just the legs—no, the whole body. A woman came up—the doctor. I knew her from Petersburg. Hadn’t seen her for eight years. We started to divert each other with conversation. I was already being shaved, which is essential for the bandaging. I talked to her about the great Russian poet Velimir Khlebnikov. They bandaged me up to my waist and put me in bed. My wife’s sister came to see me the next day. I had told them not to disturb