Course Requirements: Student presentations and 4 short assignments

Over the past few years this course served as an exploration of how the connections between culture and democracy may be theorised. In addition, the course introduced the research being done at CSCS.

In the light of the ongoing discussions at the Centre on Cultural Studies approaches and methods, this year (2007) the course begins with a tentative formulation of what a Cultural Studies approach might bring to the study of culture and democracy. It then goes on to examining texts, concepts and arguments that are useful to substantiate the initial formulation. In the latter part of the course CSCS faculty and a visiting scholar will reflect on their own work, focussing on how they view the relationship between culture and democracy in the contemporary world.

Session 1: Representation Outline of the course, framing arguments.
Edward Said, Introduction and Chapter I of Orientalism. Link found here: Introduction
Chapter one

Session 2: Culture and Colonialism
M.K.Gandhi, Hind Swaraj Link found here
Frantz Fanon, “National Culture” Link found here

Session 3: Nationalism and its Politics
Partha Chatterjee, “The Thematic and the Problematic” Link found here
Ashis Nandy, “The Making and Unmaking of Political Cultures in India” Link found here
---, “The Twilight of Certitudes: Secularism, Hindu Nationalism and other Masks of Deculturation” Link found here

Session 4: Citizen and Subject
Etienne Balibar, “Citizen Subject” Link found here
Partha Chatterjee, Politics of the Governed (Chapters 1 and 2) Link found here
---, “Beyond the Nation, or Within?” Link found here
Vivek Dhareshwar and R. Srivatsan, “‘Rowdy-Sheeters’: An Essay on Subalternity and Politics.” Link found here

Session 5: Caste and Democracy
Rajni Kothari, “Rise of the Dalits and the Renewed Debate on Caste” Link found here
Ghanshyam Shah, “Caste and Class: Social Reality and Political Representations” Link found here
Vivek Dhareshwar, “Caste and the Secular Self” Link found here
Satish Deshpande, “Exclusive Inequalities: Merit, Caste and Discrimination in Indian Higher Education Today” Link found here

Session 6: Cultural and rights
Veena Das, “Communities as Political Actors: The Question of Cultural Rights” Link found here
Flavia Agnes, “Minority Identity and Gender Concerns” Link found here
Susie Tharu and Tejaswini Niranjana, “Problems for a Contemporary Theory of Gender” Link found here
Anveshi Law Committee, “Is Gender Justice only a Legal Issue? The Political Stakes in the UCC Debate” Link found here

Session 7: Political Culture 1:Rebellious Peasants and Saints
Ranajit Guha, “Introduction” and “Negation” from Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency in Colonial India. Link found here
Shahid Amin, “Gandhi as Mahatma: Gorakhpur District, Eastern UP, 1921” Link found here

Session 8: Political Culture 2: Politics of Excess
Madhava Prasad, “Cine-Politics” Link found here
--- “Elections as Popular Culture” (Unpublished essay. Draft will not be a part of the course pack)
Janaki Nair, “Language and the Right to the City” Link found here
Earl Jackson, “Affective Affinities: The Politics of Excess in Korean Melodrama” (Unpublished essay. Draft will not be a part of the course pack)

Session 9: Culture and democracy in the global South
David Scott, “Colonial Governmentality” Link found here
Kuan-Hsing Chen, “Why is ‘great reconciliation’ impossible? De-Cold War/Decolonization, or Modernity and its Tears” Link found here
Kim Soyoung, “The Birth of the Local Feminist Sphere in the Global Era: ‘Trans-Cinema’ and yosongjang” Link found here

Guest Lectures: Reflections on Cultural Studies Research

Session 10: Vivek Dhareshwar (Readings will be provided later)
Session 11: Tejaswini Niranjana (Readings will be provided later)
Session 12: SV Srinivas (Readings will be provided later)
Session 13: Ashish Rajadhyaksha (Readings will be provided later)
Sessions 14 (Visiting Faculty): Madhava Prasad (Readings will be provided later)