Mythopolitics in South Asia

Kamari M. Clarke & Ryan C. Jobson: "Is it possible to decolonize anthropology?"
2021-01-28 | Zoom Webinar
Since the 1970s, several important critical interventions have been made in the field of anthropology questioning its disciplinary history of complicity with colonialism. Yet methodologically and theoretically, we still encounter unresolved problems of power and representation which continue to reproduce the lifeworlds of the poor and the marginalized in the global South and minorities of the global North as a neo-oriental data mine. Both the authors reflect on the question of ethics and politics in anthropology. Prof. Clarke’s “Toward a Critically Engaged Ethnographic Practice” ‘interogates what it means for anthropologists as “social critics” to be engaged in documenting efforts that not only have explanatory power but connect that power to praxis’. Dr. Jobson’s “The Case for Letting Anthropology Burn: Sociocultural Anthropology in 2019” unsettles ‘the conceptual and methodological preoccupations of the discipline in service of political projects of repatriation, repair, and abolition. By abandoning the universal liberal subject as a stable foil for a renewed project of cultural critique, the field of anthropology cannot presume a coherent human subject as its point of departure but must adopt a radical humanism as its political horizon.’

Silje L. Einarsen: Sanskrit Memory Politics
2020-12-09 13:00 - 15:00 (Europe/Oslo)
Silje Lyngar Einarsen will present the paper “Sanskrit Memory Politics” in panel 06 History Writing and the Politics of Memory in South Asia, at the SASNET Online Conference Rethinking the Politics of Memory in South Asia.
The conference is hosted by Lund University and will be live streamed. Online participants must register here before Wednesday December 9 at 12 noon.

Moumita Sen: The 'Demon' of Vanquished Histories: Memory and Myth in the Mahishasur Movement
2020-12-09 10:00 - 12:00
Moumita Sen will present the paper “The ‘Demon’ of Vanquished Histories: Memory and Myth in the Mahishasur Movement” in panel 01 Cultural Production and Heritage Politics, at the SASNET Online Conference Rethinking the Politics of Memory in South Asia.
The conference is hosted by Lund University and will be live streamed. Online participants must register here before Wednesday December 9 at 12 noon.

Silje L. Einarsen: The Mythopolitics of Ancient and Medieval Sanskrit Myths
2020-12-01 11:30 - 12:00
MF CASR Lunch with Silje L. Einarsen: The Mythopolitics of Ancient and Medieval Sanskrit Myths

This talk will give an introduction to a new postdoctoral project within the NRC/MF project MYTHOPOL. The project addresses Mythopolitics in South Asia through a study of contested and controversial Hindu myths in contemporary Indian politics. The project seeks to generate new perspectives on classical texts and their alternative readings by studying Sanskrit myths vis à vis their contemporary political counterparts, and to understand how these myths are expressed, constructed, negotiated and deconstructed in struggles for myths of identity and belonging.

Guro W. Samuelsen: "Modi Magic": Myth and Myth-making in Contemporary Hindutva Populism
2020-11-24 11:30 - 12:00 | Zoom Webinar
MF CASR Lunch with Guro Warhuus Samuelsen: “Modi Magic”: Myth and Myth-making in Contemporary Hindutva Populism
Electorally one of the most successful political leaders in the contemporary world, India’s charismatic Prime Minister Narendra Modi nurtures a considerable personal following. While the Hindu nationalist movement has a long tradition of reshaping Hindu mythological narratives for the purpose of political mobilization, over the past decade we have seen the emergence of a majoritarian regime intent on undermining the rights of minority citizens and suppressing dissident voices. These developments are buttressed by an intensive labour of political myth building. What role does myth and myth-making play in contemporary Indian politics? In this talk, Guro W. Samuelsen will present her post-doctoral project on ‘Modi Magic’ as part of the larger research project Mythopolitics (NFR), led by Moumita Sen.

Decoloniality: Webinar with Walter D. Mignolo
2020-11-18 18:00 - 20:00 | Zoom Webinar
In this Theory from the Margins event, we discuss two works (published and forthcoming) by philosopher and semiotician Walter D. Mignolo, one of the world’s foremost thinkers on epistemic decolonization, and one of the founders of the modernity/coloniality school of thought.
In On Decoloniality, Walter D. Mignolo and Catherine E. Walsh explore the hidden forces of the colonial matrix of power, its origination, transformation, and current presence, while asking the crucial questions of decoloniality’s how, what, why, with whom, and what for. Interweaving theory-praxis with local histories and perspectives of struggle, they illustrate the conceptual and analytic dynamism of decolonial ways of living and thinking, as well as the creative force of resistance and re-existence. This book speaks to the urgency of these times, encourages delinkings from the colonial matrix of power and its “universals” of Western modernity and global capitalism, and engages with arguments and struggles for dignity and life against death, destruction, and civilizational despair.
In The Politics of Decolonial Investigations, Walter D. Mignolo provides a sweeping examination of how coloniality has operated around the world in its myriad forms between the sixteenth and twenty-first centuries. Decolonial border thinking allows Mignolo to outline how the combination of the self-fashioned narratives of Western Civilization and the hegemony of Eurocentric thought served to eradicate all knowledges in non-European languages and praxis of living and being. Mignolo also traces the geopolitical origins of racialized and gendered classifications, modernity, globalization, cosmopolitanism, placing them all within the framework of coloniality. Drawing on the work of theorists and decolonial practitioners from the global South and the global East, Mignolo shows how coloniality has provoked the emergence of decolonial politics initiated by delinking from all forms of Western knowledge and subjectivities. The urgent task Mignolo stresses, is the epistemic reconstitution of categories of thoughts and praxis of living destituted in the very process of building Western Civilization and the idea of modernity. Overcoming the long-lasting hegemony of the West and its distorted legacies is already under way in all areas of human existence. Mignolo underscores the relevance of the politics of decolonial investigations, in and out the academy, to liberate ourselves from canonized knowledge, ways of knowing and praxis of living.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Walter D. Mignolo is William H. Wannamaker Professor and Director of the Center for Global Studies and the Humanities at Duke University. He was associated researcher at Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar, Quito, 2002-2018) and an Honorary Research Associate for CISA (Center for Indian Studies in South Africa), Wits University at Johannesburg (2015-2019). He is a Senior Advisor of DOC (Dialogue of Civilizations) Research Institute, based in Berlin and received a Doctor Honoris Causa Degree from the University National of Buenos Aires, Argentina. Among his books related to the topic are: The Darker Side of the Renaissance. Literacy, Territoriality and Colonization (1995, Chinese and Spanish translation 2015); Delinking: The Rhetoric of Modernity, the Logic of Coloniality and the Grammar of Decoloniality (2007, translated into German, French, Swedish, Rumanian and Spanish), Local Histories/Global Designs: Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledges and Border Thinking (2000, translated into Spanish, Portuguese and Korean); and The Idea of Latin America (2006, translated into Spanish, Korean and Italian, On Decoloniality: Concepts, Analysis, Praxis, co-authored with Catherine Walsh, 2018; and, forthcoming, The Politics of Decolonial Investigations (Duke University Press, 2021).
Please join us for a conversation on this brilliant book! Zoom link to be provided on the day of the event here on facebook, and those on our email lists.
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