The South Asian Imaginary: Exploring the region through image-making practices

A lecture by Rahaab Allana, curator and publisher at Alkazi Foundation for the Arts, New Delhi, to introduce the foundation's latest reader, Unframed: Discovering Image Practices in South Asia, co-published with HarperCollins India, 2023. An indispensable new volume for students and enthusiasts of contemporary photography and lens-based media from South Asia, this edition provides recent interviews and essays that reflect the depth and complexity of lens-based practice in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh Sri Lanka, Myanmar and Nepal. Allana will also introduce the Alkazi Foundation's recent work in exhibition-making and publishing, working collaboratively in India and abroad over the last two decades, establishing the Foundation as committed archivists and researchers of image-making practice across the region.

Rahaab Allana is Curator/Publisher, Alkazi Foundation for the Arts, New Delhi. A Charles Wallace grant awardee and Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society (UK), he received his MA in Art History from the School of Oriental and African Studies, London and was Honorary Research Associate in the Department of Visual Anthropology at University College, London. He was Founding Editor of PIX, a themed digital publication that focuses on South Asian lens-based practices and production, and Founder of ASAP|Art (Alternative South Asia Photography/Art), the region’s first app for presentation and discussion of contemporary creative work. Allana works nationally and internationally with museums, archives, cultural initiatives and institutions, universities and festivals. He recently served as Guest Editor for a Delhi-themed issue of Aperture (Summer 2021). He is on the editorial board of Trans-Asia Photography, the advisory committees of the India-Europe Foundation for New Dialogues (Rome), and the Arts and Culture committee, Asia Society (India Chapter). His forthcoming edited volume with Tulika books (Delhi) and West Heavens (Shanghai) is based on photography in India since the 90s.

This event is co-sponsored by the Department of History of Art & Visual Studies and South Asia Program.

Please join us for a virtual lecture by Petra Kieffer-Pülz (Academy of Sciences and Literature, Mainz).

Between 1803 and 1813 five ordination lineages were introduced from Burma to Sri Lanka that formed the Amarapuranikāya. In 1851 a dispute concerning the legal validity of the monastic boundary (sīmā) of Balapiṭiya in the southwest of Sri Lanka arose amongst two of them. This was a serious matter, since a sīmā is the basis for all administrative and legally binding activity of a Buddhist monastic community (saṅgha), including ordination. Since the parties were not
able to resolve the conflict themselves, and since their ordination lineage was ultimately based on a Burmese ordination tradition, they turned for help to the highest authority of the Burmese Buddhist monastic community, the Saṅgharāja, who at that time was Ñeyyadhamma. The group who considered the sīmā of Balapiṭiya confused with the village boundary, and, hence, legally invalid, sent the first delegation (1857–1858). The Saṅgharāja agreed with their legal
opinion and in his letter, called “Explanation of the judgment concerning the dispute about the monastic boundary” (Sīmāvivādavinicchayakathā) he quoted from the commentary and sub-commentaries to the Vinaya as justification. The opponents, who considered the monastic boundary not confused and legally valid, assumed that the Saṅgharāja had been misinformed by the first delegation, and sent their own delegation (1859–60). But the Burmese Saṅgharāja stuck to his original judgment. However, he wrote a letter to this party that shows special empathy and devotion, and even contains personal notes to four of the Sinhalese monks of this party. The letter is quite unique among the writings exchanged in the context of this dispute, and might have been an attempt to reconcile the opponents with his judgment.

The keynote of the day:

"Biophilia Now: Time for Imagining Alternatives to Techno- and Bio-Orientalism" by Rachel Lee, Professor of English, Gender Studies, and the Institute of Society and Genetics, UCLA.

Are you attending in person? If so, you must rsvp here. Space is limited.

We encourage in-person participation but for those who are unable to make it, please see virtual registration below.

The title of this lecture draws inspiration from what feminist historians call the Wages for Housework movement. Despite their express slogan around “wages,” the utopian desire carried forward by Selma James and Maria dalla Costa involves less the free-market payment for raising kids, caring for the elderly, tending to the sick, preparing food, etcetera, and more an almost unimaginable “time for what we will.” This “time for what we will” is not already blocked out for usefulness—e.g., to serve one’s side hustle--or even for rest and recovery from the depletions of neoliberal capital. Rather, it bespeaks an unassigned time to fritter away, to dally and daydream, and to fantasize about what might happen in the idyll of becoming (non-pejoratively) idle. Significantly, Wages for Housework construed this “time for what we will” as what is owed to—rather than simply granted to or contractually specified as compensation for—reproducers (aka reproductive laborers). The danger for the status quo in this demand—this “time for what we will”--lies in its holding space to proliferate plural and counterfactual (i.e., postwork) imaginings of present society.

Humanities scholar Rachel Lee points to artwork choreographed around smelling, singing, and sensorily dwelling in and around loss, grief, and toxic landscapes as, counterintuitively, positive sketches for types of actions that might be indulged in--and which might save lives--if we could entertain and flex our daydreaming (rather than doom-scrolling) muscles. Rather than ask how do we heal from resurgent biophobia and its catalyzing of anti-Asian violence, this talk proposes the plural and oftentimes conflicting imaginings of Chang Rae Lee, Anicka Yi [and possibly also “the Daniels”—aka Kwan & Scheinert) as hopeful alternatives to the toggle between techno-orientalism and bio-orientalism characterizing our post-/still- Covid-19 moment.

Bio: Rachel C. Lee, Professor of English, Gender Studies, and the Institute of Society and Genetics, UCLA, is the author of The Exquisite Corpse of Asian America: Biopolitics, Biosociality and Posthuman Ecologies (2014), editor of The Routledge Companion to Asian and Pacific Islander Literature (2014), and a founding editor of Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience. Currently, Lee is PI on Oral Histories of Environmental Illness: a collection of 80+ interviews of individuals who have, treat, or advocate on behalf of those with “contested illnesses” (e.g. multiple chemical sensitivity, chronic Lyme, mold-related fibromyalgia, heavy-metal intoxication, chronic fatigue and the like).

Thursday, May 11, 10:30 a.m.

Keynote: "Biophilia Now: Time for Imagining Alternatives to Techno- and Bio-Orientalism" by Rachel Lee, Professor of English, Gender Studies, and the Institute of Society and Genetics, UCLA.

Session 1 “Sensoria” 1:00-2:30 p.m.

Katie Yook (Curator, NY): “Sensoria: Evoking the Intangible”Se Young Au (Artist, CA):“Olfaction, Embodiment, and Perception”KimSu Theiler (Artist, NY):“Orientally Challenged”Skye Jin (or Jette Hye Jin Mortensen) (Artist, Writer, Curator, Copenhagen): “Hidden Epigenetic Trauma & Art as Site for Healing and Ritual"Jung Joon Lee (Rhode Island School of Design, Society for the Humanities fellow at Cornell University): discussant Session 2 “Transnational and Transmedial Approach to the Body Issues” 3:00-4:30 p.m.

Walter Byongsok Chon (Ithaca College): “Theatricalized Bodies on the Post-Dramatic Stage”Bonnie Chung (Cornell University): “The Songs of Two Islands of East Asia: Collaborative Listening and Counterarchival Impulses in Green Island (2016) and The Mermaid from Jeju (2019)”Abel Song Han (Cornell University): “Healing with Poison and Metaphor: On Bio-mimesis Horror”Paul McQuade (Cornell University): "A Dreamed Biology: Soni Kum’s ‘Morning Dew’ and Jayro Bustamante’s ‘La Llorona’”Jomy Abraham (Visiting Scholar, Cornell University): “Walking with their Dead: Biophobia and Public Protests of Farmers in India”Jun Matsuda (Visiting Scholar, Cornell University): “Police/Military Violence and Biophobia: The Intersectionality of "Asian Bodies" and Colonialism”About the Biophobia Symposium

Aversion to certain groups or statuses of the body is not just an emotion but a richly social, cultural, and political phenomenon, as it, by invoking bodily responses, functions to patrol social boundaries and norms, such as righteousness and cleanliness. The feeling’s immediacy to the body is the basis of its social power. In The Cultural Politics of Emotion(2014), Sara Ahmed situates disgust (“bad taste”) in the colonial context where the colonized bodies were subject to the imperialist politics of “what gets eaten,” and are, at the same time, regarded to stoke the “fear of contamination” to the European white bodies. Ahmed’s politicizing of negative emotions still holds strong relevance, especially regarding the recently exacerbating hate crimes based on gender, race, ethnicity, religion, health condition, and political orientation, which often tag along a profound sense of disgust and essentialist rhetoric on body types. Notably, the #IAmNotAVirus campaigns against the anti-Asian hate crimes entailed by the recent pandemic exemplify how the feelings of terror and disgust effectively turned Asian bodies into a composite of a submicroscopic agent, the “origin” of the disease, and the repugnant bodies.

This symposium proposes biophobia (aversion to bodily matter) as a critical framework to unravel the complex relationship between negative emotions and post/colonial body politics in Asian and transnational contexts. Biophobia, as a composite word, embodies an acute connectivity between body issues and the public anxiety that is often symptomatic of a given society’s constraints over the notions of the healthy and the normal, which has proved to be a global phenomenon. Accordingly, while the symposium’s case studies and materials come from Korean and diasporic Korean cultural situations, biophobia helps recognize the inter-disciplinary, inter-regional, and inter-medial facets of disability studies that identify and questions the notion of healthiness as a product of the dynamics between political, institutional, medical, and cultural entities.

The millennial city of the global South is a charged setting for allegations of corruption, with skyscrapers, land grabs, and slum evictions invoking outrage at deepening economic polarization. This talk, based on a newly published book Corruption Plots: Stories, Ethics, and Publics of the Late Capitalist City, rethinks commonsense notions that equate corruption with bribery. It illuminates instead how corruption is fundamental to a global storytelling practice about how states and elites abuse entrusted power both inside and outside the law. Drawing on ethnography in Bengaluru and Mumbai and a cross-section of literary and cinematic stories of corruption from cities around the world, Malini Ranganathan and coauthors David L. Pike and Sapana Doshi pay close attention to the racial, caste, class, and gender location of the narrators, spaces, and publics imagined to be harmed by corruption. Corruption Plots demonstrates how, in this moment of late capitalism and rightwing populism, corruption talk is leveraged to make sense of the unequal stakes of rapid urban change; it is equally used opportunistically by those who are themselves implicated in wrongdoing. Offering a wide-ranging analysis of urban worlds, the authors reveal the ethical, spatial, and political stakes of storytelling and how vital it is to examine the “corruption plot” in all its contradictions.

About the speaker:

Malini Ranganathan is Associate Professor in the School of International Service and a faculty affiliate of the Department of Critical Race, Gender, and Culture Studies at American University. An urban geographer and political ecologist by training, her research in India and the U.S. studies land, labor, and environmental injustices animating urban social movements, as well as global histories of anticaste, abolitionist, and anticolonial thought. Her coauthored book, Corruption Plots: Stories, Ethics and Publics of the Late Capitalist City, will be out with Cornell University Press in April 2023. She is co-editor of Rethinking Difference in India through Racialization and has authored several journal articles, including in the journals Antipode, Ethnic and Racial Studies, and the Annals of the American Association of Geographers. Dr. Ranganathan is a 2017-2019 recipient of an Andrew Mellon-American Council of Learned Societies fellowship and a 2021 faculty awardee for outstanding contributions to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at American University.

Critical Development Studies Seminar Series:

The series is organized by faculty and Ph.D. students in the Department of Global Development and the Graduate Field of Development Studies. You are encouraged to take part in these invigorating discussions in-person in Warren Hall B73 or via Zoom.

This seminar is co-sponsored by Cornell Global Development, the Polson Institute for Global Development, the Department of City and Regional Planning, and the Graduate Field of Development Studies.

Lund Critical Debate

Democracies worldwide—even many wealthy democracies long considered safely consolidated—are at risk today. Governments, policymakers, and voters face new conflicts over democratic institutions, checks and balances, which citizens can compete for office or deserve representation, and what rules of accountability apply.

This year's Lund debate from the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies examines the threats democracies around the world are confronting, both from external forces and from within—and what governments and citizens can do to fight back.

Join Thomas Garrett of the Community of Democracies and Damon Wilson of the National Endowment for Democracy for a conversation on democratic backsliding, strategies for resilience, and the conditions and practices that undermine democracy: democracy ... and its opposites.

A reception with refreshments will follow the conversation.

Lund Debate: 5:00–6:30 p.m. | Alice Statler AuditoriumFree ticket required for in-person attendance. Reserve your ticket today! Join the lecture virtually by registering at Cornell.

Reception to follow.

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Panelists

Thomas E. Garrett is secretary general of the Community of Democracies, a global intergovernmental coalition comprised of the Governing Council member states that support adherence to the Warsaw Declaration's common democratic values and standards. Garrett previously worked for the International Republican Institute for 12 years overseas in Ukraine, Mongolia, and Indonesia, returning to Washington, DC, in 2005 as director of Middle East programs and then as vice president for global programs.

Damon Wilson is president and CEO of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a nonprofit grant-making foundation supporting freedom around the world. Prior to joining NED, he helped transform the Atlantic Council into a leading global think tank as its executive vice president. He previously served as special assistant to the president and senior director for European affairs at the National Security Council. Wilson also served at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad as the executive secretary and chief of staff, where he helped manage one of the largest U.S. embassies during a time of conflict.

Moderator

Rachel Beatty Riedl has served as the Einaudi Center's director since 2019. She is the Einaudi Center's John S. Knight Professor of International Studies and professor in the Department of Government and Cornell Jeb E. Brooks School of Public Policy. Her research interests include institutional development in new democracies, local governance and decentralization, and authoritarian regime legacies in Africa.

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About the Debate

The Lund Critical Debate is a signature event of the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies. This year's dialogue is part of Einaudi's work on democratic threats and resilience. Established in 2008, Einaudi's Lund Critical Debate series is made possible by the generosity of Judith Lund Biggs '57.