Dislocation
On the one hand contemporary reality is of increasing brutalities. Rising counts of suicides, dislocations, and evictions. On the other, these images (and here). I would think that slowly a new way of 'being' in highly un-equal social realities and arrangements is taking shape. A new psychological profile is emerging. Also, we are witnessing a dismantling of some earlier held assumptions.
I am trying to think what is getting dismantled and being replaced by what.
Dislocation and violence have always accompanied great dreams of wealth and domination. Europe in 18th and 19th century is a good example of this. Thousands banished from within it's land to Americas and Australia. Thousands dislocated from other parts of the world to fulfill the search for labour, land and materials. The record of the "Engine of Progress" has been fairly bloody. In the 20th Century the record of this progress-travel has been even more bizarre and bloody.
We grew up with a psychological profile that somehow gave space to these 'dislocations' and through various ways admitted it as a violence that cannot be wished away. We co-inhabited the spaces of violence in our cities. From the popular cinema to documentary filmmakers - all found ways of talking about it. That mode of talking i would think reached an aesthetic and conceptual dead-end by the early nineties. Rarely could accounts move beyond the 'heroic/resisting' subject or the 'victimised/traumatised' human objects. This binary gave rise to an image fatigue of the 'poor' in the nineties.
Also, the nineties saw the stress on what Partha Chaterjee calls the 'the political society': the modes by which people found a way to make claims using the forms of 'electoral mobilisations' and 'welfare administration'. The emergence of the courts as the central actor in today's 'evictions/ dislocations' is in a very definitive way a dismantling of these negotiations.
The forms that we have at present - the courts' discourse and the image making sensibility of a new triumphal elite - open up for us new questions about how to think this conjunction. What sensibility is being demanded of us to navigate the contemporary? What intrigues me is the 'speech act' in the Brand Equity image being given to the 'poor'. These kinds of images have existed in many ads by the industry (and also in welfare ads put out by government). But, the speech act of this one is of a new order altogether.
And our poor Raghu too existed in a similar way in many ads. However, he was never branded a 'pick pocket'. Well - the ground was laid about 5 years ago by an esteemed judge in the Supreme court. He uttered in his judgement - " Giving land to squatters is like giving money back to the pickpocket". This sensibility has taken deep root and circulatory force.
I wonder: what will this harsh time-travel of capital (progress/development/triumphal chest-thumping nationalist competitions) do to millions who will not have the Americas to go to? Both cities and countryside are becoming a huge ejection machines, as was always under the sign of progress.
How will we be able to make sense of this world? Authoritarian solutions of many kinds will gain ground, so will deep solipsism.
Dislocation and violence have always accompanied great dreams of wealth and domination. Europe in 18th and 19th century is a good example of this. Thousands banished from within it's land to Americas and Australia. Thousands dislocated from other parts of the world to fulfill the search for labour, land and materials. The record of the "Engine of Progress" has been fairly bloody. In the 20th Century the record of this progress-travel has been even more bizarre and bloody.
We grew up with a psychological profile that somehow gave space to these 'dislocations' and through various ways admitted it as a violence that cannot be wished away. We co-inhabited the spaces of violence in our cities. From the popular cinema to documentary filmmakers - all found ways of talking about it. That mode of talking i would think reached an aesthetic and conceptual dead-end by the early nineties. Rarely could accounts move beyond the 'heroic/resisting' subject or the 'victimised/traumatised' human objects. This binary gave rise to an image fatigue of the 'poor' in the nineties.
Also, the nineties saw the stress on what Partha Chaterjee calls the 'the political society': the modes by which people found a way to make claims using the forms of 'electoral mobilisations' and 'welfare administration'. The emergence of the courts as the central actor in today's 'evictions/ dislocations' is in a very definitive way a dismantling of these negotiations.
The forms that we have at present - the courts' discourse and the image making sensibility of a new triumphal elite - open up for us new questions about how to think this conjunction. What sensibility is being demanded of us to navigate the contemporary? What intrigues me is the 'speech act' in the Brand Equity image being given to the 'poor'. These kinds of images have existed in many ads by the industry (and also in welfare ads put out by government). But, the speech act of this one is of a new order altogether.
And our poor Raghu too existed in a similar way in many ads. However, he was never branded a 'pick pocket'. Well - the ground was laid about 5 years ago by an esteemed judge in the Supreme court. He uttered in his judgement - " Giving land to squatters is like giving money back to the pickpocket". This sensibility has taken deep root and circulatory force.
I wonder: what will this harsh time-travel of capital (progress/development/triumphal chest-thumping nationalist competitions) do to millions who will not have the Americas to go to? Both cities and countryside are becoming a huge ejection machines, as was always under the sign of progress.
How will we be able to make sense of this world? Authoritarian solutions of many kinds will gain ground, so will deep solipsism.
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