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Modes Of Reading Culture
End-Term Examination
Submitted by: Amrita Chatterjee
Roll No. : H-1238
Course instructor: Prof. Uma Bhrugubanda
Submitted on: 23.04.2013
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Section I
a) Reflect upon Jurgen Habermas description of public sphere and discuss how
Nancy Fraser, Talal Asad and Sudipta Kaviraj critique his theorization and present
alternative understandings of public sphere.
Answer:
The term public sphere in very simplistic and layman terms can be defined as a common
space (geographic or social) where individuals can come together to identify and discuss
problems of the society, thus paving the way for influencing political action regarding those
problems. Gerard Hauser defines it as a discursive space in which individuals and groups
congregate to discuss matters of mutual interest and where possible, to reach a common
judgement. (Hauser, Gerard, Vernacular Dialogue and the Rhetoricality of Public
Opinion, page 86) Jurgen Habermas is the foremost theorist on the concept of public
sphere. Let us first look into what Habermas says about it.
Habermas conceptualises public sphere as a domain within social life which can be accessed
by all and where public opinion can be formed. Habermas opines that this concept is a fruit of
democracy. The interactions within this space are independent of class hierarchies and people
come together here out of their own will to participate in matters of general interest.
Organized political authority is formed by the public through elections and the public sphere
is the realm for influencing and criticizing this authority. The public sphere, according to
Habermas, is different from both market-economy and the state. So Habermas model helps
to remind us about the distinctness of state apparatus, market-economy and democratic
associations. These distinctions are indispensible to democratic theory.
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Habermas tries to situate the idea of public sphere historically and concludes that there was
no concept of separate private and public domains during the medieval time. This happened
due to the class hierarchies implicit in the feudal system. As Habermas points out, the
difference was that more power was divested at each level of this class pyramid with the
zenith of the structure holding all political authority. This resulted in the rules changed point
of view: they understood themselves to BE the state and not its representatives, thus their
power was not held in behalf of the people, but TO the people.
After the medieval age was long past, feudal authorities and church rule made way for
autonomous pubic power towards the end of the eighteenth century. Public figures became
rulers and vice-versa. The age of the bourgeoisie authority was slowly dawning and it was
accorded autonomy with respect to the government. The public sphere, as Habermas puts it,
was the ultimate result of these developments. According to him, the formation of the liberal
public sphere (people coming out of their private spaces to create the public and thus
mediate between the state and the bourgeoisie so as to control the government) was an
unparalleled incident in history. One huge factor that contributed to this was the rise of
literary journalism as a public institution. But this liberal public sphere was not well-suited
for the modern industrialized democratic state because the ideology associated with this
model evolved with time. Public sphere expanded its boundary for one thing and the public
structure also changed. The public and the private spheres overlapped, thus creating a new
feudal framework for the public sphere.
In todays world, the character of the public sphere has been morphed in a very different way.
As I have mentioned before, the public sphere was used in the past as a tool to critique and
influence political decisions. But now it itself is used for the benefit of certain interest groups.
The public is not constituted of individuals any more; it is made of organized communities
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who exert their influence on the debates held in the public sphere through systematic use of
institutional coercion.
In Nancy Frasers Rethinking the Public Sphere, we find a critique of Habermas
approach to and definition of the public sphere. Fraser argues that to theorize the limits of the
existing late capitalistic democracy, Habermas theory needs to undergo critical questioning
and reconstruction. That will also help to conceptualize new and alternative modes of
democracy which is urgently needed in todays world. Frasers problem with Habermas
starts when the latter does not conceptualize a new post-bourgeoisie model of the public
sphere. He also fails to adequately address some problematic structural assumptions
underlying the bourgeoisie model.
I have discussed before, Habermas account of the structural transformation of the public
sphere. Fraser offers an alternative account of this, based on some revisionist historiographic
developments. Revisionist scholars like Joan Landes, Mary Ryan and Geoff Eley have argued
that despite appearances of full accessibility, one of the foundations official public sphere
was built on is a principle of exclusions. Landes say that the main exclusion is done on the
basis of gender and masculinist gender constructs were integral to the formation of the
Republic public sphere (in post-revolution France). Eley takes this argument further by
including Germany and England with France and also saying that in addition to gender, class-
related exclusions also happened. Here, Fraser points out that Habermas idealization of the
liberal public sphere fails to account for this irony that a discourse of publicity touting
accessibility, rationality, and the suspension of status hierarchies is itself deployed as a
strategy of distinction. Fraser admirably points out that Habermas ended up idealizing the
liberal public sphere because he does not pay any attention to the non-liberal, non-
bourgeoisie public sphere that existed. Mary Ryan, the other revisionist scholar Fraser
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mentions, concludes that the public sphere rested on a class and gender-based notion of
publicity and the exclusion of women from it was an ideological stand.
So the exclusions and conflicts that appeared as accidental trappings from his (Habermas)
perspective, in the revisionists view become constitutive (of the public sphere). Thus the
public sphere as presented by Habermas rather acted as a vehicle for political domination
through the construction of consent. The revisionist deconstruction of public, according to
Fraser, problematizes the following four assumptions central to this bourgeoisie masculinist
concept of the public sphere:
1. Societal equality is not a necessary pre-requisite for existence of political democracy.
2. A single public sphere is better for democracy than multiple publics.
3. In the public sphere, deliberation about private issues and interests are undesirable as
opposed to discussion about common interests.
4. A functional and democratic public sphere requires a sharp distinction between civil
society and state.
Fraser suggests alternatives to all the four assumptions. In place of the first two points, she
insists on a nexus of multiple public spheres formed under subaltern counter-publics or
egalitarian conditions. In such a case, the public sphere becomes a structured setting of
deliberation among many publics. She argues that the concept of plural publics is also
suitable for a classless yet multi-cultural structure where discussion and deliberation across
cultures can happen. Talking about the third assumption, she says that the idea of common
interests in the name of public good actually renders voiceless the private concerns of
minorities like womens. This happens because the common is made up of the powerful
people in the society and the public is defined in such a way as to make interests of the
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minority (not necessarily numerical minority, but with respect to the dominant class in
economy and gender) excluded from the public and included in the private sphere. This
definition thus becomes oppressive. In the end, Fraser critiques the final assumption by
concluding that Habermas weakens the concept of the public sphere by positing it at a far too
great distance from the state and decision-making authorities, thus rendering it incapable of
influencing the decision-making process. In Frasers opinion, this weakness can be mended if
strong public systems replace the weak public sphere. For example, a parliamentary structure
or institutions managed by the public like self-governed jobs and residential communities
and other hybrid forms are stronger alternatives as they leave the decision-making to public
sphere discourses.
Thus Nancy Fraser successfully modifies Habermas theorization of the public sphere
according to the needs of democratic system in a late-capitalistic society. Now let us turn to
Talal Asad.
Talal Asad, in his insightful article on the Islamic-headscarf-ban affair in France, reflects on
the changing nature of public sphere. At the outset, he makes clear that public is defined as
opposed to private. The public sphere, much as Habermas said, is the intermediary space
between the state and the matters of daily life. He also agrees to Habermas point that the
concept of the public sphere was vital to the emergence of liberal democracy. His central
argument revolves around the fact that essential to that formation al so is the political
doctrine of secularism. He reflects on the possible meanings of the term secularism and
how it is defined in a liberal democratic public sphere and to what extent that definition is
followed and executed. Habermas has idealized the liberal mode of public sphere by positing
it as a perfectly accessible (by all) and rational domain and has said that it had utopian
potential which was not fulfilled. But Asads essay trumps these claims. Well discuss that in
the following pages.
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The separation between religion and politics, with politics getting assigned to the public
sphere while religion gets relegated to the private sphere, was a very important step. This step
was deemed necessary because of the concept that rational discourse can only take place (in
the public sphere) if that space is not dominated by religion. The public space was ideally
considered as a secular domain. Asad visualises the public sphere as a space where certain
groups of subjects of the state are made to be morally autonomous as long as they are socially
responsible.
In 2003, a controversy bubbled in France about whether Muslim women should be allowed to
wear headscarves to public schools. The opinions against letting this happen were fuelled by
the anxiety that the secular personality of the state of France was being distorted by the
display of the headscarf (which people took as a symbol of Islam) since a states personality
is expressed through particular signs, even those attached to the individuals it represented and
owed it allegiance to. A government commission of enquiry called the Stasi commission was
set up to investigate into this affair. They submitted a report that led to the ban of displaying
of conspicuous religious signs like crosses, kippas and headscarves in public schools.
At this point, Asad tries to trace the origin of the secular state. Towards the end of the
sixteenth century, the states of Western Christendom decided that the religion of the ruler
would be taken as the official religion of the subjects. This was introduced in an attempt to
solve religious warfare by the adoption of a political scheme. But this only gave the state
sovereign authority to decide upon the definition of religious tolerance and even who were
deserving of religious tolerance. Thus this agenda did not stop religious and political
persecution.
Asad thinks that the modern French state also abides by this law even though they claim to be
a secular government looking after a largely irreligious people. This leads the author to the
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question that what are signs of the presence of religion in a society. The Stasi commission
separated discrete religious signs from conspicuous religious signs and allowed public
display of the former while banning the latter. Now the Muslims who protested against the
ban argued that wearing the headscarf is a Muslim girls religious duty and if that right is
taken away from them, it is a case where the state takes away the rights of a particular section
of its subjects the right to practise their own religion. I think that this implies that the state is
interfering in private sphere because it is there that religion is supposed t o belong. Thus in
the cases where the public overlaps with the private (like the wearing of headscarf to public
schools which by French law are secular institutes), government takes over. So the relation
between politics and religion becomes asymmetrical as religion is not supposed to intervene
in politics as it is a private issue but politics can meddle with religious rights of people. Here
Nancy Frasers argument against Habermas (that the public spheres obsession with
common causes and the complete exclusion of private concerns ultimately negatively
affects the dominated minorities whose interests are relegated as private and thus are
neglected) becomes all the more relevant. To go back to the Stasi commission report, it saw
itself as presented with a difficult decision between two forms of individual liberty- that of
girls whose desire was to wear the headscarf ( a minority) and that of girls who would rather
not. The commission gave freedom of choice to the latter group on majoritarian grounds.
This violates two rights: 1. The rights of the minority. 2. The religious freedom of every
citizen which is their inalienable right, irrespective of what the majority prefers. Thus
although the report insists that political power and religious choices are mutually exclusive
seta, the relation between the two remains unequal, as pointed out before. Asad concludes
that this asymmetry is a measure of sovereign power.
Defenders of the ban argue that the French state is justifiably reluctant to acknowledge group
identity within a Republic. This happens because of Habermas assumption that the public
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sphere is a singular entity. Here Asad also brings in another argument that the French state
was never a society comprised of individual persons with collective rights; instead, French
citizens have enjoyed rights by virtue of their association with particular religious groups.
Asad then cites examples to prove this point, but we dont need to go into that now. Let us
leap over to the questions that Asad identifies as excluded from the formation of a secular
private sphere. He says that this (Habermas) concept of a secular private sphere fails when
confronted with subjects who inhabit several public spheres across national and cultural
boundaries (like the French Jews who relate to their Israeli counterparts and the French
Muslims who are said to sympathise with the Palestinians).
Asad contradicts Habermas concept of public sphere by concluding that the public sphere
in modern secular societies is more than a space of communication and debate and is
comprised of citizen subjects for whom it is not easy to achieve a divorce of politics from
religion. The author feels that is the reason liberal states impose disciplinary laws on their
peoples in the name of secularism.
Now it is time to take a look at Sudipta Kavirajs notion of the public sphere and see whether
it is compatible with Habermas concept.
Sudipta Kaviraj, in his brilliant article Filth and the Public Sphere: Concepts and Practices
about Space in Kolkata, takes a refreshing look at the way public spaces are conceptualised
in the colonial city of Kolkata. Basically what comes out of his essay is that the way Western
societies look at public spaces and public sphere and the way Indians look at them are
completely different. So Habermas theories are not applicable to India.
Kaviraj starts with a simple anecdote about a photo published in a Calcutta newspaper which
shows a few people urinating in front of a sign prohibiting the act of urination in that place.
The author interprets this little act of disobedience as a deep-rooted thing and not merely an
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impulse. The economically, educationally and class-wise backward people rarely get any
chance to act against the middle class and these small acts of insubordination are a means to
increase their self-worth to themselves. The middle-class bourgeoisie idea of public space
and the lower class idea of it are also completely different and the idea that a city has to be
clean as opposed to villages is a very bourgeoisie idea inherited from the colonial masters.
The poor were alienated from such influences and they in fact got access to public places like
public parks pretty late in the day and that too mainly through the Partition and other
population influxes in Kolkata. Kaviraj argues that the poor got access to the public spaces by
erecting a boundary of filth around them, which the middle class cringed from.
Kaviraj suggests that the pre-colonial Indian concepts of inside/outside, apna/paraya,
ghare/baire (title of a Tagore novel) changed vastly when it encountered the West and the
mapping of the Western ideas brought about an amalgamation to which the enlightened
middle and upper classes were privy. The poor and the rigid, upper-caste conservative crowd
tried to stay well away from the colonial influence and in doing so, tightened the boundaries
of the private against the public which they interpreted as the polluted or corrupt outside.
The middle and upper class people, who were in contact with the British for serving them,
sort of modified and Anglicised the Indian notions of marriage to companionship. But even
their households were afraid of dealings with the outside, which sometimes coincided with
the public for them. The poor and the lower classes were basically connected to them by
serving them in various forms and capacities. They came in daily contact with each other but
the middle class public sphere was really inaccessible to these people in the way Habermas
visualises. They maintained a safe distance from each other and did not overshadow each
others social circles.
Thus it is not possible to apply Habermas theory to Bengal. Habermas says that the public
sphere is that which is external to the bourgeoisie family and conceptualises the public as a
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reciprocation of the private. Application of this thesis results in a negative paradox. The
Western sense of the public and the way it is intrinsically and contradictorily bound with
the bourgeoisie notion of the private, cannot be applied to the historical transformations (of
the public sphere) in Bengal.Habermas proposition or even Frasers revisionist model is
completely different to the way public sphere evolved in Bengal, as has been briefly
discussed in the previous paragraphs. For the poor and destitute people, public came to be
defined only as a negative of private, without any value of its own: a space from which they
cannot be evicted by somebodys property rights over them.
To quote Kaviraj, to the poor, the nation of which they were now an indispensible and
sovereign part was a more distant tenuous imagination. Since this imagination is primarily
created in schools through the relentless repetitiveness of the curricula forms of historical
memory, and the destitute are deprived of that essential constituent of citizenship, ... they do
not share the lower middle classes mode of living in history.
Thus Nancy Fraser, Talal Asad and Sudipta Kaviraj all contribute to critique Habermas
theorization of the public sphere and put forward alternative understandings of the notion.
b) Discuss the enlightenment idea of the self and the ways in which Freud, Lacan and
Foucault have fundamentally critiqued it. What different ways of thinking about
subjectivity do they offer?
Answer:
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Enlightenment ideas of the self:
The enlightenment period was an intellectual movement during the seventeenth and
eighteenth century which was a significant turning point in Western philosophy and thought.
This period stretched from the time of Francis Bacon (1561-1626) to the French Revolution
of 1789. The philosophical ideas that emerged at this time can be said to be in reaction to the
previous strands of thought and also to condition of the contemporary world. It was at this
time that subjectivity emerged as a major concept and subject was considered to be a free,
rational and autonomous body. Enlightenment cannot be taken as a homogeneous or single
entity and there are contradictions within it. The most important theories regarding the self
that were put forward during this era belonged to the three lading thinkers of the time:
Descartes, Rousseau and Kant.
Descartes epistemology is in relation to the meaning of the self: the meaning of the word
I. His most famous statement remains Cogito ergo sum. It means I think therefore I
am. Descartes held that the self is the foundation of the world around us and it is this
self that creates our knowledge, experiences and feelings. His theory of selfhood is based
on the individuals conception and understanding of reality. The other thing that he stresses
on is the importance of conscious thought over any other impulse. (He wrote: I am a real
being and really exist; but what sort ofbeing? As I said, a conscious being.) Descartes also
emphasises that the self which is constructed by the use of ones rational faculties can be used
to order the world.
Jean-Jacques Rousseauwas a later-day Enlightenment thinker. His work is situated at the
intersection of the rationality that Enlightenment thinkers so emphasised on and the stress on
sensibilities and feelings which emerged out of Romanticism, the late eighteenth and early
nineteenth century movement. In his Confessions (1781), Rousseau writes extensively about
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himself, his personal experiences and thoughts. He says that he is different (in a good way or
bad) than all other individuals on this Earth. I feel that here he is not talking about only
himself. He is talking about how every person is different from every other. Thus each
persons experiences are worth noting down as it has ...no precedent, and which, once
complete, will have no imitator. This sufficiency of individualism is a key thought in
Rousseaus works, especially Confessions. Rousseau believes that a human child when born,
is in a state of perfection which is then distorted by their encounters with society and history.
Humans themselves are responsible for this deterioration. The goal of human life, therefore,
is to go back to that pure and hallowed individuality with which one was born because this is
the only way through which one can liberate the self from prejudice, error and suffering.
Thus we see that Rousseaus thought deviated from Descartes at a fundamental point: while
the former says that the I or self derives meaning because of the experiences of an
individual, the latter says that it is our conscious attempts to take meaning out of our
experiences that attaches meaning to the self.
Immanuel Kantwas a German philosopher who appeared on the scene at a still later date.
His Critique of Pure Reason written towards the end of the eighteenth century is a very
important work on Enlightenment. He also wrote a famous response to a magazine question,
titled Was ist Aufklrung? (What is Enlightenment?). In it he says that enlightenment is
mans liberation from his self-imposed immaturity. This immaturity, he says, lies in mans
lack-of-desire to use his own understanding without the tutelage of others. We know that our
world is formed by the perceptions that we make about our surroundings. We look at
something form our own representations of it. But Kant argues that before any of this
happens, there must be something that is present to do the viewing or the perceiving. This is
the self. Thus any dealing we might have with the world is channelled through this self.
When we are communicating these observations to ourselves or others, we say (or even if we
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dont, we mean it) I think... and thus I is present in all consciousnesses. This cannot
happen if the self is not self-conscious. Thus, according to Kant, if we are to make any sense
out of our dealings with our surroundings, we must be conscious of our own selves. This
must happen evenbefore we have a sense of our I as different from everybody elses. Thus
he differs from Rousseau. According to Kant, subjectivity can have content only through an
awareness of the world and this awareness, in turn, comes from an awareness of the self.
Thus Enlightenment made the individual an issue and it is this concept that the twentieth
century thinkers (like Freud, Lacan and Foucault) have tried to interrogate.
Freud, Lacan and Foucaults ideas of Subjectivity and how they differ from the
Enlightenment thinkers:
Nineteenth century fiction began to reject the Kantian idea of the human consciousness being
the definitive factor in an individuals relationship with the world. Writers ranging from R.L.
Stevenson (Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde) to Mary Shelley (Frankenstein) began to tell the
stories of horror when the rational mind could not control the irrational impulses of the
human mind and was eventually overpowered by the latter.
It was at this juncture of thought that Freudappeared in the scene. He did not reject all
aspects of Enlightenment thought but differed with it in so far as the essentialist ideas
presented by it. He did not agree with the Enlightenment idea of the centred, unified self.
Freud brought to the fore his theories of the unconscious. The unconscious mind comprises
our biologically-driven instincts like sex and aggression (eros and thanatos). It is buried under
our conscious mind and we are unaware of it because of its disturbing and irrational nature.
The only manifestation of this unconscious mind comes through the most trivial of our
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behaviours or gestures. It is beyond the control of our conscious mind. Thesubconscious is
the layer that resides between the conscious and the unconscious. We can be aware of it
easily. Freuds works explain how the topography of the subject is built. He says that the
subject is the result of an intersection of its set of dominant familial and social relations. Thus
he says that the subject is not autonomous or natural or innate. The other thing he says is
that the primary contributing elements to the production of subjectivity are the gender roles
the child sees around himself (not herself because Freud concentrates on masculinity and the
development of the male child. According to him, the female child also suffers from a variety
of the Oedipus complex: she notices hr lack of a penis and thinks that she is already castrated.
She tries to compensate for this through giving birth to a child. Freuds notoriety in the
postmodern world is largely due to these anti-feminist ideas about the female subjectivity.)
and their sexual identifications. This is famously known as the Oedipal model. Thus he
opposes the Enlightenment idea that a child is born into an unaffected and natural world
which he then perceives according to the rationalities of his conscious mind. Instead he
argues that the world into which the child is born is already structured and ordered according
to the dominant culture. Freud divides the self into three parts: id, ego and superego. Here id
is supposed to be entirely unconscious while the other two can have conscious, preconscious
and unconscious aspects. These differentiations lead to the rejection of the idea that the
subject is centrally controlled and defined by a single, fully self-aware, autonomous identity.
Freud, in essence, decentred the self by theorizing that it is fundamentally divided.
Now let us turn to Jacques Lacan(19011981), the French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist
whose works can be considered as a bridge between Freudian and postmodern
psychoanalysis. He extended Freud's critique of the centred, single, and uninhibited
autonomous self or consciousness. Lacans most famous interpretation is that the
unconscious is structured like a language. He rejected the idea that language was the means
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of communication and instead said that it (language) is the very material of which
subjectivity is built. He himself tried to use language in a very self-conscious manner. He
reverses the assumption that language arises out of and for our purposes. Lacan argues that
language pre-dates our existence and it is us who must locate ourselves in the field of
language if we are to find a place for ourselves in the human world. Thus subjectivity has to
emerge in a world where language is a pre-existing structure or system (as opposed to the
unaffected and unencumbered world of the Enlightenment child). Lacan calls the stage of
development of subjectivity in a child, the mirror stage. This stage, occurring between six
to eighteen months of the childs age occurs when the child sees her/himself in the mirror
(could be an actual mirror or could be seeing another child). Before that it has no concept of
self as a separate entity. Everything that it touches- including itself- is sensed as a
continuum of a limitless being. There is nothing external to the body since there is no sense
of limit. This is the Freudian pre-Oedipal stage when there is no subjectivity. It is only after
or during the mirror stage that child identifies spatially and goes from having a fragmented
body-image to a form of its wholeness, its unity. Thus subjectivity is developed as the
wholeness of the self is negatively-defined as an anti-thesis to the concept of otherness or
external forms/beings/things. But this new understanding of the self has ironically come from
the outside through some external image. Thus the subject does not define itself but is
defined by some other. Lacan beautifully put it by saying that the subject is the discourse
of the other. According to Lacan, the subject only exists as a tension between the imaginary
and the symbolic. Thus subjectivity cannot be autonomous or spontaneous. Both Freud and
Lacan have reached this same conclusion. But they vary at one basic point: Freud says the
subject is determined by anatomy (Anatomy is Destiny), but in Lacanian thought this
gender inequity and power struggle take place in the premise of language rather than
anatomy. Lacan says that our fantasy about an autonomous and self-generating subject (the
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imaginary) acts as a shield from reality: a safe place which our deepest desire drives us to
reach, yet which will always remain elusive to us.
Michel F oucaultis the next thinker we must turn to. He is popularly regarded as an anti-
Enlightenment thinker, but I have some arguments against that. He was definitely an anti-
essentialist theorist. Foucault refused to accept the idea of anything natural or spontaneous:
something that is the essence of human nature beyond history, culture and tradition. His
pronounced that the subject is a construct. This is something that Lacan also said, as we have
seen. But Foucault deviates from Lacan by saying that subjectivity is a factor of the power
structure omnipresent in society, instead of being a factor of the gender and sexuality roles of
family relationships. Foucault differs from the psychoanalytic understanding of power in that
he dislikes the latters attempt to define the true nature of the subject completely and finally.
He thinks that this is a totalitarian approach which ultimately collaborates with power.
Foucault seeks to differ with the Enlightenment (Rousseaus) idea of self-sufficiency and a
true self that can be recovered if the inauthenticity of day-to-day social life is banished and
man lives through pure and correct language structure, social group or personal style.
Foucault writes the exact opposite of this idea: The individual is not to be conceived as a
sort of elementary nucleus, a primitive atom, a multiple and inert material on which power
comes to fasten or against which it happens to strike, and in so doing subdues or crushes
individuals. Instead, he argues that power is the cause for which certain bodies, gestures,
desires, discourses are identified as individuals. It is through this constitution of individuals
that power expresses itself. The individual which power has constituted is at the same time
its vehicle. We can now see that Rousseau says that the unencumbered individual (which
produces itself) comes first and then power pollutes and corrupts it whereas Foucault
maintains that power comes first and power is the reason our individuality (the individual
body, gestures and language we use) is the way it is. Foucault accuses Rousseaus model of
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being responsible for the ability of power to conceal itself and thus work more effectively
than ever. Kant and Hegel maintained that attaining self-consciousness was the highest goal
and destiny of human existence. Foucault challenges this notion. He says that by turning on
himself to achieve self-consciousness and the unique truth of the self, man is basically falling
prey to the existing power structures which want him to be forever aware of its desires. This
is because the subject being a result of power cannot think freely. It is not his own desires and
truths and consciousness that he is seeking, but the power structures.
Foucault was heavily influenced by German philosopher Nietzsche and especially his theory
that the subject is formed through a cross between power and language. Foucault thinks that
modern society has its own power structures which are different from those of pre-modern
societies. Modern power structures are constructed through institutions of prisons, hospitals,
barracks, schools and factories rather than through royalty or aristocracy. These are built for
the better management of the public by the power. As a result, the individuals interior life is
no more his own, to be brought to public attention at his own discretion. It is permanently on
display for psychological or sociological analysis and the truths these analyses bring out
subjugate the individuals. For instance, irrespective of whether we commit a crime or not, we
are subordinates to the psychological and sociological theories about crime and the criminal.
The criminal is a subject of whose evidence we look for in ourselves.
Now to come back to what I mentioned in the first paragraph, Foucault did not completely
reject every aspect of Enlightenment thought. In his later life, he wrote an essay called What
is Enlightenment? (obviously drawing upon Kants famous article) In this piece, he proposes
that there is only one way the subject can deal with his situation in the modern world: this is
by becoming conscious of the self that power constructs for them. Only by becoming
conscious of this can the people aim to manufacture an alternative (albeit as a fancy) to the
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conventions modern life try to normalise. Foucaults idea of self-creation is that the subject
should produce itself endlessly as a reaction to is culture, tradition and history.
These are the ways in which Freud, Foucault and Lacan respond to and present alternative
ideas of the Enlightenment concepts of selfhood.
d) William Mazzarella engages with Walter Benjamins work to critique the
totalization narrative of commodification and to outline a different way of
understanding the phenomenon of advertising and globalization. Discuss.
Answer:
First let us look at Walter Benjamins The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical
Reproduction because this is the work that Mazzarella critiques in his Shoveling Smoke.
In this essay, Benjamin discusses a change in perceptions (in the modes of existence of
humans) and its influences on the advancing fields of photography and other visual media
that have happened in the twentieth century. Our point of view and outlook on the modes of
visual representations have changed entirely over time and its consequences remain to be
seen. One of the questions asked here is whether there can be a universal, totalized
perception.
Benjamin here tries to find out the effect that modernity has had on the work of art.
Technological modernity has brought about film and photography. Benjamin thinks that there
has been a loss of aura because works of art began to be reproduced mechanically. This
aura is defined by the author as the uniqueness of non-replicable piece of art. By this
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definition, a photograph cannot have the aura that a painting has because the painting is
authentic whereas a photograph is the visual replica of another image.
Benjamin then talks about the significance of this loss of aura. For him, this loss of the aura is
equivalent to the loss of a mark of singular authority. But what replaces this void left by the
aura that is no more? How do mechanical reproductions of the work of art manage to fill up
this nullity? The author suggests that a tension occurs because of this friction between the
new and old modes of creation.
With respect to mass consumption, this liberation achieved through the loss of authority is
not necessarily conditional. For instance, the cameraman interferes with the way the spectator
perceives an image. What the eyes of the camera or the point of view of the cameraman does,
can never be achieved by a painter through his painting. This is because the photographer
dictates where to look and what to look for. So it is totalitarian in this respect. It guides the
viewers to a specific side of a story while leaving other sides out. The aura as Benjamin puts
it, now has to move to mythological spaces which can only be recovered by a genius. The
original loses its mystic as anyone can buy a ticket to a gallery or a theatre. This makes way
for a different appreciation of art but also for new kinds of distraction, guided by the
cameraman for example. The aura ensured a distance between a particular work of art and
man. But in its absence, man consumes the object and vice-versa. This is the reason why
mass consumption prospers at the loss of aura. This loss also creates a space for politicizing
art, i.e. it gives us the scope to raise questions about the politics of the mechanical
reproduction of art and whether that is good or bad.
Benjamin suggests that the way people consider a screening and even the character of the
film have changed so drastically that the audience doesnt individually perceive the film.
Instead, the film perceives the individuals. The contradiction of the physical inertia of rest
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while watching the moving images inertia of motion, shifts the entire perspective of the
audience. Because of the reproducible nature of the film, the audiences subordination to it
increases. According to Benjamin, this is but a symbol of something horrible happening. The
concept of subjectivity also changes in the new technologically modern age and the author
looks into that matter as well. Benjamin wonders what happens to the aesthetics of art in the
absence of its aura.
In Shoveling Smoke, William Mazzarella looks to critique the teleological totalization
narrative that is a dominant discourse on photographically mediated modernities. This
work by Mazzarella constitutes an exciting examination of globalised consumerism within
the framework of the Bombay advertising industry. The author focuses on the negotiation
between the global and the local, mostly from the time of the Indian independence
movement. He also writes about the role played by consumerism and advertising in the
production of a local Indian identity. This work casts light on the intricate relationship
between culture and consumerism.
Mazzarellas explanation of the commodity image is partially written as a vociferous critique
against the totalization narrative which is equally present in marketing theory, Marxist, and
structuralist literature. This narrative considers the subsumption of concrete particulars to
abstract universals to be a pre-condition of both commodification and the mechanical
reproduction of images (commodity image or otherwise). As an alternative explanation,
Mazzarella instead emphasizes on their firm involvement with public culture and locates a
continuous oscillation between influence and emotion, or between desire to own the
commodity and the brand image enclosed within the aura of the image. Branding can be
said to be the annexe of corporate command over the potential of this aura and is thus
reminiscent of the old anthropological connotation of gift (keeping-while-giving) as
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companies and agencies try to increase the scope of consumerism while at the same time
fighting to preserve general ideological control.
Totalization narrative is a narrative which talks about a world where everything is included
within the umbrella of a single history without any exceptions or deviations. It is even
inclusive of all forms of otherness. Mazzarella engages with Benjamins workand critiques
such a totalizing narrative. He also responds to Benjamins work on photography and opines
that Benjamin comes closest to a dialectical reading of the photographic image in the sense
that Mazzarella suggests. Benjamin talks about the way in which certain images may, au
contraire our habitual hypotheses, serve very reactionary purposes through their concretion
and depending on the image and the way in which it is used. According to Benjamin the most
important part the aura plays is through the distance it maintains. This distance occurs due
to the mystification of the authentic image and the boundaries of exclusivity it constructs
around itself. Benjamin proposes that attributing aura to image-objects means projecting the
assumptions of social reciprocity onto the relationship between people and these image-
objects. (Social reciprocity model basically says that positive action by a person towards
another person reaps rewards in reciprocal positive action and vice-versa in case of negative
action.) To quote Benjamin, to perceive the aura of the object we look at means to invest it
with the ability to look at us in return. Thus according to Benjamin, aura both heightens
distance and produces conditions of social reciprocity and the advent of photography only
increases this contradiction. For Benjamin, photography acts as a de-auratizing agent that
begets closeness by abolishing distance. But ambivalently, he also implicates photographs in
the manufacture and preservation of the auratic distance. This dialectic makes it possible for
Benjamin to advance towards expressing his thoughts on photography in a Post-Marxist
historical materialism strain. The diminishing distance between people and art that
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photography brought about was coupled with the defamiliarization of the everyday world
of instrumental purpose and objective knowledge.
Mazzarella admits that the part of Benjamins argument that mostly inspires him is his
conclusion that the dialectic of aura holds true for all the domain of visual representation,
including advertising (commodity images). Advertising, according to Mazzarella depends on
an incessant movement between reactionary mythologies and daily-life possibilities. In
contradiction to the totalization narrative, these two opposite points are not one entity but
they remain entangled with each other in an unsteady and uncomfortable companionship.
This dialectic oscillation of shock and domestication is an essential feature of the
transmission of commodity-images.
Thus William Mazzarella engages with Walter Benjamin to critique the totalization narrative
and offers an alternative concept of the globalized advertising industry.
Section II
Indian Premier League: The Culture and Politics of Cricket in India
Introduction:
The most commonly understood concept about modern India is that it runs on the three C s:
Cricket, Cinema and Corruption. The inclusion of cricket in Indian pop culture is surprising
to say the least. The most recent and conclusive stamp of mass culture on cricket (if it needed
any further certification) is the annual cricket event that is being held in India since 2008: the
Indian Premier League (IPL). In this essay, first Ill briefly talk about the inclusion of cricket
in Indian popular culture and the wider social implications of cricket in India; then Ill refer
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to Adorno and Horkheimers essay on culture industry to critique the event of IPL; lastly,
Ill conclude with my opinion on the effect of IPL on Indian society and culture.
Inclusion and the Place of cricket in modern Indian popular culture:
The classical construct of cricket can be easily identified by some markers: the stiff upper
lip attitude, the placid and polite hand-clapping, the obedience and reverence accorded to the
high priest of the game in a long white coat and an abstruse set of laws nobody can follow.
These markers in fact signify prototypical Englishness and used to stand for the British
Empire and for abiding by the laws, even if one considered the law-makers to be dictatorial
or stupid. This construct is invalid now because cricket and its societies have undergone vast
changes. India is now acknowledged as the new home of cricket. Ashish Nandy famously
said that cricket is an Indian game accidentally discovered by the British. Instead of the
upper and upper middle class exclusivity of the game, it has now been completely absorbed
by all sections of the society (provided, of course, that everyone can afford the expensive
cricket kits; but even where they cannot, crude bats are hacked out of tree branches and stack
of bricks used as wickets with a tennis or even a table-tennis ball serving as the cricket
equivalent). Cricket has now lost its initial class implications and has become- at least on the
surface of it- accessible to all classes in spite of the obvious middle-class dominance.
If we want to look at the history of any sport, well find that there are two major approaches
to it:
1. To concentrate only on its practice, the background of its patron and players, theevolution of its associations and tournaments, and on how it pays or does not pay for
itself. (Guha, 1998)
2. To view sport as a rational idiom, a sphere of activity which expresses, inconcentrated form, the values, prejudices, divisions and unifying symbols of a
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society. (Guha, 1998) It also argues for situating sports in its wider societal context
and only then proceeding to analyse it.
In colonial India, when the sport was first played in India, it was initially confined only to the
British. Then it slowly spread through the Indian princes because it gave them social
hierarchical power as playing cricket was a sign of the elite and the ruling classes and also
because they could get closer to the British by participating in the sport. Under their
patronage, different religious groups (starting with the Parsees and spreading to the Hindus
and Muslims through political and royal indulgence) started playing the sport and in a process
of cultural osmosis, it went on being absorbed by the subsequent lower classes. Initially it
was imposed by the colonisers on the colonised as a measure of the masters imperial power.
The popularity of cricket went on increasing until when it became a mode of expression of
subaltern mobilisation and cultural pride. Slowly, subaltern groups grew into and excelled at
the sport and it eventually became a symbol of challenge as victorious colonial cricketers
could claim a share of the values that the British claimed were inculcated by cricket. Beating
the imperial ruler on the field therefore buttressed claims to equal worth off it. (Scalmer,
2007) Slowly cricket became a vehicle of articulating nationalism. Supporting the national
team has been historically seen as a unifying factor for a nation divided over individual and
group identities. For example, an Indian Muslim has to support the Indian national cricket
team over Pakistan as a proof of his loyalty and allegiance to the nation; otherwise (s)he will
be taken as an anti-nationalist.
Apart from the class-based osmosis of cricket, the caste-history is also very interesting. It
would suffice here to say that the lower castes acquired access to this game in India through a
long history of struggle covering the early twentieth century. The Bombay Quadrangular
Tournament played a big part in and played host to a lot of drama regarding these. Today, in
cricket as in all other spheres in India, class, caste and gender-based biases are predominant
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but it is undeniable the sport has come a long way with regard to these minority-based
exclusions.
Critique of the IPL, in Reference to Adorno andHorkheimers Public Culture:
The IPL has played a huge role in changing the currency of Indian domestic cricket and it has
also played a key part in changing the cultural politics of cricket (both playing and
viewership) in India. It is a copybook case of being a product of the culture industry. To start
with analysing it, let us look at what Adorno and Horkheimer say in their seminal essay The
Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception.
They begin by challenging the sociological theory that loss of support of religion, dissolution
of pre-capitalism, and an increase in technology leading to social differentiation are the
reasons behind causing cultural chaos. They argue for the uniformity of culture. The system
of culture functions as a corporation of artists and politicians across every kind of
government in all countries. The cities are converging towards the city centres irrespective of
how poorly they are made in the rush. The metropolis and its structure ensure that the
individuals are completely dictated by and subject to capitalistic power. Housing structure in
a city is very close (not to mention multi-storied apartments) and this results in the loss of
individual culture, tradition and identity. The films which represent our culture are but
business enterprises behind pretence of art. The culture industry is defined as a way of
mass reproduction of goods to meet similar mass demands but the catch is that the standards
are fixed by manipulation and retroactive need instead ofthe consumers actual demands. It
also echoes Says law in economics which state that supply creates its own demand. Thus,
for every IPL, the number of matches goes on increasing even though public attention is
falling (slightly). The logic behind this is that if there is a match on in the television, people
will watch it. Adorno and Horkheimer also state that the people controlling the economy
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possess technological hegemony as well, thus there is no way one can avoid looking at an
IPL advertisement (print or electronic) if one is to participate in the public sphere. The use of
technology helps to create standardisation and mass production and it gradually turns the
consumer from an active participant to a passive, freedom-less subject. The culture industry
leaves the customer dispensable because one customer can be replaced by another (a
television viewership can be immediately replaced by another and a stadium seat for an IPL
match can be sold to another person instead of the one). Thus the audience is tricked into
thinking that they are an integral part of the whole procedure when they are not effective and
active members of the whole IPL culture. Even the cricketers who are at least thought to be
very active parts of the whole tournament are replaceable commodities. The auctioning
process of the cricketers show that nobody is indispensable and often false hype is created
around certain players, whose cricketing prowess can be called into question, so as to benefit
the people in power. In the culture industry, every free expression is taken as a protest against
the institution. The England Cricket Board (ECB) which has refused to let its contract-bound
players participate in the IPL if it clashes with their domestic or international schedule is
regularly denounced as elitist and backward. While these accusations might be correct, the
grounds for making them are not. The culture industry, as the authors put it, leaves no space
for imagination or even spontaneity. Automatic responses of the audience are stifled and
substituted by mechanical and mass-produced artificial emotions which are dictated
according to the terms of the people in power. Like in a tele-serial or movie where the
audiences are given cues to laugh or cry or feel angry or amused or romantic by the
background music, even in the IPL this is done through using the cheerleaders and the
announcers at the stadium. Modern culture is responsible for forming the economic area
where art is produced. The only method to break out of this factory line is to be a deviant
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from the norm so as to be noticed by the industry (and may be subsequently pulled back into
the system).
A very important point that Adorno and Horkheimer makes here is that the upper class
capitalists maintain their power and control by making the lower classes insist on the very
ideology which enslaves them. In case of the IPL, the lower class people are being made to
believe that the tournament is doing wonders to the economy of the country and is helping it
to earn a lot of revenues, thus ultimately helping their economy. It is also touted as a form of
distractive entertainment to make people forget the grinds of daily life and immerse
themselves into the glamorous world of the IPL. The more people get insights into the
glamour world, the more people want it because that is the way they satiate their own
voyeuristic nature and unfulfilled desires. But the promise of the culture industry is a
mirage created by people in positions of power. The industry only represses everything and
everybody into a systematic idolization of the whole. Even the people in power are walled
off inside their own systems. The process and industry of culture feeds on itself. The people
subjected to the dominion of the culture industry are made to think that they are free to think
and choose for themselves; but they dont realise that the choices are already made for them
because their limited options are the ones provided by this same industry.
Conclusion:
The IPL has brought about a significant change in that it has expanded cricket viewership
beyond the traditionally male-dominated structures. The blend of non-cricketing elements
with the cricketing ones in IPL has attracted new viewers. One reason why cricket was
considered as the game of the upper classes is the huge amount of time one game takes for
completion. The economically insecure could never have so much time for leisure. But the
short format of the IPL has leaped over this hurdle. But it would be very wrong to say that
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IPL is bridging socio-economic or gender-based gaps. In fact it is doing the exact opposite.
The IPL has contributed hugely to make cricket a less egalitarian space than even before. The
very urban, metropolitan, capitalistic, bourgeoisie, exclusive and yet mechanical nature of
this tournament is against everything signifying equality.
REFERENCES:
1. Cashman, Richard I. Patrons, Players, and the Crowd: the Phenomenon of IndianCricket.New Delhi: Orient Longman, 1979.
2. Guha, Ramachandra. "Cricket and Politics in Colonial India." Past & Present 1998.161 (1998):155-90.
3. Scalmer, Sean. "Cricket, Imperialism And Class Domination." Working USA 10.4 (2007).4. The Bombay Quadrangular: Cricket as a Political Forum, Muneeb Ansari. Retrieved from the
following link:
http://www.academia.edu/1519536/The_Bombay_Quadrangular_Cricket_as_a_Politic
al_Forum_in_India
http://www.academia.edu/1519536/The_Bombay_Quadrangular_Cricket_as_a_Political_Forum_in_Indiahttp://www.academia.edu/1519536/The_Bombay_Quadrangular_Cricket_as_a_Political_Forum_in_Indiahttp://www.academia.edu/1519536/The_Bombay_Quadrangular_Cricket_as_a_Political_Forum_in_Indiahttp://www.academia.edu/1519536/The_Bombay_Quadrangular_Cricket_as_a_Political_Forum_in_Indiahttp://www.academia.edu/1519536/The_Bombay_Quadrangular_Cricket_as_a_Political_Forum_in_IndiaTop Related