South Asia NewsCenter for South Asian Studies

University of Hawai‘i Spring 2003

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak heldthe Citizen's Chair in the English

Department in Spring 2003. Herappointment was co-sponsored by theCenter for South Asian Studies,Rama Watumull DistinguishedVisiting Indian Scholar Program.During the semester, Prof. Spivakwas an active and vital part of theUniversity of Hawai‘i at Manoa,where she taught a graduate seminarthat was attended by students, facul-t y, and community members; gavepublic lectures on campus and in thecommunity; and was very generouswith her time in meeting with stu-dents, giving interviews, and participating in anti-warp r o t e s t s .

Her organized activities included:Teaching a graduate course for the English

Department on "Narratives of the Multiple Politics ofC u l t u r e " ;

Presenting a talk titled "Te r r o r," on January 24,2003, at the Art Auditorium of the University ofH a w a i ‘ i ;

Presenting a talk titled, "The Humanities in the 21stC e n t u r y,” on March 23 at the Honolulu Academy ofA r t s ;

Participating in a panel discussion titled, "Tw oWorlds Meeting: Lilikala Kame‘elehiwa and GayatriChakravorty Spivak, Conversations on IndigenousIssues and Settler Viewpoints"on April 15 at theKamakakuolani Center for Hawaiian Studies at theUniversity of Hawai‘i.The panel discussant wasCristina Bacchilega (Chair, English Department).

Delivering the keynote address for the annualCollege of Languages, Linguistics, and LiteratureGraduate Student Conference in April at theUniversity of Hawai‘i;

Delivering the keynote address for the A n n u a lSpring Symposium of the Center for South A s i a nStudies on "Film and Social Justice in South Asia," on

April 17;and participating in the book launch for

her most recent publication, Death of aD i s c i p l i n e, on April 23; at the University ofH a w a i ‘ i .

The following roundtable discussion tookplace a few days prior to professor Spivak’sMarch 23 presentation at the HonoluluAcademy of Arts, and not long before theUnited States went to war with Iraq. Presentwere Kapi‘olani Community College religioninstructor Eric Denton; Center for SouthAsian Studies director Monica Ghosh andjournalist Stu Dawrs.

Stu Dawrs (SD): What about "TheHumanities in the 21st Century" concerns you?

Gayatr i Spivak (GS): My basic topic is why it is nec-essary to strengthen the teaching of the humanities inthe United States. At a talk that I gave recently, I citedD r. Martin Luther King's 1967 speech on Vi e t n a m —"Beyond Vietnam"—where again and again what hesays is "I have to imagine the humanity of those whoare designated my enemies." And this ability to imag-ine is trained by the teaching in the humanities. Oncewe trivialize the teaching of the humanities, there is ahuge cultural loss.

Inside

Director’s Message.............................................2Faculty Profile.....................................................3Book Review: Death of a Discipline..................4Watumull Scholarship Recipients.......................6Fall Courses.........................................................7Spring Symposium..............................................8Faculty News.....................................................10

Death of a Discipline: A Roundtable Discussion onthe State of the Humanities

Continued on page 5

Dir ector’s Note

Spring in Reviewby Monica Ghosh

South Asia News 2

A loha! In the Fall newsletter I asked the ques-tion "What's going on?" This Spring I'd like to

ask the same question about the war on Iraq, eventhough I don't expect a credible answer anytimesoon. However, I will at least venture to answer thesame question at with regards to the activities andevents of the Center for SouthAsian Studies at the University ofHawai‘i this past semester.

As a big fan of UH volleyball,all semester long I was obsessedwith trying to convince GayatriChakravorty Spivak, who was theVisiting Citizen's Chair and theRama Watumull VisitingDistinguished Indian Scholar thissemster, to accompany me to agame. Even though I was unsuc-cessful in convincing professorSpivak to go to a volleyball game,her presence in Honolulu for theSpring semester was a huge boostfor the profile of South AsianStudies both on campus and in thecommunity (the details of heractivities are listed on page 1 ofthis newsletter).

Spring semester is always particularly busybecause it’s when the CSAS Spring Symposiumtakes place. This year’s topic — Film and SocialJustice in South Asia, along with the keynoteaddresses, graduate student and faculty participation— drew audiences from various disciplines and areasacross campus, generating the kind of exchange thatthe Center constantly seeks to promote.

This semester the Colloquium Series was alsorich with presenters. We were able to tap into theresources of the Rockefeller Fellowship on Genderand Globalization in Asia and the Pacific, which ismanaged by the office of Women's Research, to

bring scholars and faculty from the continent for asemester in Hawai‘i. Some of the South Asian spe-cialists participating in this program included JyotiPuri (Simmons College), Lamiya Karim (RiceUniversity) and Steve Derne (SUNY-Geneseo). Wealso benefited from having Satya Mohanty visit us

from Cornell University for aweek in March.

One of the new responsibili-ties of the Center is to adminis-ter the Watumull Scholarshipfor Study in India. This year wehad an excellent pool of appli-cants from various disciplinesand the review committee gaveout five awards.

There'll be some continuityand some changes in the Fall.I'll continue as the Director, butMatt MacKenzie, Coordinatorfor the Center since Fall 2001,is moving up to YellowSprings, Ohio, where he'llbegin a tenure-track positionteaching philosophy at AntiochCollege. We wish Matt all the

best in his career and send him off with muchaloha. A new coordinator will be appointed soon.

As always, I would like to thank the membersof the CSAS Executive Committee for all theircontributions to the success of the ColloquiumSeries, the Spring Symposium, and generally pro-moting South Asian Studies on campus. This yearI was very fortunate to have two extraordinaryLibrary Studies interns who have assisted me inmy work at the Library — they are Lisa Nguyenand Stu Dawrs.

It's been a great year and I have learned a lot inthis position. I look forward to the work in the Fall,and wish everyone a wonderful summer.

This year ’s SpringSymposium dre w

audiences from var ious disciplinesand areas acro s s

campus, generatingthe kind of exchange

that the Centerc o n s t a n t l y

seeks to pro m o t e .

Faculty Profile

3 Spring 2003

Monisha Dasgupta’s academic career has by nomeans followed a standard trajectory. After

finishing her undergraduate work in Calcutta witha B.S. in geography, she went to work as a journal-ist — only to discover that the profession’s idealsdidn’t match its reality.

“ I worked for the English-languagedaily Te l e g r a p hfor four and a halfyears,” she recalls. “This was the timewhen Punjab was going up in flames,with the Golden Temple and the after-math of that. I was on the copy desk,where we would make decisions aboutwhat was front page news, and there wasso much cynicism — it would dependon, you know: "Oh, 50 people died: Page4; OK, 100 people died, page 1, maybe the lead.’Those kind of determinations really upset me.”

Rather than follow that path any further, sheinstead chose to pursue a graduate degree atBrandeis University. It was during this period thatshe began to define her present academic calling.

“ I came to graduate school in 1991 to do womenand development in South Asia, but it becamesomething completely different because I gotinvolved with South Asian Women For Action andquickly became a core member, ” she says.“Because I'm a political sociologist, before that myfieldwork had been on immigrant communities gen-erally in the New York area. But while their storieswere valid and interesting, they were all prettymuch the same: There was no particular analysis ofracism or anything like that, and I didn't want todeal with living in this sort of half world wherepeople were constantly hankering for home and cre-ating a very idealistic view of India, while at thesame time wanting really to be mainstreamAmericans. That combination of nostalgia and alsowanting to fit in here was just a bit too much — butgetting involved with SAWA made me realize therewas another story to tell.”

Since then, Monisha has devoted her time totelling that other story, working on the oftenignored issues of South Asian immigrant laborers

and domestic workers; domestic violence and vio-lence against women; and gay, lesbian and trans-gender org a n i z i n g .

“ With the activist work, I realized people werecontesting rigid, fixed notions of culture — for

instance, a survivor of domestic violenceis Indian, even though she’s speaking outagainst her abuse … because what hap-pens is that women are often told ‘howcan you speak out against your husband?’or ‘how can you give the community a badn a m e ? ’Culture is used to silence thesewomen, so I was understanding that therewas an intersection between culture andpolitics, and there were these different dis-courses of culture that were colliding

against each other. So my primary question was toshift that cultural way of looking at the immigrantcommunity and insisting that we look at the politicsof culture.”

Among other things, this has more recently leadher to work in the political economy of migrationand what brings immigrants to the U.S. “ In talkingabout cultural politics, each of the organizations Iwas working with were talking about how beingimmigrants they could still claim rights, which wereconstantly being violated. Right now the book manu-script I’m working on is centrally focussed on thequestion of rights and the ways in which South A s i a nactivists show us one way in which being immi-grants you can still claim rights. So I’m increasinglybeing attracted to political economy kinds ofapproaches, but from a very feminist standpoint.”

Several university presses have expressedinterest in publishing the book, which sheexpects wil l be done at the end of summer, andis tentatively titled U n ruly Immigrants: P o s t -1965 South Asian Activism in the U.S. H a v i n garrived at the University of Hawai‘i last fall, sheis currently teaching in both the ethnic studiesand women’s studies department. She also serveson the UHPA Wo m e n ’s Committee and is activewith the University Peace Initiative, among othero rg a n i z a t i o n s .

Monisha Dasguptaby Stu Dawrs

Reviewed: Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s Death ofa Discipline(Columbia University Press, 2003)

Death of a Disciplineis a collection of WellekLibrary Lectures in Critical Theory given by

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak at the University ofCalifornia, Irvine, under the aus-pices of the Critical TheoryInstitute in May 2000. The lec-tures are motivated by Spivak'sdisquiet with the publishing indus-try's increased marketing of"anthologies of world literature intranslation" and with the academ-ics "busy putting these together."As these literatures of the worldtravel across the globe throughEnglish translations and becomeinstitutionalized this question goesbegging — who will teach theseliteratures? The natural place fortraining teachers of literature intranslation may be comparativeliterature, but that, says Spivak, isnot enough. Instead, in three chap-ters titled, "Crossing Borders,""Collectivities," and "Planetarity," she makes anurgent appeal for what she calls "a new compara-tive literature" as a way to keep the critical edge ofthe humanities from being appropriated and "deter-mined by the market."

“Crossing Borders” takes its cue from AreaStudies for developing a "new comparative litera-ture" that is grounded in intensive language studyand extends beyond Europe to include the lan-guages of peoples and places in the globalSouthern Hemisphere, particularly the languages ofindigenous peoples. The thrust of this recommen-

dation is that a new comparative literature mustbreak out of the limitations of "self-containedareas" to include "movements between areas,"which would include demographic shifts influ-enced by "diasporas, labor migrations, and move-ments of global capital." Spivak notes inherent lim-

itations in Area Studies, that isbased on a conservative agendaand driven by imperial motives,and calls for depoliticization ofthe discipline so as to becomeinclusionary in practice.

Informed by Derrida'sPolitics of Friendship, Spivakenvisions collectivities not asfixed domains but fluid and opento exchanges. This fluidity per-mits the merging of the humani-ties and social sciences and resistsbecoming subservient to predatorycapitalism. Spivak signals collec-tivity by evoking a ghost dancemetaphor inspired by readingConrad's Heart of DarknessandWoolf's Room With a View againstSalih's Season of Migration to the

North and Devi's Pterodactyl, Puran Sahay andPirtha. The ghost dance is choreographed throughfeminism as an example of collective formationand through a critique of the epistemic violence ofWestern feminism when it approaches women'sissues in a "cut and paste" fashion, freely substitut-ing one collectivity for another.

Spivak's invitation to think through collectivi-ties, reading as a species of cultural instruction, isnot without problems. In foregrounding culturalcompetence as a requisite for a robust reading, the

Book Review

" Ghost Dances that Effect Change"by Jorge Fernandes, Ashwin Raj and Monica Ghosh

South Asia News 4

Please see Reviewon page 5

5 Spring 2003

new comparative literature is vulnerable to thevery dangers of market determination thatprompted its call. To avert this, Spivak defamiliar-izes the globe, the abstract terrain of comparativeliterature, through the invocation of the planetary.The figure of the planet, as an underived intuition,embodies a radical alterity. Planetarity opens thesubject to a boundless field of difference that isnot derived from the self. The movement awayfrom controlled difference requires not only areading that dis-figures "the undecidable figure

into a responsible literality," but forces an engage-ment with minoritarian literatures from A f r i c a ,Asia, South America, and the Pacific. Planetary-thought thus allow Spivak to open comparativeliterature to a vast literary field, while resistingthe dangers of a facile multiculturalism.

This text challenges the death of a discipline inthe wake of predatory capitalism and breathshope for a future of comparative literaturethrough pedagogical and theoretical insights thatresist the appropriation of the subaltern by thed o m i n a n t .

Review, continued from page 4

SD: It certainly seems like there's plenty of contextfor that given what's going on in the world today …

GS: That's exactly correct. You know, in anotherspeech given that same month, Dr. King said,"Don't let anybody make you think that God choseAmerica as His divine messianic force to be — asort of policeman of the whole world. God has away of standing before the nations with judgment,and it seems that I can hear God saying toAmerica: 'You are too arrogant! If you don'tchange your ways, I will rise up and break thebackbone of your power..." Those two assertionscan be connected. T h a t ’s also what I’m going totalk about: The connection between humanitiesand the ethical base of political behavior.

SD: D r. King is an interesting example, given thatso many people — including the current U.S. pre s i -dent — have appropriated his message in ways hewould have strongly opposed.

GS: That is also the thing about literary material:One of the things about the way Dr. King spoke isthat those are highly rhetorical texts. "I have adream": This particular bit can be picked up anduttered in a monumental voice to support all kindsof things about which Martin Luther King, if wepay attention to what he says, would be highly

dubious. Therefore one has to know how to read,how to look, how to listen — these are not thingsthat just happen. There is a certain kind of romanticnotion that we don't need any instruction in orderto be able to exercise the imagination, but it's thesame as the body: You have to exercise it in orderto be able to use it.

Monica Ghosh (MG): You've founded severalschools in India?

GS: "Founding" is such a big word: Yes, I did startthem. Eleven: They are in small, aboriginal settle-ments. But you must realize when you say schoolsthat it's not a huge thing, it's just one teacher, twoteachers. But some of them have been going for 13years and some are more recent. …

M G : One of the reasons you started these schoolsis for the communities to be able to advocate forthemselves, yes? So they're learning in Bengali?

GS: Well they have to in order to take the stateexam. But the thing is, it's the same message that Ihave for my students at Columbia University inNew York, what I began with: The ability to imag-ine the other—in the case of these folks, the abilityto intuit the public sphere … they're not dumb, butnobody ever gives their imagination that scope. To

Roundtable, continued from page 1

continued on page 13

Watumull Scholarships

The purpose of the J. Watumull Scholarship forthe Study of India is to promote understand-

ing of India through scholarship support ofUniversity of Hawai‘i students with a focused andwell-developed proposal to study for a minimumof two months in India. The scholarship is gener-ously supported by the Watumull Foundation.

The scholarship supports students in areas ofstudy such as the visual and per-forming arts, history, philosophy,religion, and politics as well asany other field including the pro-fessional schools and communitycollege programs. Students areexpected to be enrolled in coursesat a recognized Indian institutionor to be conducting pre-approvedindependent study overseen by afaculty member at UH in coopera-tion with a scholar in India.Students may also choose to par-ticipate in an approved studyabroad program sponsored byanother U.S. institution.

This year the Center waspleased to be able to offer five scholarshipsinstead of the usual three. This year's awards willgo to David Falgout (Religion), Alexandria Ham(Philosophy), Matthew Lopresti (Philosophy),Jessica Schmidt (Political Science), and IsaacSouweine (Religion). For more informationabout the Watumull scholarship, please contactthe Center at csas@hawaii.edu.

David C. Falgout, is a graduate student work-ing on a Masters in Religion at UH Manoa. Hehas already completed a Masters in Philosophyat Southern Illinois University at Carbondale.

His undergraduate work was a double major inPhilosophy and History at the University ofSouth Alabama. All of these degrees havefocused, in different ways, upon the study ofIndia. David's Watumull project will be a studyof Linga-puja in North India along the Ganges,culminating in a study of this practice inVaranasi. In Varanasi, he intends to document

linga-puja through contact withthe practicing family of a priestthat leads a linga-puja inWahiawa, Hawai‘i, here onO‘ahu. He has been studying thegroup in Wahiawa sinceSeptember 2002 and hopes to usethis study as the basis of hisMasters thesis.

Alexandria Ham received herB.A. in Philosophy, Religion andPsychology at the University ofIowa, and an M.A. in ComparativePhilosophy, at the University ofHawai‘i Manoa. Alexandria plansto continue her graduate work here

at UH Manoa in Indian Philosophy. She will beusing the Watumull Scholarship this summer tostudy Sanskrit and Nyaya philosophy. She willspend the first half of the summer attending theJnana Pravaha center for cultural studies inVaranasi, studying Sanskrit under R.S. Sharma.For the remainder of her stay she will be inCalcuta working with Nandita Bandyopadhyay onboth Sanskrit and Nyaya philosophy.

Matthew Shelton Lopre s t ihas been a doctor-al student in Comparative Philosophy at theUniversity of Hawai‘i at Manoa since January

CSAS Awards Five Watumull Scholarshipsfor Study in India

South Asia News 6

This year, theC e n t e rw a spleased too ff e r f i v e

s c h o l a r s h i p sinstead of theusual thre e .

ART 492 Art of Ancient India TR 9:00 - 10:15 N. DowlingHNDI 101 Elementary Hindi MWF 8:30 - 9:55 R. SharmaHNDI 201 Intermediate Hindi MWF 10:30 - 11:55 R. SharmaHNDI 301 Third-Level Hindi MWF 1:30 - 2:45 R. SharmaIP 365 South Asian Lit. in Trans. W 3:00 - 5:30 R. SharmaSNSK 181 Intro to Sanskrit TR 9:00 - 10:15 R. SharmaSNSK 281 Intermediate Sanskrit TR 11:00 - 12:15 R. SharmaSNSK 381 Third-Level Sanskrit TR 2:30 - 3:45 R. SharmaHIST 241 Civilizations of Asia MWF 12:30 - 1:20 J. SharmaHIST 301 History of India and Pakistan MWF 2:30 - 3:20 J. SharmaPACE 412 Gandhi, King, and Nonviolence TR 1:30 - 2:45 TBAPHIL 350 Indian Philosophy TR 12:00 - 1:15 V. DalmiyaPHIL 750 Seminar in Indian Philosophy W 3:30 - 6:00 R. PerrettREL 202 Understanding Indian Religions MWF 10:30 - 11:20 R. LambREL 207 Understanding Buddhism MWF 9:30 - 10:20 H. BaroniTHEA 763B Sem. In Theatre: SE Asia and India R 1:30 - 4:00 K. PaukaASAN 202 Intro to Asian Studies: S/SE Asia MWF 12:30 - 1:20 B. AndayaASAN 312 Contemporary Asian Civilizations TR 12:00 - 1:15 M. SharmaASAN 393I Field Study-Asia: South Asia TBA R. TrimillosASAN 624 Culture and Colonialism T 3:00 - 5:30 M. Sharma

Fall Courses

2000. His emphasis in study is IndianP h i l o s o p h y, Existentialism and Philosophy ofReligion. This summer he will be participatingin the American Institute of Indian StudiesAdvanced Summer Language Program in Pune,India where he will engage in a rigorous studyof the Sanskrit language at Deccan College. Inthe fall, Matthew will travel to Bodh Gaya toteach a course in Buddhist Philosophy as part ofthe Buddhist Studies program of A n t i o c hC o l l e g e .

Jessica Schmidt, is a Masters candidate inPolitical Science. Her project will involve field-work for a thesis that seeks alternative under-standings of development. She will be spendingabout six months working for a number of non-profits in various villages within India and

Bangladesh, seeking to gain an understanding ofhow rights-talk is formulated at the villagelevel, and how Indians are attempting to secureeconomic prosperity in ways that look remark-ably different from western conceptions ofd e v e l o p m e n t .

I saac Souweine is a candidate for a Masters ofArts in Religious Studies at the University ofHawai‘i, Manoa. As a recipient of the Wa t u m u l lScholarship, Isaac will pursue intensive languagestudy in Hindi and Sanskrit at Tilak MaharashtraVidyapeeth in Pune, Maharashtra. Before joiningthe Religion Department, Isaac was an A s i aPacific Leadership Program fellow at the EastWest Center. Isaac has a B.A. (2002) in Religionfrom Columbia University (magna cum laude,Phi Beta Kappa).

continued from page 7

7 Spring 2003

The 20th Annual Center for South Asian StudiesSpring Symposium opened on Wednesday, April16 with an evening screening of AnandPatwardhan’s award-winning documentary Jangaur Aman (War and Peace). It continued onThursday April 17 with a daylong series of pre -sentations and panel discussions. Below are thepost-symposium comments of presenters KeyaGanguly and Priya Joshi.

‘So far fr om hell, so close to America’(almost a Mexican proverb)by Priya JoshiUniversity of California, Berkeley

My visit to the Center'sspring symposium on

Cinema and Social Justicebegan a few days beforethe symposium itself when,minutes after my arrival inparadise, I attended a pub-lic conversation betweenLilikala Kame‘eleihiwa,Director of the Centerfor Hawaiian Studies, andGayatri Chakravorty

Spivak, Citizen's Chair at UH for the Spring term.My own research on social justice has focused

on its representation in popular culture; ProfessorKame‘eleihiwa’s remarks on Hawai‘i's history ofoccupation and the colonization of its economicand human resources by the United States were apowerful reminder that here, in Hawai‘i, one iswitness daily to an erasure of identity and rights,to the persistent refusal of a people's desire forself-representation and self-governance by thatmassive occupying force called the United Stateswhich denies Hawai'i so many basic freedoms inthe name of liberty.

Inaugurated by this conversation, the visit toManoa was a moving combination of ceremonyand hospitality that confronted in an immediatesense the reality of social injustice. In manyways, Mahatma Gandhi's legacy lives powerfullyin the dewy grasses of Manoa: there is a revolu-tion brewing here, and one day it will be success-ful. Not with guns and arms, but with roses andlove. "We are descended from the gods,"Professor Kame‘eleihiwa reminded her audiencethat evening amidst the taro farm and the starsthat bless the Hawai'ian Studies Center. And thegods she invoked were the gods of the wind andearth, of flowers and sea, sun and moon. Thevisit to Manoa reminded me that these gods shallprevail. That Hawai'i's struggle can and will soonenchant others, and that the scholarly preoccupa-tions of our conference are reflected in the workand struggles of our host.

To them I offer Gandhi's words, "Satyamevjayete," echoed by Che Guevarra ("venceremos")and Martin Luther King, Jr. ("we shall over-come").

Aloha. You are not alone.

***

Film And Social Justice In South Asia

Spring Symposium

South Asia News 8

Priya Joshi

Priya Joshi, Kazi Ashraf and Gayatri Spivak

Keya GangulyCultural Studies &Comparative Literature,University of Minnesota

I found the symposium onSouth Asian films to be a

great idea, creatively puttogether by everyoneinvolved in the CSAS, but itwas especially important tohave the energy of Monica

and Matt behind it. I was very happy to be invitedand found the collective conversation among par-ticipants and attendees to be thought-provokingand invigorating. Despite the emergence of seri-ous work on the media by scholars of South Asia,it is still quite rare for people to engage the subjectof the cinema theoretically and conceptually — interms of its formative role in cultural politics(given that postcolonial studies continues to betied mostly to literary and historical analysis). SoI was especially happy that the U. of Hawai‘i pro-vided a venue for such an engagement and Ienjoyed the experience — both inside and outsidethe meeting rooms.

***

9 Spring 2003

Symposium Program

Wednesday, 4/16/03Jang aur Aman (War and Peace)Screening of the award-winningdocumentary by Anand Patwardhan4:30 - 7:30 p.m.

Thursday, 4/17/03Session I8:30 Opening reception

9:00 - 9:10 a.m.Introduction: Monica Ghosh(CSAs Director)

9:10 - 9:30 a.m.Opening remarks Gayatri Chakravor ty Spivak (Citizens' Chair, UH English Department)

9:30 - 10:30 a.m.Priya Joshi (UC Berkeley) 'Police and Thieves'

10: 45- 11:45 a.m.Keya Ganguly (University of Minnesota)'The Avant-Garde and Enlightenment: Secularism vs. Decadence in Satyajit Ray'sDevi'

Session II2:00 - 3: 30 p.m.Panel and Discussion:S. Krishna (Political Science)‘Intimations of Modernity: Railway asMetaphor in Partition Literatures’Jyoti Puri (Women's Studies) ‘Where is the Fire in Monsoon Wedding?’R. Dalvi (Philosophy) ‘Phir bhi Dil hai Hindustani: Nationalismand Social Justice in Hindi Film Music’

3:45 - 5:30 p.m.Roundtable: Keya Ganguly, Priya Joshi,Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak and S.Charusheela

Keya Ganguly

Keya Ganguly, Kazi Ashraf, S. Charusheela,Jyoti Puri (fr ont, left to right); Priya Joshi,Monica Ghosh, Gayatri Spivak, S. Krishna,

Rohit Dalvi and Matt MacKenzie (rear)

Kazi Ashraf (Arc h i t e c t u re )chaired the Kenneth F. BrownArchitecture Design Aw a r dthat identifies and gives aprize of $25,000 to the mostimportant architectural projectin the last two years in theAsia Pacific region. This isthe fourth cycle of the Aw a r dsponsored by the UH Schoolof Architecture. Paper "PlacingArchitecture, PresencingArchitecture" was invited forpresentation at the IASTE con-ference in Hong Kong inD e c e m b e r. Publication"Sherebanglanagar: LouisKahn and the Making of aCapital Complex," publishedfrom Dhaka, on the nationalcapital complex in Dhaka,Bangladesh designed by thelate Philadelphia-based archi-tect Louis Kahn.

Arindam Chakrabar ti(Philosophy) delivered theRabindranath Tagore MemorialOration at Indian Institute ofManagement, Kolkata, on 5thJanuary 2003. Invited as theDistinguished Visitor atHaverford College, PA, he gaveone public lecture and oneworkshop with the Philosophystudents on April 3,4. Invitedby Girish Karnad, at the NehruCentre, London, he spoke about"Asthetics of Disgust.” InMarch, he presented a keynoteaddress titled “Fun” at the UHPhilosophy Graduate StudentConference. On April 8, 9 and

10 Arindam presented fourinvited lectures at thePhilosophy, Religion and LogicDepartments of JagellonianUniversity, Krakow, Poland ondifferent topics on ClassicalIndian and ContemporaryWestern Epistemology.Arindam is about to leave forIndia for a one year sabbatical,the last part of which he hasbeen invited to spend as aVisiting Professor at TrinityCollege Cambridge, UK.Arindam is working on twobooks: One on "Ethics ofSpeech and Debate" and anoth-er one on " Moral Psychologyof Emotions."

S. Charusheela (Wo m e n ’sStudies) presented the paper"Interrogating the Wa l r a s -Saussure Connection" for theHistory of Economics Societyat the Allied Social SciencesAssociation Conference inWashington DC this January.She also attended theAmerican ComparativeLiterature A s s o c i a t i o nC o n f e r e n c e ,C rossing Over, atSan Marcos CA this A p r i l ,where she presented" M a rginalia to Capitalism"(for Panel, "Can We Ta l k ?I n t e r d i s c i p l i n a r i t y, Culture,and the Global Economy").Charu has spent the past yearfinalizing the volume (co-edit-ed with Eiman Zein-Elabdin,Franklin and MarshallCollege) P o s t c o l o n i a l i s m

meets Economics, forthcomingfrom Routledge. She alsofinalized the articles"Feminism, PostcolonialThought, and Economics,"(with Eiman Zein-Elabdin,Franklin & Marshall College,for publication in M. Ferberand J. Nelson eds. F e m i n i s tEconomics Today: BeyondEconomic Man, University ofChicago Press, Forthcoming2003) and "EmpoweringWork? Bargaining ModelsReconsidered" (in D. Barkerand E. Kuiper eds. To w a rd aFeminist Philosophy ofE c o n o m i c s. London:Routledge, 2003). Charu hasjust been elected to the boardof the InternationalAssociation for FeministEconomics, and plans to attendthe IAFFE summer conferenceat the Centre for Gender andDevelopment Studies, T h eUniversity of the West Indies,Barbados. She is also workingwith colleagues in theAssociation for Economic andSocial Analysis to org a n i z eRethinking Marx i s m ' s5 t hInternational Gala Conference,"Marxism And The Wo r l dStage" (6-9 November 2003,University Of MassachusettsAt Amherst, http://www. m a r x-i s m a n d t h e w o r l d s t a g e . o rg).

Monica Ghosh (South A s i aL ibrar ian, CSAS Dire c t o r )o rganized a panel titled, "The

Faculty Notes

South Asia News 10

Continued on page 11

Big Picture: How Films andReligion Influence Popularand Official Views in and ofSouth and Southeast A s i a , "with Professors Ti m o t h yBarnard, and Goh Beng-Lan(National UniversitySingapore), Payal Banerjee(Syracuse University), andYati Barnard (University ofHawai'i). Presented a papertitled, "Mohammed RafiRocks and Amir Khan Swings(a bat) as Bollywood CrossesOver on a Tw o - Way Street," atthe Annual Meeting of theAssociation for Asian Studiesin New York City, March 29,2 0 0 3 .

Peter Hoffenberg (History)gave a paper on "JohnLockwood Kipling, W. H.Griggs and The Journal ofIndian Art and Industry" at the"How Empire Mattered:Imperial Structures andGlobalization in the Era ofBritish Imperialism" conferencein Berkeley on April 4-5, 2003.He has also submitted an essayon The Journal of Indian Artand Industry for a special issueof Victorian Periodical Reviewon 19th-century South Asianpublications. That essay is enti-tled: "Promoting TraditionalIndian Art at Home andAbroad: The Journal of IndianArt and Industry, 1884-1917.""Photography and Architectureat the Calcutta InternationalExhibition, 1883-84" forthcom-ing in Traces of India:

Photography, Architecture, andthe Politics of Representation,published this May by theCanadian Centre forArchitecture, Montreal.

That publication accompaniesa traveling exhibition of photo-graphs from 19th- and 20th-century India. Hoffenberg isalso serving as the Chair of theHistory Department's SouthAsian history search committeeand continues to research hisbiography of John LockwoodKipling, artist, art-schooladministrator, journalist andfather of Rudyard.

S. Shankar 's (English) a n t h o l-ogy C rossing into America: TheNew Literature of Immigration(New Press, 2003) has justappeared in print and has beenfavorably reviewed in suchplaces as the San FranciscoChronicle and San A n t o n i oExpress-News. His literary noteon R.K Nararan appeared in Ti nHouse 4.2 earlier in the spring.His article "Midnight'sOrphans: A P o s t c o l o n i a l i s mWorth Its Name" has beenaccepted for a forthcomingissue of Cultural Critique.During the spring semester, hegave invited presentations atUniversity of Western Ontario,Columbia University,University of Texas at SanAntonio, University of Texas atAustin, and Seattle University.

Lee Siegel's (Religion)Loveand other Games of Chance: A

Novelty was published byViking Penguin (February2003). L'Amour dans uneLangue Morte, a French trans-lation of his novel Love in aDead Language, was publishedby Editions Philippe Picquier inFrance (April 2003). He waselected to the represent theUnited States as a novelist atInternationales Literaturfestivalin Berlin (September 2003).

***

Rohit Dalvi (Philosophy)presented “Death of aDervish” at C ro s s - C u rre n t s :New Intersections inComparative Philosophy, UHManoa. He also presented“Phir bhi Dil hai Hindustani:Nationalism and Social Justicein Hindi Film Music” at theCSAS Spring Symposium.Rohit successfully defendedhis dissertation proposal thissemester and plans to spendthe summer writing.

Himanee Gupta (PoliticalS c i e n c e )presented a colloqui-um, "Can (We Let) the IndianImmigrant Bourgeoisie Speak?Some Thoughts on DoingCollaborative Research," for theCenter for South Asian Studieson Feb. 6. She gave the follow-ing papers at the InternationalStudies Association annualmeeting, Feb.26-March 1, in

11 Spring 2003

Continued on page 12

Portland, Ore.: "Ayodhya's pastand India's national 'present'" and"No place to call home: Hindunationalism and overseas Indians."She also presented the paper,"Subtleties of culture and imperi-alism in Moulin Rouge" at theAssociation of Asian A m e r i c a nStudies annual meeting, May 8-11, in San Francisco.

Matthew Lopr esti (Philosophy)presented “Pragmatics of Praxis:Yoga and Christianity in Pascal’sWager,”at Cross-Currents: NewIntersections in ComparativePhilosophy at UH this March.This summer he will be partici-pating in the American Instituteof Indian Studies AdvancedSummer Language Program inPune, India where he will engagein a rigorous study of the Sanskritlanguage at Deccan College. Inthe fall, Matthew will travel toBodh Gaya to teach a course inBuddhist Philosophy as part ofthe Buddhist Studies program ofAntioch College.

Matthew MacKenzie(Philosophy)presented “DoesSelf-Awareness Require a Self?”at California State University,San Bernardino, in February. Hepresented “No-Self, Egoism, andAltruism,” at Antioch College inApril. After defending his disser-tation in August, he will take up aposition as Assitant Professor ofPhilosophy at Antioch College,Yellow Springs, Ohio.

South Asia News 12

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“Terror”

Gayatri Chakrovorty SpivakVisiting Citizens’Chair, UH Manoa

January 24, 2003

“Can (We Let) the Indian ImmigrantBourgeousie Speak?

Some Thoughts on the Politics of DoingCollaborative Research”

Himanee GuptaPolitical Science, UH Manoa

February 6, 2003

“Cultural Studies and ColonialGovernmentality:

Law and the Cultural Political Economy ofIndia”

Ritu BirlaHistory, University of Toronto

February 18, 2003

“LGBTHQK Sexualities in Urban India andthe Limits of the Globalization Paradigm”

Jyoti PuriSociology and Women’s Studies

Simmons CollegeFebruary 27, 2003

Spring Colloquia Presentations

an extent, I try to develop the same kind ofthing there, because their other is the pub-lic sphere, whereas the "other" of the NewYork student is "the enemy" if you like, orthe understanding that you can't just dogood and really d ogood, you know what Im e a n ?

M G : You just returned from a trip toCalcutta. As both a New Yorker and a NRI,a non-resident Indian, what sort of newsdo you have about the war that Bush istalking about? I'm really interested in whatpeople outside the U.S. are thinking. …

GS: Well, one of the things about the sub-continent as you well know is that it's notcentralized. So it's extremely difficult tosummarize: Unless you are a New Yo r kTi m e scorrespondent, who will say any-thing, it's difficult to say "Indians think."And I was only there for three days. Butnonetheless I'll say it: There is alarm allaround. … Not just middle class familiesbut in terms of labor export, many non-middle class families also have membersin the United States, so there is a culturalfeeling that is different from what it was inmy youth. But nonetheless, there is realopposition of Bush. I'll tell you why I wassurprised: Because of the anti-Muslim sen-timents in India; again, I didn't go any-where besides Calcutta, but I did not hearin Calcutta anywhere, anything aboutIslam, Muslims or the fact that SaddamHussein is Muslim; the Muslim world orAl-Qaeda and etc. This is quite significant,I think.

I had to give a talk the last day and I wasonly there for two nights and two-and-a-half days,and therefore I was not doing afield trip. But I had innumerable conversa-tions—on the street, at the shops—and I

13 Spring 2003

“The ‘Inadver tant’ Killing of Mansa:Narratives of a Colonial Homicide in

Eighteenth Century British-India

Sudipto SenHistory, Syracuse University

March 12, 2003

“Getting Real: The Place of IdentityPolitics Today”

A roundtable discussion featuring Satya P.Mohanty, with Cynthia Franklin and Candace

Fujikane

March 17, 2003

“How Do Texts Reflect Reality?Theories of Reference and the 19th

Century Indian Novel”

Satya P. MohantyEnglish, Cornell University

March 18, 2003

“Imperial Jazz”

Timothy BrennanEnglish and Cultural Studies & Comparative

Literature, University of MinnesotaApril 21, 2003

Spring Colloquia PresentationsRoundtable, continued from page 5

did not hear at any point—not from the street peo-ple, not from the middle class, not from my upper-middle-class relatives—not a one of them spokeabout anything like that. It was like in the days ofVietnam: You never heard anyone support thiskind of American incursion into Asia—it didn'tmatter what your politics were. In the same waythere was not one voice—I'm sure there werevoices somewhere, I'm just one person and I wasthere for two days so I'm giving a very subjectiveand impressionistic account, but Idid talk to an awful lot of people,and many who are normally veryanti-Muslim, and not one saw thisas a Muslim or a terrorist typeissue. They saw it solely asAmerican aggression in takingcontrol of other places.

Er ic Denton (ED): You said youw e re going to talk about the trivi -alization of the humanities—do youfeel like the humanities are beingactively and consciously trivial -ized?

GS: Yes. Well consciously it's not so much againstthe humanities as for a certain type of rationalization.I've been teaching fulltime in the United States inEnglish departments for 38 years, so therefore if thereis a certain trend to watch, I'm a trendwatcher: T h erationalization of universities is in a sense the shrink-ing of the humanities. And even within the humani-ties … I don't know every school but at my own forinstance, the desire to have the humanities be eco-nomically viable means you're taking students whocan pay full tuition but you're doing little more thanthat. The whole thing is judged in terms of cost eff e c-tiveness. And young people don't want to go into afield where there is no future; I do think there is acertain kind of trivialization. Also, the way in whichhumanities try to justify themselves in terms of mak-

ing the language of criticism sort of pseudo-scientificor pseudo-legalistic: I don't think we are ready to say,"we are in fact not what you want us to be." Basictraining in the humanities is training the imaginationinto an uncoercive rearrangement of desires. Sorry,but it's not like getting a grant for some sort of eso-teric experiment—it's not like that. I therefore thinkthat the humanities should stop pretending that theycan compete with the business school. That's not whythey should be encouraged; they should be encour-aged because there are certain things one pays for

even if … well, its something that'snot often heard in our world becauseeven something like "sustainabledevelopment" is really about how faryou can go in cost efficiency; it's notto sustain the environment, that word"sustain" is a joke. But on the otherhand one has to be critical and thehumanities can develop. And youk n o w, I know this is not going to hap-pen: What I'm saying is a completelyimpractical thing, but I have to say it,because I think it is right.

E D: The core changes that have beengoing on to the general education re q u i rements at UHseem to reflect this: A lot of the rationale used to justi -fy the changes is based on the idea that UH needs tobe run more as a business than a university: Tos t reamline and to be able to compete with Hawai‘iPacific University, which very consciously runs itselfas a for- p rofit business. A lot of the core changes haveto do with humanities re q u i rements — they’ve elimiat -e dthe need to take a lot of humanities courses, andm o re and more the question being asked is, "Do youmake your own money? Do you make the moneyb a c k ? ”

GS: You see: Human beings don't matter. I'm soglad you brought this up. This is what's called ration-alization: Can you imagine that to be rational is to bethis way? You cut out everything and that's why

Basic training inthe humanities is

training theimagination into

an uncoerc i v ere a r r a n g e m e n t

of desire s .

South Asia News 14

Roundtable, continued from page 13

when people even speak in favor of the humanitiespeople think they're only talking about what is irra-tional. George Fletcher has written a fine book abouthow politics can be and the law can learn from liter-ature—he talks about romanticism … but what doeshe call it? Irrationalism! We're not irrational: T h eway in which we make reason flower is by allowingit to live in its habitat, within the imagination andw i t h imagination. The more you rationalize it interms of "does it pay for itself," the more you shootyourself in the foot because you're going to bring upa generation of culturally deprived children.

E D : I teach at a state-funded school where the pre v i o u sgovernor did his best to slaughter higher education bycutting funding re p e a t e d l y. The new governor has justcut funding — we're surviving on less than nothing atthe university and the colleges, so it's not surprisingthat the pre s s u re coming down on the administration is," Well, we're not going to pay for you so you've got topay for yourself." So, I guess it wouldn’t be shocking tome if the dance program at Kapio‘lani CommunityCollege were to be threatened with cuts. It would bed e p ressing to me, but not shocking. Is there hope at aprivate institution like Columbia, where I assume thebudget isn’t being cut every year?

GS: I don't believe so. Having money does notmean that you do not say … I mean, you knowthat rich people are very careful about savingm o n e y. Isn't that true?

M G : Stu and I were talking the other day abouthow private patrons of the arts increasingly influ -ence what does and doesn't get seen — since thefunding is not so much from federal money anym o re as from private donors, those donors cannow dictate what gets to be seen. And it's notalways a generosity that's open — it's a very dic -tated generosity; it's very specific.

GS: A b s o l u t e l y. And I'm not suggesting — youk n o w, I taught at state schools before I came to

Columbia, at the University of Texas; at theUniversity of Iowa; Pittsburgh, which is half state.But I have to admit that it would be disingenuousto equate a community college with a large, pow-erful Ivy League college — I cannot say it's thesame. But when it comes to the question of thetrivialization of the humanities — not just the dec-imation of the humanities — that in fact happenseven more profoundly when you have a verystrong hand in business, in international affairs, inarea studies, in the school of public affairs. T h ehumanities become unimportant. And within thehumanities there is this kind of traditional celebra-tion of a sort of 1950s, Cold War separation …that's what I'm saying: Our own students — I getthe students from the core in my classes, and mygod all they know is that the writer does not meanwhat he or she writes. They are being taughtintentional fallacy in the worst kind of minimalistfashion: The complicated relationship betweenaesthetics and politics is reduced to, "The writerdoesn't mean what he or she writes." So that isalso trivialization: We can't just look at decimation— and I believe that the problem with decimationis obviously much worse at community collegesthan at schools with money. And the “star system”in schools with money is also something that isquite scary. Especially since the big humanitiesstars are generally hand-in-hand with the sort ofculturalism of the international civil society moralentrepreneurs. It's the kind of human rights that isphilanthropy without democracy: No social con-tract, no anything. That's also something intowhich the humanities go; that is also a kind oftrivialization. Do you know what I'm saying? Soit's a bigger picture than just cost cutting, althoughcost cutting is a very important part of it.

When I give this talk at the Academy of Arts, doyou think anyone is going to do anything morethan applaud and go and it will remain business asusual? Do you think anything will change? I sortof don't think so. On the other hand, do you think Icould say anything else?

15 Spring 2003

SOUTH ASIA NEWS STAFFMonica Ghosh Matt MacKenzieCSAS Director CSAS Coordinator

Stu DawrsAssistant

Contributions of articles, book reviews andcommentaries are welcome. Please sendthem to us at csas@hawaii.edu

We also thank those who have supportedthe Center with monetary contributions inrecent years. These funds provide a flexibleresource to supplement our (rapidly declin-ing) university operating budget and per-mits us to augment our South Asia activi-t i e s .

Your tax-deductible contributions are great-ly appreciated and can be made payable toUniversity of Hawai‘i Foundation A c c o u n tNo. 130910, c/o Center for South A s i a nStudies, Moore 411, University of Hawai‘i,Honolulu, HI, 96822 USA.

Center for South Asian StudiesSchool of Hawaiian, Asian and PacificStudiesMoore Hall 4111890 East-West RoadUniversity of Hawai‘i-ManoaHonolulu, Hawai‘i, 96822 USA

Professor Keya Ganguly of theUniversity of Minnesota’sDepartment of Cultural Studies and Comparative Literaturepresented “The Avant-Garde and Enlightenment: Secularism

vs. Decadence in Satyajit Ray’s Devi” as part of theCenter’s 20th annual Spring Symposium. Please see page 8

for more on the symposium.