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- Convenor:
-
Amélie Blom
(Institut d'études de l'Islam et des Sociétés du Monde Musulman (IISMM-EHESS))
- Chair:
-
Martin Aranguren
(EHESS Paris)
- Discussant:
-
Martin Aranguren
(EHESS Paris)
- Location:
- C407
- Start time:
- 26 July, 2012 at
Time zone: Europe/Lisbon
- Session slots:
- 1
Short Abstract:
This panel focuses on the public expression of emotions in South Asia and aims at studying, in an interdisciplinary and comparative perspective, the mechanisms that make political problems be requalified (or disqualified) as being a matter of legitimate (or illegitimate) emotions.
Long Abstract:
Emotions have become a "hot topic" in the study of politics and societies. They shed a new light on classic questions related to political regimes, political participation, activism and mobilization. This renewed interest has somehow left unexplored the distinct, yet similar, role of emotions in non-Western political spheres. South Asian states offer in this regard a perfect, but much overlooked, site of observation. This panel aims at studying, in an interdisciplinary and comparative perspective, those mechanisms that make private emotions become public in South Asia. How are political problems requalified (or disqualified) as being a matter of legitimate (or illegitimate) emotions? Papers may focus on four distinct, but closely related, themes: (1) the historical evolution of the norms and rules governing political emotions; (2) the interdependency between individual emotions (positive and negative), judgmental processes (allocating blame for instance) and political activism; (3) the "emotional-institutional contexts" regulating the public expression of emotions, and even making some of them "obligatory emotions"; (4) the properties of the language of emotions in South Asian politics.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Maritta Schleyer (Universität Bonn)
Paper short abstract:
The paper explores visions of the political and religious self as a reformed moral community – with a set of emotions and virtues at the core of its identity - of the Delhi based Sufi shaikh, author and Muslim activist Khwaja Hasan Nizami (1878-1955) in the context of the contemporary Gandhian movement.
Paper long abstract:
The proposed paper looks at the role of emotions in collective identity discourses in late colonial India. Contemporary debates about religious and possible political communities often entailed negotiations of their envisioned mentality - the moral values, ethics, and emotional attitudes shared by its members as accepted norms and lived practices.
In the presentation I will outline the visions of an Indian nation, posed as an ethical community, of the political leader Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869-1948) on the one hand, and of the Delhi based Sufi shaikh, author and Muslim activist Khwaja Hasan Nizami (1878-1955) on the other hand.
Both actors imagine the political community as defined and legitimized through a specific moral core which is internal to the individual and expressed through a particular mentality. This has to be established in a process of introspection and proven through the performance of a particular set of emotions and virtues by its members. Personal reform becomes a central prerequisite for collective subjectivity here.
I argue that both Gandhi and Nizami construct the political community within the framework of their own religious worldview, the former Hindu, the latter Sufi Muslim, thereby reconceptualizing religiously connoted ethics associated with personal devotion and piety within a political teleological narrative. The nation on its part becomes a space for spiritual development.
I suggest that Khwaja Hasan Nizami offered a response from a Muslim perspective to Gandhi's vision of an inclusive Indian nation as a trans-communal spiritual and moral community, and a home for both Hindus and Muslims.
Stéphanie Tawa Lama-Rewal (CEIAS (Centre for South Asian Studies, Paris))
Paper short abstract:
On the basis of a series of films on public hearings conducted in Delhi in the past few years, this paper will attempt to analyse the various uses made of the festive elements of the Indian repertoire of collective action. It will also reflect on the methodological issues attached with that type of analysis, and that type of material.
Paper long abstract:
Laughter, humour, a sense of fun is very much part of various types of political mobilization - in the largest sense - in India. Political meetings, electoral rallies, public hearings, participatory events, street protests often include songs, jokes, and some kind of street theatre. While political theatre, of which India has a rich tradition, has been studied by theatre scholars as well as anthropologists, one finds very little analysis of other forms of fun, and of their use by political leaders, political parties, social movements, associations and activists. Yet many examples come to mind, suggesting a humorous sub-repertoire of collective action, to borrow Tilly's notion, which aims at producing a range of emotions that play an important role in mobilizing people.
Humour is much used in participatory events such as public hearings, which are organised by ONGs to facilitate a confrontation between public authorities and ordinary people, around a given issue - such as access to hospitals, or water delivery, for instance. On the basis of a series of films on public hearings conducted in Delhi in the past few years, this paper will attempt to analyse the various uses made of the festive elements of the Indian repertoire of collective action. It will also reflect on the methodological issues attached with that type of analysis, and that type of material.
Amélie Blom (Institut d'études de l'Islam et des Sociétés du Monde Musulman (IISMM-EHESS)) Aminah Mohammad-Arif (CEIAS (CNRS-EHESS))
Paper short abstract:
The interlinkage between re-Islamization and the emotional expressions and norms that appears in the narratives of young "born-again Muslims" from Bangalore and Lahore shows that emotions said to be felt and to have to be felt partake in the political delimitation of a "Muslim community".
Paper long abstract:
The ethical and political dimensions of re-Islamization amongst the Muslim youth is fairly well studied (though marginally in South Asia). This process certainly results in the formation of a new "virtuous self" as well as in new forms of activism in the name of Islam. Yet, the emotions at play are still to be taken as valid entry points in the analysis, something this paper aims at doing by looking at the emotional vocabulary which, indeed, occupied a prominent place in the self-reflective narratives of young "born again Muslims" interviewed in Lahore and Bangalore (2006-2011). Which emotions do they associate with self-reform? Do triggering emotions differ from emotions that consolidate re-Islamization? How do they link religious emotions to political activism? These narratives show in addition that emotions are also subjected to new appraisals; suggesting the formation of a new emotional regime. Young "born-again Muslims" wonder about how God is to be loved and feared, about the legitimacy of anger, about the public expression of religious emotions, and about the "emotional work" of their own organizations. This complex interlinkage between re-Islamization, emotional expressions and emotional norms is addressed through an interpretive and a comparative perspective which focuses not on the actual feelings of the respondents but on the emotions said to be felt and to have to be felt. These, in our view, partake in the political delimitation of a "Muslim community" as much as the more obvious dynamics - ritualism and activism - provoking these very emotions do.
Charles Nuckolls (Brigham Young University)
Paper short abstract:
A south Indian myth traces the development of the political order to matricide, and to the suppression of maternal desire.
Paper long abstract:
The origin of the democratic political order in ancient Athens was to be found, according to Aeschylus, in the trial by jury of Orestes, accused of murdering his mother, Clytemnestra. In the south Indian fishing village that is the subject of this paper, the political order also begins in matricide, in this case of the earth goddess "Adi Sakti" by her three sons, Brahma, Visnu, and Siva. What Clytemnestra and Adi Sakti have in common is uncontrollable sexual desire. It is this desire - maternal and sexual at the same time - that must be suppressed, and then transformed, in order for the patriarchal political order to come into existence. This paper explores the relationship between maternal desire and the development of the political order in the mythology of a south Indian fishing village, and compares this story to the account in Aeschylus of the origins of Athenian democracy.
Dietrich Reetz (Zentrum Moderner Orient)
Paper short abstract:
The Difa-e-Pakistan Council (DPC), a group of 40 religious and conservative groups founded in November 2011, with an aggressive anti-American and anti-Indian agenda, offers an insight into the ways how sectarian emotions are being used and controlled for political and strategic gains.
Paper long abstract:
The paper discusses the DPC project as an attempt to form a coalition of competing and conflicting religious and political forces that is presented as an emotional 'outburst' of calculated anger and anxiety.
The use of emotions in this political project caters to various competing and conflicting needs which will be unpacked in the paper:
• References to its emotional contents are being used to justify and legitimise more aggressive demands made by the Difa Council. They are thus portrayed as temporary and can still be revised.
• Emotions play a particular role in sectarian politics where lines of dissent with sectarian competitors and adversaries are routinely drawn to consolidate support and downgrade the opponent. While it can provide steam to the project it can also prove divisive and disruptive.
• There are also attempts to stir up emotional attachment to the fatherland, to Pakistan, the military and the legacy of Zia-ul-Haq. These look more like institutional concerns that reflect the anxiety of losing out in the current reconfiguration of politics in Pakistan and in the strategic competition with India.
• Emotional politics also allow the Difa Council to join the current bandwagon of popular 'tsunami' politics of the Imran Khan variety. They are thus meant to confer new legitimacy on the religious right in the national political arena that is increasingly dominated by emotional mass meeting where a new generation of young Pakistanis has the chance to vent their anger over the failures of the political and economic system.
E-paper: this Paper will not be presented, but read in advance and discussed