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Theme: 8. Negotiating Margins: Representations, Resistances, Agencies
Sanjukta Das Gupta
Sapienza Università di Roma, Italy
Alessandra Consolaro
University of Turin, Italy
Marilena Proietti
Sapienza Università di Roma, Italy
Alessandra Consolaro
University of Turin, Italy
Marilena Proietti
Sapienza Università di Roma, Italy
Sanjukta Das Gupta
Sapienza Università di Roma, Italy
Sanjukta Das Gupta
Sapienza Università di Roma, Italy
Alessandra Consolaro
University of Turin, Italy
Arnav Bhattacharya
University of Pennsylvania, United States
Valeria Termolino
Fondazione l’Albero della Vita, Italy
Marilena Proietti
Sapienza Università di Roma, Italy
While the concept of indigeneity has only recently gained acceptance in Asia, the idea of ‘tribes’ or ‘Adivasis’ (original inhabitants) as cultural exceptions has been in vogue in South Asia since colonial times and have attained a new articulated visibility and an amplified political resonance today. The panel seeks to interrogate the colonial and post-colonial representations of the subjectivities of ‘indigenous’ or ‘tribal’ populations in South Asia. It demonstrates that indigeneity in South Asia is subject to renegotiation and reconfirmation and that it is a temporally and spatially structured concept which assumes different shapes across different historical moments. It thus elaborates on the construction and reconstitution of indigeneity across the subcontinent and on the contestations over the various nomenclatures and identities which have either been imposed upon or been claimed by diverse indigenous/ ‘tribal’ communities since the 19th century.
British colonial state policies had placed such communities among the most vulnerable and marginalized groups in the subcontinent and perceived them through a variety of lenses, ranging from ‘noble savage’ to ‘born criminals’, all of which continue to influence contemporary imaginings of ‘tribal’ populations. For both the colonial and post-colonial state, the ‘indigenous’ ways of life were an aberration, which marred the (apparently) smooth fabric of sedentary, agrarian/urban, attuned-to-private ownership, mainstream society. In recent decades, the conflict has been particularly sharp between an indigenous way of life with its close ties to nature and the demand of the neoliberal, globalized world economy for unlimited access to natural resources. It is their very ‘indigeneity’ which is believed to mark them off as an irksome obstacle to national ‘development’.
How indigeneity has been represented was, and is, instrumental in its construction/constitution. The panel aims to interrogate the diverse objectives, processes and facets of such representations. While representations of indigeneity by state power and mainstream society have limited the agency of various indigenous communities, the latter is now increasingly taking upon itself the task of self-representation. Mainly articulated around expressions of moral and political discontent, such forms of self-representation are, at the same time, making demands for artistic recognition. By engaging with the evolution of indigenous rights, cultural rooted¬ness, and geographical locatedness, the panel provides a critical understanding of indigenous people’s confron¬tation with modernity in the subcontinent and re-examines the subalternity of indigenous communities and the multiple representations of their consciousness, identity and politics.
Presenter: Sanjukta Das Gupta – Sapienza Università di Roma
Presenter: Alessandra Consolaro – University of Turin
Presenter: Arnav Bhattacharya – University of Pennsylvania
Presenter: Valeria Termolino – Fondazione l’Albero della Vita
Presenter: Marilena Proietti – Sapienza Università di Roma