Session 1: 10 am – 12:30 pm
Keynote:
Arka Chattopadhyay, Ph.D., is assistant professor of literary studies and philosophy in the department of Humanities and Social Sciences at IIT Gandhinagar, India. He is a B.A., M.A., MPhil in English Literature, from Presidency College and Jadavpur University, India. He has written his MPHIL thesis on Samuel Beckett and Alain Badiou and finished his PHD from Western Sydney University on Beckett and Lacanian Psychoanalysis. He has been published in books like Deleuze and Beckett, Knots: Post-Lacanian Psychoanalysis, Literature and Film, Gerald Murnane: Another World in this One etc.,and journals such as Textual Practice, Interventions, Samuel Beckett Today/Aujourd’hui, Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society, Sound Studies and The Harold Pinter Review. He has co-edited the book, Samuel Beckett and the Encounter of Philosophy and Literature and has guest-edited the SBT/A issue on Samuel Beckett and the Extensions of the Mind. Arka is the founding editor of the online literary journal Sanglap (http://sanglap-journal.in/) and a contributing editor to Harold Pinter Review. His first monograph, Beckett, Lacan and the Mathematical Writing of the Real has been published by Bloomsbury Academic UK in 2019. He has recently co-edited a volume on Nabarun Bhattacharya for Bloomsbury India in 2020 and is working on a monograph on Posthumanism, contracted by Orient Blackswan and two edited volumes on Affective Ecologies and Badiou and Modernism.
Abstract:
Can the State be Posthuman?
The talk will address the question of the politics of posthumanism as theory and practice by asking if the nation-state as a dispositif can ever be posthuman, if it is always already non-human, even in-human? When posthumanist philosophy rethinks politics, how does this new notion of politics negotiate with the concept of the state? Political action in a certain progressive-left thinking has almost always been seen in opposition to or at a distance from the state apparatus. If the political process emerges through a conflict or distance with/from the state, how does posthumanist politics reconceptualize the role of the state in politics if at all or does it not think of the state machine? Drawing on the structural aspects of Marxism in Althusser and the vision of non-human politics in Latour and others, the talk will focus on the politics of the posthumanist subject at odds with a state that was never human to begin with and has become all the more non-human in its late-capitalist neo-liberalist manifestation. Does this mean the state can never be posthuman? If the answer is no, how does one do posthuman politics with the state? The talk will offer literary instances to delineate its argumentative trajectory from the state to the political action in relation to posthumanism.
Panel: Nation-State and Neoliberalism
Sukanya Maity is a third-year undergraduate student, pursuing a major in Sociology with a minor in International Relations from Jadavpur University, Kolkata. Her research interests can be categorised within the fields of Citizenship, Sociology of Education and Conflict Studies (with a special focus on minorities in India).
Abstract:
Posthumanist Interpretations of Surveillance through the Introduction of Multiple Choice Questions and the Need to Fit in
Surveillance through knowledge-mapping and knowledge construction remains a political weapon of the state. Contextually in India, in the face of rising extremism and normative polarity, few educational institutions still serve as the safety valve of democracy, providing free space for thinking and thereby to resist the monopolisation of common masses. Consequentially, attempts at curbing the independence enjoyed by these institutions, have been ten-fold. One of the most prominent yet subtle ways of doing so is the imposition of the computational process of assessment through Multiple Choice Questionnaires (MCQs) in Social Sciences, reasoned out as an attempt to favour ‘exact knowledge’— a process which is less time-consuming, effortless and lacks any “political bias” since computers do not possess the ability to promote favouritism. This paper examines how the language of humans is being substituted by codes, turning students into puppets of facts that are acceptable. The homogenization of the masses and ignorance of the existing digital divide is yet another pathological effect of capitalist advancement. This paper will further explore the hermeneutics of MCQization and the need to fit in (within the given options) whereby having an opinion other than what is acceptable eliminates the participating individuals from the process itself.
Debarshi Arathdar and Amit Mandal are are currently pursuing PhD from the department of English, University of Delhi.
Abstract:
Tracing the ontic of Singularity: from Brahman to Big Brother
Singularity, in all its perplexed metaphors and epithets; draws on from the idea of an all-encompassing domain that promises both a freedom from the part and servitude to the whole. This paper seeks to contest the idea of ‘Singularity’ as exhibited within the Transhumanistic discourse in tandem to the Vedantic concept of the ‘Brahman’ as put forth by the Advaita and Vishishtadvaita schools of thought. The Indian philosophical strand of Brahman provides a counter to the ontic of technological singularity by stating that a much benign and grander singularity of sat (Absolute Being), chit (consciousness) and Ananda (Bliss) is always already at play. Brahman then, exists akin to the Gestalt whole that encompasses its parts and yet transcends them by being somehow more. The paper shall attempt to look into questions (but not limited to): What are the various contestations on the strands of singularity arising within a Posthuman paradigm? How do the strands address the concept of the ‘Absolute’ domain? How is one different from the other in propounding a connected and channelized state of consciousness? In a Transhuman singularity scenario, will one inform and add-up with the other? conflict and contest? Or numb and nullify the other?
Subhadeep Paul, Ph.D., is currently Assistant Professor, Department of English, School of Literature, Language and Cultural Studies, Bankura University, West Bengal. He has previously taught at the P.G. Department of English, Maulana Azad (Govt.) College, Kolkata and as Guest faculty at the P.G. Department of English, Lady Brabourne College, Kolkata. He was a UGC J.R.F and S.R.F. at Jadavpur University. He was Co-Director of a Two-Year Major Research Project (2016-18) entitled “Discoursing the Homeless Elderly: Tropes, Desires, Containment” (funded by the I.C.S.S.R., in collaboration with The University of Swansea, UK).
Abstract:
Bio-Denials and the Billboard Religious Imaginary: Posthuman Defeatism in Present-day India
This paper dwells on the catastrophic predicament (predicating both the recent past and immediate future) facing contemporary India, centering around the perpetuation of what may be defined as a non-relational praxis between technology, religion and the environment. A marked paradigm shift is revealed in terms of an unhealthy collusion between muscular nationalism, a jingoistic evolutionary divine and sheer bio-denials in cataclysmic succession. A technology-backed theophany excludes the environment and climate justice as part of the posthuman narrative of overall species’ well-being. Development chronicles, chained to anthropocentric monopoly, entail and foretell calamitous outcomes that have been sanitized as petty casualties for profitable utilitarianism. This has shunned an Indian posthuman future that could and ought to have been founded on species welfare and attentive to a cosmopolitan democratization. Instead, the natural equilibrium has been avariciously exploited and tampered, with zero tolerance and total disregard for fragile Indian ecosystems (viz. the projected 12000 Crore INR Char Dham highway connectivity project). This plutocratic privileging of investment capital over natural sustainability, is the contemporary Indian ‘Billboard Religious Imaginary’ that shuns a traditional mindful evolutionary divine, in favor of a baneful pantheon-promotional. This results in a posthuman defeatism for the subcontinent, where all psycho-spiritual technologies are rendered farcical. This jingoistic anti-heterodox also results in a post-disciplinary dead end, where scientific and logical meaning themselves collapse. This paper critiques this atrophied and mercenary planning ethic in India today, that is sans ethics and anticipatedly fatalistic in the light of proper posthuman contiguities and continuities.
Nisarga Bhattacharjee is a Ph. D. research scholar in the English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad. His area of interest includes Modernist and Postmodern literature.
Ananya Chatterjee is an Assistant Professor of English at Balurghat College. Her research interest lies in Tagore Studies and Gender and Literature.
Abstract:
Cyber-Community Formation through Pokémon Go and the Question of Posthuman Private Spaces in India
By superimposing palimpsests of the virtual upon the real, reality-based augmented games like Pokémon Go threaten to impose homogeneity as per norms alien to the local culture, but are imported from a reservoir of Eurocentric fantasies. We will debate in this paper whether Pokémon Go facilitate the liberation of individual agency for Indian players, or it moulds them into complying subjects of the neoliberal paradigm. The gaming collectives formed surrounding Pokémon Go can function as platforms for the realization of alternate, posthuman identities that engage in value-formation through behaviours that would have been considered non-normative in Indian contexts. This, however, leads to a pastiche of private spaces, thereby actually instigating hierarchical technostructures within the cyber community, making it contradictory to the utopian community platform whose messianic promise initially motivated its fanbase. Through the assistance of Baudrillard’s understanding of neoliberal ‘baseness’, the paper will debate whether, by rarefying worldly humanist values, Pokémon Go can generate an alternative paradigm of posthuman values, or if this cultural sublimation means a spiral into naked orthodoxy.
June 5, 2021 – Session 2
Keynote:
Anirban Das is Associate Professor in Cultural Studies at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta. After graduating in Medicine, he shifted to an interdisciplinary space in the humanities and the social sciences with a PhD in Philosophy. He has published in English and vernacular Bangla on feminist theory, deconstruction, postcolonial theory, the body, science studies and medical epistemology. His academic monograph Toward a Politics of the (Im)Possible: The Body in Third World Feminisms has been published by the Anthem Press. He is currently working on three book projects and a number of essays.
Title: Posthumanism and the Many Ways of ‘Thinking’ the ‘Non-Human’
Abstract: TBA
Panel: Alternative Humans
Nabanita Karanjai is a Research Scholar in the Department of English, Bankura University, West Bengal. Her research interests include postmodernism, posthumanism and science fiction.
Abstract:
Posthumanist Strategies of Storytelling: “Metaphoric Connections” in A.K. Ramanujan’s A Flowering Tree
Oral traditions abound in folk tales where anthropomorphic transformations tend to blur the boundary between the human and the non-human. However, the aim of these tales is ultimately anthropocentric. Written in 1997, A.K. Ramanaujan’s A Flowering Tree reports a popular folktale from the Kannada oral tradition where the female protagonist transforms into a tree and gradually achieves agency. What this paper would like to argue is that the repetition of this event in the tale inadvertently makes possible the acknowledgement of the life-force (“zoe”) present in all the non-human life-forms constituting ecology. Ramanaujan’s telling of the tale presents nature (as the “flowering tree”) on a plane equivalent to the subjugated position of the woman in a patriarchal society. The “metaphoric connection” with the tree accords the women a space of their own in the Kannada cultural sphere. In this way the posthumanist strategy of storytelling is deployed in cultural narrative.
Mahasweta Sikdar is a research scholar in the department of English at The English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad.
Abstract:
Almost Humans: A posthuman study of the creatures in the short stories of Satyajit Ray
The short stories of Satyajit Ray are full of astonishing discoveries and inventions, ranging from planets, strange creatures to AI. This paper aims to study the fictional creatures in the short stories of Satyajit Ray to understand the human reaction to the almost human. The paper is primarily focused on Professor Hijibijbij and Aschorjontu. Both the stories express a problem in naming the two creatures found in them. Though they are quite different from each other they raise the same concerns- why are humans so fascinated by creatures that are almost humans but not quite so. Though the evolution theory establishes our kinship with monkeys, in Aschorjontu we also find how it establishes an evolutionary hierarchy. The hybrid creations of professor Hijibijbij are mere experiments to bring into life the fictional creatures from the book Hojoborolo. These creatures further confuse the meaning of what is a human. Finally, this paper intends to study the poster of Aschorjontu in Radio Mirchi show Sunday Suspense in likeness to the hand stencils found in Lascaux, France.
Małgorzata Kowalcze received her Ph.D. in English from the Pedagogical University of Cracow, Poland. She also holds a Master’s degree in Philosophy at the Jagiellonian University, Cracow. Her doctoral dissertation is devoted to the phenomenological interpretation of the concept of corporeality in the novels by William Golding. Much of her work involves philosophical treatment of issues raised by literature. Her principal research interests are in the field of contemporary English literature, phenomenology and posthumanism. She is assistant lecturer at the Institute of English Studies of the Pedagogical University of Cracow.
Abstract:
Posthuman Magical Corporeality in Salman Rushdie’s “Midnight’s Children”
The purpose of this paper is to discuss Salman Rushdie’s depiction of human corporeality in his novel Midnight’s Children within the framework of new materialistic Posthumanism. With its focus on the inherent vitality and agency of matter, New Materialism makes room for the kind of spirituality which is seen not as the opposite of materiality, but its very component. The writer’s focus on human sensual perception is given particular attention in an attempt to show how human ‘magical’ corporeality corresponds to the uncanny ‘corporeality’ of the world. Rushdie exhibits a surprisingly new materialist strand of the posthumanist perception of reality: human physicality being intrinsically ‘intelligent’ and endowed with metaphysical properties, questioning of the human vs. animal dualism, appreciation of the non-human, and accentuating the peculiar ‘uncanny’ quality of matter. He stresses that every self is necessarily an embodied self and as such is already caught up in the fabric/flesh of the world. Rushdie illustrates a close correspondence between the material and the immaterial and shows how the world is created by meaningful ‘intra-actions’ between human beings and their surroundings: each act of perception or performance one carries out is already involved in giving shape and visible expression to the world.
Souvik Kar is a Ph.D. scholar at Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad, India. His interests include nuclear fiction, posthumanism, the environmental humanities, and the Novel. He writes and performs his own poetry.
Abstract:
The Sacrilegious Goddess: Giti Chandra’s “The Goddess Project” and the intersection of Postcolonial and Feminist Posthumanism
This paper situates a conversation between Rosi Braidotti’s (2017) configuration of feminist posthumanities as a critique of androcentric humanism and Md. Monirul Islam’s (2016) interrogation of posthumanism’s neocolonial implications. I locate Giti Chandra’s short story “The Goddess Project” at this intersection, and read its titular project of creating cyborgized female vigilantes to avenge sexual violence in a Hindu fundamentalist regime as a posthumanist interrogation of “Bharat Mata” (Mother India) as a male chauvinist Hindu postcolonial icon at odds with the true position of the feminine in the imagination of Hindutva. With respect to the ongoing controversies about sexual violence and government proposals of technocratic solutions such as electronic tracking (see Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Chouhan 2021) that shift the onus onto working women instead, this paper will decolonize the cyborg as an embodiment of postcolonial feminist justice as well as a mode of reflection on the contradictions that mark its uneasy, “sacrilegious” co-existence with images of the postcolonial Hindu Divine Feminine.