kriticulture

A timely article, a semi-obituary. . . But I still have hope that the history of cultural studies might matter to the university—and to the world beyond it. My hopes aren't quite as ambitious as they were 20 years ago. I no longer expect cultural studies to transform the disciplines. But I do think cultural studies can do a better job of complicating the political-economy model in media theory, a better job of complicating our accounts of neoliberalism, and a better job of convincing people inside and outside the university that cultural studies' understanding of hegemony is a form of understanding with great explanatory power—that is to say, a form of understanding that actually works. Link: http://chronicle.com/article/Whats-the-Matter-With/48334/

“Identity and Cultural Dynamics Tribes of South Africa, Nigeria and North East India” Rajiv Gandhi University, Itanagar, Arunachal Pradesh, India October 28-30, 2009 A three-day International Multidisciplinary Seminar on “Identity and Cultural Dynamics: Tribes of South Africa, Nigeria and North East India” is being organized by Rajiv Gandhi University, Itanagar, Arunachal Pradesh, India in collaboration with the African Studies Association of India, New Delhi, from October 28 to 30, 2009. Papers are invited on any of the sub- themes of the seminar. Please send in the abstracts (not exceeding 300 words) by 30th September 2009 and full research papers by 15 October 2009. For further details please contact: 1. Dr. Shreya Bhattacharji Seminar Coordinator Email: bhattacharjishreya@gmail.com shreya_bhattacharji@yahoo.com shreya_b3@rediffmail.com 2. Mr. Miazi Hazam Email: miazimiazi@rediffmail.com “Identity and Cultural Dynamics Tribes of South Africa, Nigeria and North ...

By Rajesh Kumar Sharma It was a tight, neat cabin. Files were piled up like trophies against a wall. An air-conditioner peeped out of the twisted mouth of a window. Across the table sat the gatekeeper, the all-potent PA, chattering with some malevolent soul on his elegant white-gray telephone. “I am like a mongrel’s carcass, torn to shreds by those vile crows,” he said with the touching vanity of a poet who has just discovered himself. The tall man looming over him with a file and a smile frowned at the comparison, unable to determine whether the first simile was more honourable or the second. “VIP after VIP has been tearing into my flesh, but I tell them I can’t get them an appointment with the Sahib. At least not yet.” I was amazed at the range of images his uneven head could harbour – from disintegrating dogs and scavenging crows to exhausted courtesans! Keats’s negative capability, or the ancient seers’ aham brahmasmi? Had I yielded to a fit of that idiotic sentiment which sometime...

Memories come like winter sunshine when the mind turns to those who have been my teachers. Now that I have myself been a teacher for several years, I have begun to realize how difficult – impossible even – it is to become, and remain, one. Teaching, like learning, begins – as the story of Nachiketa and Yama hints – with dying. The will to know, which sprouts in the will to be, must crash against the farthest bounds of being. To seek is to eternally destroy and create your being. It is to be, like Nachiketa, the flames of yajna agni (sacrificial fire) . . . even as it is to be Yama, the one who lives dying . ...