Mohan Dutta: Culture-Centered Approach

Much of the current scholarship of cultural studies is a necessary and important accompaniment to diverse forms of neoliberal transformations of politics and economics globally. The emergence of cultural studies in communication in the 1990s is also juxtaposed in the backdrop of the hegemony of neoliberalism as the organizing framework of thought. What role then did cultural studies play in the context of neoliberalism? The ascendance of cultural studies in academia as "the" critical has taken over the performance of critique through cultural descriptors. These cultural descriptors most often are disengaged from questions of structure(s), and by occupying "the" critical space, they draw attention away from the everyday necessities of critiquing neoliberalism and challenging it. Cultural Studies, performing as sites of radical difference within academic institutions, on one hand, position themselves as oppositional sites. On the other hand, the lack of enga...

I can feel the brownness of my skin, in your gaze. In your desire, to uplift the burden of my brown soul. I can feel the brownness of my skin, in your touch. In your passion, to fill the primitive depths with your light. I can feel the heat of your bomb, under my skin. In your declarations, to democratize the backward ways of my life. Inspired by my reading of Raka Shome's "Diana and Beyond."

The shiny advertising slogans of "Make in India" tell the story of a modern India, a rapidly growing IT sector, the rising knowledge management industry, and the burgeoning private industry feeding India's growth story. The convent-educated, MTV-watching, Nike-wearing twenty-something is the face of this new India. Aspiring. With dreams of the Big Apple. The pulse of the nation's imagination. Promising in his appeal as the digitally skilled workforce of the new India, the twenty-something presents the image of a global cosmopolitanism. Technologically-savvy, social media-adept, YouTube-conversant. The gloss of modernity is a well performed facade, however. The Domino's, Levi's, and Coldplay obfuscate the casteism that pervades the everyday being of this twenty-something India. Rituals of touch, codes of purity, and practices of boundary-marking define his inner life. He follows the rituals spelt out by his parents. Participates in the custo...