Mohan Dutta: Culture-Centered Approach

Poster of the No Singaporeans Left Behind documentary I had directed While working in Singapore for six years, what was most powerfully evident to me was the capacity of the authoritarian state to continually deploy communicative inversions. Communicative inversions are symbolic resources that turn materiality on its head.  I crystallized much of my thinking on communicative inversion while working in Singapore, witnessing the academy as an extension of the state continually play this game of communicative inversions. Even as I was being continually called into meetings with management regarding the work of my research team at the Center for Culture-centered Approach to Research and Evaluation (CARE) with migrant workers and with households experiencing poverty, I would be lectured by the management on how these meetings were really meant as friendly guidance.  When questioned about the attacks on my academic freedom, management would offer me polite stories about how my acade...

In earlier talks delivered at the Center for Culture-centered Approach to Research and Evaluation (CARE), I have outlined Hindutva's uses of deception .  One such strategy of deception is through equivocation, communicating opposite narratives at the same time.  I have noted how Hindutva speaks to its internal audience in one language while communicating with its external audience in an entirely different narrative register.  Hindutva's hate-mongering, and otherizing of Muslims would often come as a shock to white liberals in the diaspora, who are used to being invited to a nice Indian meal of daal and naan while being regaled with stories of "Hinduism as a religion of peace." Hindutva in the diaspora actively works to project the narrative of Hinduism as a language of peace while participating in promoting the extremist anti-Muslim ideology to its internal audience. You will witness Hindutva ideologues narrate stories of Hinduism as a religion of giving while funding...