[I write this piece as an upper caste, upper-class academic, who through the privileges accorded by caste, and through friendships with Adivasi intellectuals, organizers, and activists, is continually learning about the violence that is scripted into my caste position in the academe]. Imagine the upper caste, upper middle-class Calcutta antel, the daughter or son of a corporate executive or a professor or a doctor, sipping their whisky in their Calcutta living room in one of those South Calcutta neighborhoods, surrounded by other caste privileged friends that followed the same trajectory, St. Xaviers and then perhaps Jadavpur or Presidency, the spaces of radical posturing among the caste privileged, and declaring, "The subaltern can't speak. For if the subaltern was heard, s/he would no longer be subaltern." An entire infrastructure of caste privileged radical posturing that shapes the intellectual zeitgeist of postcolonial theory derives from the unquestioned privilege o...
This blog offers Mohan Dutta's reflections on the theoretical framework of the culture-centered approach, examining the interplays among culture, communication and marginalisation. It also explores resistance, the ways in which communities at the margins challenge structures. Writings on the blog are updated to reflect the organic analysis of structure and agency. Occasionally, this serves as a space for interlocutors examining marginalisation and voice.