Mohan Dutta: Culture-Centered Approach

The ideology of Whiteness excludes by delineating its boundaries, marking the "other" as the outside of these boundaries, as an inferior category that is not yet human. Setting up its own rules for what counts and how, Whiteness then goes on to circulate its hegemonic form through the active exclusion of the other. Turning these rules into universals, Whiteness ensures it perpetuates its hegemony. These hegemonic logics of Whiteness reproduce themselves within postcolonial contexts. After all, the technique of marking the other as inferior that enabled the White master to rule also serves colonial rule by postcolonial elites. These postcolonial elites are descendants of the local elite class in the colonies that collaborated with the colonizer in running the imperial projects. The god-granted privilege of these elites to rule over the popular other is intrinsically tied to their continual production of the other as inferior, lacking, backward, traditional. The figure ...

Totalitarian control thrives on the totality of power over every space of articulation. In turn, totalitarian control is intrinsic to the reproduction of absolute power. Power works through every corner of totalitarian societies, from the schools and universities in such societies, to work spaces, to neighborhoods, to homes. The effect of power is felt at the cellular level, in the everyday being of life in the regime. Totalitarian control is exercised not only through direct tools of repression, but also through various everyday norms that constitute interactions. One such form of normative control exercised in totalitarian systems is in the threat to reputation. The threat to reputation works to keep intact the practices of the regime, without questions or criticisms. Any criticism of the system and/or its corrupt processes can be controlled by attacking the reputation of the person raising the criticism. Such forms of attacks on reputation can work powerfully to silen...

Vacuous communication is communication that is empty, gutted of materiality, located in networks of symbolic references that are equally empty. Through these interpenetrating chains of vacuous symbols, power finds strategies of retaining and ensconcing itself. Vacuous communication is an essential communicative strategy of hegemonic structures.  The various combinations of otherwise disconnected words make up the formations that serve the agendas of power. In digital networks, the vacuous formations travel quickly from the elite structures of authoritarian regimes to think tanks propped up by such regimes, to the academic-business thought leadership panels of the 1% in the picturesque meeting rooms of the Swiss Alps. Vacuous communication thrives on word play. Wordsmiths, particularly credentialed academic experts, are integral to building infrastructures of vacuous communication. Vacuous communication is often a collection of words. Words that are arranged in meaning...

Academic cultures thrive on habits of scavenging. These habits of scavenging are expressed particularly at moments of crises created by the oppressive forces in the academe. When a scholar, a group of scholars, or a body of work is specifically targeted for having disrupted the structure, scavengers in various forms "scoop in" so they could profit from the crisis. Crises thus are opportunities for profiteering for the academic careerist, eating from the deaths produced by the structure. The oppressive force of the structures enables the scavengers, signaling the appropriate time, avenue, and context for scavenging. The scavengers enable the structure, recovering from the scraps salvageable publications, social impact metrics, and "measurable" outputs to be used by the structure. After having dismantled the radical sites of resistance, the structure can go back to the products put together by the scavengers from the deaths of radicalism, claiming "...

by Bernadette Marie Calafell, Karma Chávez, Devika Chawla, Lisa A. Flores, Nina Lozano, and Bryan McCann On June 26, 2019, responding to the strong critique to the DS letter, Professor Carole Blair, a DS and a leading feminist scholar of Communication, wrote a response (pasted below). In this letter, Professors Bernadette Marie Calafell, Karma Chávez, Devika Chawla, Lisa A. Flores, Nina Lozano, and Bryan McCann respond to Professor Blair. Dear Carole, After considering several possible ways to respond to your recent Crtnet post amid the disci plinary fallout regarding NCA Distinguished Scholars and Marty Medhurst’s editorial, we have chosen to address you personally--for the impact of your post and the silence that preceded it is personal, professional, and political. As we believe you well know, these three things are always intimately entwined. We write to you as mid-career scholars working in various critical traditions. While our work differs in many salient ways, we ...

Women farmers of the Deccan Development Society (DDS) running the community workshop on video-based voice We at the Center for Culture-centered Approach to Research and Evaluation (CARE) are delighted at the recent recognition of our community partner, Deccan Development Society (DDS), with the 2019 UN-Equator Prize.  The Equator Prize is a recognition of community-led grassroots initiatives that offer solutions to sustainable development. For the last three decades, the  Deccan Development Society (DDS), has been developing culture-centered interventions in agriculture and ecology through sanghams, grassroots cooperatives owned by dalit women. These grassroots cooperatives are spaces for knowledge generation, drawing on indigenous knowledge, offering solutions to sustainable ecologies, and challenging the global onslaught of neoliberal agriculture, felt locally.  The interventions developed by the DDS have been at the forefront of offering an alternative mode...

From 2015, for a few years, I had the opportunity to team teach the introductory Philosophy of Communication, the fabled course at Purdue University that formed the basis of doctoral pedagogy in the program. The conversation on Whiteness that we witness today is a reminder of the many experiences of teaching the course and disrupting the doctoral program. On one hand, in my many years at Purdue, teaching this course was one of the most joyful experiences, an opportunity to witness the brilliance of colleagues, many of whom formed the canon of Communication. On the other hand, teaching the course embodied the emotional and cognitive labour of struggles against Whiteness while immersed in it. When reflecting on this experience and the painful work of labour, let me note in the beginning my gratitude to the White allies that stood in solidarity. As a team taught course, Com 600, embodied a pedagogy of debate. It was therefore set up like that, beginning with Philosophy of Science...