Mohan Dutta: Culture-Centered Approach

We have now said our goodbyes Comrade. Our fists raised, pointing to the skies, we say our goodbyes, our heads held high, so immensely proud of the journey you have traversed. In gratitude that we traversed some of this journey together, that you taught me the first lessons of performance work. Lessons you taught us will stay forever, deep in our hearts. Lessons of justice. Lessons of change. Lessons of the transformative power of culture work. In the working class struggles, in the feminist struggles of women within the Left, in the street theaters and revolutionary plays, in the echos of the songs of change, you will forever stay. That revolutionary song that we so often performed with "the waves will rise, the prisons will break" will forever seed the hopes of a revolutionary future. That you were my pishimoni, my aunt, my teacher, the anchor to my journey in performance work, will stay with the journey ahead.  Your teaching, "the difficulty does not mat

In July 2019, when the Communication Studies discipline imploded, with the inner workings of the discipline rendered visible because of the decision of the leadership of the National Communication Association (NCA) to change how Distinguished Scholars of the discipline are selected and the subsequent backlash from the discipline's Distinguished Scholars, a number of us, scholars of colour, critically interrogated the racist ideology that forms the infrastructure of Communication Studies. I had responded with a series of blog posts , arguing that not only do scholars of colour have to excel many times over, but we also have to bear the pain of living through unequal structures. Much of our labour is erased, written off, denigrated. Our work is labeled as activist to delegitimize it. Our voices are framed as angry to undermine our concerns at the racism that inhabits the cellular structures of our disciplines, institutions, and organizations. When we speak out, we are targeted,

Why White supremacists support free speech? For the White supremacist and the collaborators of White supremacy (including Zionists that support various forms of White supremacy, more on this in a later blog), the instrument of free speech is a powerful tool. You will often hear the White supremacist rallying behind calls for free speech. Such so-called higher order defense of free speech that White supremacists often jump to is to make space for far-right White supremacists to attack the dignity and human rights of communities of colour. White supremacists placing themselves behind the freedom of speech agenda is an effort  to prop up White supremacy. The underlying agenda of the White supremacist is to uphold White supremacy as the normative structure of society. How then do White supremacists attack voices of colour? This therefore also means that the White supremacist simultaneously must silence the freedom of speech of people of colour, especially the voices of pe

The culture-centered approach (CCA) roots itself in the methodology of listening as the basis for co-creating transformative practices. Listening as a methodological tool in the CCA is tied to the work of building communicative infrastructures in solidarity with subaltern communities. The voices of the subaltern margins, emergent through method, disrupt the oppressive forces of colonialism, capitalism, and feudalism that violently erase subaltern voices. The presence of subaltern voices in hegemonic discursive spaces dismantles the structures of erasure and oppression. The work of solidarity is one of walking alongside subaltern communities to address the political economy of oppressive structures that consolidate power in the hands of the ruling classes. In this journey of walking together, culture-centered processes bring to reality communicative practices that seek to dismantle oppressive structures. The CCA, as a meta-theoretical framework therefore, is in direct oppos

(A note of love to family) You say, be careful, Be careful or else, They’ll come after you. You say, watch out, Don’t raise your voice, Don’t speak up so much. Don't join the protests, Don't post on Facebook, Get off Twitter, Be careful or else They'll come after you. I turn to you, Look you in the eye, And ask, Do you remember? When I said to you In the times of love, "You are cheering for the fascists. What you are playing with Will turn this place Into the valley of death." Do you remember the times? When I said, "All your cheering and hate-mongering Will one day consume us all." So let the fascists come, Let them turn  the streets into piles of bodies Let them fill  their jails with our bodies. Let them make up False charges and  made-up stories. Our voices and bodies Are all we have. Because these voices we have Will witness, These voices we have Will remember There was

Neoliberal organizing actively makes place for the politics of hate. One might even argue that neoliberal transformations are integral to the production of wholesale hatred, while at the same time, surviving on hate to fuel further reforms. The majoritarian politics of hate that forms the backdrop for the hegemonic emergence of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS)-linked Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the broader climate of hate targeting India's Muslim minorities, and the active political-institutional support for policies such as the National Registry of Citizens (NRC) and the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) that are directly targeted at India's Muslim minorities thrive on the ongoing neoliberal reforms across India, especially the privatization of public spaces and the normalization of individualized greed as the basis of identity. The reforms have been at the core of the production of the upwardly aspiring Indian, structured on the values of self-centeredness, gre

Figure 1: The #NoSingaporeansLeftBehind campaign created by families living in poverty in Singapore Across culture-centered interventions, the co-creation of voice infrastructures in partnership with communities living in poverty results in the ownership of decision-making processes in the hands of the poor. When the poor own the communicative platforms, make decisions on these platforms based on information they seek out in partnership with community organizations and researchers, and own the frameworks of evaluating the interventions they develop, the nature and quality of decisions become anchored in their everyday lives. As opposed to experts from the outside making decisions that are not grounded in the lived experiences of the poor, the culture-centered interventions developed and owned by the poor address the various underlying conditions causing poverty by being created by the poor. That experts often make decisions based on poorly informed, empirically empty ideolog