Abstract of a recent sociology work in progress talk at U of A. These run regularly. I have a talent for missing Mark’s presentations - doh! Some of his photographic work can be seen at Reflexive Frames.
Following Walter Benjamin’s key insights into modernity and history, this essay analyzes the social and built spaces of post-colonial Calcutta (Kolkata). Weaving personal narrative, ethnography, social theory, and visual analysis, I argue that Calcutta (Kolkata) is a paradigmatic space of modernity. The dissertation begins with a reflection, resolved through Henri Lefebvre’s notion of “urban society”, on the contemporary, global condition of totalizing urbanization. It narrows its focus through an examination of the tropes of commodity and allegory to read contemporary and historical spaces in Calcutta (Kolkata) as indicative of historical return and standstill. While Benjamin scrutinized multiple commodity forms in his Arcades Project, the following project focuses on the discursive transition of one particularly illuminating commodity form, Bengali pata painting. It contextualizes the transition of this significant folk art form from its traditional uses in cultural transmission, through its more recent articulation in commodification and exchange values, to its more contemporary reception as an artefact of nationalist identity formation. The role of the modern city space and its place in defining commodified forms of nationalist discourse contextualizes the discussion of the pata painting’s transition to artefact. The essay concludes by investigating commodity phantasmagoria in both the Calcutta International Exhibition of 1883-4, and the now ruinous, but still surviving, remnants of a 19th century colonial arcade. Calcutta’s (Kolkata’s) emerging, contemporary consumptive spaces merely repeat previous commodity myths; and, as such, produces the image of Calcutta (Kolkata) as, quintessentially, an urban allegory of modernity, one that uniquely illuminates the multiple tensions and continuing catastrophes of the present.
This entry was posted Sunday, November 5th, 2006 at 5:38 pm and is filed under Uncategorized.
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