Wording the World: Veena Das and Scenes of Inheritance

495 Pages·2015·6.94 MB·English

by  Roma Chatterji (ed.)

Wording the World

Stefanos Geroulanos and Todd Meyers, series editors

Wording the World
Veena Das and Scenes of Inheritance
Edited by Roma Chatterji
Fordham University Press
New York 2015
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First edition
Contents
Ac know ledg ments ix
1. Conversations, Generations, Genres: Anthropological Knowing
as a Form of Life 1
Roma Chatterji
2. Ethnography in the Time of Martyrs: History and Pain
in Current Anthropological Practice 21
Sylvain Perdigon
3. Pedagogies of the Clinic: Learning to Live (Again and Again) 38
Aaron Goodfellow
4. Disembodied Conjugality 55
Lotte Buch Segal
5. Word, Image, and Movement: Translating Pain 69
Ein Lall and Roma Chatterji
6. Conceptual Vita 84
Bhrigupati Singh
7. The Child Bears Witness: Menace, Despair, and Hope
in a Courtroom 105
Pratiksha Baxi
8. Experiments with Fate: Buddhist Morality and Human Rights
in Thailand 128
Don Selby
9. Communitas and Recovered Life: Suffering and Recovery
in the Sikh Carnage of 1984 154
Yasmeen Arif
10. Sexual Violence, Law, and Qualities of Affi liation 172
Sameena Mulla
11. On Feelings and Finiteness in Everyday Life 191
Clara Han
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12. “Listening to Voices”: Immigrants, Settlers, and Citizens
at the Ethnic Margins of the State 211
Sangeeta Chattoo
13. Punjabi Inscriptions of Kinship and Gender: Sayings and Songs 236
Rita Brara
14. In the Event of an Anthropological Thought 258
Anand Pandian
15. The Ayodhya Dispute: Law’s Imagination and the Functions
of the Status Quo 273
Deepak Mehta
16. The Death of Nature in the Era of Global Warming 288
Naveeda Khan
17. Triste Romantik: Ruminations on an Ethnographic Encounter
with Philosophy 300
Andrew Brandel
18. Making Claims to Tradition: Poetics and Politics in the Works
of Young Maithil Paint ers 318
Mani Shekhar Singh
19. The Mirror as Frame: Time and Narrative in the Folk Art
of Bengal 347
Roma Chatterji
20. Adjacent Thinking: A Postscript 372
Veena Das
21. Between Words and Lives. A Thought on the Coming Together
of Margins, Violence, and Suffering: An Interview with
Veena Das 400
Notes 413
Bibliography 445
List of Contributors 469
Index 473
Ac knowl edg ments
I would like to take this opportunity to thank Andrew Brandel and Deepak Mehta, who
have both contributed to this volume in different ways. Veena Das has, as always, been
unstinting in her support and encouragement. In a career in anthropology that spans
over four de cades and has inspired students and colleagues in institutions across the
globe, it is fi tting that this volume pays tribute to her role as mentor and continues a con-
versation with her ideas.
Two of the essays in this volume (by Sylvain Perdigon and Pratiksha Baxi) have been
previously published, as “L’ethnographie à l’heure des martyrs” (Annales Histoire, Science
Sociales, 2010) and as a chapter in Public Secrets of Law: Rape Trials in India (Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 2013), respectively. I am grateful for permissions from Éditions de l’École des
Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales and Oxford University Press for allowing us to re-
publish those pieces. I would also like to thank Santosh Kumar Das, Shalinee Kumari,
the Mithila Art Institute, the Ethnic Arts Foundation, Devi Art Foundation, Zoe Szan-
ton, Ribha Das, Julia Szanton, and Ron Morris for granting us permissions pertaining to
the artwork used in two chapters (by Mani Shekhar Singh and Don Selby). Finally, I
would like to thank all the contributors for their hard work and dedication to a project
that is close to all of our hearts.
Roma Chatterji, Department of Sociology, University of Delhi, May 2013
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