Unfinished Yarn: Work, Technology, and the Ethical Subject in Kolkata
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Unfinished Yarn: Work, Technology, and the Ethical Subject in Kolkata by Abhijeet Paul A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in South and Southeast Asian Studies and the Designated Emphasis in Critical Theory in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Raka Ray, Co-Chair Professor Lawrence Cohen, Co-Chair Professor Martin Jay Summer 2015 Abstract Unfinished Yarn: Work, Technology, and the Ethical Subject in Kolkata by Abhijeet Paul Doctor of Philosophy in South and Southeast Asian Studies and the Designated Emphasis in Critical Theory University of California, Berkeley Professors Raka Ray and Lawrence Cohen, Co-Chairs This dissertation explores jute life and community through the repair and reworking of old and analog machines. This, I claim, has given rise to particular brands of microlocal or community practices and politics, including craft revival, tensions between the “body mechanic” and the “fragmented mechanic,” repair and reuse as ethical work, strategies of dealing with “gray” infrastructure, “proverbial ethics,” and “pension politics,” which are different from the politics of unions and the “seamless” production theories of industrial capitalism as well as global capitalism. In short, the dissertation uses the idea of the local, tied to vernacular forms of thought, action, interaction, and interruption, to give a sense of shared values and tensions between individuals and the community in working neighborhoods. The community adapts to the ideas of recycling, flexibility, improvisation, and mobility, redefining the “fields of practice” in the domain of work and everyday life. The five chapters of the dissertation trace the material culture of jute from medieval to neoliberal times. I begin with the many local narratives of raw jute or pāṭ and jute handicrafts or pāṭ shilpa, overlooked in most studies of jute. This grounds the ethnography of (machine)-woven jute or cho ṭ and the jute industry or cho ṭshilpa in the first section, “Jute Works.” The section begin with the total works, then moves in to focus on one machine, the hāti kal (elephant machine) , and finally one tiny pinion of this machine. Moving out again from the jute works to “Jute Publics,” the last two chapters explore the spaces and circuits of the mohall ā (neighborhood/community) bazaar and mohall ā politics in the context of nonelite globalizations. 1 Dedicated to my father and mother i Contents Illustrations iii Note on transliteration iv Acknowledgements v Introduction 1 Chapter 1: Vernacular histories of pāṭ : pasts in the present 15 Chapter 2: kāmārsh ālā or the works: the small worlds of the “body mechanic” 32 Chapter 3: Inside the elephant machine: “ ṭūṭā sūtā” and the work of ethics 50 Chapter 4: Infrastructure of the gray: asl ī/naql ī in the mohall ā bazaar 67 Chapter 5: chai-pānī and mohall ā politics 87 Conclusion: “Community” and its “institutions” through performance 108 Bibliography 115 Appendices 128 ii Illustrations FIGURES 1. Trilingual sign: “Work is dharma” 1 2. Sketch: coarse handloom with dobby 29 3. Plan of Jute Mill 37 4. kāmārsh ālā 39 5. ṭūṭā sūtā returned to “ gard ā room” for re-carding 55 6. Roller section; “ṭūṭā s ūtā” on the floor in fluffy balls 55 7. Jute softening machine 58 8. Inside the hāti kal 61 9. Mill-side junkyard 62 10. Pictures of deities in mill-side mechanical workshop 64 11. Pinion inside a hāti kal 64 12. Kamarhati skyline; view of the mohall ā. 72 13. Kamarhati skyline; fringes of the mohall ā 73 14. “Hooking” 76 15. Bazaar lit by “hooked” electricity 77 16. Photo of a hand-sketched map of Kamarhati ethnographic site 81 17. “Calvin Kleen” ( naql ī Calvin Klein) belt made of jute 83 18. Bazaar entrance, Graham Road, Kamarhati 85 19. chai-pānī 92 20. Union notice in Hindi/Urdu on jute mill wall 96 21. “shapath Naihati ” (“Oath Naihati”) sign on rickshaw, Gouripur 99 22. Gouripur mill area near the pānī ṭank ī 101 23. Anti-pension-fraud meeting in Garifa, Gouripur 105 TABLES 1. chai-pānī and other informal shops in Kamarhati, Naihati, and Gouripur-Hajinagar 91 2. Attendees at roll call for pension claims in Gouripur-Naihati-Kankinada and Barrackpur-Titagarh-Kamarhati 103 iii Note on Transliteration I have used diacritical marks selectively in transcribing Bangla, Hindi-Urdu, and Bhojpuri words in the dissertation. I have used macrons to distinguish between short and long vowels and dots below the letter to distinguish between dental and retroflex consonants. However, I have not adhered strictly to any standard transliteration system, preferring to represent roughly colloquial and dialectal pronunciation. Proper names of individuals and deities have been represented according to common practices. iv Acknowledgements My father and mother, to whom I dedicate this dissertation, inspired this project with their lifelong experience of the hazards of employment in the jute industry in Bengal. My father in particular would have been happier than anyone to see this dissertation completed, but unfortunately, he passed away in the middle of my writing in 2013. My jute mill mohall ā (neighborhood/community) friends in Kamarhati and Naihati-Gouripur— too many to name here—compelled me to do this predominantly ethnographic piece of work. Closest among them are: Iqbal Ahmed, Aftab Rajababu, Munnabhai, Haji chaiwālā, Yadav ch āch ā, Ram Singh, Natwar, Tiwariji, Zakir Hussain, Raju, Raja, Hamid, Shahid, Mukul, Saurav, Sanjay Pandey, Upadhyay, Singhji, Bikram Shaw, Kartik Shaw, Bindu Singh, “Sir-ji”, Manju, Tumpa, Rajshri, Mukhtar, Adil, Amin, Mushtaq, Rama Shankar Paswan, Subimal Palit, and Gaya chāch ā. Special thanks go to Indu Singh, who opened the mohall ā library, Maitreya Granthagar, and its invaluable literary, cultural, and community resources to me. I was fortunate to co-organize and participate in two seminars on jute life through literary texts and community practices at Maitreya Granthagar. Gour Goswami, Shyamal Roy, Debasish Datta, Gorakhnath Mishra, Narayan Dubey, Jiten Chatterjee, Shyamal Bose, and Mohammed Amin deserve special mention. Special thanks to Sushant Agarwal for his generous hospitality and giving me full access to his mill and mill premises for research. Three research assistants—Naghma, Tumpa, and Snehabrata—were exemplary in helping me access local archives, do interviews, and take photos whenever necessary. My academic mentors, Raka Ray, Lawrence Cohen, Martin Jay, and Michael Mascuch, have been outstanding in guiding me in this work. Ethnography has been the bone of disciplinary contention throughout—anthropologists and sociologists favor ethnography, while historians and rhetoricians are suspicious of it—, and the multidisciplinary nature of the project owes much to this debate. I am glad that each mentor has upheld his/her priorities, giving me perspective on both sides. Rakadi (“di” or “elder sister” is a mark of respect in Bengali, my native tongue) has been central to the framing of questions in each chapter and in the dissertation as a whole. This project would have gone nowhere without her active support—especially by permitting me to write on labor, work, and ethics in a department heavily invested in textual and religious studies—and relentless criticism. Lawrence, with matchless fervor, has helped me recognize the nuances of ethnography and theory. And endless discussions with Marty on the Frankfurt School and Critical Theory have provided a much needed foundation for the practice of critical ethnography. Due to misunderstanding of a technicality, Michael could not be an official signing member of the committee, but his participation has been simply invaluable. I particularly dedicate the literary-cultural part of the dissertation and the conclusion to him, as I would never have thought about text, performance, and work in a related way without his constant prodding. My home department, South and Southeast Asian Studies, has been generous in supporting me throughout the project. Munis Faruqui, Penny Edwards and Robert Goldman have been particularly supportive. The Center for South Asia at UC Berkeley has provided conference and travel grant support. Of the many interlocutors with whom I have had the pleasure of discussing technology, ethics, work, and community, Bhaskar Mukhopadhyay, Anne-Lise Francois, Anthony Cox, William Stafford Jr., Ishani Saraf, Daisy Rockwell, Dylan Fagan, Senthil Babu, Amitabha Sarkar, v Arunabha Sarkar, and Jack Whittington deserve mention. I thank Arnab Mukherjea for his friendship and his endless criticisms of “interpretive” research agendas in cultural studies (including ethnography), which have played a vital role in distilling my thoughts on the subject. I want to thank the staff of local libraries and offices in the Kamarhati, Naihati, and Gouripur areas, in particular Usmanji of Kamarhati Staff Library; the Labor office record keepers in Kamarhati, Agarpara, and Prabartak jute mills; and the staff members of Kamarhati Municipality, the CPI library, Ganashakti Library, and especially the little magazines Anik , Bh āsh ālipi , Pad ārpan , and Samak āl Kath ā. My wife Rebecca has literally lived through this work. She also did some of the translations that appear in the dissertation. Our two-year-old daughter Kuheli, who loves to do “important work” in daddy’s office, will be surprised to learn when she grows up that it was perhaps not daddy but mommy who was doing real work, juggling motherhood with academic research of her own as well as helping daddy rethink his ideas in a communicable manner. To both of them, I owe the most. Other members of the family—Eric, Nicholas, and Shelby Whittington and Ariktam and Surajit Paul—will be happy to learn that this work is finally done! And finally, thanks to Nicholas Whittington and Elodie Steffen for going out of their way to help me file this dissertation remotely. Puducherry 24 July 2015 vi Introduction Figure 1 Trilingual sign in Hindi, Bengali, and Urdu: “Work is dharma : please do not waste time sitting outside,” by the author, 2011.