Literature Festivals and Talk-Culture In
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POSSIBLE INSTITUTIONS: LITERATURE FESTIVALS AND TALK-CULTURE IN INDIA By SUSHIL SIVARAM A dissertation submitted to the School of Graduate Studies Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey In partial fulfillment of the requirements For the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Program of Literatures in English Written under the direction of Mukti Lakhi Mangharam & Stéphane Robolin And approved by ______________________________ ______________________________ ______________________________ ______________________________ ______________________________ New Brunswick, New Jersey October 2020 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Possible Institutions: Literature Festivals and Talk-Culture in India by SUSHIL SIVARAM Dissertation Directors: Mukti Lakhi Mangharam & Stéphane Robolin This dissertation sets out to understand the proliferation of literature festivals in India since the mid-2000s. These festivals serve cultural, economic and political functions in a dynamic field characterized by varying degrees of competition and co-operation between different literary cultures in multiple languages, the uneven legitimation and reception of culture by different class formations, and the multiple locations where the humanities are practiced. Against this complex setting, I demonstrate that the literature festivals attempt to find unique ways to connect and in turn reimagine a fragmented and plural literary field in the public sphere. This work specifically turns to the producers, managers and the writer- curators of three festivals to understand what drives them and the festivals they curate to produce a network of legitimation for literature in India. The festivals I engage with are the “Jaipur Literature Festival,” the “Indian Languages Festival: Samanvay” and the “Almost Island Dialogues.” I claim that these festivals connect and reimagine the field via a mode of interaction that I call “talk-culture.” As a form of purposeful and conscious (re)turn to conjunctural networks of literary sociality and older forms of public communication, talk- culture is an intimate, face-to-face practice that is a combination of the literary and the critical. In other words, talk-culture is a type of connectivity and framework to reconstitute community. ii Each chapter locates dispositions and attitudes that emerge out of interactions between writer-curators, the guest speakers, the topics of discussion, audience responses, interviews I conducted with writer-curators, and participant observation. At all three festivals, the possibility of change lies in performing different versions of literary histories and producing knowledges without objectifying or institutionalizing them. This I claim makes their practices ephemeral and engenders attitudes towards literature and literary culture that do not aim towards explicit rulemaking, objectivity and systemization, but at the same time offer a sense of community that performances simulate. That is why I call these events “possible institutions.” The significance of this dissertation rests in the possibility of new academic and non- academic approaches to literature and literary cultures in India. In turning to practices on the ground, the project demonstrates that the often unrehearsed and unintentional practices of writers-curators and the festivals offer alternative ways to approach the complexities of a fragmented, plural, and multilingual literary field. Moreover, this work, attempts to learn from and at the same time support the knowledges that the writer-curators and the festivals produce in the public sphere. The specific literature festivals in this dissertation are spaces where new ways to practice an alternate relationship to literature and literary culture could emerge. iii Dedication For Diya iv Acknowledgements This dissertation would have been impossible without support, help, critique, and the discussions I have had with numerous individuals over the last seven years. In that sense, this work is a product of many minds and many instincts. Writing about literature festivals in India was a leap of faith and I am grateful first and foremost to my advisors and committee members for believing in the project. I would like to thank Mukti Lakhi Mangharam for giving me a start at Rutgers and then guiding me through the research and writing process patiently and critically. An opportunity like this had always seemed distant for me. I also thank Stéphane Robolin for being so generous with his time as he engaged in long discussions with me in his basement office at Murray Hall. I am eternally grateful to Mukti and Stéphane for reading and re-reading the various chapters I gave them. This project would not have been possible without their perceptive and intelligent critiques. Andrew Goldstone has been both an intellectual mentor and friend who continuously found ways to show me the value in my work. I turned to him in times of doubt and his kindness has been unfailing. Some of the impetus for this project emerged through questions we asked in Rebecca Walkowitz’s 2014 graduate seminar “The Contemporary Novel and the World.” It was there that I started to wonder about how to account for readers more fully in India. Anjali Nerlekar always had the time to talk to me about the Bombay poets, the literary scene in India, and my research. As an outside reader, she has been generous and insightful. The faculty and colleagues at Rutgers have been exceptional in allowing me to grow as a scholar, researcher, and teacher. Both Lynn Festa and Colin Jager carefully read sections of this project and taught me how to write for different audiences. So many of the ideas v emerged during discussions in and outside their writing workshops. I must thank Caroline Pirri, William Welty, Alex Leslie, Maria Vrcek, Melissa Parish, Emily Coyle, Kevin Sigerman, Danielle Allor, Tara Gildea, Elizabeth Greeniaus, Sean Hughes and Moyang Li. I have not seen a person with more initiative to organize than Bakary Diaby and the informal theory group he coordinated at Old Bay was incredible. Lech Harris has been a wonderful interlocutor and friend. The long one-hour lunches with Gabriele Lazzari at the Brower Faculty Lounge were always illuminating wanderings. None of this would have been possible without Cheryl Robinson and Courtney Borack. Both were always there to help, keep me on track and talk to whenever I was at Murray Hall. This work was generously supported by grants and fellowships from the Department of English, the Graduate School, and the South Asian Studies Program at Rutgers University. I am grateful for this. The arc of this research project and the insights that I gained emerged during long conversations with the writer-curators and directors of the various festivals. I would like to thank Sharmistha Mohanty, Vivek Narayanan and Rahul Soni, Rizio Yohannan Raj and Giriraj Kiradoo, and Namita Gokhale and Sanjoy Roy for their time and intellectual collaborations. Finally, I am immensely grateful to my parents, Rama Sivaram and S. Sivaram for being patient with me through all my adventures, including this. I would like to thank Anup Paul for being a friend and an inspiration. The four days we spent at Jaipur are unforgettable. Last, but not the least, I dedicate this dissertation to Diya Paul, without whom I would have given up a long time ago. vi Table of Contents Abstract Of The Dissertation ............................................................................................................. ii Dedication ............................................................................................................................................ iv Acknowledgements .............................................................................................................................. v Table of Contents ............................................................................................................................... vii Introduction .......................................................................................................................................... 1 Genealogy, Connecting Fragments and Talk-Culture................................................................... 23 The Institution of Literature, Criticism and “ILF: Samanvay” as Institution of Practice ....... 72 “Almost Island Dialogues” and Performing Literature Worlds ................................................ 125 Commodifying the Postcolonial: The “Jaipur Literature Festival” and the Pakistani Novel 165 Epilogue ............................................................................................................................................. 199 Appendix 1: Interview Questions .................................................................................................. 203 Bibliography ...................................................................................................................................... 206 vii 1 Introduction A number of literature festivals suddenly appeared and quickly proliferated in India in the mid 2000’s.1 Although festivals that engage literary production are not a new phenomenon globally, the way they were modified and localized for the Indian public caught the attention of the media and the literary establishment (Sahitya Akademi, University departments and writers).2 Then, and sometimes even today, the festival was considered a tamasha, an Urdu-Hindi word that in its derogatory sense means a “farce” or a “sideshow.” More neutrally, the word can be translated as “entertainment,”