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Cultural Dynamics
DOI: 10.1177/092137409801000203
1998; 10; 123 Cultural Dynamics
M. Madhava Prasad
Back to the Present
http://cdy.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/10/2/123
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123
BACK TO THE PRESENT
M. MADHAVA PRASAD
Centre for
Study
of Culture and
Society, Bangalore
ABSTRACT
Thinking
about culture in the humanities is dominated
by
a historicist
approach
derived from a
nationalist,
postcolonial
consciousness marked
by
a disavowal of
modernity.
The
study
of
contemporary
culture,
in
particular
the cultural context overdetermined
by capitalist processes,
shows
up
the
limitations of this
paradigm
and
foregrounds
the need for a
concept
of the
contemporary.
As a first
step
towards this
goal,
the article takes
up
for
analysis
certain
key ideologemes
of modern Indian life which
hinge
on the
sense of a
recovery
of
identity,
and tries to demonstrate their
inadequacy
for
a
rigorous
sense of the
present.
Key
Words ♦
contemporaneity
♦ culture ♦
democracy
♦
modernity
♦
nation
A sense of the
present
is,
above
all,
a matter of arrival. It is a
problematic
that
emerges
as much out of the
long interregnum
of debates about moder-
nity
in the
postcolonial
context as it does from the consolidation of the
effects of the revolution
signalled by
the declaration of the
Republic.
It is
an
attempt
to exit from the inter-civilizational or inter-racial
agonistics
of
the colonial aftermath to
announce,
not the nations arrival at some
prede-
termined telos but arrival as
such,
arrival in the
present
as the
place
from
which to find our
way
forward. It
proposes
an answer to the
questions
that
have been the traumatic
driving
force behind all the debates about moder-
nity.
To the
question,
When will we arrive at/return to our true
destiny?
it
answers: We have arrived at our true
destiny.
Moreover,
we have
always
been there. Likewise to the
question,
When will we recover our true
identity?
it enables us to
reply:
We have recovered our true
identity.
Moreover,
our
identity
has
always
been true.
In his call to make the
present
an
object
of
reflection,
Vivek Dhareshwar
(1995) suggested
that a
receptivity
to the
present
can
only
be realized
when we break out of the
paralysing
historicism that debates about
modernity
are
caught up
in:
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124 Cultural
Dynamics 10(2)
When ... we
begin
to reflect on the conditions for a
critique
of our
modernity,
it would
be
futile,
and
intellectually incoherent,
to
deny
our
history
as alien in order then to
reach back to a different
historicity
as our
impossible history (nonmodern
or
pre-
modern
time,
culture)....
In order to determine a reflective relation to our
present
we
must think the
historicity
of
history
itself. Here then is the
paradoxical
task: we need to
deploy historicity against
the
very
notion of
history
such that
historicity
is not reab-
sorbed
by
historicism.
(p. 318)
I
approach
the
question
of
arriving
at a reflective relation to our
present
as someone interested in
developing
a framework for the
study
of contem-
porary
Indian culture. It is the
problems
encountered in the course of
my
attempts
in this direction that led me to the sense that one needs a
concept
of our
contemporaneity
in order to
respond
in full measure to the com-
plexity
and
diversity
of cultural
practices
in a modern democratic nation-
state where
thinking
continues to be
troubled,
if not
haunted,
by
the
legacies
of colonialism. I
approach
it as one who cannot distance
modernity
from his own sense of
identity
in order to
speak
of it as an alien
imposition,
with the aim of
discovering
a
way
to
bring
to consciousness
(to my
own con-
sciousness)
this truth for which there is as
yet
no
recognition.
While this is
a difficult
process
that cannot be
accomplished
in one
stroke,
in what
follows a
beginning
is made
through
a
reading
of some central
ideologemes
of the historicist
fantasy
that sustained and
perhaps
continues to sustain us
as
(post)colonial subjects.
The Drama
of
Humiliation
In the course of a discussion of
Tagores
fiction,
Ashis
Nandy (1994: 50)
remarks of Nikhil
(The
Home and the
World)
and the reborn Gora that
[t]hey
have been
through
and
emerged relatively
intact from the humili-
ation of the colonial
experience;
and the even
greater
humiliation of
fighting
colonialism with the
help
of methods and
ideologies imported
through
the colonial connection. What interests us in this
passage
is the
strong
evocation of colonialism as above all a
humiliating experience.
What
is
succinctly
formulated here is
clearly
a
widespread feeling,
one that we all
(at
least those who are
interpellated by
the nationalist
ideology)
share. One
could even
say
that it is
by learning
to
experience
this humiliation as ones
own that
every generation
accedes to the
national,
that a
subject
becomes
a national
subject.
The
simultaneity
of these two events must be noted: to
experience
colonial humiliation is to become national
subject
but,
at the
same
time,
only
a national
subject
can feel so humiliated.
And
yet,
in the 50th
year
of
independence,
there are
already signs
that
this historical
memory
of humiliation is no
longer
the
powerful unifying
experience
that it once was. The finance ministers
reported
invitation to
the West to come back once
again
and
conquer
India is
only
a
spectacular
and
mildly
scandalous
sign
of a
general
loss of
potency
of the
memory
of
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125 Prasad: Back to the Present
colonialism.
(One
of the ironies of this
golden jubilee
is that the British
seem,
by
all
accounts,
to be
celebrating
it with more enthusiasm than
Indians.)
Does this not indicate a loss of historical
consciousness,
does it
not forebode the erosion of national
identity?
If we
forget past
humilia-
tions,
do we not
open
ourselves to the
possibility
of their
repetition?
Situating
ourselves in this
present
moment of erosion of historical
memory, perhaps
we should take another look at the scene of humiliation.
As a
point
of
departure
for such an examination we
may
take the
prop-
osition that the scene of humiliation
always
involves a third. What turns a
struggle
between two
opposed
forces into an
experience
of humiliation is
the
presence
of the Other as witness to the enslavement and
degradation
of
the
vanquished.
In a more archaic
version,
it was
perhaps
the
people
who
played
this role when the
vanquished king
was
dragged through
the streets.
But in a modern nation under colonial
rule,
it is the
people
themselves who
are
humiliated,
by
another
people,
the East humiliated
by
the West. Who
then witnesses this scene and instils in us this
feeling
of
having
been
degraded
before another?
The
peculiarity
of
capitalist
colonial domination is that it is the domi-
nation of one nation over
another,
a fact which
Tagore
in his lectures on
nationalism
emphasized
more than
any
other
feature,
evoking
the
figure
of
the nation-machine. Where home
payments
are the
driving
force behind
conquest,
the maintenance of national
identity
becomes crucial and
by
extension,
apartheid practices
serve to maintain the distinction of the colo-
nized. The extraction of
surplus
value to be
deployed
elsewhere becomes a
crucial factor in
bringing
into
being
the scene of humiliation. Thus into the
two-term relation between colonizer and colonized a third term is
imported, whereby
colonial relations between two nations are
justified by
reference to a neutral
ground.
This neutral
ground justifies
colonialism as a
mission but it is also under its
aegis
that anti-colonial
struggles
take
place.
My
sense is that this neutral
ground
is
History.
But then is not
history
itself a western
thing?
The scene of humiliation is the enactment of a
fantasy
wherein we submit to
history by feeling
humiliated when we are
merely
defeated.
By
this
very
enactment, however,
history
has been ren-
dered hors de
combat,
no
longer merely
the much touted western
propen-
sity
for
keeping
a historical record-in itself
nothing
more than a
particular
mode of
production
of discourse about the
past.
It is
only
at the
moment when we
acknowledge History
as the common transcendental
witness that the scene of humiliation becomes
imaginable.
This
history
is
not the accumulation of discourse about the
past,
the
evolving
methodolo-
gies
for
keeping
record and for
extracting meaning
from a sedimented
past.
It is not
history
as a form of
knowledge
but
History
as the
gaze
that affirms
our
being
in the modern world.
If this is the case there is then no
point
in
claiming
that the
imposition
of
history
on a
people
accustomed to
mythical thinking,
or
whatever,
is itself
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126 Cultural
Dynamics 10(2)
a
humiliating
act. The
feeling
of humiliation is
already
an admission of
complicity,
of a secret
pact
between enslaver and enslaved to let
history
be
the ultimate witness. This is the
history
that Fanon
(1990: 170) speaks
of
when he
says:
The
Negro,
never so much a
Negro
as since he has been dominated
by
the
whites,
when
he decides to
prove
that he has a culture and to behave like a cultured
person,
comes
to realize that
history pomts
out a
well-defined path
to him: he must demonstrate that a
Negro
culture exists.
(Emphasis mine)
History
here is the
aegis
of
negotiation,
a
reconciler,
not a
weapon
of
struggle.
This is what
explains
the
sense,
articulated
by Dipesh Chakrabarty
(1997: 223)
that
&dquo;Europe&dquo;
remains the
sovereign,
theoretical
subject
of all
histories,
including
the ones we call
&dquo;Indian&dquo;, &dquo;Chinese&dquo;,
&dquo;Kenyan&dquo;,
and so
on.
Although Chakrabarty
is here
referring
to historical discourse
pro-
duced in the
academy,
it is
arguable
that the
subject
of
history
he invokes is
the transcendental
exception
which makes
possible
the
assembly
of national
histories. The
subject
as
gaze
that unifies the field is what I evoke here as
occupying
the
position
of the transcendental
signifier,
like the
phallus
in
psychoanalytic
discourse. Here the tension arises because of the
continuing
sense that
history
is still the same as the
practice
of historical
knowledge
production (or
that the
phallus
is still the
penis),
which renders invisible the
elevation of
history
as
gaze
to a
neutral,
transcendental
position.
This
gaze
is an
ever-present gaze
but its
Judgement Day
is
always
deferred to a future
that will never
arrive,
whence the
practice
of
burying
time
capsules,
to be
discovered
by
the Future.
For our immediate
concerns,
the relevant factor here is that the
striving
for
singularity,
for the status of an
exception
to the rule of a
homogenizing
modernity,
can
only
occur
against
this horizon of the
gaze
of
history.
Moreover,
every striving
after
singularity only
reinforces,
or at
any
rate,
fails to evade the status of
particularity,
that is to
say,
the status of a
par-
ticular within the
reigning
universal. In
light
of this we could
perhaps prof-
itably
read the theme of
provincialization
of
Europe
that
Chakrabarty
among
others
proposes, against
the
grain,
not as an
attempt
to liberate the
non-western world from western
modernity,
but as a
way
of
setting
moder-
nity
itself free from its historical association with
Europe
in order
thereby
to be able to relate to it
differently.
The
Subject Supposed
to Believe
If the above narrative works at the level of the historical destinies of the
worlds
civilizations,
in the
post-colonial
moment we encounter the
problem
of national
identity
as an immediate
necessity,
as
something
that
must be realized or
posited
as effective. How is this to be achieved? In
order to
approach
the
problem
at
hand,
let us turn to a succinct formulation
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127 Prasad: Back to the Present
of one of the
principal ideologemes
of
post-independence
India. This for-
mulation is attributed to the late
poet, linguist
and critic A.K.
Ramanujan,
justly
famous for his translations of
Kannada,
Tamil and
Telugu poetry,
his
own
poetry,
fiction and criticism in
English
and
Kannada,
and his
compi-
lation of folk tales based on oral
retellings.
In an
interview,
the
playwright
Girish
Karnad,
while
remarking
that
Ramanujan
was a
strong
influence on
his own
work,
cites a remark
by
the latter which he holds
up
as a sort of
motto for the artist in
contemporary
India: I do not believe in
God;
I
believe in
people
who believe in God. Rather than define the
ideologeme,
this remark
performs
it,
giving
it a
protonarrative
form,
and as such invites
interpretation.
It is a statement that articulates and tries to resolve a fundamental
dilemma of the secular intellectual in
contemporary
India. It enacts one
possible
solution to what we have become habituated to
defining
as the
problem
of the coexistence of
modernity
and tradition. The
speaking
subject
here is located in
modernity,
where the lack of belief attests to
the indifference that characterizes modern
capitalist
societies. The
subject recuperates
from this state to establish an indirect relation of
belief
through,
as it at first
appears,
the mediation of true believers.
However,
this new belief is not so much an indirect
approach
to God as
a direct substitution of the
people
for God.
Henceforth,
it is the exist-
ence of the
people
in their
original
state of
primary
belief that sustains
the secular
subjects capacity
for belief. It is not their belief as such that
is the
object
of the secular
subjects
attention. It is
only
in so far as this
belief constitutes a
guarantee
of difference that
secondary
belief finds its
fulfilment. As
Jacques
Lacan has
argued,
to believe in God is
already
not
the direct faith in a transcendent
being
that it
appears
to be. To believe
is to believe in the
community
of
believers,
to
pledge allegiance
to this
community.
This secular faith is no
exception.
Belief in the folk sustains
the
community
of secular
intellectuals,
giving
us the sense of difference
of which
modernity
has robbed us. From another
perspective,
this faith
could be one
way
in which the secular
subject
as
global
citizen,
product
of the internationalism of colonial
rule,
recovers a sense of national
identity.
Whereas in the
developmentalist ideology
of modern
nation-states,
the
undeveloped
are invited to relate to the
developed
as the
subject supposed
to
know,
in the above formulation we see the evocation of the
subject sup-
posed
to
believe,
whose
figure
enables an
integration
of modern and non-
modern sectors into a nation. This
subject supposed
to believe has been the
point
at
which,
in modern
India,
the two
poles
that are
usually
rendered as
modernity
and tradition
converge.
These
poles,
which are also rendered
sometimes as Nehru versus
Gandhi,
together
constitute a sometimes
antag-
onistic,
sometimes
complementary ideological
dance
where,
in the words of
Frank
Sinatra,
you
cant have one without the other.
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128 Cultural
Dynamics 10(2)
What is to be noted here is also
that,
by constituting
this
couple, by
relating
them
through
the
figure
of the
subject supposed
to
believe,
Ramanujans
formulation locates the nation so formed in the chain of
national
identities,
a
particular
within the
reigning
universal,
turning
its
singularity
into a moment within the
particular.
The
possibilities
of other
times,
other
paths
and destinies are husbanded to serve as the sedimented
resources of a nation-state. The
people
in their
belief,
in their incommen-
surable
singularity,
no
longer
encounter
directly
the
hegemony
of moder-
nity.
The secular intellectual or the members of civil
society
turn towards
them in order to maintain their distinction as a nation within the modern
world.
At the same time the
subject supposed
to believe is
hardly
left alone
by
the forces of
development.
The
implicit assumption
behind belief in the
believer is that there is a barrier between the two
sectors,
that there is a
self-sufficiency
to the life of the
community
which makes it indestructible.
This enclosure however is breached
by development.
We want the com-
munity
to
speak
its own
truth,
to address itself in its
communications,
its
rituals and
practices.
We want its
messages
to be absorbed into its own cir-
cuits,
to be available to us
only indirectly
as evidence of its
self-identity.
But
development
breaks into such enclosures to force the
subject
to
speak
to us.
In the
ideological
scenario of cultural
self-identity,
there is
speech,
seman-
tically
rich and
instantly
communicated. Under
developmental
conditions,
the
subject
becomes
voice,
bearing
demands: voice
deprived,
at the
moment of
enunciation,
of the assurance of communication. When this
message
is received
by
the
developmental
sector,
it is understood as
demanding rights-cultural rights
for instance.
Thus it is that for
developmentalists,
the world is full of voices
expressing
demands. For those anxious about national
identity
there is a
community
turned
upon
itself,
with which one must link
up
in order to
secure our
identity.
This checkmated
conceptual
field is what we con-
front when we look for
ways
in which to reconceive the humanities in
India,
in
particular
when faced with the
challenge
of
conceiving
a frame-
work for the
study
of
contemporary
culture. As cultural
production
and
the field of
reception
are
increasingly
mediated
by capitalist processes,
we
face,
within cultural
studies,
our own variations on the two themes
discussed above.
1.
Capitalist (mass/popular/commercial)
culture is
already altogether
too
well
defined,
its essential features are well known. It
has, moreover,
its
stages
and forms: for
example,
realism, modernism,
postmodernism
with
their self-sufficient Eurocentric histories. From this
perspective,
as a
cap-
italist
culture,
India seems to offer
only
an ersatz
recapitulation,
an inau-
thentic variant that
aspires
to but never
quite
catches
up
with the
international model.
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129 Prasad: Back to the Present
2. On the other
hand,
and
by way
of
compensation,
we have the
option
of
considering
ourselves,
like others on the
planet,
as one of
many singu-
larities which are fortunate or condemned to be other than
capitalist
culture. In this
scenario,
Europes encroaching
culture
produces
its own
clones,
as noted
above,
but
always
fails to transform the core. Our iden-
tities are inalienable. Come what
may, phir
bhi dil hai hindustani. For
studies of
popular
culture in modern
India,
this
presupposition
some-
times
appears
to be a
political imperative.
As the
expansion
of
modernity
makes the latter claim more and more
difficult to
sustain,
a new
tendency
has
emerged
of
examining
the
ways
in
which
people
on the
periphery
of the
capitalist
core consume
modernity
(Breckenridge, 1996) in
their own
ways.
It is not
just
a case of
shifting
atten-
tion from
production
to
consumption,
a shift that
capitalist
culture effec-
tively
enforces,
but also of
asserting
that communities on the
periphery
relate to
modernity primarily
as an
object
of
consumption, thereby
implying
that
they
are situated outside it. Here the historicist
fantasy
of a
return to true
identity
is
replaced by
a sort of achieved historicist
paradise
where we can consume
modernity
all we want but it will never
get
the
better of us. On the other
hand,
we cannot
escape
the
feeling
that weve
been had
anyway
since this
consumption
of
modernity
takes
place
on the
global stage,
where nation-states are seen as
declining
formations
delaying
the inevitable union of the local
directly
with the
global.
To return to our
main
concern,
the
present
cannot be ours
except through
an abdication of
power by
the nation-state.
Political
Society
How can a
receptivity
to the
present help
us to think our
way
out of this
conceptual
stalemate? A recent
essay by
Partha
Chatterjee
can serve as an
instance of the
possibilities
for
thinking
that such a
receptivity
could
open
up.
In a
deceptively simple operation, Chatterjee places
an incision in the
conceptual
field that
reorganizes
the
field,
redefines its constituents and
provokes
a redefinition of the
problems posed
within it. The line drawn is
at an
angle
to all the familiar lines that divide
modernity
from
tradition,
and
so on.
First,
like
Ramanujan, Chatterjee
does not wish
away
the modern
or civil
society
but tries to find a
way
of
connecting
it with the rest of the
social structure.
Insisting
on a retention of the classical sense of the term
civil
society,
the
essay
then characterizes the rest as
political society (here
parting ways
with
Ramanujan), having already separated
the
political
dimension of
modernity (as democracy)
from
modernity
as a mass-cul-
tural, consumerist,
developmentalist, globalized phenomenon.
This new
political society
is the site of mediation between the
population
and the
state
(Chatterjee, 1997: 32). Referring
back to a
point
made
above,
I would
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130 Cultural
Dynamics 10(2)
suggest
that here
political society
is conceived as
consisting
of
subjects
turned into voices
bearing
demands;
at the same
time,
not
remaining
docile
targets
of
development
but
speaking
a new
political
idiom.
Subjects,
that
is,
that are neither absorbed in their
self-identity
nor lost in a sea of voices
demanding development.
The three theses in which the
argument
is
encap-
sulated are worth
citing
in full:
(1)
The most
significant
site of transformations in the colonial
period
is that of civil
society;
the most
significant
transformations
occurring
in the
postcolonial period
are in
political society.
(2)
The
question
that frames the debate over social transformation in the colonial
period
is that of
modernity.
In
political society
of the
postcolonial period,
the
framing
question
is that of
democracy.
(3)
In the context of the latest
phase
of the
globalisation
of
capital,
we
may
well be wit-
nessing
an
emerging opposition
between
modernity
and
democracy,
i.e.,
between civil
society
and
political society. (Chatterjee,
1997:
33)
As far as this desire for
democracy
that is a feature of
political society
is
concerned,
Chatterjee suggests (p. 30)
that we should look within the
nation rather than
beyond. Beyond
the nation lies the
agency
of
modernity
minus
politics
and a
necessary
tension between these two
conflicting
dynamics.
At a time when there is a
general feeling
of the
disappearance
of
politics
in the moment of
postmodernity,
this
conceptual
cut relocates the
political
in a site that was
previously
condemned to one of two destinies:
either
recipients
of
developmental largesse;
or
stubborn,
self-absorbed
pre-
servers of
tradition,
alternative
ways
of
life,
etc. It is
only
in the context of
a national
political
culture, moreover,
that such
possibilities
for what I
would term self-alienation can arise. The existence of such a
political
society
can also be seen as evidence of the
provisionality
of the
state,
as the
struggles
of
political society
are also
struggles
over the state form
(see
Prasad,
1998: ch.
1 ).
Within
every
nation-state
formation,
studies of
contemporary
culture
will of course
inevitably
encounter a field in which it is difficult to
separate
easily
the themes of
political society
from those of a
globalized modernity.
But it is nevertheless the case that the
political
framework
opens
the
way
to a sense of the
present
and defines a site within which
every phenomenon,
however
global
its
character,
is overdetermined
by
the nation-state frame-
work. The framework of
global modernity
will ...
inevitably
structure the
world
according
to a
pattern
that is
profoundly
colonial;
the framework of
democracy,
on the other
hand,
will
pronounce modernity
itself as
inappro-
priate
and
deeply
flawed
(Chatterjee,
1997:
34).
While it cannot be taken
for
granted
that the framework of
democracy
will
necessarily reject
moder-
nity
as
flawed,
it is
my
contention that our time is
located,
if
anywhere,
in
this
political
framework.
Turning again
to the
perspective
of the
humanities,
we find that democ-
racy
as the
synchronic
structure within which we dwell has failed to
capture
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131 Prasad: Back to the Present
the
imagination
of the
disciplines.
These latter have continued to be fasci-
nated with the moment of
freedom,
which is also a moment that reminds
us,
sometimes with an obscene
warmth,
of the cosiness of colonial domi-
nation. To turn to
democracy,
in other
words,
to locate ourselves in the
present
not as
midnights
children forever in
thrall
to that historical
moment,
but as the children of the
revolution,
is also to
give up
the sense
that we can still reside in another
time,
still draw
upon
another secret
source of difference. It is
also,
above
all,
to face the
challenge
of cultural
interpretation
unaided
by
the
reassuring
sense that the
meaning
of our cul-
tural
practices
is
given
for all time in our
heritage
or our established
predilections.
For
increasing
numbers of Indians
today,
this is
effectively
the case.
REFERENCES
Breckenridge,
Carol
A.,
ed.
(1996) Consuming Modernity:
Public Culture in
Contemporary
India. Delhi: Oxford
University
Press.
Chakrabarty, Dipesh (1997) Postcoloniality
and the Artifice of
History:
Who
Speaks
for "Indian"
Pasts?,
in Padmini
Mongia (ed.) Contemporary
Postcolonial
Theory:
A
Reader,
pp.
223-42. Delhi: Oxford
University
Press.
(Previously pub-
lished in
Representations
37
[Winter 1992]: 1-26.)
Chatterjee,
Partha
(1997) Beyond
the Nation? Or
Within?,
Economic and
Political
Weekly (4-11 Jan):
30-4.
Dhareshwar,
Vivek
(1995)
"Our Time":
History, Sovereignty
and
Politics,
Economic and Political
Weekly (11 Feb.):
317-24.
Fanon,
Frantz
(1990)
The Wretched
of
the Earth. London:
Penguin.
Nandy,
Ashis
(1994)
The
Illegitimacy of
Nationalism. Delhi: Oxford
University
Press.
Prasad,
M. Madhava
(1998) Ideology of the
Hindi Film: A Historical Construction.
Delhi: Oxford
University
Press.
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
M. MADHAVA PRASAD is a Senior Fellow at the Centre for the
Study
of Culture
and
Society, Bangalore.
Address: Centre for the
Study
of Culture and
Society,
1192,
35th B
Cross,
Fourth T
Block,
Jayanagar, Bangalore
560 041,
India.
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