The rise of right-wing populist movements has led to a public debate on the role of digital platf... more The rise of right-wing populist movements has led to a public debate on the role of digital platforms and political extremism. Today, the ‘fringe’ consists of a series of political affects ranging from fake news, mainstream right-wing speeches that circulate worldwide, trolls, the dark net, and Russian hackers. Most arguments on this current phenomenon draw connections between the affordances of digital platforms and the rise of right-wing populism. The election victory of the BJP in India in 2014 and 2019, the rapid rise of the European right, the coming to power of Duterte in the Philippines - all seem to confirm this. I want to suggest that there is a longer cycle to this moment in India. This begins with the rise of informal video infrastructures, and expands with the emergence of media enabled populations in the post 2000 period. Populations now go well beyond their placement as objects of welfare and politics. Populations now emerge as generative players in media networks, offering endless potentials for the political. I enter this debate by revisiting twentieth century debates on the ‘dangerous’ crowd, and then move on to the power of the populist leader, digital agglomerations and the fringe.
ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊThe techno-social hypothesis concerns the idea that, over the last three decades or so,... more ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊThe techno-social hypothesis concerns the idea that, over the last three decades or so, the technological and the social have become thoroughly enmeshed with each other. It also poses the question of how this new inseparability should be understood. The technosocial hypothesis is not about how, as Bernard Stiegler claimed, social media have bypassed Òthe traditional networks of proximity that have defined the social since time immemorial.Ó 1 Neither is it about how technology has subsumed and colonized social life, and how this process might be reversed to gain access to a more authentic, embodied sociality. It is rather about the fundamental role played by Òthe socialÓ in the modern age, and how contemporary digital and computational networks as technical beings do not just generate, as Gilbert Simondon suggested, a natural and technical milieu, but also a directly (techno-)social one. 2 ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊThe techno-social hypothesis is thus premised on the idea that the social never possessed an intrinsic or preexisting reality, but rather what, with Michel Foucault, we might call a historical, that is a ÒtransactionalÓ one. Like sexuality, madness, or civil society, the social is real, although it has not always existed. It, too, was born Òfrom the interplay of relations of power and everything which constantly eludes them at the interface É of governors and governed.Ó 3 As a result of this history, the social assumed its three fundamental properties: a form of abstraction, the territory of government, and a conflictual political domain. ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊThe social thus existed inasmuch as it was a fundamental part of modern Western European epistemologies and eventually also as part of its governmentalities. As a form of abstraction, it grounded the truth claims of the social sciences, which posited that it was possible to scientifically study human societies inasmuch as they presented quantitative and qualitative determinations. As part of what Denise Ferreira da Silva has called the power of the nomos, the social entailed a distinction between transparency and affectability, between the position of observers and observed. 4 This epistemological function of the social (that is, its accounting for human social life as a distinct, measurable, and observable sphere of reality, endowed with its own patterns and regularities) was also indispensable to the other role that the social played. As Nikolas Rose put it, from the nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century, the social constituted the Òterritory of government,Ó that is, a Ònovel plane of territorialization [which] existed within, across, in tension with other spatializations (such as blood and territory; race
Since the turn of the century, India has witnessed a growing number of entrapment events or media... more Since the turn of the century, India has witnessed a growing number of entrapment events or media “stings” in which private, secret, and unknown events, relationships, acts, and structures are publicly revealed. Aided by the rapid spread of technological modernity and low-cost media gadgets such as mobile phones, the media sting has been carried out by print, TV, and new media; transparency campaigners; NGOs; political parties; social movements; and ordinary individuals. As entrapment expands from a police technique to a generalized technology of transparency, it has produced great strains in existing control systems and traumatic disruptions at all levels. The video object pro- duced by the sting is part of a circulation engine as it attaches to multiple environments: the political spectacle, the judicial review, and the online archive. I connect debates in infrastructures, media theory, and law to reflect on the implications of these new truth strategies for contemporary thought.
As we enter the third decade of the twenty-first century, the hegemony of a digital universe in I... more As we enter the third decade of the twenty-first century, the hegemony of a digital universe in India seems without limit. The digital now stands in for a larger environment, ranging from media culture, climate monitoring, governance, surveillance technologies, medicine and the entire landscape of the political. This sense of media as a constitutive plural, transcending medium specificity or geography makes our task doubly difficult. From its emergence in the 1990s, media culture began relentlessly digitising from the first decade after the millennium. By the next decade, global digital infrastructures spread rapidly in India and much of the non-Western world, aided by better bandwidth and the increasing use of smartphone mobile interfaces. This linear story hides the remarkable hybridity of the digital world, existing in conjunction with analogue. In his remarkable essay, 'On the Superiority of the Analog' Brian Massumi, suggested that analogue's variable impulse allowed it to cross 'from one qualitatively different medium into another. Like electricity into sound waves. Or heat into pain. Or light waves into vision. Or vision into imagination' (Massumi, 2002, p. 135). For Massumi, analogue's expression was topological, the digital had potentialities of the virtual only through an 'analogue' expression. Massumi's focus is on the continuity of transformation, where topology is the 'science of self-varying deformation' (2002, p. 134). Here Massumi closely follows Deleuzian metaphysics, which stress the continuity of the virtual in contrast to the discrete in the digital. The quantified forms of the digital fail to measure up to the strengths of the analogue, which better approximates the process of becoming and its indeterminacy. As Sterne (2016) points out the designation of the analogue as a 'not-digital' sphere in the 1980s has been hugely problematic; blurring a rich traffic between technologies. In fact, says Sterne, 'reality is just as analog as it is digital; and conversely, that it is just as not-digital as it is not-analog' (p. 41). Massumi's essay aligns with arguments on the transductive being of technicity (Simondon, 1958/1980). In transductive arguments, technical objects are ontogenetic, defined by evolution and indetermination, existing in associated environments or milieus. The topological impulse has become a larger drive in a calculative infrastructure so important to contemporary capitalism. Some scholars have argued that becoming topological is a larger impulse of contemporary culture, the normalisation of continuity, life measured according to capacities for change (Lury et al., 2012). Topological culture is relational and interconnected. The 'ordering of continuity', Lury et al. argue, 'makes itself felt 'in practices of sorting, naming, numbering, comparing, listing, and calculating' (2012, p. 4). In this context, the sharper oppositions of analogue
Centre for the Study of Developing Societies This essay looks at Hindu nationalism's investment i... more Centre for the Study of Developing Societies This essay looks at Hindu nationalism's investment in a crisis machine linked closely to digital media networks in India. Media infrastructures have provided right-wing populism with new techniques for performative action and network-driven collective expansion. A crisis ontology inherent in digital media has helped Hindu nationalism to optimize techniques of mobilization across time and space. While ambulatory, media-enabled populations are subject to periodic political stimuli, online collective movements are driven by a cluster of Hindu nationalist microcelebrities and regional performers. Hindu nationalist supporters periodically initiate multiple event chains to attract users across digital platforms. What we see is the "eventalization" of time where online populations are drawn into periodic bursts of sustained intensity. In this process, graphic video documents once seen as peripheral to public culture are now periodically occupying center stage in the current political spectacle. Within the space of a few years, Hindu nationalism's crisis machine has substantially shifted the public culture of the republic.
As we enter the third decade of the twenty-first century, the hegemony of a digital universe in I... more As we enter the third decade of the twenty-first century, the hegemony of a digital universe in India seems without limit. The digital now stands in for a larger environment, ranging from media culture, climate monitoring, governance, surveillance technologies, medicine and the entire landscape of the political. This sense of media as a constitutive plural, transcending medium specificity or geography makes our task doubly difficult. From its emergence in the 1990s, media culture began relentlessly digitising from the first decade after the millennium. By the next decade, global digital infrastructures spread rapidly in India and much of the non-Western world, aided by better bandwidth and the increasing use of smartphone mobile interfaces. This linear story hides the remarkable hybridity of the digital world, existing in conjunction with analogue. In his remarkable essay, 'On the Superiority of the Analog' Brian Massumi, suggested that analogue's variable impulse allowed it to cross 'from one qualitatively different medium into another. Like electricity into sound waves. Or heat into pain. Or light waves into vision. Or vision into imagination' (Massumi, 2002, p. 135). For Massumi, analogue's expression was topological, the digital had potentialities of the virtual only through an 'analogue' expression. Massumi's focus is on the continuity of transformation, where topology is the 'science of self-varying deformation ' (2002, p. 134). Here Massumi closely follows Deleuzian metaphysics, which stress the continuity of the virtual in contrast to the discrete in the digital. The quantified forms of the digital fail to measure up to the strengths of the analogue, which better approximates the process of becoming and its indeterminacy. As Sterne (2016) points out the designation of the analogue as a 'not-digital' sphere in the 1980s has been hugely problematic; blurring a rich traffic between technologies. In fact, says Sterne, 'reality is just as analog as it is digital; and conversely, that it is just as not-digital as it is not-analog' (p. 41). Massumi's essay aligns with arguments on the transductive being of technicity (Simondon, 1958(Simondon, /1980)). In transductive arguments, technical objects are ontogenetic, defined by evolution and indetermination, existing in associated environments or milieus. The topological impulse has become a larger drive in a calculative infrastructure so important to contemporary capitalism. Some scholars have argued that becoming topological is a larger impulse of contemporary culture, the normalisation of continuity, life measured according to capacities for change (Lury et al., 2012). Topological culture is relational and interconnected. The 'ordering of continuity ', Lury et al. argue, 'makes itself felt 'in practices of sorting, naming, numbering, comparing, listing, and calculating' (2012, p. 4). In this context, the sharper oppositions of analogue
This chapter examines some of the new media technologies of fear that emerged in urban Delhi duri... more This chapter examines some of the new media technologies of fear that emerged in urban Delhi during the postcolonial period, using the events of the Monkeyman panic as a point of departure. In 2001, Delhi was deluged by stories of a monkey-like creature that attacked people at night. These accounts, which combined both terror and the carnivalesque, originated almost exclusively from the proletarian and lower-middle-class neighborhoods of East Delhi and the nearby suburbs of Ghaziabad and Noida. Almost immediately a frenzy of media effects began with regular television and news reports, daily sightings, and television interviews given by victims of the so-called “Monkeyman.” The chapter explores how new technologies of fear, which intervene through media effects, and cultures of viral media proliferation combined to create productive situations of danger and an urban crisis that constantly exposed the fragility of institutions of power in Delhi in the 1990s.
Infrastructure or what seemed to stand in for it, has served as the reference point for a series ... more Infrastructure or what seemed to stand in for it, has served as the reference point for a series of debates in India in the last decade, including urban expansion and displacement of the poor, the “public-private” model, and middle class visions of global modernity (Aggarwal 2006, Fernandes 2006, Chatterjee 2008, Dupot 2011). Infrastructure has been the prime mover in debates on the Special Economic Zones (SEZ), often linked to land acquisition struggles in the urban periphery. For many years...
The circulation of privately collected media is not specific to India. From prisons to schools, s... more The circulation of privately collected media is not specific to India. From prisons to schools, streets, and hospitals, privately produced videos have emerged to make their way into public events and court battles worldwide. 2. This essay is part of a larger book project that examines the consequences of this shift in the postcolonial world.
LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES PREFACE LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS INTRODUCTION: THE HORIZON OF MEDIA STUDI... more LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES PREFACE LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS INTRODUCTION: THE HORIZON OF MEDIA STUDIES, RAVI SUNDARAM PART ONE: MAPPING THE TERRAIN 1. THE 'BOLLYWOODIZATION' OF THE INDIAN CINEMA: CULTURAL NATIONALISM IN A GLOBAL ARENA THE 'BOLLYWOODIZATION' OF THE INDIAN CINEMA: CULTURAL NATIONALISM IN A GLOBAL ARENA AFTERWORD: THE BOLLYWOODIZATION ARGUMENT-TEN YEARS ON, ASHISH RAJADHYAKSHA 2. SENSUOUS ENCOUNTERS: LAW, AFFECT, AND THE MEDIA EVENT, LAWRENCE LIANG 3. THE INNER AND OUTER WORLDS OF EMERGENT TELEVISION CULTURES, SHOHINI GHOSH PART TWO: CIRCULATION 4. MISSION, MONEY, AND MACHINERY: INDIAN NEWSPAPERS IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY, ROBIN JEFFREY 5. REVISITING THE PIRATE KINGDOM, RAVI SUNDARAM 6. FIGURES OF TRANSIT: TRACING A CENTURY OF HOLLYWOOD IN INDIA, NITIN GOVIL PART THREE: PUBLICS 7. CREATING CINEMA'S READING PUBLICS: THE EMERGENCE OF FILM JOURNALISM IN BOMBAY, DEBASHREE MUKHERJEE 8. NOTES ON CONTEMPORARY FILM EXPERIENCE: 'BOLLYWOOD', GENRE DIVERSITY, AND VIDEO CIRCUITS, RAVI S. VASUDEVAN 9. WHISTLING FANS: REFLECTIONS ON THE SOCIOLOGY, POLITICS, AND PERFORMATIVITY OF AN EXCESSIVELY ACTIVE AUDIENCE, S.V. SRINIVAS 10. UNIMAGINABLE COMMUNITIES: TELEVISION, GLOBALIZATION, AND NATIONAL IDENTITIES IN POSTCOLONIAL INDIA, SHANTI KUMAR 11. THE IMAGINED REIGN OF THE IRON LECTURER: VILLAGE BROADCAST IN COLONIAL INDIA, JOSELYN ZIVIN 12. THE 'TERRORIST' AND THE SCREEN: AFTERIMAGES OF THE BATLA HOUSE 'ENCOUNTER', SHUDDHABRATA SENGUPTA PART FOUR: PRODUCTION 13. THE GRAMOPHONE COMPANY IN INDIA, 1898-1912: THE EVOLUTION OF AN EARLY MEDIA ENTERPRISE, VIBODH PARTHASARTHY 14. DEMOCRATIZING INDIAN POPULAR MUSIC: FROM CASSETTE CULTURE TO THE DIGITAL ERA, PETER MANUEL 15. FILM STARDOM AFTER LIVENESS, RANJANI MAZUMDAR NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS INDEX
Recycling modernity: Pirate electronic cultures in India
Third Text, 1999
... uncomfortable. "Down with all the hypotheses that allow the belief in a true wor... more ... uncomfortable. "Down with all the hypotheses that allow the belief in a true world", once wrote Nietzsche, angrily. There is no doubt that for a "Third World' country,India displays a dynamic map of the new technocultures. The ...
IN an oft-quoted statement, the late Theodor Adorno once said that it is impossible to write. poe... more IN an oft-quoted statement, the late Theodor Adorno once said that it is impossible to write. poetry alter Auschwitz. For Adorno and many of his generation, social theory could never be the same after the holocaust, the universalist meta-nariatiVes of western civilisation could ...
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Papers by Ravi Sundaram
I want to suggest that there is a longer cycle to this moment in India. This begins with the rise of informal video infrastructures, and expands with the emergence of media enabled populations in the post 2000 period. Populations now go well beyond their placement as objects of welfare and politics. Populations now emerge as generative players in media networks, offering endless potentials for the political. I enter this debate by revisiting twentieth century debates on the ‘dangerous’ crowd, and then move on to the power of the populist leader, digital agglomerations and the fringe.