Seeing South Asia: Visuals Beyond Borders

Description

This book critically examines the cultural politics of visuals in South Asia. It makes a key contribution to the study of visuals in the social sciences in South Asia by studying the interplay of the seen and unseen, and the visual and nonvisual. The volume explores interrelated themes including the vernacular visual and visuality, ways of seeing in South Asia and the methodology of hermeneutic sensorium, anxiety and politics of the visuals across the region and the trajectory of visual anthropology, significance of visual symbols and representations in contemporary performances and folk art, visual landscapes of loss and recovery and representation of refugees, visual public in South Asia and making of visuals for contemporary consumptions. The chapters unravel the concepts of visual, visibility, visuality while attending to determinant meta-ideas, such as memory and modernity, trajectories of tradition, fluidity and hybridity, and visual performative politics. Based on interdisciplinary resources, the chapters in this volume present a wide array of empirical findings across India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bangladesh, along with analytical readings of the visual culture of the subcontinent across borders. The book will be useful to scholars and researchers of visual and cultural studies, social and cultural anthropology, sociology, political studies, media and communications studies, performance studies, art history, television and film studies, photography studies, and South Asian studies. It will also interest practitioners including artists, visual artists, photographers, filmmakers and media critics. Cover Half Title Title Page Copyright Page Dedication Table of Contents List of illustrations Acknowledgements Preface List of contributors Chapter 1 Introduction: Visuals in South Asia: The Interface of Seen and Unseen Part I Ways of Seeing and Showing Chapter 2 Vernacular Visual: Seeing in South Asia Chapter 3 Hermeneutic Sensorium: Positing a Methodological Dynamics of Seen-Unseen Chapter 4 Visual Anthropology in Nepal: A Critical Trajectory of Practices and a Way Forward Part II Approaches, Representations and Politics Chapter 5 Myths and the Visual Imagination: The ‘Duplicitous Maiden’ as a Narrative Theme in Gond Art Chapter 6 Transport Art of Dhaka: Where the Invisible City Becomes Visible Chapter 7 Visual Inscriptions upon Landscapes of Loss: Memorializing Thileepan in Sri Lanka Chapter 8 Seeing the Invisible: Anthropological Reflections on the Representation of the Rabari Community in Rajasthan Part III Seeing Public and Mediation Chapter 9 South Asian Ways of Seeing: Towards a Visual Public Sphere Chapter 10 Visual Public in South Asia: Seeing and Showing in the Digital Sphere Chapter 11 Visibility of Sindhi Progressive Sufism in the New Media Domain of Pakistan Chapter 12 Visual, Visibility and Memory: Television in Everyday Life in Rural Rajasthan Part IV Image-Making and Manufacturing Meanings Chapter 13 Collective Making of Press Photographs: An Ethnographic Enquiry Chapter 14 The Vulnerability of Visual Vocabulary on Refugee Representation: The Voyage of Boatwo/men Rohingya Chapter 15 Visual Matters: Unpacking Political Communication and Politics of the Camera Index