Navayana and Sarai invite you to the fifth in the series of Navayana-Sarai lectures
on Tuesday, 3 November 2009, 3.30 p.m. at Seminar Room, CSDS.

RAVIKUMAR, author of Venomous Touch: Notes on Caste, Culture & Politics (Samya) shall speak on “Theorising Resistance”
ANIL CHAMADIA, Professor, Mahatma Gandhi Antarrashtriya Hindi Vishwavidyalaya, Wardha; SANJAY KAK, filmmaker; and
R. AZHAGARASAN, translator of Ravikumar’s work, shall participate in a discussion on the book.

Ravikmuar has pursued writing, publishing, translation and rights activism over two decades in Tamil Nadu. He has authored seven books and edited three little magazines in Tamil—Nirappirigai, Bodhi and Dalit. He has rendered from English into Tamil the writings of Edward Said, Mahasweta Devi, Isabelle Allende, Gabirel García Márquez, Michel Foucault and Augusto Boal, among others. Ravikumar is the cofounder of the publishing house Navayana, and a member of the Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly representing Dalit Panthers.
Venomous Touch is a collection of his writings translated into English. A concern for the question of power in society – derived from his engagement with Marx, Ambedkar, Bakunin, Derrida, Foucault and other philosophers and his wide readings in Tamil literature – permeates his writings. Throbbing with righteous anger at centuries of oppression and denial against dalits, this collection of essays, as Susie Tharu says in her Foreword, acts as ‘both poison/venom and remedy’.