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SARAI READER 07: FRONTIERS
Produced and Designed at the Sarai Media Lab, Delhi
Editors: Monica Narula, Shuddhabrata Sengupta, Jeebesh Bagchi, Ravi Sundaram
Associate Editor: Smriti Vohra
Translations: Shveta Sarda
Design: Mrityunjay Chatterjee
Editorial Collective: Monica Narula, Shuddhabrata Sengupta, Jeebesh Bagchi, Ravi Sundaram, Ravi S. Vasudevan, Awadhendra Sharan + Geert Lovink
Cover Design: Mrityunjay Chatterjee
Back Cover Images: Mogas Station
Published by
The Director
Centre for the Study of Developing Societies
29 Rajpur Road, Delhi 110054, India
Tel: (+91) 11 2394 2199; Fax: (+91) 11 2394 3450
E-mail: dak@sarai.net
www.sarai.net
Delhi, 2007
ISBN 81-901429-9-2
Any part of this book may be reproduced in any form without the prior written permission of the publishers for educational and non-commercial use. The contributors and publishers, however, would like to be informed.
Sarai Reader 07: Frontiers: <http://www.sarai.net/publications/readers/07-frontiers>
Sarai Reader 07: Frontiers is part of the documenta 12 magazines project
<http://www.documenta12.de/magazine.html?&L=1>
Printed at Impress, Chittaranjan Park, New Delhi
600 pages, 14.5 cm x 21 cm
Paperback: Rs 350, US$ 20, € 20
At Frontiers:
Frontiers considers limits, edges, borders and margins of all kinds as the sites for declarations, occasions for conversation, arguments, debates, recounting and reflection. Our book suggests that you consider the frontier as the skin of our time and our world, and we invite you to get under the skin of contemporary experience in order to generate a series of crucial (and frequently unsettling) narrative and analytical possibilities.
For us, the frontier is a threshold waiting to be crossed, a space rife with the seductive aura of transgression. We are not talking only of actual, physical borders (though of course we are interested in literal and political borders) that are usually the residues of war, but also of the borders between different temporal registers, between languages, between different modes of action, between different bodies of thought and conviction, between the exception and the rule. Looked at this way, a border is more than a constellation of fixed markers circumscribing a domain.
We have always viewed the Sarai Reader as hospitable to new and unprecedented ideas, as a space of refuge where wayward reflections can meet half-forgotten agendas. We hope our text this year sets the stage for a productive encounter with the demand for an account of the boundaries, parameters and verges of our times.
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saraiREADER07
Frontiers
Contents
At Frontiers - Editorial Collective - v
FRONTIER SCOUTS AND BORDER CROSSERS
Narrating the Frontier: Perspectives from Kachchh - Farhana Ibrahim 2
Chromatic Boundaries - Paolo Novak 12
A Politics of Sensitivity: Ambiguity and Exceptionality along the India-Bangladesh Border
- Jason Cons 20
At That Insurmountable Border - Sucharita Sengupta 30
Wagah/Wagha: India Meets Pakistan - Amar Kanwar 40
Transit Visa: An Essay on Code - A.J. Sood 43
A Strange Feeling of Familiarity - Lamia Joreige 56
Abkhazia: A Broken Paradise - Georgi Derluguian 65
Desire, Fear and Death… - Samir Chakrabarti 83
UP CLOSE AND IMPERSONAL
Counterfeit Consciousness and the Joy of Abandonment - U. Kalpagam 90
… And Nothing but the Truth, So Help Me Science - Lawrence Liang 100
Unofficial Secrets Act: The Administration of Certainty and Ambiguity
- Shuddhabrata Sengupta 111
Dead Man Walking: Sovereignty and the Supreme Court in the Age of Terror - Mayur Suresh 121
The ‘Law’ of the Police - Anuj Bhuwania 134
The Fuzzy Logic of National Frontiers or a Frontier Nation: Reflections on the Multi-Purpose National Identity Card Scheme in India - Taha Mehmood 144
SCALING WALLS, BREAKING FENCES, CROSSING GATES
All in All, It’s Just Another Hole in the Wall… - Jiti Nichani + Aarti Mundkur 160
An Interview in the Emergency Room: A Cure in Three Stages - Aman Sethi 167
El Siluetazo (The Silhouette): On the Border between Art and Politics - Ana Longoni 176
Locating Torture in Jammu and Kashmir - Warisha Farasat 187
Borderless Bodies - Pramod K. Nayar 199
NEW CARTOGRAPHIES / OLD BOUNDARIES
From Music to Painting: The Strange Yet Not-So-Strange Tales of Pardhaans
- Udayan Vajpeyi 212
Ancient Geographies – New Frontiers - Anthony Acciavatti 221
The Folly of Maps - Jeremy Hight 229
Smart Borders - Guido Cimadomo + Pilar Martínez Ponce 232
Glamour as a Form of Culture in Post-Soviet Russia - Keti Chukhrov 236
One Biennial, Two Triennials, Three Interventions and Research for a Retrospective
- Ruth Sacks 249
THE EDGE OF THE FRAME
Betrayed Borders: Double Agents and the Crisscrossing of Conflicts
- Manuel Ramos Martínez 256
Framing Frontiers: The Suspended Step towards Visual Construction of Geopolitical Borders
- Saayan Chattopadhyay 264
Transitions, Transactions: Bollywood As a Signifying Practice - Pooja Rangan 273
Art without Frontiers? Satyajit Ray and the Constraints of Universality - Chandak Sengoopta 286
Miss Frontier Mail : The Film That Mistook Its Star for a Train - Rosie Thomas 294
TEXTS AND MARGINS
The “Frontier” Revisited - Cédric Vincent reads Lawrence Alloway 310
Up for Auction: A Devoted Communist’s Labour of Love - Abhishek Hazra 316
Frontier’s Virgule/Virgule’s Frontier - K. Narayana Chandran 325
The Mahimandala Gita , Chapter 66, by Arakkhita Das: Notes towards a Translation
- Sailen Routray 332
Bhudev’s Uchronia: The Temporal Exile of the Colonised - Ritwik Bhattacharjo 339
“It’s Raining Aliens!” Coloured Rain in Kerala and the Fuzzy Frontiers of Science
- Shiju Sam Varughese 348
“We Want No Flats…!” Bauwagen Culture and the ‘Desired’ Urban - Stefan Canham 359
BETWEEN, ACROSS, BELOW, WITHIN, OUTSIDE
Notes on the Frontiers and Borders of the Postcolony - Angela Mitropoulos 372
Across (B)order and Back: The Everyday Reality of Kolkata’s “Flyings” - Swati Ghosh 380
Between Queer Ethics and Sexual Morality - Naisargi N. Dave 387
South Asian “Adda ” in Barcelona - Sameer Rawal 396
Long-Distance Nationalism: Constructing ‘Indianness’ in American Kitchens - Ekta Ohri 404
Following the Black Block: Pragmatic Depression, Action and Aftermath - Sam Gould 417
Walking for Nandigram - Moinak Biswas 422
The Logbook - Sreejata Roy 428
THE URBAN FRONTIER
Ghevra Diaries - Cybermohalla Practitioners 438
Photographs - Ravi Agarwal 460
At the Frontier of the Urban Periphery - AbdouMaliq Simone 462
Harmless Fraud: Pyramid Schemes in Andhra Pradesh - S. Ananth 471
Tophane: The Closing In of an Istanbul Neighbourhood - Pelin Tan 484
Moscow: Fortress City - Irina Aristarkhova 490
A 21st-Century Urban Landscape: The Emergence of New Socio-Spatial Formations in Gurgaon
- Seth Schindler 499
Looking Outwards, and Outwards - Gauri Gill 509
Frontier Town: Marking Boundaries in a Delhi Resettlement Colony 30 Years On
- Cressida Jervis-Read 516
Moving Cities: Life on the New Frontier - Bert de Muynck 527
ALT/OPTION
Occupancy Urbanism: Ten Theses - Solomon Benjamin 538
No One Is Illegal!
- Steve Cohen, Harriet Grimsditch, Teresa Hayter, Bob Hughes, Dave Landau 564
Contributors, Acknowledgements and Image Credits 574
Images: New Categories/Old Boundaries - Monica narula + Shveta Sharda 582
Rokovoko - Mogas Station inside back cover
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