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Sarai READER 05: BARE ACTS
Produced and Designed at the Sarai Media Lab, Delhi
Editors: Monica Narula, Shuddhabrata Sengupta, Jeebesh Bagchi + Geert Lovink
Guest Editor: Lawrence Liang
Associate Editor: Smriti Vohra
Translations: Shveta Sarda
Editorial Collective: Monica Narula, Shuddhabrata Sengupta, Ravi Sundaram,
Ravi S. Vasudevan, Awadhendra Sharan, Jeebesh Bagchi + Geert Lovink
Design: Mrityunjay Chatterjee
Associate Design: Gauri Bajaj
Design Coordinator: Monica Narula
Cover Design: Gauri Bajaj
592 pages, 14.5cm X 21cm
Paperback: Rs. 350, US$ 20, Euro 20
ISBN 81-901429-5-X
Preface
With the publication of Sarai Reader 05, the one you now hold in your hands or have downloaded from the Internet, we can safely say that we have at least achieved a handful.
From ‘The Public Domain’ (Sarai Reader 01) to ‘The Cities of Everyday Life’ (Sarai Reader 02), to ‘Shaping Technologies’ (Sarai Reader 03), to ‘Crisis/Media’ (Sarai Reader 04), we have also seen a process of reflection on the first half-decade of what promises to be a turbulent century. These are times that come to us with the sharp edge of newness, with violence, with confusion and with promise. The Sarai Reader series has, since its inception, responded by attempting be a navigation tool, a rough and ready map for this unruly world. How far the readers of our Readers have accepted our claims is hard to say, but we do know that Reader 01 is sold out, that we are nearly out of stock for Reader 02, that Reader 03 is the most downloaded of them all, and demands for a second imprint of Reader 04 are making themselves heard as we go into press with Sarai Reader 05. Clearly something is working, and this despite the fact that we decided from the very beginning to have each of the books available in its entirety for free download from the Sarai website.
We have been asked before as to how and why the themes of the Sarai Readers get chosen, and how the Reader gets produced. Perhaps this is a good time to attempt a few answers. Each of the themes represents different facets of our intellectual and cultural curiosities at the Sarai programme at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies in Delhi. As a programme geared towards interdisciplinary research, practice and reflection on urban spaces, modes of communication, media cultures and the role of information in society, we have found ourselves dealing with concepts, questions and issues that bully us into printing them on the title page of the Readers. At Sarai, we are squarely and inescapably in the public domain, we have thought at length about everyday life in cities, we reflect on how technologies shape the way we live, and how we shape technologies, we have had to explore the relationship between media and situations of crisis to understand the nature of the representations of our times, and we have had to consistently read between the lines of bare acts. Without doing any of these things, the object of addressing questions to the city, and to the place of information – of images, sounds and data within it – would have been impossible.
Urban space and culture, the politics of information, intellectual property, media forms and practices, technology and society, surveillance, forms of articulating liberty, pleasure and justice, free software, language and digital culture, the myriad everyday practices of negotiation and resistance in city spaces, and the ways in which law shapes lived experience – all of these concerns have woven themselves in and out of each Reader. Over the past five years we (and our public) have come to recognise the fact that these are the curiosities which characterise the work we do at Sarai.
This year, the Reader looks at ‘Acts’ – at instruments of legislation, at things within and outside the law, and at ‘acts’ – as different ways of ‘doing’ things in society and culture. Several essays echo and complement themes that have emerged in earlier readers. Piracy, borders, surveillance, claims to authority and entitlement, the language of expertise, the legal regulation of sexual behaviour and trespasses of various kinds have featured prominently in previous Readers. This collection foregrounds these issues in a way we hope can make a series of coherent but autonomous and interrelated arguments.
Each year, the Reader attempts to reflect our concerns at Sarai, and to respond to what has happened within our field of vision. We have been curious, not only about what happens in and around Delhi, but also to what is happening, or is being thought about, in places as far afield as Imphal, Lagos, New York, Aligarh, Kathmandu, Kolkata, Srinagar, Sarajevo, São Paulo, Rafah, Tel Aviv, Bangalore, Berlin, Chennai, Taipei, Singapore, Moscow, Beirut, Sydeny, London, Karachi, Kanpur, Kabul and Mexico City. It is possible that but for the eccentric orbits that the Sarai Readers undertake, many of these voices would never have spoken to each other, or to the world. It is our conviction that a voice from Imphal must be heard in New York and New Delhi, because voices from New York and New Delhi tend to be heard, no matter what happens, in Imphal.
Reader 01: ‘The Public Domain’ relied mainly on material that was available within the public domain to construct its arguments. From Reader 02 onwards, the process of ‘building’ the book underwent a significant transformation. Each year in the summer we issue an invitation to contribute to the forthcoming Reader, spelling out what we are interested in. An important part of this invitation consists of an evocation of certain key words, or anchoring concepts, that leave ample room for interpretation, and at the same time are specific enough to speak to concrete realities. Take the expression ‘Bare Act’, for instance: on the one hand it seems to invite a philosophical unpacking of the essence of actions, while on the other hand it points to a specifically Anglo-Saxon culture of legal practice.
contd...
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sarai READER 05
Bare Acts
PREFACE - vi
ARGUMENTS - 1
Invitation - Sarai Reader Editorial Collective - 2
Porous Legalities and Avenues of Participation - Lawrence Liang - 6
“…Bolti Band (SILENCED)!” - Clifton D’ Rozario - 18
Lepers, Witches and Infidels & It’s a Bug’s Life - Francesca da Rimini - 26
Rested - Colette Mazabrard - 39
DISPUTATIONS - 45
Of Butchers and Policemen: Law, Justice and Economies of Anxiety -
Gunalan Nadarajan - 46
Down by Law: A Critique for the 21st Century - Alexander Karschnia - 57
‘New’ Delhi: Fashioning an Urban Environment through Science and Law -
Awadhendra Sharan - 69
Improbablevoices.net: An Improbable Monument to Witnessing and the Ethics of Trespass - Sharon Daniel - 78
TRESPASSES - 95
The Discovery of the Fifth World: Stealth Countries and Logo Nations -
Daniel van der Velden, Tina Clausmeyer, Vinca Kruk, Adriaan Mellegers
(Meta Haven Project) - 96
Transcoding Sovereignty: Naked Bandit/Here, Not Here/White Sovereign - KR + CF - 111
SMS to Passport - Vishwajyoti Ghosh - 115
The Strange Case of Qays Al Kareem - Tripta Wahi - 123
Marginalia - Kai Friese - 129
On Smugglers, Pirates and Aroma Makers - Ursula Biemann - 145
Sponge Borders - Guido Cimadomo + Pilar Martínez Ponce - 150
Notes on the Disappeared: Towards a Visual Language of Resistance -
Chitra Ganesh + Mariam Ghani - 154
Dreams and Disguises, As Usual - Raqs Media Collective - 162
HACKS - 176
Trespasses of the State: Ministering to Theological Dilemmas through the Copyright/Trademark - Naveeda Khan - 178
Harmony or Discord? TRIPS, China, and Overlapping Sovereignties - Shujen Wang - 189
Innovating Piracy: The Bare Act of Stealing, and Shaping the Future - Menso Heus - 202
Is Hacking Illegal? - Yuwei Lin + David Beer - 205
Three Proposals for a Real Democracy: Information-Sharing to a Different Tune - Brian Holmes - 215
Roots Culture: Free Software Vibrations “inna Babylon” - Armin Medosch - 222
ENCROACHMENTS - 241
Touts, Pirates and Ghosts - Solomon Benjamin - 242
Daily Journey - Satyajit Pande - 255
Complicating the City: Media Itineraries - Media Researchers @ Sarai - 258
Begum Samru and the Security Guard - Anand Vivek Taneja - 287
My Driving Master: A Story of Everyday Trespasses - Zainab Bawa - 297
Naye Qanoon (New Laws) - 301
ANNOTATIONS - 305
Vis-à-Visage - I. Helen Jilavu - 306
Cybermohalla Logs/Acts/Texts - CM Labs @ LNJP-DP-NM - 308
NEGOTIATIONS - 323
The Act of Leisure - Iram Ghufran + Taha Mehmood - 325
Surveillance, Performance, Self-Surveillance: Interview with Jill Magid -
Geert Lovink - 339
Living Between Laws - Ninad Pandit - 348
Negotiating Territory - Ateya Khorakiwala - 354
RECORDS - 359
Tis Hazari Diaries - Chander Nigam - 360
Bare Acts and Collective Explorations: The MKSS Experience with the Right to Information - Preeti Sampat + Nikhil Dey - 385
TRIALS - 397
Zimbabwe’s ‘New Clothes’: Identity and Power Among Displaced Farm Workers - Amy R. West + Blair Rutherford - 398
Standardised, Packaged, Ready for Consumption - Ravi Agarwal - 412
The Act of Instruction - Jan Ritsema - 420
VIOLATIONS - 427
Womanhood Laid Bare: How Katherine Mayo and Manoda Devi Challenged Indian Public Morality - Alice Albinia - 428
Literature and the Limits of Law: Crime, Guilt and Agency in Premchand’s Ghaban - Ulka S. Anjaria - 437
The Honourable Murder: The Trial of Kawas Maneckshaw Nanavati - Aarti Sethi - 444
Judicial Extract - 454
Representing a Woman’s Story: Explicit Film and the Efficacy of Censorship in Japan - Hikari Hori - 457
The Queer Case of Section 377 - Siddharth Narrain - 466
ASSAULTS - 471
“For God’s Sake, Be Objective!” - Somnath Batabyal - 472
Another 9/11, Another Act of Terror: The ‘Embedded Disorder’ of the AFSPA -
A. Bimol Akoijam - 481
Warporn Warpunk! Autonomous Videopoesis in Wartime - Matteo Pasquinelli - 492
‘First, Do No Harm...’: Ensuring Humanitarian Military Interventions -
Bikram Jeet Batra - 500
War Cake - Linda F. Beekman - 511
DISSENSIONS - 515
The Law of the Mother: Soldiers’ Mothers and the Post-Soviet Army -
Irina Aristarkhova - 516
Naked Protest and the Politics of Personalism - Isaac Souweine - 526
Analytical World Statistics Wall Chart, 2003 - Louise Kolff - 537
A Comparative Anatomy of Post-Mortem Acts - Smriti Vohra - 540
ALT/OPTION - 551
The Accidental Activist - Fredrik Svensk + Kristoffer Gansing - 552
‘Our’chitecture - Jayson Claude - 559
Sex Workers’ Manifesto - Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee, Kolkata - 564
Bare Wiring - Sophea Lerner - 572
Notes on Contributors - 574
Image and Photo Credits - 581
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