American Anthropologist reviews our Celebrating Transgression book.

Click on the image to enlarge.
Celebrating Transgression.

From: John Hutnyk – Academic Director, Centre for Cultural Studies
Work: http://www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/cultural-studies/staff/j-hutnyk.php
Blog: http://hutnyk.blogspot.com/
Links: http://tawdrysouvenirs.blogspot.com/
Events: http://whats-on-occasionally.blogspot.com/

Amitava Kumar writes again

A new book – a novel! – by my good friend Amitava Kumar. Get it. Don’t delay. See here for reviews and so forth.

Home Products
February 2007

A film director asks Binod, who is a journalist in Bombay, to produce a portrait of a murdered girl, a poet killed by a politician by whom she is pregnant. The director wants a script about small towns, desire, compromise and intrigue. Probably he wants masala. Subtle and articulate, his sensibility shaped by the classic films of a high-minded and austere boyhood, Binod undertakes to draught a Bollywood story. Unlike Binod is his cousin Rabinder, in Hajipur jail and full of plans. Arrested for turning his cybercafe into a porn parlour, Rabinder is a doer, with dreams of entering films.

Home Products is the story of Binod and Rabinder, brought up as brothers, one a man of hope, the other of appetite, whose ambitions unexpectedly intertwine. As it unfolds, a complex world comes to throbbing life, moving from Motihari where Binod was born, and George Orwell before him; to the Bombay of film, imitation and enterprise; via Delhi, its calm shattered by an assassination and riots.

In the broad sweep of this stunning first novel, acclaimed non-fiction writer Amitava Kumar charts a tale of sexual anxiety and anarchic impulses in a society steeped in crime. Detailing the search among its members for order and artistic brilliance, written with extraordinary inventiveness, Home Products brings aglow the struggle against small-town beginnings. It reminds us gently, and incisively, of our anxieties as middle-class individuals in a middle-class nation.

See his weblog here

From: John Hutnyk – Academic Director, Centre for Cultural Studies
Work: http://www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/cultural-studies/staff/j-hutnyk.php
Blog: http://hutnyk.blogspot.com/
Links: http://tawdrysouvenirs.blogspot.com/
Events: http://whats-on-occasionally.blogspot.com/

Sacred Media Cow

From Somnath over on on “Sacred Media Cow” [SACREDMEDIACOW is an independent postgraduate collective on Indian media research and production at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) at the University of London]:

Oh Calcutta

Published by Somnath Batabyal February 26th, 2007 in Som’s Blog.

Folks, been away from active blogging for a while. Apologies. The PhD writing and thinking alongwith other activities been taking its toll. Hopefully back now.

My thesis concerns itself with two urban news centres, Calcutta (I still cant bear to do away with the colonial imageries) and Mumbai. Been reading a bit about both the cities lately and a book by John Hutnyk called The Rumour of Calcutta is a quite fascinating account of the city and deconstructs the myths around this “city of extremes” created through the views and notions of representations, from foreign travellers on missions of mercy staying at a cheap tourist lodge to travel guides, books and films.

I have also been logging how the media in recent times has been portraying the city. By all accounts, Calcutta has finally come of age. It is the city on the mend. The government is being applauded, the Chief Minister felicitated. Right wing Conservative Shekhar Gupta in Indian Express speaks and applauds the Indian Left and its erudition, the Politburo and its concerns. Sagarika Ghose cant stop gushing in her interview with Buddha Babu. Protests by “nay sayers” are brushed aside as the crumbling city wakes up to a new dawn. These are not my metaphors. So what’s going on.

It is very much like the errant child who has come home. Give it it’s just rewards, bring it into the fold, hand out the sops and make sure it feels welcome. The media house, the corporate entities cant stop falling over each other to felicitate Buddhadev Bhattacharya’s “coming to sense” wisdom and merging Calcutta with the other metros; long live the Left, so long as it can be managed.

From: John Hutnyk – Academic Director, Centre for Cultural Studies
Work: http://www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/cultural-studies/staff/j-hutnyk.php
Blog: http://hutnyk.blogspot.com/
Links: http://tawdrysouvenirs.blogspot.com/
Events: http://whats-on-occasionally.blogspot.com/

Powell’s Books – Bad Marxism: Capitalism and Cultural Studies by John Hutnyk

Powell’s Books – Bad Marxism: Capitalism and Cultural Studies by John Hutnyk: “
Bad Marxism: Capitalism and Cultural Studies
by John Hutnyk
ISBN:0745322662 (More details…)
Available at:Quimby Warehouse
Synopses & Reviews
Book News Annotation:
To Hutnyk (anthropology and cultural studies, Goldsmiths College, UK), figures like James Clifford, Jacques Derrida, Antonio Negri, and other theorists of ‘cultural studies’ have had a substantial impact recently with eclectic, but ‘substantially misconstrued’ versions of Marx. He offers a critique of these theorists, presents a relatively positive re-evaluation of Georges Batailles, and attempts to point the way towards a substantially expanded cultural studies that is able to take on such topics as geo-politics, theory, war, and capitalism. Distributed in the US by the U. of Michigan Press.
Annotation �2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)”

From: John Hutnyk – Academic Director, Centre for Cultural Studies
Work: http://www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/cultural-studies/staff/j-hutnyk.php
Blog: http://hutnyk.blogspot.com/
Links: http://tawdrysouvenirs.blogspot.com/
Events: http://whats-on-occasionally.blogspot.com/

CELEBRATING TRANSGRESSION

CELEBRATING TRANSGRESSION
Method and Politics in Anthropological Studies of Cultures

Editors: Ursula Rao and John Hutnyk

A book in Honour of Klaus Peter Koepping

Transgression is the stock in trade of a certain kind of anthropological sensibility that transforms fieldwork from strict social science to something more engaging. It builds on Koepping’s idea that participation transforms perception and investigates how transgressive practices have triggered the re-theorization of conventional forms of thought and life. It focuses on social practices in various cultural fields including the method and politics of anthropology in order to show how transgressive experiences become relevant for the organisation and understanding of social relations. This book brings key authors in anthropology
together to debate and transgress anthropological expectations. Through transgression as method, as discussed here, our understanding of the world is transformed, and anthropology as a discipline becomes dangerous and relevant again.

Not yet Published (Devember 2005)
256 pages, bibliog., index
ISBN 1-84545-025-6 Hb $48.00/£29.20

Please send orders to:
UK & Europe : Berghahn Books, 3 Newtec
Place,.Magdalen Road, Oxford OX4 1RE, UK
Email : salesuk@berghahnbooks.com
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Broadway, Ste 812, NY 10038, USA
Email: salesus@berghanhnbooks.com
Available from Berghahn Books

This title and other selected titles are also available to order at 15 % discount from
http://www.berghahnbooks.com

http://www.berghahnbooks.com/title.php?rowtag=RaoCelebrating

City Requiem

City Requiem, Calcutta: Gender and the Politics of Poverty

by Ananya Roy

Uni of Minnesota Press.

Roy she was paralysed by “Rumour”, but went on to write her book anyway. Some pics too, and discussion of New Communism. “Roy shows how urban developmentalism, in its populist guise, reproduces the relations of masculinist patronage, and, in its entrepreneurial guise, seeks to reclaim a bourgeois Calcutta, gentlemanly in its nostalgias”.
.

Diaspora and Hybridity

New Book

Diaspora and Hybridity Authored by: Virinder Kalra Ahmed Iqbal Ullah Race Relations Resource Centre, UK Raminder Kaur University of Sussex John Hutnyk Goldsmiths College, University of London

Description:
What do we mean by ‘diaspora’ and ‘hybridity’? Why are they pivotal concepts in contemporary debates on race, culture and society?

This book is an exhaustive, politically inflected, assessment of the key debates on diaspora and hybridity. It relates the topics to contemporary social struggles and cultural contexts, providing the reader with a framework to evaluate and displace the key ideological arguments, theories and narratives deployed in culturalist academic circles today. The authors demonstrate how diaspora and hybridity serve as problematic tools, cutting across traditional boundaries of nations and groups, where trans-national spaces for a range of contested cultural, political and economic outcomes might arise.

Wide ranging, richly illustrated and challenging, it will be of interest to students of cultural studies, sociology, ethnicity and nationalism.

BAD MARXISM

Bad Marxism: Capitalism and Cultural Studies, Pluto 2004

‘Hutnyk packs more dynamite in his sentences than any other writer I know.’ Amitava Kumar, Penn State University

Cultural Studies commonly claims to be a radical discipline. This book thinks that’s a bad assessment. Cultural theorists love to toy with Marx, but critical thinking seems to fall into obvious traps. / After an introduction which explains why the ‘Marxism’ of the academy is unrecognisable and largely unrecognised in anti-capitalist struggles, Bad Marxism provides detailed analyses of Cultural Studies’ cherished moves by holding fieldwork, archives, empires, hybrids and exchange up against the practical criticism of anti-capitalism. Engaging with the work of key thinkers: Jacques Derrida, James Clifford, Gayatri Spivak, Georges Bataille, Homi Bhabha, Michael Hardt and Toni Negri, Hutnyk concludes by advocating an open Marxism that is both pro-party and pro-critique, while being neither dogmatic, nor dull.

Pluto Press 2004

Critique of Exotica

Critique of Exotica: Music, Politics and the Culture Industry

London: Pluto Press, 2000

In this innovative book, John Hutnyk questions the meaning of cultural hybridity. Using the growing popularity of Asian culture in the West as a case study, he looks at just who benefits from this intermingling of culture. /What does it mean when Madonna dons a bindi or Kula Shaker incorporate sitar music in their music? When Cherie Blair wears a sari to a public dinner? When the national dish in the UK is chicken tikka masala? Is this a celebration of multiculturalism or cultural appropriation?/Focusing on music, race and politics, Hutnyk offers a cogently theorised critique of the culture industry. He looks at artists such as Asian Dub Foundation, FunDaMental and Apache Indian to see how their music is both produced and received. He analyses ‘world’ music festivals, racist policing and the power of corporate pop stars to market exotica across the globe. Throughout, Hutnyk provides a searing critique of a world that sells exotica as race relations and visibility as redress

THE RUMOUR OF CALCUTTA

THE RUMOUR OF CALCUTTA:

TOURISM, CHARITY, AND THE POVERTY OF REPRESENTATION

John Hutnyk 1996 Zed books, London.

An original study in the politics of representation, this book explores the discursive construction of a ‘city of intensities’.

The author analyses representations of Calcutta in a wide variety of discourses: in the gossip and travellor-lore of backpackers and volunteer charity workers; in writing – from classic literature to travel guides; in cinema, photography and maps. The book argues that Western Rumours of Calcutta contribute to the elaboration of an imaginary city which circulates in ways fundamental to the maintenance of an international order.

Throughout, the focusis on the technologies of representation which frame tourist experiences of Calcutta, particularly Calcutta as an image site of decay. For example, volunteer charity workers’ explanations of their experience fit into a framework which attributes blame locally. In this perspective tourist volunteers cannot acknowledge complicity in its own production of the city as a phantasmagoric space of poverty. Travellers visiting Calcutta are shown to be located in a place through which ideological and hegemonic effects are played out in complex yet coordinated ways which are to be analysed within the context of international privilege and domination. Here specific practices and technologies, of tourism, representation and experience, are intricately combined to reinforce and replicate the conditions of contemporary cultural and economic inequality.

A provocative and original reading of both Heidegger and Marx, the book also draws up on writers as diverse as Spivak, Trinh, Jameson, Clifford, Virilio, Bataille, Derrida, Deleuze and Guattari.

Available from Zed books
7 Cynthia Street, London N1 9JF
Tel 020 7837 4014

Travel Worlds

Travel Worlds:Journeys in Contemporary Cultural Politics

Edited by Raminder Kaur
and John Hutnyk
Zed books, London 1999.

Pb ISBN 1 85649 562 0 Price UK£13.95/US$22.50
(see below for ordering details)
(cover photo Karoki Lewis)

Everyone’s got a traveller’s tale,
but TRAVEL WORLDS tells them with a sting:

African-American musicians head East for Kung-Fu kicks while
paedophiles go for cheap sex pilgrimage; Western bible-bashers adopt
missionary positions in India while heroic Saint George signs on as
an Arab soldier in Britain; the scars of Partition mock the protocols
of transit, while nomadic insurgents resist the Bangladeshi nation
state with lyrical persuasion; Kula Shaker and Madonna trinketize the
‘Orient’ while dead tourists exchange values with travelling
‘terrorists’; British Mirpuris and Black women travel back to the ‘Old
Country’ and beyond in ways that are not quite as they seem; and
ethnographers collide with tourists in the carousel of Goa’s resorts.

Including poetry and fiction alongside academic essays, this book
refuses simplistic dichotomies of north/south and east/west and
confronts head on existing conventions of writing about travel in
post-colonial, literary and cultural studies. In so doing, it sheds
new light on:

- the shortcomings of border theories and nation-state parameters

- the politics of diasporic and transnational travels

- the relations between tourism and terrorism

- the limitations of ‘alternative’ tourism

TRAVEL WORLDS plots the politics of diverse journeys;
it is ‘something of a travel guide,
something of a hold-all backpack,
and something of another compass’.

`Travel Words dares you to embark on a variety of journeys
simultaneously-from magical-mystical tours that promise to fulfil the
private fantasies of jaded tourists and eager missionaries to new
journeys across old borders that have become terribly real by virtue
of being more psychological than territorial. This collection explores
exciting psycho-geographical spaces through journeys that somewhere
along the way become journeys into the self.’ – Ashis Nandy.

 

Ordering details:
In Europe order from Zed books, 7 Cynthia St, London N1 9JF, UK
tel +44 (0)171 837 4014/8466 email: FAROUK@zedbooks.demon.co.uk
In Australia and elsewhere order from our friends at Manic Ex-Posuer: books@manic –
http://www.manic.com.au/

In the US: Order from St Martins Press, Scholarly & Reference
Division, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010, USA
tel (212) 982 3900/fax (212) 777 6359 Contact Peter Burrell email: peterburrell@stmartins.com

Dis-Orienting Rhythms:

Dis-Orienting Rhythms: the Politics of the New Asian Dance Music.

eds Sanjay Sharma, John Hutnyk and Ashwani Sharma, 1996 Zed books.

The image on the cover is from a Fun^Da^Mental album, Sieze the Time.

Blurring the boundaries between academic and cultural production, this book produces a new understanding of the world significance of South Asian cultural production in multi-racist societies. It writes back the presence of South Asian youth into a rapidy expanding and exuberant youth scene; and celebrates this as a dynamic expression of the experience of South Asian lives with an urgent political consciousness. One of the first sustained attempts to situate such production within the study of race and identity, it uncovers the crucial role that contemporary South Asian dance musics – from Hip-hop, Qawwali and Bhangra through Soul, Indi and Jungle – have played in the formation of a new urban cultural politics.

The book opens by positing new theoretical understandings of South Asian cultural representation that move beyond essentialist, outmoded and overdetermined accounts of ethincity in the cultural studies literature. Contributors then go on to narrate the formation of South Asian expressive culture coming out of the UK in a highly charged political context. Part three takes on the task of historical recovery, looking at the antecedents of political South Asian musical performance, autonomous anti-racist organising and problems of alliance with the white Left. The final part of the book engages with the movements and translations of cultural productions across the world, particularly in the fractured spaces of a postcolonial Britian in decline. In opposing all-too-easy ‘world music’ categorisations, the contributors also demonstrate throughout how the liberal alibi of multiculturalism can be challenged across the line of music and politics.

The book as a whole points to more productive ways of undertaking cultural study, a pedagogy committed to constructing forms of political engagement that do not reduce popular culture to the scrutinised Other or simply celebrate new expressive cultures as fragmented and hybrid. *For* a Black politics – this book is required reading for students and academics in cultural studies and social theory; as well as for everyone engaged in anti-imperialist, anti-racist struggles.

The image on the cover is from a Fun^Da^Mental album, Sieze the Time.

Dis-Orienting Rhythms is available from:
Zed books
7 Cynthis St, London N1 9JF
Tel. 0171 837 4014