media, information, the contemporary

Tag: Writing


  • The Listening Academy Delhi

    Call for participation | The Listening Academy Delhi

    The Listening Academy Delhi Organised and facilitated by Brandon LaBelle, Budhaditya Chattopadhyay and Suvani Suri in collaboration with Sarai-CSDS Concept In her publication Resonant Alterities, literary and cultural theorist Sylvia Mieszkowski explores the literary articulations of aural phenomena and processes of hearing, which have been transported by (written) words. Through a study of specific fictional…

  • Writing, Reading, Digitising, Interviewing: Postmemorial Engagement with Histories of Partition

    I am interested in reversing the gaze to explore the importance of ‘our’ personal subjectivities – the stories of the writers, researchers, artists, digital archivists and volunteers working on Partition – in order to further complicate our understanding of the postmemories of Partition. The myth of distance from our topic of interest that has traditionally been used to signify the objectivity of the writer has always been problematic, especially when the topic in question is a traumatic event that has shaped modern South Asia…

  • ‘Lahore is a lot like Delhi’: Digital Discourse on Histories and Places across the Border

    I am interested in seeking answers for the following questions: Why does it matter for these younger generations to document and, in so doing, relate to memories of Partition? What is the impact of this desire to understand Partition on modern Indian/Pakistani/’South Asian’ identity? What is the impact of the digital space and new media technologies on our relationship with history? How do we imagine the ‘lost’ spaces and times of our ancestors?

  • Postmemories and the Digital Afterlives of Partition

    The digital space is a significant medium through which discourses on Partition, and thereby a larger South Asian identity, are enacted. This is in many ways an attempt to move from the amnesias and post-amnesias of the past by those who are both sufficiently distant from the actual event and yet strongly feel that they have a direct stake in understanding Partition and its repercussions… My focus is not as much on the memories of those who directly experienced Partition (about which there is a vast and fascinating literature), as it is on the postmemories of new generations who are spearheading digital archives, oral history projects and online peace initiatives. I am interested in the ways in which new media and communication technologies have shaped the postmemories of the post-Partition generations and the virtual ways in which they choose to remember, recover and engage with the past of their families and nations.

  • Digital Histories of Partition: Memory, Archives and the Narration of a ‘South Asian’ Identity Online

    By focusing on the transnational South Asian histories, national and diasporic identities negotiated online through Partition-related narratives and archives, this project will interrogate the effect of new media technologies on South Asian memory and history. Memories of Partition stand at the crossroads of the personal and the political, by being a personal tale of displacement and trauma that is also simultaneously a constitutive moment in the construction of national identity and the birth of the nation-state. This dissonance is exemplified in the digital archiving of memories and histories of Partition.