THE DYNAMICS OF CULTURE, SOCIETY AND IDENTITY: EMERGING
LITERATURES FROM NORTH EAST INDIA
Culture is a dynamic process that
goes through mutations and underwrites changes in
time while some historic turning points in the life
of a community becomes the defining moment for that
community in terms of identity and articulation. Culture
as a hold all word also operates within an epistemological
horizon in that cultural reproduction is intimately
connected to its transmission and transformation.
In an era when we go on debating the merits and demerits
of globalization from an economic stand point we often
ignore what happens to fragile marginal identities
and the way a society articulates its inner conflicts,
ambivalences, passions, through the written word.
Creative literature has always expressed not only
the discursive struggle of an individual but also
struggles of many kinds of the community as a whole.
Creative literature is an indicator of a society’s
understanding of itself, human ecology, various ‘life
forms’ and the larger world around it. It engenders
itself through constant engagement with the changes
while accepting what is universal, defining and redefining
what is specific and particular.
Northeast India has always been in
mainstream consciousness mostly for the wrong reasons,
its understanding mostly created through, and derived
from the media. There is a Northeast outside of the
newspaper pages; it is something different to people
who live here. The land mass that is designated as India’s
Northeast is not the same to the people who inhabit
this geographical area that has existed for centuries
through its ecology, myths, legends, stories, poetry,
dances, arts and crafts, its conflicting history and
moribund politics. This territory has many facets and
many faces; it is not just a map; it is a cultural and
linguistic geography—diverse, vibrant and variegated.
The people who call this territory their home define
the uniqueness and diversity of their cultures, customs
and social practices through their oral and written
literatures. Some of the communities in the Northeast
are still embattled being caught up in a never ending
conflict between the Indian State and ethnocentric autonomy
movements. The fluid political situation is a carry
over of the colonial past. The colonial past has shaped
and reshaped the cultural identities of most communities
(mostly tribal communities) in Northeast while Christianity
has added another dimension to cultural loss and recovery.
The historical is always the political in that different
articulations have captured the complexity of life in
Northeast. What is edifying in the face of the fragile
and fluid political situation is the emerging literatures
that seek and articulate the wholeness of life in the
face of disintegration and fragmentation. The act of
creativity in its self-knowledge and dynamics seeks
to affiliate and connect the individual to the society
holding together the home and the world.
The emerging literatures from Northeast,
particularly from communities which were mostly oral
cultures till recently and have undergone historical
and political trauma, have registered their unique voices
that needs to be heard and understood in the context
of India’s pluri- cultural mosaic. These emerging
voices bring in a freshness to the literary repertoire
of the country not because these literatures are historically
young but because the way they depict the experience
of their communities, the unique linguistic registers
they use and the vision they project for the future
in an endeavour to preserve their cultural and ethnic
identities. For all these reasons and many more these
literatures mark a difference that is not borne out
of a blind nostalgia for a lost world but resonate through
the voices of the individual authors from societies
fraught with many a personal tragedy, trauma and cultural
ambivalence in developing a literary consciousness that
needs to be recognized and interrogated.
As literature occupies a third space
beyond politics and history, it needs to be discussed
and interrogated for having a clear understanding of
the aspirations of the people of Northeast India. The
proposed seminar therefore would broadly focus on (a)
Northeast as cultural geography and its diversities;
(b) the problematics of ethnicity and identity placing
them in the terrains of politics of culture and identity;
(c) the emerging literatures which have come to existence
after the textualisation of tribal societies mostly
in the wake of Christianity while mapping the transition
from oral to the written and (d) finally, the interpretation
of emerging literatures from NE for an understanding
of their cultural nuances. (e)other writings / literatures
emerging across India over caste-tribe paradigm to provide
a wider spectrum to the seminar’s main theme.
Sub Themes
1. Colonialism, Ethnography and Societies
in NE India
2. Christianity and Textualisation of cultures
3. The transition: From Oral to Written
4. The Emerging Voices:
(a) Northeast poetry
(b) Short Story from NE
(c) Fiction and NE societies
5. Interpreting Emerging Literatures:
(a) Ambivalence
(b) Cultural loss and recovery
(c) Trauma
(d) Linguistic Register and literary articulation
(e) Sameness and Difference
(f) Institutional legitimacy and politics of linguistic
identity
(g) Politics of culture, Identity and globalization
(h) Ethnic politics and regionalism
6. Translation: Translating cultures
7. Emerging writings / literatures across India over
caste-tribe paradigm
As the Seminar is interdisciplinary,
scholars across disciplines are invited to make their
presentation at the seminar. Each participant will get
20 minutes presentation time and 5 minutes will be devoted
to discussion. Each session will start with a plenary
lecture (if possible) that will give direction to the
discussions.
Place: I & PR Conference Hall,
Treasury Square, Aizawl, Mizoram.
Time : 10 & 11 March 2009
Last date for submission of seminar
abstract: 10thth February 2009
Last date for submission of complete papers: 2nd March
2009
Weather will be pleasant but light
sweaters / jackets will be required
How to reach Aizawl: Air link from
Kolkata, Imphal and Gauhati by Indian Airlines / Air
Deccan ; Road link from Assam, Meghalaya, Arunachal
Pradesh, Nagaland, Tripura and Manipur via Silchar by
Bus and Sumo.
Address of Contact Persons :
Convener :
Prof.Margaret Ch Zama
Head, Department of English
Mizoram University, Aizawl
Pin -796 009
Phone Nos. (0389) 2330631 / 233705 (Fax)
Mobile Nos. 9436142413
Email : margaretzama@yahoo.com
Dr. Margaret L. Pachuau
Department of English
Mizoram University, Aizawl
Pin -796 009
Mobile Nos. 9436141232
Email : maggielpachuau@gmail.com
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