“They Paint Sedition on the Walls”
Year: 2021
Type: article
Abstract: While publicly funded institutions in India have provoked the punitive ire of the ruling Hindu right and systematically invited acts of state terror, a new education policy drafted by the same ruling party advocates a wholesale return to a “liberal arts” curriculum. The essay attempts to demonstrate how the “liberal” has become the cultural logic of a communal-fascist regime, insofar as the regime is harnessing universities to its project of redefining citizenship in line with its recently passed citizenship laws. In this context, how might a hijacked “idea” of the university be reclaimed—and what are the possible futures of such a political maneuver? This essay suggests how a practice of imaginative labor at the university might be leveled not toward citizenship but toward lessons in immigrancy. It also addresses how a mass online transition—prompted by policy in the name of a pandemic—reconfigures rights of entry to this imaginative labor.
Source: Critical Times
Author: Debaditya Bhattacharya
Language: English
Subfield: Education
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W3209863957