Third National Symposium

Third National Symposium, The Culture of Diversity and Disciplinarity, 2-4 February 2012; Venue: Balvant Parekh Centre for General Semantics and Other Human Sciences, Baroda

Balvant Parekh Centre for General Semantics and Other Human Sciences, in collaboration with the Forum on Contemporary Theory, will be organizing its third national symposium on the topic mentioned above in Baroda during 2-4 February 2012 to coincide with Professor Arjun Appadurai’s visit to the Centre to deliver the fourth Balvant Parekh Distinguished Lecture. The theme of the symposium resonates with Professor Appadurai’s continuing concern with problems of diversity and disciplinarity within the university set-up. The topic of his lecture, “Pedagogies of Diversity and Cultures in Disciplinarity in India ” may as well be taken as the keynote address for the Symposium. In a way this symposium continues the debate initiated in the last year’s symposium on the topic of the “relevance of the human sciences at the time of disciplinary decadence” in which Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak was the keynote speaker.

The 2012 symposium will try to understand how diversity as a topos is both ingrained in the texture of academic discipline and imposed upon the structure of institutional knowledge from outside the intellectual field of force. In his seminal essay “Diversity and Disciplinarity as Cultural Artifacts” Professor Appadurai examines the way diversity as a necessary force in the dynamics of knowledge production and dissemination negotiates itself through the intricate labyrinths of institutions where it is confronted with an aporia in not only trying to “get from cultural diversity to a culture of diversity” but also in forging links between its intellectual and cultural aspects. In other words, how does one try to translate the need for demographic diversity within the academic community into a productive climate for a more substantive articulation of its epistemic inwardness? The question here is not just to study diversity as a quantitative mechanism for ensuring plurality in the course offerings in a classroom, but more importantly how it is maintained as a generative principle within an institutional and disciplinary structure as the condition of knowledge-formation. The emphasis here is to study how culture and discipline are intrinsically diverse; this diversity is of course difficult to grasp, but with close examination it is unveiled. Edward O. Wilson’s biological metaphor of “consilience” applied to the need for the effacement of disciplinary boundaries in favor of a unified knowledge-system does not seem to translate easily into Appadurai’s culture of diversity. In his trenchant critique of Wilson’s position, Martin Jay warns that “the weakening of disciplinarity, within the humanities let alone in a larger arena, may lead us down a slippery slope into intellectual incoherence—or perhaps what is worse, an extorted and sterile super-coherence” (“The Menace of Consilience: Keeping the Disciplines Unreconciled” (Journal of Contemporary Thought, 29: Summer 2009). Speaking of Philosophy as the master discipline of the humanities, Jacques Derrida says that “it [philosophy] has always been bastard, hybrid, grafted, multilinear and polyglot” (Ethics, Institutions, and the Right to Philosophy 10). Derrida asserts that no discipline can be traced to a single origin or a unitary memory; each discipline is a “graft” and a “translation” having the potential to multiply in several directions. The symposium will engage with some of these issues with regard to how diversity permeates through both culture and discipline and in a sort of double-bind disturbs their filiation while bringing them together. We hope the symposium will generate a great deal of interest among the participants and will result in the publication of a volume. Those who want to participate in this symposium should mail their abstracts to: prafullakar@gmail.com by January 10, 2012. Full papers should reach us by January 31, 2012. Registration fee for participation is: Rs. 1000/ (Rupees one thousand only), which may be sent by money order or bank draft favoring Balvant Parekh Centre for General Semantics and Other Human Sciences, payable in Baroda , by January 10, 2012. The fee will take care of lunch and tea during the symposium. Participants will make their own travel arrangement. Accommodation will be available on request.

PROGRAM SCHEDULE

2 February 2012

10.00-11. 30 am Inauguration

10.00-10-15 am Welcome Address

Prafulla C.Kar, Director of the Centre

10.15-10.25 am Remarks on the Centre

Sitanshu Yashaschandra

10.25-11.25 am Keynote Address and Discussion

Arjun Appadurai

Discussant: Sura P. Rath

11.25-11.30 am Vote of Thanks

Bini B.S., Academic Fellow of the Centre

11.30-11.45 am Tea

11.45 am-1.15 pm Presentation I & Discussion

Sura P. Rath: “A New Bartleby Syndrome: Disciplinary Economy, Scientific Method and the Cult of Multiculturalism”

Discussant: Jasbir Jain

1.15-2.15 pm Lunch

2.15-3.45 pm Presentation II &Discussion

Jasbir Jain: “The Grassroots Reality of an Indian Classroom: Challenges of Plurality”

Discussant: Prafulla C. Kar

3.45-4.45 pm Presentations by Respondents

(Based on “Diversity and Disciplinarity as Cultural Artifacts” by Arjun Appadurai and “The Menace of Consilience: Keeping the Disciplines Unreconciled” by Martin Jay )

Lajwanti Chatani: “The Politics of Diversity and the Discipline of Politics”

Discussant: Kailash Baral

Mandakini Jha: “Boundaries: ‘Left’, ‘Right’ and ‘Centre’”

Discussant: Rajan Barrett

4.45-5.00 pm Tea

5.00-6.30 pm Round Table Discussion

Arjun Appadurai

Sura P. Rath

Jasbir Jain

Kailash Baral

Dilip K. Das

3 February 2012

10.00 am-11.30 pm Presentation III & Discussion

Kailash Baral: “Sites of Indiscipline: Disciplinary Diversity and Teaching of Humanities Today”

Discussant: Dilip K. Das

11.30-11.45 am Tea

11.45 am -1.15 pm Presentation IV & Discussion

Dilip K. Das: “Disease, Law, Citizenship: Rethinking Diversity”

Discussant: Lajwanti Chatani

1.15-2.15 pm Lunch

4.00 IV Balvant Parekh Distinguished Lecture

“Disciplining India ’s Diversity” by Arjun Appadurai

Venue: Dr. I.G. Patel Seminar Hall, Faculty of Social Work, Fatehgunj, Baroda

4 February 2012

10.00 -11.30 am Presentation V & Discussion

Sonali Pattnaik: “From Literature to Film: Adaptation as Movement”

Discussant: Gabika Bockaj

11.30-11.45 am Tea

11.45 am -1. 15pm Presentations by Respondents

(Based on “Diversity and Disciplinarity as Cultural Artifacts” by Arjun Appadurai and “The Menace of Consilience: Keeping the Disciplines Unreconciled” by Martin Jay)

Bini B.S.: “Engaging with Diversity in Disciplinary Domains”

Discussant: Sonali Pattnaik

Preeti Maneck: “Views on Disciplinarity and Diversity”

Discussant: Mandakini Jha

Rajan Barrett: “Dalit and the Discipline”

Discussant: Ananya Das

1.15-2.15 pm Lunch

List of Participants

Ananya Das

Department of English

The Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, Baroda

Email: ananya.infinite@gmail.com