Tradition, politics, and the arts in Calcutta: Creating a Bengali postcolonial aesthetic.
Item
-
Title
-
Tradition, politics, and the arts in Calcutta: Creating a Bengali postcolonial aesthetic.
-
Identifier
-
AAI3037388
-
identifier
-
3037388
-
Creator
-
Butterfield, Julia Lynn.
-
Contributor
-
Adviser: Jane Schneider
-
Date
-
2002
-
Language
-
English
-
Publisher
-
City University of New York.
-
Subject
-
Anthropology, Cultural | History, Asia, Australia and Oceania | Theater
-
Abstract
-
This study examines the work and ideas of artists, film-makers, cultural critics, and theatre workers in the Indian city of Calcutta and seeks to characterize a canon of vernacular (Bengali) modernity to which they contribute. I describe the efforts of these "cultural producers" to draw from the diversity of Bengali and Indian "tradition" and to engage with and selectively assimilate Western categories and forms. That they do so primarily in the interest of addressing political issues of local relevance is an important aspect of Bengali criteria and standards of judgement about what makes "good art".;Part I of the dissertation addresses the specificities of "the Calcutta context": the city's transition from an exemplary colonial city to its contemporary postcolonial status. The colonial experience and the rise of a 19th century Western-educated cultural elite known as the bhadralok are explained as the historical foundation of the ideology of Bengali modernity. During the Second World War international anti-fascist struggles sparked a global consciousness among Bengali intellectuals already attuned to the local popular politics of the nationalist struggle. The 1943--44 Bengal famine created especial empathy for "the people" and a search for forms to represent their experiences.;Part II presents Calcutta's experience with theatre, the visual arts, and film, and offers portraits of individual cultural producers, explaining their backgrounds and presenting their own and cultural critics' accounts of their work and how it is received by audiences. Characteristically the work reveals political content, an interest in history and the colonial past, and a desire to change spectators' thinking.;By examining questions about the sociocultural utility of art in Bengali postcolonial society---its role as a forum for public debate and a reservoir of images (both cosmopolitan and local) to draw on and contribute to a collective sense of self and a sustaining pride in Calcutta's heritage---I conclude that Bengali aesthetic modernity has served as an anti-imperialist gesture, a way of coming to terms with the legacy of colonialism, thereby enabling Calcutta's transition to postcoloniality.
-
Type
-
dissertation
-
Source
-
PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
-
degree
-
Ph.D.
