Writing
ACADEMIC
“Biopolitical Convergences: Narmada Bachao Andolan and Homo Sacer.”
Taking the anti-dam movement in India (“Save the Narmada Movement” or Narmada Bachao Andolan) as a case study, this paper aims to mark the present as one of ethical indeterminacy for the social activist towards the life that the activist claims to protect through an activation of the law, i.e. the refugee and the adivasi made human through the law. Relying on Giorgio Agamben’s concept of “bare life” in Homo Sacer, I argue that the activist disarticulates “bare life” from sovereign power, thereby relying on a human rights discourse that conceives of a subject within and yet beyond the logic of the state, as a life reappropriated and redefined by state power. I end by suggesting that the activist must go beyond the contemporary ethical crisis by conceiving of a struggle that isolates the moments that make visible the indistinguishable convergence of sovereign exceptionality and life’s exemplarity. Such moments involve a double move which names bare existence, not life, as outside the sovereign’s juridical power and refuses to attribute this existence to activation under the name of law.
Co-written with Nick Parker, ” Myth-Making and Meaninglessness in Lady in the Water”
A chapter in an anthology on the films of M Night Shyamalan. Relying on reception theory, cultural and social theory, and folklore studies, we argue that the overwhelmingly negative reception of Shyamalan’s most recent film, “Lady in the Water” emerges from a general critical distrust of myth as a foundational epistemology for our understanding of the world. We posit that like Shyamalan, we might do well to embrace the anti-modern traditions of folklore and storytelling as essential to our understanding as they foment our ability to be creative, and even more importantly, allow us to engage ethically in a world replete with unreasonable acts of violence.
JOURNALISM
The Indian and the Turk: Adventures in Turkey
Paul Varghese highlight of ‘Gurus of Comedy’ show (Paul Varghese)
Brown student portrays slain mother in intense film based in Sri Lanka (Sharika Thiranagama)
Joslin initiative nets 200K for research in community
Author in town on book tour holds mirror to globalization (Kiran Desai)
Conn. native stars in NESN film “Wait Till This Year” about team’s search for World Series title
Harvard’s comedy event nets around $9K for victims
Vandana Shiva talks at MIT, promotes ‘Earth Democracy’ (Vandana Shiva)
New book explores dichotomy of living in two worlds (Professor Rajini Srikanth)
Dialog between religions spurs MIT’s Buddhist chaplain (Tenzin L.S. Priyadarshi)