"Diaspora, Utopia, Critique of Capitalism", Paul Gilroy

Gilroy's reading reminded me of our discussions within class about blackness and geography -- thinking through the material relations which produce space and geographies (**how to think of land/geography as more than just an object, abstracting our relationships to land**). Similarly, I think that culture and sonic forms relate to geographies, as cultural objects are produced through material relations and social conditions of possibility. Gilroy, in line which British cultural studies, looks @ diasporic movement as both a process (the moving, the flux of moving bodies) but also a site of cultural production. He writes, "Black British cultures have been created from diverse and contradictory elements apprehended through discontinuous histories. They have been formed in a field of force between the poles of under- and overdevelopment, periphery and centre. Their bi-lingual character expressed these origins and dislocates the languages of sometimes antagonistic politics formations - black and white, slave and slave-holder, class, people, nation, and locality into new meanings" (219). Through this, emergent (sub)cultures should be given attention as cultural objects into themselves, as they speak to particular political moments, circuits of capital, and dynamics between the psychic/material. 

"Pedagogies of Crossing", M Jacqui Alexander

In the introduction of Pedagogies of Crossing, Alexander writes:

“We cannot afford to be continuously, one-sidedly oppositional...Pedagogies is intended to intervene in multiple spaces where knowledge is produced. ...In the same way in which Paulo Freire narrated our ontological vocation to become more fully human, these pedagogies assemble a similar ontological imperative, which pertains to learning and teaching. And since there is no crossing that is ever undertaken once and for all, this ontological imperative of making the world intelligible to ourselves is, of necessity, an enterprise that is ongoing. 

 Since the central metaphor of this book rests in the tidal currents of the Middle Passage, we should want to know why and how this passage -- the Crossing -- emerged as a signifier...Put differently, pedagogies that are derived from the Crossing fit neither easily nor neatly into those domains that have been imprisoned within modernity’s secularized episteme. Thus, they disturb and reassemble the inherited divides of the Sacred and secular, the embodied and disembodied, for instance, pushing us to take seriously the dimensions of spiritual labor that make the sacred and disembodied palpably tangible, and, therefore, constitutive of the lived experience of millions of women and men in different parts of the word.”

I think that this text serves as an important backdrop for any research design, because the oppositional consciousness she is calling for an active being within knowledge production. That is, epistemology (ways of knowing) must transcend into ontology (ways of be/coming). This pedagogy demands that we seek a crossing (never fully crossed, always in a diasporic, instable process) as opposed to a static, fixed bridge between binaries. I appreciate Alexander's thoughts of the in-between spaces of the psychic and material, the Sacred and secular, the geographic and memory. In many ways, this relates to my research because any understanding of Kashmir and land cannot be only understood through objective cartographies or linear timelines of communal conflict. Because materiality is constructed through social relations, any research around land evokes the psychic: memory, storytelling, language, loss, crossings. For my research to do justice to its subject, at a level of thought and production, it's important for me to continually remind myself of these crossings.

The phrase, "making the world intelligible" to ourselves stood out to me the most in my re-read of this passage. With the modern academy, knowledge production serves as a tool to "make sense" of chaos, of external realities. What is Alexander asking of her readership here? Why? 

initial research concepts:

the rough sketch of my research project is to frame kashmiri militarization (from india/pakistan) with other contemporary decolonial struggles, and to think through kashmir as an evolving indigenous model. traditionally/hystorically, kashmir is diagnosed as a "communal violence" of india/pakistan and hindus/muslims. however, i think that the forms of militarization, dispossession of land, gendered violence, and imperial cartographies relate kashmir more to a shifting face of coloniality. currently, i'm trying to historicize the conflict, and find points of comparison/conversation with other continuing struggles. this is also an attempt to connect ethnic studies theory to a location outside of the u.s., and look at forms of transnational solidarities.

"Kashmiriyat does not only mean simply a harmonious relationship cutting across religious and sectarian divisions or pluralistic tradition, but it is a far wider concept that has grown over centuries of historical processes that the region of Kashmir has embraced, both in peace and in turmoil. Kashmiriyat is not a mere concept, but an institution with societal, political, economic, and cultural currents and undercurrents. Kashmiriyat is only unique to Kashmir, and this specificity of Kashmir has evolved as a result of special circumstances rooted in Kashmir’s topography/geography, ecology, religious ethos, and cultural moorings. The immensity of distance has never restricted Kashmiris from traveling to distant lands. This region has always been surrounded by the world’s greatest civilizations such as China, Persia/Iran, Central Asia, and India. These civilizations always interacted with the region’s population and culture but did not and could not overwhelm the region’s character in any manner, irrespective of the small size of Kashmir and the number of people who migrated into Kashmir and inhabited it from time to time. All these forces facilitated the growth of an integral personality of Kashmir that imbibed varied socio-religious, politico-regional, and cultural trends that were assimilated and reworked by Kashmiris in evolving an indigenous model." -Ratthan Lal Hangloo

test post: kala - tamil, meaning unity kala - hindi, meaning the color black