Mimetic Sovereignties, precarious citizenship: state effects in a looking glass world

https://www.scribd.com/doc/267505102/Mimetic-Sovereignties

Published in The Journal of Peasant Studies - This article explores the way in which the Indian state and the incipient Maoist state in central India mimic while repudiating each other.  As against theories of sovereignty which see it either as authored from below (contract theory) or scripted from above (domination), or irrelevant to the extent that subject and state are co-constituted by regimes of power (cf. Foucault), I argue that in civil war, the display and practical exercise of statehood and sovereignty is critical. However, this is primarily aimed not at putative citizens but at the enemy. I look at the way in which the Indian state impersonates guerilla tactics in order to fight the Maoists, and the way in which the Maoists mimic state practices of governmentality. Each side identifies its own ‘citizens’ through uniforms, lists of people killed, and inscribes its ‘territory’ with memorials to its martyrs.  For the presumed citizens of these mimetic states, however, it is precisely these markers of identity and legibility which make them more vulnerable. Membership of parallel regimes holds out both promise and precarity.

Reflections on Civil Liberties, Citizenship, Adivasi Agency and Maoism: A Response to Alpa Shah

 

If Alpa Shah had her way (Shah 2013), civil liberties and democratic rights platforms in India, currently speaking in the name of citizenship or ‘the people’ (e.g. Citizens for Justice and Peace (CJP), Concerned Citizens Committee (CCC); People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL), Independent People’s Tribunal for Environmental and Human Rights (IPT)) would abandon their  pretensions and instead give themselves names such as “Committee for the Recognition of Maoist Love and Marriage” (CRMLR) or “Union for the Promotion of the Sacral Parha Polity” (UPSPP), and be in a much better position to advance the cause of the adivasis, in conjunction, of course, with suitably re-educated Maoists. 

            In her article (CofA 33:1:2013), Shah covers three broad themes: The first pertains to the civil liberties movement in India; the second concerns villager support for Maoists, and the third bears on the way Maoists create political consciousness and citizenship in their own areas. The first two are not original, though poor citation gives this impression, while her comments on the third border on the incoherent. 

Read on.... 

 http://www.scribd.com/doc/166637586/COA-Reply-to-Alpa-Shah

or 

http://www.academia.edu/4437783/Reflections_on_Civil_Liberties_Citizenship_Adivasi_Agency_and_Maoism_A_Response_to_Alpa_Shah

Emotional Wars

http://www.scribd.com/doc/145360197/Emotional-Wars 

Adivasi Politics and State Responses

Adivasi Politics and State Responses

Adivasi Politics and State Responses: Historical Processes and Contemporary Concerns. In Sanjukta Das Gupta ed. Narratives from the Margins. Delhi: Primus Books, 2012

(first given as a Keynote address on 22 March 2006: Adivasis in Central India: Historical Processes and Contemporary Concerns. Seminar on Communities and the Nation: Dalit and Adivasi issues in colonial and post- colonial India. Department of History, Calcutta University).

Violent Social Conflicts in India's Forests

Violent social Conflicts in India’s Forests: Society, State and the Market. In Deeper Roots of Historical Injustice: Trends and Challenges in the Forests of India. Washington: RRI, 2012, pp. 13-32  

Violent Social Conflicts in India's Forests 

Habits of the Political Heart

The Habits of the Political Heart: Recovering Politics from Governmentality. In ‘Reframing Democracy and Agency: interrogating political society’. Edited by Ajay Gudavarthy. Anthem press, 2012 (with Aparna Sundar)

 Habits of the Political Heart

Interning Insurgent Populations

‘Interning Insurgent Populations: The Buried Histories of Indian Democracy.’ Economic and Political Weekly, February 5, 2011, XLVI No. 6, pp. 47-57

http://www.scribd.com/doc/52895674/Interning-Insurgent-Populations-EPW-Feb-2011

At War with Oneself: Constructing Naxalism as India’s Biggest Security Threat.

At War with Oneself: Constructing Naxalism as India’s Biggest Security Threat. In Michael Kugelman ed. India's Contemporary Security Challenges, Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, 2011.

At war with oneself: Constructing Naxalism as India's biggest security threat

Educating for Inequality

 

Educating for Inequality: The experiences of India’s ‘Indigenous’ Citizens. Asian Anthropology, Vol. 9, September 2010, pp. 117-142. 

This report deals with the contradictions and dilemmas concerning education faced by adivasis, the preferred local term for “indigenous people,” in central India. The full article is available at:  

http://www.scribd.com/full/46102521?access_key=key-12e1xsut7f0dtudx14ze