Shivani Kapoor
O.P. Jindal Global University, Centre for Writing Studies, Faculty Member
- Sensory Social Sciences, Sensory Studies, Autobiography, Caste and Untouchability, Indian Politics, Feminist Theory, and 23 moreGender Studies, Philosophy, Indian Philosophy, Bodies and Culture, History of the Senses, History Of Emotions, History of Medicine and the Body, Sensory history, Touch, History of Perfumes, Anthropology of the Senses, The Senses, "New" senses in art: touch, smell, taste, Embodiment, Anthropology of senses, Smell, Material Culture, Phenomenology of Touch, Sensory Cultures & Visuality, Senses, Especially Touch, Sensory Ethnography, Perfume, and Scent and Sensesedit
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Research Interests:
Research Interests:
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Leather was an important commodity for the British empire in terms of industrial production and scientific innovation. From the mid nineteenth century in India, the British sought to convert leatherwork into a scientific industry.... more
Leather was an important commodity for the British empire in terms of industrial production and scientific innovation. From the mid nineteenth century in India, the British sought to convert leatherwork into a scientific industry. Leather, however, also has a life in caste. The profound stench inherent to the process of leather tanning marks leather workers as polluted. Examining archival material and contemporary ethnography from Uttar Pradesh, this paper examines how the scientific colonial intervention in leatherwork was made complicated due to the sensorial politics of caste. The leather chemist, trained to impart scientific knowledge to leather workers, often failed to negotiate the caste-based sensorial nature of leatherwork, thereby allowing caste to limit the reach of modern science in the industry. Understanding this interaction between colonial science and leatherwork has important consequences for our understanding of the politics of caste and scientific knowledge in India.
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Leather is a sensuous object marked by complex affects of desire and disgust. In India, this disgust is amplified due to the association of leather with caste. This paper examines the leather tannery as a space produced through the... more
Leather is a sensuous object marked by complex affects of desire and disgust. In India, this disgust is amplified due to the association of leather with caste. This paper examines the leather tannery as a space produced through the sensuous discourse of caste violence, which functions by marking leatherworking bodies with odors, that in turn perpetuate affectual and material possibilities of humiliation and discrimination. This violence of odors has no place in the deodorized discourse of law and yet in the sensuous ordering of caste there is nothing more repulsive than to carry the stench of tannery on oneself. The paper examines this intangible and sensual character of caste violence by closely following Paul Stoller’s methodological argument that sensuousness forms the field on which phenomena play out and through which they can be understood. Keeping in mind the value-laden and subjective nature of sensuousness, the paper also reflects on the ways in which the sensory politics of caste frames the interactions between the field and the body of the researcher – both of which are determined by the norms of caste. The ethnographic descriptions of caste and violence in the tannery on which this paper is based are thus mediated by multiple sensorial perceptions, including those of the researcher.
KEYWORDS: Caste, senses, odors, sensory ethnography, leather
KEYWORDS: Caste, senses, odors, sensory ethnography, leather
Research Interests:
The conversion of traditional crafts into modern technological industries was one of the important interventions made by the colonial regime in India, in collaboration with the native class and caste elite, in order to provide a boost to... more
The conversion of traditional crafts into modern technological industries
was one of the important interventions made by the colonial regime in
India, in collaboration with the native class and caste elite, in order to
provide a boost to industrial development in the colony. This transformation was sought to be achieved through sustained investments in the regime of technical and vocational education. Leather, with its strategic importance for export-led trade and warfare, was an important commodity for this proposed modern industrial regime. However, due to the inextricable relationship of leatherwork with caste, the colonial administration had to negotiate through complex issues of sensorial and bodily politics in attempting to create a modern industry out of a ‘disgusting’ and ‘smelly’ manual craft. Examining archival records and relying on contemporary field research, this article examines the politics and processes through which a sanitised realm of leatherwork was sought to be created through a regime of technical education in colonial Uttar Pradesh in the early decades of the 20th century. In delineating the contours of these tense caste and sensorial relationships, this article also reflects on the eventual failure of this enterprise and consequences of this for understanding the
relationship between caste, work and education in the present.
was one of the important interventions made by the colonial regime in
India, in collaboration with the native class and caste elite, in order to
provide a boost to industrial development in the colony. This transformation was sought to be achieved through sustained investments in the regime of technical and vocational education. Leather, with its strategic importance for export-led trade and warfare, was an important commodity for this proposed modern industrial regime. However, due to the inextricable relationship of leatherwork with caste, the colonial administration had to negotiate through complex issues of sensorial and bodily politics in attempting to create a modern industry out of a ‘disgusting’ and ‘smelly’ manual craft. Examining archival records and relying on contemporary field research, this article examines the politics and processes through which a sanitised realm of leatherwork was sought to be created through a regime of technical education in colonial Uttar Pradesh in the early decades of the 20th century. In delineating the contours of these tense caste and sensorial relationships, this article also reflects on the eventual failure of this enterprise and consequences of this for understanding the
relationship between caste, work and education in the present.
Research Interests:
This essay examines the question of empathy within the discourses of caste in India and argues that the presence of this deeply hierarchical system, which is premised on the idea of disgust, does not allow for the production of empathy or... more
This essay examines the question of empathy within the discourses of caste in India and argues that the presence of this deeply hierarchical system, which is premised on the idea of disgust, does not allow for the production of empathy or empathic political
spaces. Locating itself in a particular case of caste violence and its counter discourse in the Una District of the state of Gujarat in western India, this essay examines the affectual politics of the presence of the animal and the animal-like in caste publics and
the consequences that it has for the question of empathy.
spaces. Locating itself in a particular case of caste violence and its counter discourse in the Una District of the state of Gujarat in western India, this essay examines the affectual politics of the presence of the animal and the animal-like in caste publics and
the consequences that it has for the question of empathy.
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The paper examines a single moment of defiance by the lower-caste leatherworking castes against the violence perpetuated against them by the Hindu Right groups in India on charges of killing and consuming the holy cow. The paper argues... more
The paper examines a single moment of defiance by the
lower-caste leatherworking castes against the violence perpetuated against them by the Hindu Right groups in India on charges of killing and consuming the holy cow. The paper argues that when these lower-caste groups deliberately threw cattle carcasses into the public,
instead of ‘cleaning’ them up as ritually required, they inaugurated the carcass as a political subject. In constituting itself around death, the animal carcass complicates the idea of the sacred animal put forth by
the Hindu Right, thereby introducing a distinct kind of affect into the political public—the affect of rot and decay. By throwing these carcasses out from the slaughterhouses, abbatoirs and tanneries into the
full public sensorium, the leatherworking castes introduce caste, with all its sights, tastes and odours, into the political public. The paper thus argues for considering the carcass as a specific kind of malodourous political subject.
lower-caste leatherworking castes against the violence perpetuated against them by the Hindu Right groups in India on charges of killing and consuming the holy cow. The paper argues that when these lower-caste groups deliberately threw cattle carcasses into the public,
instead of ‘cleaning’ them up as ritually required, they inaugurated the carcass as a political subject. In constituting itself around death, the animal carcass complicates the idea of the sacred animal put forth by
the Hindu Right, thereby introducing a distinct kind of affect into the political public—the affect of rot and decay. By throwing these carcasses out from the slaughterhouses, abbatoirs and tanneries into the
full public sensorium, the leatherworking castes introduce caste, with all its sights, tastes and odours, into the political public. The paper thus argues for considering the carcass as a specific kind of malodourous political subject.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
The paper examines the politics between caste and odours in Uttar Pradesh, especially in reference to the expansive leather industry in the state.
Research Interests:
Almost two decades after the emergence of the first male Dalit autobiography in Hindi, there has emerged a need to re-examine these texts for their silences and erasures especially regarding women. Using Judith Butler’s idea of... more
Almost two decades after the emergence of the first male Dalit autobiography in Hindi, there has emerged a need to re-examine these texts for their silences and erasures especially regarding women. Using Judith Butler’s idea of ‘performativity’ and Joanne Latimer’s exploration of the concept of the ‘dividual’, the paper proposes that autobiographies or the autobiographical act is a particular performance of a historically specific gendered self, rather than the homogenous narrative of an unmarked, non-differentiated ‘Dalit’. The paper attempts to re-examine the idea of the ‘Dalit’ which was floated by the Ambedkarite movement and writing and which now seems to be fragmented. Although, these specific Dalit identities may still be consistent with the larger paradigm yet there is perhaps something to be gained from visualizing this movement as a mosaic (as Latimer’s dividual) rather than as a split identity or as a whole.