Some of the key texts that immediately come to mind include, Asish Nandy, Shikha Trivedy, Shail Mayaram and Achyut Yagnik’s Creating a Nationality: The Ramjanmabhumi Movement and Fear of the Self; Roma Chatterji and Deepak Mehta’s Living with Violence: An Anthropology of Events and Everyday Life; Veena Das’s Life and Words - Violence and the Descent into the Ordinary and Rustom Bharucha’s Terror and Performance.
One can also see a less prolific but nevertheless a quite pronounced interest in the politics of violence in other South Asian countries as well. A few examples would be, S.J. Tambiah’s Buddhism Betrayed?: Religion, Politics, and Violence in Sri Lanka; Jayadeva Uyangoda’s edited volume, Matters of Violence: Reflections on Social and Political Violence in Sri Lanka; Haroon K. Ullah’ Vying for Allah's Vote: Understanding Islamic Parties, Political Violence, and Extremism in Pakistan and Ayesha Jalal’s Partisans of Allah: Jihad in South Asia.
As such, I take it for granted that different aspects of violence in our region have been reasonably well studied in sociology. And I will not dwell on this any further. My interest now is to see how the idea of memory might be understood when studying political violence and to suggest why this might be important. I also want to take some time to think what kind of new methodological possibilities might be available for scholars who are keen to study political violence in our region.
Memory
Let me now talk a little bit about memory. As Eric Kandel has noted, in the simplest understanding, memory is the ability to acquire and store information which may range from mundane things to complex ideas (Kandel 2006: 10-11). Recalling the past however, is not a simple matter of bringing into consciousness an incident or a cluster of experiences from the past. It is also a matter of “experiencing the atmosphere in which it occurred – the sights, sounds, and smells, the social setting, the time of day, the conversations, the emotional tone” (Kandel 2006: 3). In this sense, at one level, we may opt to remember the least traumatic or the least disturbing.
At yet another level, we will opt for the most traumatic or the most distressing. But it is due to our personal preferences as individuals or due to the political hegemony of a particular moment in the context of societal or collective politics, that we decide what and how to remember, and what to forget. So the partition of India and Pakistan is never forgotten either by Indians or Pakistanis though the memory of individuals who directly experienced its trauma and violence has now mostly faded with their own deaths. But the idea of that memory and its collective pain is reproduced everyday through other means, which vary from the arts, formal histories to routine cross-border incursions with their own specific dynamics.
In any event, other than documents of various kinds, ‘memory’ is the most crucial repository of information when it comes to scholarly work on political violence. Since the 1980s, there has been a marked increase in the scholarly interest in social or collective memory across numerous disciplinary borders, which includes sociology and anthropology. These scholars have attempted to understand how individuals and societies “retain a sense of the past” and how such a sense of the past would impact their politics, religion, art and social life in general (Roth and Salas 2001: 1). Much of this recent scholarly interest in memory in the social sciences tends to be located within preoccupations in the study of war, ethno-religions conflict, nationalism and so on. As Michael Roth and Charles Salas in their edited volume, Disturbing Remains: Memory, History, and Crisis in the Twentieth Century have observed, experiences of violence or “trauma breaks through the categories we use to take in the world, and thus it seems to be registered in our memories in ways that are unlike those used to register conventional experience” (2001: 1).
Since at least the latter part of the eighteenth century, the emphasis and political demands on memory as a potent political tool has been enormous. Since this time, and in the context of the invention of nation states, the necessity of a ‘common past’ as well as common future emerged as a key requirement in the process of ‘nation-building.’ In this situation, major monuments erected in public space urged individuals to remember. But such urging was not merely on the basis of individuality, but more on the basis of each individual defining himself as a member of a larger community (Weissberg 1999: 12).
In other words, in such contexts, memory was part of a collective effort. According to Maurice Halbwachs, memory was mostly a burden that individuals carry, in the context of which even the most primal individual memories were framed socially, and as such, it was never easy to make a clear distinction between individual and social memory (Halbwachs 1992; Olick 2007: 6). When it comes to experiences of violence, what is important to us is to remember that there are two kinds of memory even through it is not always easy to make this distinction: One is, private memory as narrated by individuals and the second is: collective or social memory as constructed by larger collectives. At the most fundamental level, Halbwachs’ argument is that memory fulfils social expectations that are already in place in society, which are framed by the answers it seeks (Halbwachs 1992).
It is in this context, that Halbwachs has noted that every manifestation of collective memory needs to be anchored within a group of people that is “delimited in time and space” from which it can draw support (quoted in Coser 1992: 22). One problem in Halbwachs’s emphasis on collective memory is that it almost completely removes from individual or private memory all possibilities of agency, and subsumes the recollections of individuals within the dictates on the past, of the collective.
Lillian Weissberg has suggested that in the context of memory, language plays an important role. That is, “words that are formed by social life, and that appear intelligible, offer themselves as both recollections and the language in which we recall. Language itself is already a system of social conventions that makes the reconstruction of ‘our own’ past possible” (Weissberg1999: 14). While accepting Weissberg’s general position on language, one has to wonder if language could work in this manner in extreme conditions marked by violence and pain which may impact society’s normative expectations of language. As Elaine Scarry contends, “whatever pain achieves, it achieves in part through its unsharability, and it ensures this unsharability through its resistance to language” (Scarry 1985: 4).
Scarry, referring to language's inability to express pain suggests that this problem has to be essentially located in the utter rigidity of pain itself, and that pain's "resistance to language is not simply one of its incidental or accidental attributes, but is essential to what it is" (Scarry 1985: 5). This issue of language’s rupture when dealing with violence should be important to sociologists who focus on memory when studying violence and also depends perhaps too much on individuals’ ability narrate their memories – through words. I will take up this matter in some detail in the last part of my presentation.
On the other hand, a focus on larger societal or official memory is inadequate when exploring the complexities of political violence. This is because often, memories of individuals or small communities do not become part of official public memory as research in South Africa has amply demonstrated (Das et. al. 1999; Reynolds 1999). In my work, I prefer to consider memory of individuals and small collectives as a particular genre of text that is not always readily visible or audible while that text is also not be completely autonomous. A particular memory of an individual or community may be autonomous to the extent that specific memory is based on an actual experience which only that individual or community had lived through. At the same time, the narratives of such experiences cannot be taken as autonomous texts within a larger context as the politics and actors which made such experiences possible and inevitable at a particular moment, are generally beyond the control of people who experienced the repercussions of these actions.
Method
Let me now move away from my thoughts on memory to think aloud on new possibilities of sociology in the study of violence and memory. So far, what I have tried to do is to establish the centrality of memory in the study of violence but also to warn of the limitations of over-emphasizing collective over individual memory and the over-dependence on the written and the spoken word, or quite simply on language in eliciting narratives of memories on violence. Can’t we think of other repositories of memory beyond documents based on the written text and beyond human being’s ability to recall and narrate a story in an interview or case study?
Can’t discourses on violence and memories of such violence be embedded in other kinds of texts that do not depend on the written and the spoken word? If so, would this not help further expand the possibilities of sociological research into violence? I am specifically thinking about the narrative possibilities of contemporary art, and particularly what might be called ‘political art’ in the study of violence, war, pain and memory? Is it impossible for sociologists to think that works of contemporary art might be repositories of memory; that they can be narratives of violence; that they might be a worthwhile terrain for ethnographic inquiry?
The futurist artist and critic Gino Severini, made the following observations in 1946 with reference to Pablo Picasso’s well-known painting Guernica, that depicted the 1937 bombing and devastation of the Basque town of Guernica. The incident was one of the best known and documented cases of political violence in the first half of the 20th century. And this is what Severini Said:
There could be no severer condemnation of the bourgeoisie and the Fascist systems with which it defends itself than his magnificent picture, Guernica. In work of this kind, and especially in that great picture, he reached the extreme limits of expression and abstraction, of an almost monstrous representation of all the evils which have led to war and for which the whole world is responsible (Severini 1946: 9).
Over twenty years ago, when I first began to think of expanding the methodological domains of sociology and when I first encountered Severini’s essay in a secondhand book store in Los Angeles, I wondered if a painting can contain such feelings and expressiveness of politics, pain and violence, why can’t such works of art speak authoritatively to sociologists? So what I have to say in the rest of my presentation today is based on that initial thought, and subsequent and incomplete thinking that has followed me since.
Picasso, in this particular case did not simply produce a painting, but a painting that had a specific political narrative that was effectively communicable in the context in which it was produced, and now beyond that time as well because of the preservation of that work along with the discourses of art history it has since generated. Perhaps Guernica is the best-known painting that is based on memories of violence of a particular political moment. We know quite well that very expressive political art of this kind has been produced in California in the 1960s in the context of the Vietnam War and the American youth movement as well as in the post 1980s period Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka responding to their own socio-political circumstances. In the book, Mortality-Immortality: The Legacy of 20th Century Art, with reference to how 20th century art would be remembered in times to come, Miguel Angel Corzo observes, “if we accept the notion that arts reflects history, then contemporary art is, in some way, a monument to contemporary civilization. It is the cultural heritage of our time…” (1999: XV).
Within certain limits, I think Corzo’s observations create an avenue to pose a series of questions on the politics of memory as they are reflected in contemporary artworks in our part of the world and elsewhere, which might inform sociological research into political violence.
One of these questions has to do with how notions and experiences of pain, war and trauma might be represented in visual arts.
Yet another question is whether art reflects history, and if it represents particular civilizational attributes of a particular place or moment? If so, what kind of histories would art narrate? What would it not narrate? Who narrates these memories and who are the consumers? What are the absences and silences in these narratives?
My personal conviction is, if we can successfully pose and answer these questions, then contemporary political art could become audible in a manner that would make sociological sense.
Caroline Turner, talking specifically about contemporary Asian art has noted that political and social changes in the region and beyond have been “mirrored and reflected” in the region’s art, and that individual changes within countries have significantly impacted upon the development of art practices in these countries (Turner 2005: 1). In this regard, she also notes that “artists can, through their work, reflect the values and aspirations of their own society, and of humanity. While some react with cynicism and even despair, others produce an art of resistance. Over the past decades, many artists in the Asia Pacific region have protested colonialism and neo-colonialism; global environmental degradation; cultural loss; illness due to poverty; sexual exploitation; social and political injustice; war; violence and racism. Their work is in the broad area of social justice” (Turner 2005: 4). Don’t these constitute the very same areas of interest for sociologists working on political violence?
It is in this context, marked by specific local political conditions and global concerns that Indonesian artists in particular have produced a significant collection of work opposing human rights violations in that country, often facing personal danger in that process (Turner 2005: 9). According to Jim Supangkat, these particular tendencies manifested in the 1990s; and in terms of one such tendency, artists were interested in locating the “truth based on morality” (Supangkat 2005: 223). It is within this particular manifestation that he locates the work of an entire range of artists who explore “social realities which they see as reflecting poverty, injustice and oppression” (Supangkat 2005: 223). The other tendency, represented by artists such Dadang Christanto, Tisna Sanjaya and others critiqued the government as “an oppressive, corrupt and powerful group of people who deceived the poor” (Supangkat 2005: 222). Dadang Christanto is perhaps the best-known Indonesian artist who has consistently narrated in his work extreme conditions of human suffering such as the work he and three others presented at the fiftieth Venice Biennale in 2003 under the theme, Paradise Lost: Mourning the World (Turner 2005: 9). In this series of works the artists took as their point of departure, the Bali bombing incident in which over 200 individuals perished (Turner 2005: 9). Similarly, Thai artist Vasan Sittiket has commented on issues of war in Iraq and corruption in Thailand in the shadow puppet-based work, The Truth is Elsewhere (Turner 2005: 10). Earlier, in a painting titled If Buddha Returned to Bangkok, he depicted the image of the Buddha among scenes of corruption and social dislocation, thereby commenting in very graphic and easily communicable manner, his own thoughts on the events surrounding the 1992 coup in Thailand (Turner 2005).
However, looking at contemporary political art, not as artists, not consumers and not as art historians, but as sociologists, a question that must be posed at this moment is this: can we assume that art in fact reflects history or memory in some linear and coherent fashion without any contradictions? Is art such a simple text? I would suggest that everywhere some of the fundamental assumptions of Corzo’s observations I referred to earlier, would have to be reformulated to some extent. For instance, art does reflect history in the sense that all art is produced at particular historical and political moments within clear social and cultural geographies and are impacted upon by temporal realities. As such, in many ways such works are products of that moment in terms of material used, stylistic conventions and often in what is represented. Representational politics is certainly very obvious in political art.
However, despite that historical location in spatial and temporal terms, art does not always narrate clear histories as it also does not always capture and transmit coherent memories. In other words, despite the possibility of historically locating a work of art, it does not necessarily visually represent that moment in all its complexities. But is this any different from other sources of information and discourse that sociologists regularly deal with? As scholars, we are expected to place our material in context, check their validity and sense, and offer interpretations. It seems to me, this methodological possibility is well within contemporary art even though sociology the world over has not realistically assessed its possibilities.
Based on this kind of thinking, in my work dealing with political violence and memory in Sri Lanka over the last 14 years, I have spent considerable time, looking at contemporary political art, particularly the art of the 1990s and beyond as well as public monuments, as repositories of memories of violence. I have also talked to people, read through countless documents as conventional sociology has trained me to do and keeps insisting that I do.
However, in a country where official records are not always complete or available, where talking to people about their experiences on violence is not as easy as one may think due to both political and ethical reasons, if I had not self-consciously veered somewhat away from conventional sources of discourse to the less conventional repositories of memory such as contemporary art and public monuments, my work would have been substantially incomplete. It would have been much less nuanced. In fact, I am convinced no substantial political history of Sri Lanka is possible without this kind of methodological innovations. And my sense is that similar necessities exist elsewhere in South Asia though conventional sociology is extremely reluctant to make the effort
Part of the problem in this methodological conservatism is that sociology in our part of the world in particular and elsewhere more generally, is imprisoned in appears to be an inherent lack of innovativeness. Sociology in our contexts shows clear trends of being theoretical and methodological followers rather than innovators in these domains. Sociology in South Asia also seems to suffer from a more general fear of the visual that we also see elsewhere in the world. Besides, in this context, some innovations if they emerge at all, might well be labeled ‘soft sociology’ as opposed to ‘hard sociology’ represented by the recent influx of statistics into the practice of sociology. In this context, methodological approaches towards possibilities such as contemporary art or photography quite possibly would be seen as an embrace of ‘soft sociology’ and a matter of compromising the discipline’s analytical rigor. So clearly, these are not conducive circumstances for a discipline to reinvent itself.
End
Let me now bring these thoughts to some kind of conclusion by going back to the subjective and personal domain from where I began my presentation. The Buddha has advised long time ago that one should not preach to people with empty stomachs. While I strongly believe in this sentiment in my own teaching, I also believe that speaking to anyone soon after a meal or any time after 1.00 pm might also not achieve much. Hence, my interest to conclude soon.
My attempt was not to present to you something conclusive and coherent. That is the work best suited for the confines of the of the classroom. It is also not possible, when one’s own thinking is closer to a work in progress rather than a process of thinking that has somehow been concluded. Instead, my attempt was to simply address some issues in how memory can be understood in the study of violence, and how we might be able to explore different and uncharted ways of trying to do this with a focus on contemporary art.
I also thought it might be better to spend the time talking about these issues to you, as people whose minds might not yet be closed, as opposed to my colleagues in Delhi and beyond in my generation whose minds might be already quite tightly locked in their regular conventional mode, or quite snug in their well-travelled comfort zone. For me, talking to them on these matters – which I have done many times before -- would be a waste of time. Talking to you, might not make any difference either. But there is some possibility of hope. And for me, that is good enough.
I have not talked of ethics today though ideally I should have. Working on violence is not an easy thing for a scholar given the ethical issues one might be confronted with on a regular basis. But such investigations would be necessary, particularly if they would have an impact on everyday circumstances beyond the Ivory Tower within which we work. For most individuals in India, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Sri Lanka as far as South Asia is concerned, and other colleagues elsewhere in the world, who have opted to work and live in the midst of violence, including myself, any exploration into memory, erasure and their public and private manifestations, cannot be a simple academic inquiry. It is an emotional endeavor as well. We cannot be aloof from the reality of these memories and the pain inscribed in them, and take refuge within the ramparts of sociological objectivity beyond a point.
On the other hand, writing on violence also poses a series of difficulties in much the same way as it does in the process of research. From the experience of writing his recent book, Terror and Performance, Rustom Bharucha notes that for him, “this writing demands stamina as it faces an onslaught of uncertainties and cruelties at the global level that challenges the basic assumptions of what it means to be human” (xi). Bhraucha further identifies quite accurately two predicaments that writers on terror and violence have to face. One is the seeming non-existence of an exit from the act of writing in the sense of not “being able to free one’s self from the closure of violence” (xi). Particularly in the uncertain political circumstances of countries in South Asia and other regions of the world with similar political experiences, there is no seeming end to violence. As such, how would one end his narrative? This is not a simple matter of cataloguing acts of terror, but the interpretation of what happens. The second predicament he refers to is the need to “accept a state of suspension” with no other choices (xii). In other words, “once one enters the narrative of terror, one has no other choice but to keep wading through the blood even as the possibility of reaching the other side cannot be readily assumed” (xii). In this sense, writing about violence and terror in many ways is an immersion in the violence itself, particularly when this has to be done from our kind of political and social circumstances where the distance between the constant unfolding of terror and the relentless and seemingly fruitless search for collective sanity is not so great. This would be a reality for all of us researching and writing on violence in our region.
For me, working in contemporary Sri Lanka and talking to people touched by violence in India is a matter of living in crisscrossing fields of memory; and in fields of erasure; amidst survivors; amongst ghosts; and surrounded by variously narrated discourses of memory rooted to a common past of violence and pain. As such, for research or for leisure, if we take a simple walk down a street, irrespective of where one might be, that could easily mean one is in the midst of interlocking landscapes of memory gesturing to us about events that have happened and people who have been lost. That is because as the words of the 17th century Spanish poet, Francisco de Quevedo would remind us death itself does not necessitate erasure:
It will leave its body, not its cares;
they will be ashes, but still will feel;
dust they will be, but dust in love
- Francisco de Quevedo –
So working with violence is about working in fields of emotion, among people who are dead but memories of them might not be. If you opt to take this journey by being a conventional sociologist, or if you decide to do so by becoming slightly innovative, you are still going to transgress a world of liminality. My hope is that you would have the sense to be cautious.
Thank you for your time.
(Lecture Delivered at Maitreye College, New Delhi on 21st August 2015 at the inauguration of the lecture series of Department of Sociology; Images from the Maruki Gallery for the Hiroshima Panels, Japan, 2010)
