Table Of Content

INSURGENT METAPHORS ESSAYS ON CULTURE AND CLASS Marxism’s cultural turn, which has been prominent in its operation over at least the past four decades, continues to belie the hope it had initially held out. The idea that such a move would eventually pull Marxism out of its ‘ontological crisis’ is on the verge of a miscarriage. That is certainly the case in sub-continental South Asia. Unsurprisingly, therefore, ‘culturally-turned’ Marxism survives as the sign of the very crisis it was meant to surpass. Its canonisation within the academia, and beyond, as a mere analytic of culture has led to the blurring of politico-ideological lines. The quietist impulse that this theory of the science of revolution has, as a consequence, come to share with so- called poststructuralism implies its complete detachment from all notions and conceptions of class and class action. The 13 essays that comprise this book are envisaged as a small attempt from South Asia – where communitarian postcolonialism and ‘Marxist’ culturalism constitute the most respectable trend in radical theory – to remedy the situation. Pothik Ghosh was educated as a professional journalist in Calcutta, Lucknow and Delhi. Active with various Left groups, he is currently based in Delhi and is one of the editors of Radical Notes. His monograph, Loss as Resistance: Towards a Hermeneutic of Revolution, has also been published by Aakar as part of the Radical Notes booklet series. INSURGENT METAPHORS ESSAYS ON CULTURE AND CLASS Pothik Ghosh First published 2023 by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2023 Pothik Ghosh and Aakar Books The right of Pothik Ghosh to be identiﬁed as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identiﬁcation and explanation without intent to infringe. Print edition not for sale in South Asia (India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan or Bhutan) British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-1-032-36552-7 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-36553-4 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-33262-6 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003332626 Typeset in Palatinno by Sakshi Computers, Delhi To Paramita, who kept her self-expression in check so that I could give mine Contents Acknowledgements 9 Epigraph 11 Introduction 13 1. In Search of Class 31 2. Fascism and a Marxist Praxis of Art 43 3. Academics, Politics and Class Struggle 76 4. The Siren Songs of Neo-traditionalism 90 5. Akhtaruzzaman Elias: Beyond the Lived Time of Nationhood 106 6. Kafka and the Question of Revolutionary Subjectivity 150 7. Media and the Indian State: On the Draft Broadcasting Services Regulation Bill, 2006 162 8. The Blind Art of the Concrete 174 9. In Defence of Hamas 178 10. Sri Lanka: Genocide and Other Majoritarian Falsehoods 186 11. Fascism in its Liberal Womb 194 12. Lalgarh beyond Maoism, Maoism beyond Lalgarh 199 13. Three Fragmentary Theses on the Politico-theoretical Problematic posed by the Current Phase of the Indian Maoist Movement for Working Class Politics 207 Acknowledgements Acknowledging friends, family and fellow-travellers has become an indispensable ritual in modern publishing. It is a device by which the writer—otherwise immersed in the self- centred, almost arrogant, ethics of individuated production of autographed literature—shows himself to be capable of humility, thus bolstering, paradoxically enough, precisely the authorial self he condescends to efface. It is a gesture of humanisation where there can actually be none. But a work, any work, cannot plausibly be imagined as an extraordinary feat by an individual. More so a book such as this one that claims to be an expression of a political ethics of non competitive, unalienated collectivity. An individual writer is merely the contingent agency of discourse whose locus is always the collective. As far as this book is concerned that has really been the case. My fidelity to the actual condition of possibility of this book allows me to fulfil the ritual of acknowledgements only by reanimating that ritual to transform it into an authentic act of good faith. This book is truly the product of a collective enterprise. That I have been its writer is a contingent detail that gives me a sense of happiness and pride. And it is this pride and happiness that I wish to share with my “party of the concept”. Comrade Ganeshan of CPI(ML)-Liberation would be the first among them. It is to him I owe the realisation that practice of theory for a partisan has to be much more than merely a matter of private amateurish pursuit.