Life andWords A B O O K The Philip E.Lilienthal imprint honors special books in commemoration of a man whose work at University of California Press from 1954to 1979was marked by dedication to young authors and to high standards in the field of Asian Studies.Friends,family,authors, and foundations have together endowed the Lilienthal Fund,which enables UC Press to publish under this imprint selected books in a way that reflects the taste and judgment of a great and beloved editor. Life and Words violence and the descent into the ordinary Veena Das Foreword by Stanley Cavell university of california press berkeley los angeles london University of California Press, one of the most distinguished university presses in the United States, enriches lives around the world by advancing scholarship in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Its activities are supported by the UC Press Foundation and by philanthropic contributions from individuals and institutions. For more information, visit www.ucpress.edu. Several chapters are revised versions of earlier essays, which are listed in the acknowledgments on pages 267–269. University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles, California University of California Press, Ltd. London, England © 2007by The Regents of the University of California Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Das, Veena. Life and words : violence and the descent into the ordinary / Veena Das ; foreword by Stanley Cavell. p. cm. “Philip E. Lilienthal Asian studies imprint.” Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn-13, 978-0-520-24744-4(cloth : alk. paper) isbn-10, 0-520-24744-2(cloth : alk. paper) isbn-13, 978-0-520-24745-1(pbk. : alk. paper) isbn-10, 0-520-24745-0(pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Violence—India. 2. India—History—Partition, 1947. 3. Sikhs—Crimes against—India. 4. Riots— India—History—20th century. 5. Suffering—India. 6. India—Politics and government. 7. India—Social conditions. 8. India—Social life and customs. I. Title. gn635.i4d2662 2007 303.60954—dc22 2006003041 Manufactured in the United States of America 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 This book is printed on New Leaf EcoBook 50, a 100% recycled fiber of which 50% is de-inked post-consumer waste, processed chlorine-free. EcoBook 50is acid-free and meets the minimum requirements of ansi/astm d5634–01(Permanence of Paper). For Saumya,Jishnu,and Sanmay— for their gift of love and Ranen— for the generosity of spirit with which he has nourished our life together contents foreword / ix 1. The Event and the Everyday / 1 2. The Figure of the Abducted Woman: The Citizen as Sexed / 18 3. Language and Body: Transactions in the Construction of Pain / 38 4. The Act of Witnessing: Violence, Gender, and Subjectivity / 59 5. Boundaries, Violence, and the Work ofTime / 79 6. Thinking ofTime and Subjectivity / 95 7. In the Region of Rumor / 108 8. The Force of the Local / 135 9. The Signature of the State: The Paradox of Illegibility / 162 10. Three Portraits of Grief and Mourning / 184 11. Revisiting Trauma, Testimony, and Political Community / 205 notes / 223 acknowledgments / 267 index / 271 foreword veena das speaks of her “repeated (and even compulsive) reliance on Wittgenstein” as playing a role in the philosophical friendship that has developed between us. Beyond the clear evidence for this observation, the truth of it, from my side of things, is further confirmed, if perhaps less clearly, in an early and in a late thought of mine, each expressing my sense of an anthropological register in Wittgenstein’s sensibility, thoughts not reflected in Wittgenstein’s well-known recurrence, in his later (or as the French put it, his second) philosophy, to imaginary “tribes” different from “us.” I would like to mark my pleasure in contributing prefatory words for Das’s wonderful book Life and Wordsby putting those easily lost thoughts into words, into the world. My early thought was directed to a passage in Philosophical Investigations that roughly sounds to me like a reflection on a primitive allegory of incip- ient anthropological work: “Suppose you came as an explorer into an unknown country with a language quite strange to you. In what circum- stances would you say that the people there gave orders, understood them, obeyed them, rebelled against them, and so on? The common behaviour of mankind is the system of reference by means of which we interpret an unknown language” (§206). This may, as other moments in Wittgenstein’s text may, seem either too doubtful or too tame to be of much intellectual service. “Common behavior” ix
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