The Secret Politics of our Desires: Innocence, Culpability and Indian Popular Cinema

by Ashis Nandy (Editor)

Overview

This book deals with an important and too-often ignored area of cultural studies. To examine the enormous industry of Indian popular cinema is to study Indian modernity at its very rawest. The questions and perspectives this book presents provoke a thinking of cinema that is political in the widest sense – from cinemas importance in ideas of nation and national cultural formation to psycho-social perspectives on identity, class and gender.

The contributors deal with a range of themes from the metaphor of the slum as a defining cultural phenomenon to personal reflections on the political meanings and strategies of South Asian film, from Tamil blockbusters to the intrinsic ineffectivity of TV as a propagator of state ideology. Whilst the book is essential reading for students and academics of film, media and of South Asian studies. It will also fascinate anyone with an interest in the genuinely global phenomenon of South Asian cinema.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781856495165
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	04/01/1999
Pages:	240
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.61(d)

About the Author

Ashis Nandy is an Indian political psychologist, a social theorist, and a contemporary cultural and political critic. A trained sociologist and clinical psychologist, his body of work covers a variety of topics, including public conscience, mass violence, and dialogues of civilizations.

He was Senior Fellow and Director of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) for several years. Today, he is a Senior Honorary Fellow at the institute and apart from being the Chairperson of the Committee for Cultural Choices and Global Futures, also in New Delhi.

Appearing on the list of the 2008 list of the Top 100 Public Intellectuals Poll, Nandy had received the Fukuoka Asian Culture Prize in 2007. In 2008 he was listed as one of the top 100 public intellectuals of the world by Foreign Policy magazine.
Ashis Nandy is an Indian political psychologist, a social theorist, and a contemporary cultural and political critic. A trained sociologist and clinical psychologist, his body of work covers a variety of topics, including public conscience, mass violence, and dialogues of civilizations.

He was Senior Fellow and Director of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) for several years. Today, he is a Senior Honorary Fellow at the institute and apart from being the Chairperson of the Committee for Cultural Choices and Global Futures, also in New Delhi.

Appearing on the list of the 2008 list of the Top 100 Public Intellectuals Poll, Nandy had received the Fukuoka Asian Culture Prize in 2007. In 2008 he was listed as one of the top 100 public intellectuals of the world by Foreign Policy magazine.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction: Popular Cinema and the Slum‘s Eye View of Indian Politics - Ashis Nandy
2. Dilip Kumar Made Me Do It - Ziauddin Sardar
3. Raj Kapur: From Jis Mesh me Ganga Behti Hai to Ram Teri Ganaga Maili - Rajni Bakshi
4. How Angry is the Angry Young Man: ‘Rebellion‘ in Conventional Hindi Cinema - Fareedudeen Kazmi
5. Official Television and Unofficial Fabrications of the Self: The Spectator as Subject - Anjali Monteiro
6. On Castes and Comedians: The Language of Power in Recent Tamil Cinema - K. Ravi Srinivas and Sundar Kaali
7. The Impossibility of the Outsider in the Modern Hindi Film - Vinay Lal

Editorial Reviews

Nandy (political psychologist, sociologist of science, and futurist, Center for the Study of Developing Societies) presents six essays that examine the distinctive relationship between Indian popular cinema and the larger politics of culture and society in India. Dealing with a range of themes from the metaphor of the slum as a defining cultural phenomenon to the intrinsic ineffectiveness of TV as a propagator of state ideology, the contributors rethink cinema as a form of shared, tacit political knowledge. Lacks an index. Distributed by St. Martin's Press. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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