'Questions in and of Language' a talk by Prof. Rita Kothari at Teen Murti House, Teen Murti Marg > 3pm on 11th April 2014
Time : 3:00 pm
Entry : Free (Seating on First-Come First-Served basis)
Place : Seminar Room, Library Building, Nehru Memorial Museum & Library (NMML), Teen Murti House, Teen Murti Marg, New Delhi - 110011
Venue Info : Events | About | Map | Nearest Metro Station - 'Race Course(Yellow Line)'
Event Description : The Nehru Memorial Museum and Library cordially invites you to a Public Lecture (in the ‘India in Transition’ series) on ‘Questions in and of Language’ by Prof. Rita Kothari, Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar, Ahmedabad.
Abstract : The assumption that languages are ‘given,’ ‘fully-formed’ well defined and discrete entities erroneously informs a range of contemporary discourses on nationalism, identity, textual practices and discussions of translation, the last being the vantage point the speaker comes from. The edifice of language is more often than not invisible, a background that on occasions gets foregrounded in intense and violent ways. How does language become both an argument and its ally in service of state, territory, nation, citizenship and a host of ‘larger’ causes? How does its operation and constructed genealogies erase and diminish histories and memories, turn certain identities illegitimate, outsider-like? How does language get deployed to mark out differences, and also to homogenize them? What rhetoric is employed in such situations, and how do we examine language as the thing itself, as well as a metaphor? This inquiry must be made with interdisciplinary approaches that are sensitive to language as cultural memory as well as practice, rather than disembodied objects of linguistic inquiry or instruments of policy and politics. A beginning is made in this talk by citing the western region and interrogating the certitudes underlying the Gujarati language today, especially as it experiences newly felt anxieties.
Speaker : Prof. Rita Kothari is the author of Translating India: The Cultural Politics of English; The Burden of Refuge: Partition, Sindh, Gujarat and Memories and Movements: Borders and Communities in Banni, Kutch. She is the editor and translator of Speech and Silence: Literary Journeys by Gujarati Women and Unbordered Memories: Partition Stories from Sindh. She is the translator of Angaliyat: The Stepchild, and has also translated (in collaboration with Suguna Ramanathan) Modern Gujarati Poetry: A Selection and Coral Island: The Poetry of Niranjan Bhagat. She has co-edited (with Judy Wakabayashi) Decentring Translation Studies: India and Beyond and (with Rupert Snell) Chutnefying English: The Phenomenon of Hinglish. Prof. Kothari has published widely in leading journals and books in India and abroad; delivered plenary addresses on a range of issues and is the former recipient of the Fulbright, Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio and the Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla fellowships. She is currently with the Humanities and Social Sciences department at the Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar and holds the Bhupen and Shruti Shah Chair fellowship.
Related Events : Talks
Entry : Free (Seating on First-Come First-Served basis)
Place : Seminar Room, Library Building, Nehru Memorial Museum & Library (NMML), Teen Murti House, Teen Murti Marg, New Delhi - 110011
Venue Info : Events | About | Map | Nearest Metro Station - 'Race Course(Yellow Line)'
Event Description : The Nehru Memorial Museum and Library cordially invites you to a Public Lecture (in the ‘India in Transition’ series) on ‘Questions in and of Language’ by Prof. Rita Kothari, Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar, Ahmedabad.
Abstract : The assumption that languages are ‘given,’ ‘fully-formed’ well defined and discrete entities erroneously informs a range of contemporary discourses on nationalism, identity, textual practices and discussions of translation, the last being the vantage point the speaker comes from. The edifice of language is more often than not invisible, a background that on occasions gets foregrounded in intense and violent ways. How does language become both an argument and its ally in service of state, territory, nation, citizenship and a host of ‘larger’ causes? How does its operation and constructed genealogies erase and diminish histories and memories, turn certain identities illegitimate, outsider-like? How does language get deployed to mark out differences, and also to homogenize them? What rhetoric is employed in such situations, and how do we examine language as the thing itself, as well as a metaphor? This inquiry must be made with interdisciplinary approaches that are sensitive to language as cultural memory as well as practice, rather than disembodied objects of linguistic inquiry or instruments of policy and politics. A beginning is made in this talk by citing the western region and interrogating the certitudes underlying the Gujarati language today, especially as it experiences newly felt anxieties.
Speaker : Prof. Rita Kothari is the author of Translating India: The Cultural Politics of English; The Burden of Refuge: Partition, Sindh, Gujarat and Memories and Movements: Borders and Communities in Banni, Kutch. She is the editor and translator of Speech and Silence: Literary Journeys by Gujarati Women and Unbordered Memories: Partition Stories from Sindh. She is the translator of Angaliyat: The Stepchild, and has also translated (in collaboration with Suguna Ramanathan) Modern Gujarati Poetry: A Selection and Coral Island: The Poetry of Niranjan Bhagat. She has co-edited (with Judy Wakabayashi) Decentring Translation Studies: India and Beyond and (with Rupert Snell) Chutnefying English: The Phenomenon of Hinglish. Prof. Kothari has published widely in leading journals and books in India and abroad; delivered plenary addresses on a range of issues and is the former recipient of the Fulbright, Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio and the Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla fellowships. She is currently with the Humanities and Social Sciences department at the Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar and holds the Bhupen and Shruti Shah Chair fellowship.
Related Events : Talks
'Questions in and of Language' a talk by Prof. Rita Kothari at Teen Murti House, Teen Murti Marg > 3pm on 11th April 2014
!['Questions in and of Language' a talk by Prof. Rita Kothari at Teen Murti House, Teen Murti Marg > 3pm on 11th April 2014]()
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Friday, April 11, 2014
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