ISSN 2283 - 7949

logo
Glocalism: Journal of culture, politics and innovation
logo
  • Home
  • About
  • Call for papers
  • Issues
  • Editorial Board
  • Publication Ethics
ISSUE 2021, 1: NEW GLOCAL FORMS OF FINANCIAL PARTICIPATION AND REVENUE MOBILIZATION - Other essays

Defamiliarizing the Familial: a Cosmopolitan Reading of Satyajit Ray’s “Agantuk”

Home ISSUES ISSUE 2021, 1: NEW GLOCAL FORMS OF FINANCIAL PARTICIPATION AND REVENUE MOBILIZATION ISSUE 2021, 1: NEW GLOCAL FORMS OF FINANCIAL PARTICIPATION AND REVENUE MOBILIZATION - Other essays Defamiliarizing the Familial: a Cosmopolitan Reading of Satyajit Ray’s “Agantuk”
Luglio 2, 2021 by Nishita Kattar in ISSUE 2021, 1: NEW GLOCAL FORMS OF FINANCIAL PARTICIPATION AND REVENUE MOBILIZATION - Other essays
  • Abstract
  • Content
  • DOI

Abstract

Abstract: In their introduction to the anthology Cosmopolitanisms, Breckenridge et al. describe cosmopolitanism as “ways of living at home abroad or abroad at home” (2000: 587). Cosmopolitanism, in these two dimensions, is enacted in Satyajit Ray’s film Agantuk (1991) as well. While the dominant tendency in the film’s reception has been to draw a dichotomy between parochialism and cosmopolitanism – with each proclivity identified with a different branch of the same family tree – this paper shall attempt to problematize this binary. Rather than articulating a tension between the home and the world, this paper proposes that Agantuk illustrates two different cosmopolitanisms – a way of “living at home abroad” and a way of “living abroad at home”. While both cosmopolitan approaches diverge significantly, the film makes a strong case that they emanate from a common space of middleclass privilege and access, by contextualizing them against the economic liberalization reforms of 1991 India. Globalization is seen as fostering a banal, consumerist variety of cosmopolitanism – a means for a financially stable middle class to garner cultural capital, and to produce itself as “modern” on a global scale. It is this consumption-oriented cosmopolitanism that bears the brunt of the film’s critical as well as recuperative efforts. Melted and recast, it has the potential to produce a “thicker”, more inclusive form of local, everyday cosmopolitanism – a cosmopolitanism that is equipped to resist the impulse to flatten and commodify alterity, and to open itself to plural, co-existing modes of inhabiting modernity.

Keywords: Satyajit Ray, globalization in India, cosmopolitanism of consumption, middle class, modernity.

DOWNLOAD PDF

Content

DOWNLOAD PDF
Khattar_gjcp_2021_1

DOI

DOI: 10.12893/gjcpi.2021.1.1

About the author

Nishita Kattar
nishita.khattar@gmail.com

University of Delhi (India)

0
Recommend
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIN
Share
Tagged in

Search

CFP

CFP 2024, 1: GOVERNANCE FOR ACHIEVING SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS
CFP 2024, 1: GOVERNANCE FOR ACHIEVING SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS
Settembre 4, 2023 by Glocalism in CALL FOR PAPERS
Share
CFP 2023, 3: LIFE CHANCES IN A (UN)SUSTAINABLE WORLD
CFP 2023, 3: LIFE CHANCES IN A (UN)SUSTAINABLE WORLD
Maggio 11, 2023 by Glocalism in CALL FOR PAPERS
Share
CONTACT US HERE
delimiter image
Published by

Milan, Italy

ISSN 2283-7949

Glocalism: Journal of Culture, Politics and Innovation

CC-BY_icon

Except where otherwise noted,

content on this site is licensed under a

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

Privacy Policy

Follow us on Academia.edu
logo