Prahlad and Shanta: the city’s madness
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Prahlad and Shanta : the city’s madness. / Malini Sur ; Sen, Atreyee.
I: Contemporary South Asia, Bind 28, Nr. 4, 2020, s. 498-510.Publikation: Bidrag til tidsskrift › Tidsskriftartikel › Forskning › fagfællebedømt
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TY - JOUR
T1 - Prahlad and Shanta
T2 - the city’s madness
AU - Malini Sur
AU - Sen, Atreyee
PY - 2020
Y1 - 2020
N2 - This article explores the irreverent and supposedly irrational actions of two protagonists, Prahlad and Shanta, characters that the authors encountered during the course of their extended fieldwork in Kolkata. Prahlad is an Oriya migrant plumber who passionately seeks god at the cost of making money, and resists adhering to rational economic behaviour in the city. Shanta is a grieving mother who relentlessly seeks justice for her son’s disappearance during a revolutionary movement that consumed the majority of urban youth in the 1970s. Family, friends, neighbours and employers describe and at time dismiss rgen as pagla or insane. This article foregrounds these expressions of paglami or madness in Kolkata. We ask: how does close ethnographic attention to quotidian madness – its articulations, exploitations and resistances – enable us to rethink urban lives? We argue that dissension, alienation and ‘unreasonable fixations’ are affective thresholds of a changing city. They corroborate the ways in which the city’s transforming political landscape impinges on its ordinary lives.
AB - This article explores the irreverent and supposedly irrational actions of two protagonists, Prahlad and Shanta, characters that the authors encountered during the course of their extended fieldwork in Kolkata. Prahlad is an Oriya migrant plumber who passionately seeks god at the cost of making money, and resists adhering to rational economic behaviour in the city. Shanta is a grieving mother who relentlessly seeks justice for her son’s disappearance during a revolutionary movement that consumed the majority of urban youth in the 1970s. Family, friends, neighbours and employers describe and at time dismiss rgen as pagla or insane. This article foregrounds these expressions of paglami or madness in Kolkata. We ask: how does close ethnographic attention to quotidian madness – its articulations, exploitations and resistances – enable us to rethink urban lives? We argue that dissension, alienation and ‘unreasonable fixations’ are affective thresholds of a changing city. They corroborate the ways in which the city’s transforming political landscape impinges on its ordinary lives.
U2 - 10.1080/09584935.2020.1842857
DO - 10.1080/09584935.2020.1842857
M3 - Journal article
VL - 28
SP - 498
EP - 510
JO - Contemporary South Asia
JF - Contemporary South Asia
SN - 0958-4935
IS - 4
ER -
ID: 255514461