Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 Jain Studios on the Meandering Stairway to Success
- 2 Translating Metaphors of Nation-Building
- 3 Hindutva's Media Phantasmagorias
- 4 Re-mapping the Nation-Space: place and displacement
- 5 Re-making History: ‘The Truth shall not be touched!’
- 6 Mother India's Heroic Sons: a passion play of martyrdom
- Epilogue: ‘Making India a Dharmic Superpower’
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Videography
- Index
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 Jain Studios on the Meandering Stairway to Success
- 2 Translating Metaphors of Nation-Building
- 3 Hindutva's Media Phantasmagorias
- 4 Re-mapping the Nation-Space: place and displacement
- 5 Re-making History: ‘The Truth shall not be touched!’
- 6 Mother India's Heroic Sons: a passion play of martyrdom
- Epilogue: ‘Making India a Dharmic Superpower’
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Videography
- Index
Summary
When and how will the worlds of form that have arisen in mechanics, in film, machine construction and the new physics, and that overpowered us without our being aware of it, make what is natural in them clear to us? When will the conditions of society be reached in which these forms or those that have arisen from them open themselves up to us as natural forms?
(Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project)Walter Benjamin's quotation addresses the role played by new audiovisual media in the construction of national identity, and the way in which the perception of individuals and groups in a society is influenced by modern technologies. Benjamin's comment is part of a large body of reflections accumulated in his Arcades Project, a montage on the rise and the ‘signatures’ of modern societies and public life in Europe in the context of popular culture, politics and capitalism at the turn of the nineteenth century. Naturally, his concern with production and distribution of various visual media demands to be read within the historical context from which it arose. Yet, despite today's very different technological, social and economic conditions, which impact on, and are shaped by, postmodern and postcolonial societies, Benjamin's concern with the relationships between actuality and virtuality, fantasy and rationality, and the complex invisible and visible strategies of ideological power that enhance ways of seeing and displaying, is still relevant.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Empowering VisionsThe Politics of Representation in Hindu Nationalism, pp. 1 - 14Publisher: Anthem PressPrint publication year: 2004