March 2017
From animal ethics to a feminist inquest on how women internalise male surveillance, political relevance informs John Berger’s formidable gamut of works- from photography, paintings, and screenplays to novels, short stories, essays and poetry. He helped us grapple with history and memory by decoding the very visual and verbal language we use to approach them. A Marxist humanist in spirit, his breadth of vision and self-reflexivity is what is direly needed in the present that is fast becoming polarized in terms of its view of social problems.
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Berger’s ‘Ways Of Seeing’ is storytelling in its finest genre, penned and narrated like a children’s film script, dismantling the false consciousness of the adult male empire, and the subjugation of the female body and mind, says Amit Sengupta.
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Berger’s A Seventh Man seems more relevant today as the issue of migration has taken centre stage in present-day politics – from Trump to Brexit to the differential treatment of Hindu and Muslim migrants into India. Thomas Crowley reflects on how the book can help us make sense of (and humanise) the present context.
‘Looking At The Relation Between Things And Ourselves’
As she re-reads ‘Ways OF Seeing’ post Berger’s death, Paramita Banerjee takes a look at the chasm that exists between the women’s rights/gender rights movement on the one hand and the sexuality movement on the other – seeking to understand the way such a gap reinforces hetero-normative patriarchy, thereby harming both forms of struggle in reality.
Berger-iana: Finding the Master in India
Nabina Das tells us the fortunateness of Copper Coin and how the small poetry-publishing outfit acquired the rights to print the Indian edition of John Berger’s poetry collection.
In the post-modern half-century that we just lived through, the once revolutionary question – “is there such a thing a truth?” – has become a conventional, almost banal concept; a reflexive mental habit of serious academics and armchair philosophers alike, says Koli Mitra.
Ways Of Saying: John Berger and Shubh Laxmi
As a girl in Assam raises her voice on the social media against eve teasing, she took on the role of the performer. But Berger pointed out, “In public nobody can escape from it; everyone is forced to be either spectator or performer.” And so the public took over the role of a performer, writes Samudra Kajal Saikia.
Looking At The British Paintings Of India
Aritra Mukherjee extends the application of Berger’s concepts to the works of British painters like Thomas and William Daniell, thus justifiably moving beyond a cursory appraisal of the exquisite artwork to a deeper analysis of the painters’ compositional intentions.
“Like thousands of other Rohingya Muslims, Abdullah has a traumatised past and bleak future. He, like many others, is bitter, angry and helpless.” Ramesh Menon walks us through the tragic back-stories of a few such Rohingya refugees.
A couple of poems by Sayan Aich.
While Modi came into power riding the wave of “sabka saath, sabka vikas”, Yogi seems to be coming from a very pre-modern sense of violence, which exists only to destroy. This difference is very important according to Soumabrata Chatterjee.
Kanhaiya’s Journey From Bihar To Tihar
“The people in power are concentrating and centralising all the powers in their hands to control every bit of information from one centre. What we as the fighting forces need to do is to decentralise the same power.” Kanhaiya Kumar talks to Bishwadeep Mitra on his book ‘Bihar to Tihar’, and how it is a memoir comprising people from different realms of the society coming together in the journey of a single person.
Rana Ayyub’s Quest For Justice
“The reason we are crusading and working against this is because we believe there is light at the end of the tunnel and I still believe so. I am an eternal optimist and I believe my book will seek justice, for sure.” Rana Ayyub talks to Bishwadeep Mitra about her journalistic days and her journey, which resulted in her book Gujarat Files.
Despite the army chief – General Bipin Rawat’s warning to Kashmiris that “tough action” would be taken if they created “hurdles” for security forces during anti-militancy operations, the security forces have had to face tough resistance from the people in the three encounters in south Kashmir since the beginning of March, reports Bilal Kuchay.