Comments on: *Mujhe Tumare Sign Chaiyen: The Act of Writing in Deewaar (1975)

By: jamesdio62 | vender online

jamesdio62 | vender online — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 16:42:48 +0000

Very good exposure. What he says here is very interesting and all users should read and follow the recommendations.
Thanks for the input.

By: Glenda | Filipino Food Recipes

Glenda | Filipino Food Recipes — Sat, 05 Feb 2011 19:04:08 +0000

Interesting blog! Very nicely done, I’ll certainly be coming back for more. Thanks!

By: vic

vic — Sun, 19 Dec 2010 22:45:22 +0000

Guys- who you writing this for?
It’s indecent.
Labour struggles are on going.
Please respect my dead Gran- or my own confused reaction to the Grunwick strike- or at least the notion of ‘apoorvata’- originality- and not render uttely infertile, utterly dead, even this your last grasp at a popular topos.

By: vic

vic — Sun, 19 Dec 2010 22:28:55 +0000

Vinay Sahib- sorry to be blunt. My Gran (we called her Oma- the German word for Maternal grandmother) said to me again and again that the North Indians cheated us.
She learnt Hindi. BTW our family visited Rashtrapati Bhavan to see V.V. Giri ( he offerred me kismis)- her husband was known by two Presidents though he died at 49.

One at least of his sons is bloody bright- and very bright kids and so on.
But ALL OF the kids in the schools founded back in the War Years, HAVE HAD REMARKABLE STORIES.
I’m a prostitute by profession. These fuckers give me more money over the phone than my own kin, just for oral, you understand- and I from being a nice Tam Bram maiden am turning into a fucking Hindutva countervailing force (Brahmins can’t be killed) ensuring people get Medical College admission and aren’t beaten up or raped and so on.

A valuable service, Sir. What is it that you perform? I mean for the peasants and workers?
Their children?
Oh! I see! The same as the Congress Party!
Sir, Fuck you and the horse you rode in on.

By: vic

vic — Sun, 19 Dec 2010 17:16:07 +0000

‘Writing inaugurates a hermeneutics of suspicion, introducing new hierarchies of power and establishing a contrast between status, where one’s place in the social hierarchy is a matter of ascription, convention, and unwritten traditions, and contract, an agreement that is legally enforceable in a court of law.’
Writing may have done that in the 60′s when some sort of intensional, internal I-Language seemed possible. However, by the early 70′s, Ricouer’s heremeneutic of supicion was risible precisely because it was unable to conceive of itself as gesture-politics gone mad or bunkum pure and simple.
I watched a lot of movies with my grandmother- an old Trade Unionist- back in the mid 70′s, and enjoyed her expalanations why they were a particularly meretricious type of self-serving cant.
It was as though the downward slide that takes us from Mehboob Khan of Roti to the idiotic Mother India (peasant Moms don’t shoot their sons for the sake of the ‘izzat’ of some Seth’s daughter- especially as she was High Caste and girls don’t matter EVER) or the silliness of ‘Do Bigha zameen’ (take the job in the factory you idiot! No need to run yourself ragged pulling a rickshaw in Calcutta)- my grandmother would explain why this shit served the interests of the Congress Party who had very thoroughly fucked up both the Trade Union Movement and the prospect of Land Reform precisely by claiming to protect unviable ‘Do bigha’ farmers and the criminal/political Unions they’d foisted on the workers.
Of course, bogus agreements were always being foisted on the workers- still happens- but not coz some goon is trying to protects his little babies. No. The fix is in.

In contrast to Indian movies, a few years later, at the L.S.E, I watched a heck of a lot of crap Kung Fu films WHICH did the workers and peasants proud. The main idea is that the workers and peasants have to team up to defeat the Kung Fu master in the pay of the Exploiters. Bruce Lee, didn’t do that- he was American- but all the others did. Moms do crop up in Chinese movies of the 70′s but they were not doctrinaire reactionary shit-heads.

Writing does come into this but not at the level of being branded ‘my father is a thief’ or signing away one’s entitlement. Writing comes in AS THE SCRIPT!
What sort of ‘hermeneutic of supicion’ is it that does not look at the actual relationship between Bollywood and Haji Mastan? It’s as though Javed-Akhtar were some sort of natural phenomenon or that India did not possess a pretty punitive Censorship board.

The whole point about violence is that, like talking nonsense, it IS LEARNED. Unleash a new type of violence and in the short-run there is a shock & awe effect. But people adapt quickly. The way you learn fighting is by fighting.

It’s no good pretending ‘the subaltern’ can’t signify, or conjuring up a phantom alterity that is inaccesible and unappeasable- the fact is people from peasant and Mill-worker backgrounds aint stupid.
There is a temple in Uttar Pradesh dedicated to ‘Goddess English’ with Macaulay as a presiding deity. It’s no good putting a label on people and then pretending they can’t hear us talking meretricious shite on their behalf.

We want is a historiography which tells us where the bodies are buried. Which slimy little shit was responsible for which debacle- that kind of thing.

On the other hand, congrats on the prose style. Very…. beautiful.

By: *The Foothpath and the Skyscraper: The Pleasures of Deewaar « Lal Salaam: A Blog by Vinay Lal

Tue, 14 Dec 2010 19:35:19 +0000

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