Via Mumbai: Multiple Cultures in a Globalizing World

Convener: Prashant Parikh
Speakers: Ales Erjavec, Amra Ali, Ellen Harvey, Geeta Kapur, Homi Bhabha, Jale Erzen, Johan Pijnappel, Kumkum Sangari, Lee Weng Choy, Marco Kusumawijaya, Neeladri Bhattacharya, Noel Carroll, Shahzia Sikander, Thierry de Duve, and Virginia Mackenny
Chairs: Dominic Willsdon, Gayatri Sinha, Girish Shahane, Manas Ray, Parul Dave Mukherji, and Rahul Srivastava

February 13 to 15, 2006 | 10.00 am to 6.00 pm
Godrej Dance Theatre, National Centre for the Performing Arts, Mumbai

Concept Note | Prashant Parikh

The contemporary visual arts today literally span the entire globe and for the first time perhaps have begun to address global themes (or themes of global import) rooted in local forms. This conference takes this exciting development as a starting point to see what artists and others in the present-day art world have to say about one of the central concerns of the planet today: how multiple cultures in a globalizing world can coexist.

There are two levels at which the theme of the conference can be stated.

The first simply is to attempt to address how people from different cultures and with different values both within a country and across countries can coexist and live together peacefully and productively. There are very many definitions of “culture,” especially by anthropologists; I mean simply the set of practices that make up the life of a more or less “homogeneous” group of people in a society: these practices include the group’s entire life activities, but I want to emphasize those aspects that take on an institutional form, whether economic, political, religious, or social. Today, as perhaps always, both collaboration and conflict are present in large measure; one essential difference from the past may be that of scale. So the theme of the conference, a little more pointedly expressed, is: how can groups with potentially incompatible values live together productively? How does our contemporary visual art reflect this aspect of the human condition today?

At the second level, I will try to state the theme in slightly more conceptual terms that may also be a little more specific. While the societies that make up the world today form a complex system, it does not seem too far off the mark to say that their dominant aspect is that they are largely liberal, democratic, and capitalist. While other forms, like communist or theocratic states and military dictatorships, also no doubt exist, it does not seem inaccurate to say that the dominant characteristics of the world system have been shaped by the former attributes.

Conceptually, this was the outcome of the modern liberal tradition in political and economic thought in the West, starting perhaps with the writings of Hobbes, and going on to Locke and Rousseau and John Stuart Mill, not to mention Adam Smith, Ricardo, and Marx. This tradition has continued to this day, most recently in the work of Kenneth Arrow, John Rawls, Jurgen Habermas, Robert Nozick, and Amartya Sen. It is largely to this body of political philosophy and its elaborations in economics and law that our world owes the institutions that constitute our liberal constitutional democracies and our modern way of life. It has given the world, most centrally, the freedoms we enjoy, at least in theory, secularism, at least partially, growing prosperity for many, at least in principle, and in many countries, a safety net in the form of a social security system. Whatever its imperfections, and there are many, it does appear to be the most successful form of society known to man through history, even though some would argue that it was colonialism that made it possible.

There is, however, an important gap in this tradition, though there are of course isolated instances of such work (most notably, Kant), especially in our times. There is no formulation of a framework for how multiple sovereign states must comport themselves in a just order. We have a framework for a single state and its civil society, but there is no posing of the problem of what order a system of multiple states and their constituent civil societies might form to create the same freedoms, growing prosperity, and a safety net for all the states in the system, while maintaining the relative independence of each state. We can see what may be the uncertain beginnings of such a development in the growing body of international law and the international human rights movement. However, these developments are relatively ad hoc, with none of the theoretical vision and ambition that we find in the liberal tradition.

Not only this, while this tradition seemed to solve the problem of a single state and its civil society, it appeared largely to assume the existence of a homogeneous culture. In our times, this abstraction has been questioned, and it now appears that one central problem of the times is how different cultures can be accommodated both within and across countries in ways that permit peaceful and productive coexistence.

I have started with the vantage point of the modern liberal tradition as I believe it is that framework that has largely shaped the dominant aspects of the world as it is today; however, there are other traditions certainly that have shaped many parts of the world that are often quite different from and even at odds with this tradition. These other traditions and ideologies offer different ways to conceptualize these issues.

One alternative is the radical leftist view that sees the central problems of the world today, including the ones mentioned here, as stemming from and ultimately traceable to the logic of global capitalism. One key idea underlying many articulations of this tradition is the classical distinction, given a particular reading by Hegel and Marx, between “essence” and “appearance;” another is the idea of ”contradiction.” Many thinkers, too numerous to mention here, have contributed to this tradition in the twentieth century, perhaps Adorno and Horkheimer, and Walter Benjamin, and Marcuse most notably in the realm of culture. The great strength of this tradition is that it has offered some of the most vigilant critiques of inequities in contemporary societies and of anti-democratic practices. However, some would argue that it has also itself led to totalitarianisms of various kinds.

This vantage point also has much to commend it, and it could equally serve as a point of departure for us; indeed the over-simplified picture presented here obscures the many overlaps and also sharp differences between the two traditions. Just as there are significant gaps in the liberal tradition, so there are significant gaps in the radical leftist tradition. The ideas of culture generally, and more particularly, of the interrelationships between cultures, have always posed a problem for this largely Marxian tradition. Another issue for this viewpoint is of a methodological kind: do we really understand the logic of contemporary capitalism (e.g. the idea of contradiction) well enough so that when we use it in our explanations we are being adequately rigorous?

Of course, these stances do not by any means exhaust the options available today, but they are amongst the more commonly available traditions. Another broad outlook is provided by the conservative vantage point, also with many overlaps and differences with the two traditions described above. Again, there are many thinkers who have contributed to this strand, both in the West and the non-West, notable recent Western examples being Michael Oakeshott and Friedrich Hayek. Contemporary conservatives often draw upon many of the same early modern thinkers mentioned above. One typical strength of this tradition is its strong defense of individual rights and freedoms; one typical weakness is its relatively poor understanding of the social and cultural dimension of society. Samuel Huntington, in his widely read recent book, sketches multiple models of contemporary world reality, perhaps none of them fully persuasive, including his own preferred civilizational one, but they may also serve as a point of departure for reflection on the themes of the conference. His view is often characterized as a conservative one and serves as one more example of the broadly conservative standpoint.

It will be seen that all three orientations, as also others I have not considered, have problems with an adequate theoretical consideration of “culture” and cultural conflicts. As we know, this is a moment in our collective global history that rouses strong passions from a variety of standpoints. It is also possible that many will find the way I have framed the theme of the conference objectionable. But this incompatibility of frameworks and visions is precisely part of the problem we hope to address. How do we admit and accommodate other worldviews in ways that respect rational argument and genuinely democratic processes? The only other alternatives appear to be either the exercise of raw power or anarchic relativism, whether in the world at large or even in microcosms like our conference.

Thus, once again, the theme for the conference is: how do multiple states share the space of the planet without conflict and without losing their relative independence? How can multiple cultures both within and across countries live together peacefully and productively? And finally, how does contemporary visual art deal with these themes? I hope it is clear that these may well be common goals and concerns, whether we approach them from a conservative, liberal, or radical standpoint.

These are two ways of delineating the same problem and it is this problem that our speakers and artists will address in the conference. Anything that leads to better understanding even if no actual “solution” is offered is fair game. We urge participants to think imaginatively and speak frankly. It is our belief that the only starting point for such problems, as far as the conference is concerned, is through language and dialogue, perhaps the central elements of all cultures: we must solve problems of culture with the tools of culture. We do not require that speakers and artists represent their part of the world even though we have tried to bring people from many diverse cultural and intellectual traditions together.

The precise role of the visual arts vis-à-vis these themes may appear tenuously defined, but it has been left so deliberately so as to not foreclose the options and strategies our presenters may adopt. How does the art world approach such issues? Do artists, critics, and art historians produce works and ideas that relate to these themes? How do curators and museums tackle them? Can artworks help to bring out aspects of these problems in ways that other disciplines cannot? Can they offer insights that point to solutions? While the framework I have sketched is a broadly philosophical one that may not appear to connect directly with the visual arts, it should be seen more as a setting for reflection along the lines of each presenter’s discipline and activity. Some may prefer to speak directly using the language of the framework; others may adopt less direct or entirely different approaches.

The plan is to bring twelve speakers – critics, art historians, philosophers, political thinkers etc. – together with seven visual artists from as many different parts of the world as possible to create a conference where the problems of multiple cultures in a globalizing world are directly or indirectly addressed. We will also assemble as many as fifty conference attendees from Indian cities other than Mumbai and about sixty invitees from Mumbai, all from the art world of India. Thus, there will be over a hundred invited participants.

Such a large theme may seem too ambitious to some, and perhaps it is so. The hope is, however, that our participants will rise to the challenge and not only present insightful analyses but also constructive solutions to some of the problems we face today.