This talk explores the possibilities of embodied and affective aesthetics in anti-caste films. With special focus on A.S. Ajith Kumar’s Malayalam documentary film 3D Stereo Caste (2012), it emphasizes the sensorial presentation of anti-caste aesthetics. Moving beyond the conceptualizations of gaze and power, the talk unpacks the possibilities of a look that demands touch foregrounding vernacular Indian languages. It also proposes ‘intermediality’ as a mode of historiography in visual media and traces its employment by caste- and race-oppressed communities as an emancipatory archival practice. The talk thus examines the relationship between intermedial historiography and affective expressive aesthetics, which reject the visualities of caste through a look that demands touch.

Watch the film 3D Stereo Caste (2012): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djIrtfXl2rw

Dr. Manju Edachira is a cultural theorist and comparatist. She is currently a Madeleine Haas Russell postdoctoral fellow in Critical Caste Studies and a lecturer in South Asian Studies at Brandeis University, Massachusetts. She researches and teaches Film and Cultural Studies, Comparative Literature, Critical Caste Studies, Affect Studies and Aesthetics.

Please RSVP for this event here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSf_3GvssLqfSFCX-nejeq8lhBeRhpGtNUmDR5hiyBNVnCtCRw/viewform

This event is co-sponsored by Stanford Global Studies, the Stanford Humanities Center, and the Center for South Asia.