Sepia Mutiny’s blog administrators seem to have a lot of shiny and fun technology at their disposal to figure this one out.

Nagasai, all we have is a few dedicated bloggers who try and squeeze SM in when they’re not being parents or siblings or full-time drones.

All I did was try and open up a discussion, a discussion I was warned not to, lest it become an absolute clusterfuck.  For the most part, I’m proud of how everyone carried themselves and I don’t regret my somewhat controversial choice to try and create this dialogue.  However, I’m being challenged by my workload right now and I’m being stretched very thin.  I’m feeling like whatever I do isn’t good enough and that hurts when this site is one of the most precious things in my life. 

I’m sorry that my attempts to intervene via the "intern" struck you as clannish and stupid; all I was trying to do in my flawed way was

a)  remind people that I was around,to nip the suddenly and sadly prevalent, "while the admins are away, bannable offenses are okay" bullshit right in the bud.

b)  keep things light-hearted in a VERY emotional and heavy thread…a virtual court jester, if you will.

c)  let Nina know that she wasn’t alone.  Not because she’s our friend but because some of you were really going at her jugular (especially the deleted comments…but I know you’re kind and wise enough to remember that there were probably several of those, right?) and she didn’t have to give me permission to draw a target sign on her back via this post.  I am not a mean girl in high school; I am also not an asshole.  Perhaps my compassion was running rampant, but at moments, I felt bad for her even as I was in awe that she put herself out there for skewering.

If I really were a "mean girl", I wouldn’t have opened up an entire post as a forum, essentially just for you.  I love our newcomers, even as most of them don’t seem to love me.  On a more general note, I don’t need to be kowtowed to, but to be a little less abused, to have the best vs the worst assumed about me and to not be taken for granted would be nice.

A final note:  I am not the mutineer who closed this thread.  While each of us is responsible for modding our own threads, each of us has the others’ back, as well.  I mention this so you realize that this isn’t personal etc etc.  Please don’t assume that the intern is ALWAYS me or that the person who closed Vinod’s thread is Vinod.

And now, though I did not close it, I do agree with the decision to do so because I need to go to bed and I can’t be counted on to manage this.  Perhaps it’s for the best; Nagasai, you aren’t the only one who apparently thinks I did a poor job of it.

Good night and thank you for participating.  To the 90% of you who weren’t trolls, who were respectful and cogent, you rocked my polka-dotted socks off.    Thank you, most.

What you call

critical race analysis of your work in a postcolonial context

I call racism couched in academic jargon. Although it’s not actually jargon to me – I’ve been there and done that and am familiar with theories of white privelege and postocolonialism.

Here’s a sincere question for you and any other critical race analysts here: what good comes from “critical race analysis”? What are your ends? How does bringing race into a critique of art improve the critique, or understanding? I said your ideas are “decades-old” because these ideas are no longer new and radical – they’re mainstream. With the exception of people who rely on the Fox Network for their news, people know about American Imperialism, colonialism, post-colonial imperialism, white privelege, and most importantly, white guilt. When you bring race into a critique, you’re not actually enlightening anyone who never considered race. So what are you hoping to accomplish? Do you think that, if white artists thought more about their white privilege, they wouldn’t make art that offends you?

Nina’s right too.

In fact, it’s not clear to me exactly why they are in conflict. Nagasai is suggesting the necessary hesitations, and Nina is exercising artistic license. A person can do both. A person can weigh the postcolonial/cultural-appropriation factors at play, and still produce risky, artistically challenging work.

I think drawing a line between “religion qua religion” and “religion as cultural expression” might be helpful. It’s possible to have zero respect for the former (not necessarily true of Nina, but true of an apostate like me), and great reverence for the latter. It’s alright to piss on religion (again, that’s not Nina, that’s me), but it’s not alright to piss on people.

There’s no one-size-fits-all solution to this thing, but “I’m offended” is rarely enough reason to get in the way of artistic practice.

Kumba-friggin-ya, people, kumba-friggin-ya. If your God is so strong, she can open up the can of whoop-ass without our help. Culture needs defending, but Gods don’t.

*Yes ‘white privilege’ exists to various extents in different situations…and affects some people more than others…but many desis I know (including myself) are more privileged than all but the highest echelons of whites in this country. That’s what’s great about America.

Its art after all. Its courageous and different and expressive and all that. You wouldn’t because its just not done. Not because you are scared of your dad ( ie. riots ) or being realistic ( can’t stay in the same house anymore after ensuing hungama) or anything else.

I’d say IF someone wanted to do such a thing, the fear and realistic reprecussions would curtail it. If you’re saying that they naturally would never do such a thing, just out of an innate respect and politeness, then this statement of yours makes no sense:

There will be riots and burnings and lost lives. And then, one might ask if all of this was worth it. That was my point – artists in India can paint just as well and rake up enough controversy messing about with religious imagery.

Nagasai:

Sometimes the only way to explain white privelage to a white woman, is to put it in the context of male privelage. Bravo.

(a) Label me as a racist; (b) Accuse me of being someone else to posit this as some sort of conspiracy; and (c) Label the language in which I choose to speak as “over-written, highfallutin, decades-old academic puffery.”

Fine. So in response, I’m just going to write viscerally because I’m feeling like a bitch tonight and let the blog administrators deal with me as they please, since you seem to be some sort of “sacred cow” here. I’m not trying to strip this forum of the civility it deserves, and I’m going to try not to resort to your level of argument, but I am going to write without tip toeing.***

Nina, your calling me a racist is tantamount to me calling you a man-hater. Some of your work is obviously borne from a feminist viewpoint, and you yourself say that you initially deemed the Ramayana a “misogynistic” work. One can argue that your “Sitayana” is a feminist re-telling of the parable. How elementary and simplistic would it be for me to call you a “man-hating feminazi” because you chose to accentuate the female voice in the Ramayana? I mean, your positing Sita as the primary voice in your work obviously means that you are anti-Rama and therefore anti-man. Right? I mean, what is with your campaign against men? You must be a lesbian.

That would obviously be ludicrous. You chose to engage in a critical interpretation of the Ramayana steeped in the feminist tradition of re-positing gender dynamics within popular works. LIKEWISE, I chose to engage in a critical race analysis of your work in a postcolonial context, choosing not to divorce the artist from the art. Asking you to be critical of your position as a white, American woman is not tantamount to me hating you simply because your white. That is racism. I didn’t just happen to see your piece, learn that you’re a white woman, and decide to mount some campaign against you because I hate white people. Give me a damn break.

I mean, damn, let’s do a simple, high school “read between the lines” of the Sitayana – your work, it can be argued, is asking the viewer to consider the female point of view and situation in the Ramayana. So why should the female view be privileged? Huh?

OH, that’s right – because we don’t live in a completely egalitarian, colorblind, kumba-friggin’-ya society. Sexism and misogyny are alive and strong, aren’t they? Right…so it’s not about hating men. It’s about giving the marginalized a voice – in this case, the woman.

In the same regard, my critique is not about hating you or hating white people. But I don’t live in a colorblind, patriarchy-free, all-are-equal, gender-is-irrelevant kind of society, the kind of society that even so many damn liberals selectively bring up when their positionality and privilege are brought into question. JUST as your work seems to imply that men and women are not treated equally in our society, my critique implies that white people and people of color are not treated equally in our society. Saying that does not make me a racist. As much as you and others may want to think so, I don’t apply my critiques solely to white people. As much as you and others may want to think so, I don’t shy away from similar critiques of my work. I have certain privileges in and pre-conceived notions about the world – HELL YEAH, I do! And if we want to take it to the next level, then damn, let’s just say it Avenue Q style – everyone’s a little bit racist.

A racist with a lot of over-written, highfallutin, decades-old academic puffery as self-justification.

This just irks the hell out of me. Listen, if you’re going to argue using your own language and lexicon, then fine – I never called you out for that. But do NOT feign to sit there and call my reference points bullshit just because (a) you’ve never read them, (b) you don’t understand them, (c) you don’t think they apply to you, or (d) they are “old” (???????). I don’t know anything about your education (institutional or otherwise), but just because something sounds “highfallutin” doesn’t mean it’s crap. That’s the same argument Ann Coulter and the Bush camp use when liberals make sophisticated, nuanced arguments against the war, environmental degradation, racism, etc. Disagree with it, call its shit out, denounce it – fine. But dismissing whole schools of thought is pretty damn ignorant in my book.

Look, if you don’t understand something, look it up. Read. Ask questions. Preston jumps in and says “‘appropriated’ (whatever this means).” Just because a term doesn’t sit well with me doesn’t mean I’m going to just dismiss it as ivy tower, esoteric, not-dealing-with-reality BS. If you don’t know what appropriation is in the context of this thread, read Orientalism. Read Said and Spivak. Do a Google Scholar search. Do a Wiki search. Consider some aspects of post-modern theory, post-colonial theory and literature, Orientalist theory, subaltern studies, etc. before making a Coulter-like, “we’re the authentic thing” kind of dismissal. Heck, some of your feminist messages, Nina, stem from a lot of the highfallutin’ feminist academic puffery of the 1960s and 1970s. And, uh, since when is something negligible because it’s OLD?! Lest I remind you that the Ramayana you’re dealing with is pretty damn old, too.

But hey, why consider all this when you can just call something “lame.” Seems pretty lazy to me.

That’s “mighty white” of you Zoe I mean Nagasai, not “naively” labelling me a racist “solely” for being white – not here anyway.

That’s pretty hilarious and somewhat paranoid of you to think that I am Zoey. I don’t know Zoey. Yes, I read her critique of your work on her blog, and yeah, we seem to share a lot of the same views about it (really, how arrogant can you be to think that only ONE person in this work can critique your work using theoretical reference points?), but I’m not her. I don’t know how I can prove this to you, but Sepia Mutiny’s blog administrators seem to have a lot of shiny and fun technology at their disposal to figure this one out. So please: track me. Go all Patriot Act on my ass. Seriously! Track my IP address, and then track the IP address of the person who runs this blog: http://zooeylive.blogspot.com/. Track anything you want, be as intrusive as you want, get as much info as you want – I’m an open book. Because then you’ll realize that we’re two completely different people who happen to share similar views. And then maybe you’ll quiet down about trying to posit me as some troll or conspirator. Because that’s just too damn easy.

Anyway, I have a date tonight, and a sexy black dress and a sexy white man waiting for me. I don’t want any images of you or your “Desire” in my head tonight, so I’m going to cut out now.

***Seriously, Sepia Mutiny people, I’m not trying to obnoxious here. But I had to “pound the keyboard” just as Nina chose to go for the visceral, as well. Sorry, I don’t want you to have to act like a parent patrolling a bunch of kiddies. But hey, I am relatively new here. And I just want to respectfully make one point, as a relative newcomer: I’m not against the banning of trolls and whatnot, but what is kind of irksome in a thread like this is when a multitude of people are trying to espouse their views and in drops the “SM Intern” with quips like, “Aww damn, Nina, you told her!” or “You don’t have to apologize, Nina” (I’m paraphrasing). No, it’s not that I want any sort of fuzzy attention from ya’ll (high school is blisfully a thing of the past), but to be honest, it does kinda sorta create an unwelcoming vibe for new people to this blog. It kind of creates this cliquish feeling, and that’s what I was trying to articulate when I said that the tendency is to be emotional. Please, free love all you want, but can it take place elsewhere so us wee newcomers don’t feel like the administrators of the blog are rooting for us to embarrass ourselves in this public forum? I’m being totally sincere. Thanks. And good night.

Then nobody should have a problem with it.

Speaking of guests, when people share their culture with you, its with the same spirit. You are not supposed to run away with their silver spoons, or break their cups and saucers. You are a guest and they’re partaking their culture with you. When Nina takes my culture ie. Hindu Gods, especially Kali, and destroys her in this manner ( destroy as in do something with it that is generally not done ) , it does offend me(fob) and a lot of other fobs as well. You can’t come to my house and break my cups and write A R T with the broken pieces and claim subjective artistic interpretation. Its not your cup. I’m just sharing it with you.

So who’s got a copywrite on Kali Ma now? She’d more than likely cut off your head if you even try to fit her into some kind of box.

Even if it is depicting Kali, I like it. And Kali Ma is part of my tradition – Sita even more so, and from what little I saw of Sita Sings the Blues, I like that too.

Here we have not only “cultural ownership,” but also the idea of intellectual property. Disney, Sony and BMI couldn’t have said it better.

The difference between culture and objects like cups and spoons, is that one person copying/interpreting/appropriating a song, image or story does not actually take anything away from another. If I took your spoons, you’d have fewer or no spoons. If I retell Ramayana, you still have your Ramayana. Your Kali icons are still there, too.

This is the kind of art I was reminded of when seeing Nina’s depiction of Kali

Just want to re-iterate, my picture is of Desire. It refers to Kali, and I understand most people see it as Kali, but that’s not actually what I was specifically depicting. If someone asked me to depict Kali, it would not look like the picture Anna posted above. Some critics may not make the distinction, but others might as well.

That painting seems to be symbolizing the annihilation of male-founded, male-dominated religions. With Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva rendered helpless and limp in her hands, as well as the brahmin under her feet (or perhaps the Buddha, as you suggest), and the feminine principle towering strong and powerful over them all….. and the Shakta and Tantric paths are female dominated ones – at least in theory or at least in terms of the Deities worshipped.