I am writing my Masters' dissertation on crafts. Notwithstanding the disillusionment with academic writing itself, I am encountering questions I would have otherwise posed quite easily and explored conveniently, thanks to my ever-judgemental self and a firm belief that I always innately knew the distinction between 'rights' and 'wrongs', howmuchsoever ambiguous they might seem on the surface. Sadly this is not what academia is about. So, in order to produce a piece of academic writing, I need to constantly remind myself that my understanding of 'rights' and 'wrongs' is perennially incomplete.
I understand that craft, as it was understood centuries ago, is not the same in the globalised, market driven world today. It is the different market actors that shape the dynamics of crafts today, actors who are powerful, to state it bluntly. It would be foolish to imagine crafts as a craftsman's eternal love, when the latter struggles on a daily basis to exist as a human.
No I do not harbour the illusion that the girl in Gottigere who dragged her polio-affected legs to the unit everyday and made 'Potli-buttons' to be stitched on Angarakha kurtas, had an undying love affair with her work. She earned Rs 1500 a month for her work and was constantly worried that if the unit closes down due to lack of sufficient orders, how will she pay her house rent share of Rs 800 and how will she buy her daily meal of 'anna-saaru'.
So did Coomaraswamy say in 1900s in his seminal works on Indian art and craft. He claimed that for the artisan in India, unlike his Western counterparts, art was not a means for individual expression. It was a legacy passed on from one generation to another, with very limited scope for individual creativity. And so does Soumhya Venkatesan's anthropological study of Pattamdai weavers in Tamil Nadu suggest. It asserts that artisans and craftsmen reproduce the more powerful outsiders' vision of aesthetics and creativity.
Nonetheless, if I was not writing an acdemic thesis, my intuition would tell me that no matter how diluted an individual's creativity gets in the wake of someone else's instructions, the very act of creating a work of art emanates a sense of fulfilment. My intuition would also tell me that the excitement that gleamed in the eyes of Madura, Lakshmi and many others when they created an embroidered motif out of some vague instructions, was not merely the satisfaction of a task well completed. Moreover, I would really want to believe that when the Pattamadai weaver in Soumhya's study writes a letter to the Chief minister of Tamil Nadu, seeking financial assistance for saving the 'dying craft', it is not just a means to encash the ongoing enthusiam about crafts.
But then is it not my own love for art and crafts that colours my perception of the artisan and her apparent love for the art? And is it not my romanticised view of the world around me that constantly seeks to overturn the balance of power in the favour of the underdog, in whatever small way possible.
I have been reading about capitalism and how capitalism constantly assimilates the contradictory voices in a particular context, in order to provide justifications for the insatiable capital accumulation and garner the required support (including the support of the dissenting voices). Now this assimilation or 'acculturation', as some call it, is so subtle and pervasive that after a point of time one cannot distinguish between what was purely motivated by capitalist intentions and what was against it.
I think it is a similar case with academia. While on one hand it thrives on reason and logic that is supposedly an antithesis of intuitive judgement, on the other hand it deploys intuition to arrive at amazing levels of ambiguity, by pitting one type of intuition against another. So, although I am not supposed to rely on intuitions to arrive at answers, academia invariably evokes them. And to add to the complexities, it evokes contradictory intuitions. Moreover, it blurs the line between pure logic and logic derived out of some or the other intuitive judgment. Or does such a line exist at all?
I understand that craft, as it was understood centuries ago, is not the same in the globalised, market driven world today. It is the different market actors that shape the dynamics of crafts today, actors who are powerful, to state it bluntly. It would be foolish to imagine crafts as a craftsman's eternal love, when the latter struggles on a daily basis to exist as a human.
No I do not harbour the illusion that the girl in Gottigere who dragged her polio-affected legs to the unit everyday and made 'Potli-buttons' to be stitched on Angarakha kurtas, had an undying love affair with her work. She earned Rs 1500 a month for her work and was constantly worried that if the unit closes down due to lack of sufficient orders, how will she pay her house rent share of Rs 800 and how will she buy her daily meal of 'anna-saaru'.
So did Coomaraswamy say in 1900s in his seminal works on Indian art and craft. He claimed that for the artisan in India, unlike his Western counterparts, art was not a means for individual expression. It was a legacy passed on from one generation to another, with very limited scope for individual creativity. And so does Soumhya Venkatesan's anthropological study of Pattamdai weavers in Tamil Nadu suggest. It asserts that artisans and craftsmen reproduce the more powerful outsiders' vision of aesthetics and creativity.
Nonetheless, if I was not writing an acdemic thesis, my intuition would tell me that no matter how diluted an individual's creativity gets in the wake of someone else's instructions, the very act of creating a work of art emanates a sense of fulfilment. My intuition would also tell me that the excitement that gleamed in the eyes of Madura, Lakshmi and many others when they created an embroidered motif out of some vague instructions, was not merely the satisfaction of a task well completed. Moreover, I would really want to believe that when the Pattamadai weaver in Soumhya's study writes a letter to the Chief minister of Tamil Nadu, seeking financial assistance for saving the 'dying craft', it is not just a means to encash the ongoing enthusiam about crafts.
But then is it not my own love for art and crafts that colours my perception of the artisan and her apparent love for the art? And is it not my romanticised view of the world around me that constantly seeks to overturn the balance of power in the favour of the underdog, in whatever small way possible.
I have been reading about capitalism and how capitalism constantly assimilates the contradictory voices in a particular context, in order to provide justifications for the insatiable capital accumulation and garner the required support (including the support of the dissenting voices). Now this assimilation or 'acculturation', as some call it, is so subtle and pervasive that after a point of time one cannot distinguish between what was purely motivated by capitalist intentions and what was against it.
I think it is a similar case with academia. While on one hand it thrives on reason and logic that is supposedly an antithesis of intuitive judgement, on the other hand it deploys intuition to arrive at amazing levels of ambiguity, by pitting one type of intuition against another. So, although I am not supposed to rely on intuitions to arrive at answers, academia invariably evokes them. And to add to the complexities, it evokes contradictory intuitions. Moreover, it blurs the line between pure logic and logic derived out of some or the other intuitive judgment. Or does such a line exist at all?
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