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UID:20250801T144421EDT-4065d6Ccd9@132.216.98.100
DTSTAMP:20250801T184421Z
DESCRIPTION:The Flâneur in South Asia: A Poetic Long Walk Through the Globa
 l Sixties and Cultural Cold War\n	\n	Moinak Banerjee\n	English\, 9IÖĆ×÷ł§Ăâ·Ń\n	\n	Th
 e flâneur appearing as a strolling spectator who registers the vagaries of
  urban life became a ubiquitous figure of modernism following Walter Benja
 min’s reading of Charles Baudelaire’s poetry in the Arcades Project. This 
 talk draws on and distends such a theorization of modernism\, addresses it
 s limitations on a world scale\, and situates two very different instantia
 tions of the flâneur in South Asia. Specifically\, it brings into conversa
 tion two long poems—an Anglophone text\, Arun Kolatkar’s Jejuri (1976) and
  a Hindi text\, Gajanan Madhav Muktibodh’s Andhere Mein (1964)—to demonstr
 ate how they act as specific forms of literary engagement with modernism. 
 Kolatkar draws on the Marathi Bhakti or devotional poetry tradition to dep
 ict his flâneur’s journey into a sacred Hindu pilgrimage site that is secu
 larized through a modernist vision. Unlike the Baudelairean flâneur who is
  an out-of-place witness in metropolitan centres\, Kolatkar’s flâneur is f
 ar more conditioned to the rural and suburban spaces that he encounters de
 spite being an urban middle class subject. On the other hand\, Muktibodh’s
  flâneur walks at night in a cityscape mediated through an interior monolo
 gue. The text begins with mythologizing the mundane and ends with a vision
  of an impending rebellion hinting at the radicalization of a middle-class
  subject. Despite their overlapping influences\, Kolatkar and Muktibodh\, 
 represent two very different ideological positions in modernism. Kolatkar 
 bypasses most political issues of his time and chooses to focus on a certa
 in aesthetics of modernism. But he published widely in Quest – a literary 
 magazine later discovered to be funded by the CIA for countering the growi
 ng influence of communism in South Asian vernacular cultures during the Co
 ld War. Conversely\, Muktibodh never hides his political commitment in aes
 thetic engagement. This is also reflected in the text\, as it brings toget
 her disparate world historical and local events of the time—particularly\,
  the Sino-Soviet split\, the Vietnam war\, and the dual split in the India
 n communist party.\n
DTSTART:20250212T200000Z
DTEND:20250212T220000Z
LOCATION:Room 116\, Peterson Hall\, CA\, QC\, Montreal\, H3A 0E6\, 3460 rue
  McTavish
SUMMARY:IOWC Winter Speaker Series - Moinak Banerjee
URL:/history/channels/event/iowc-winter-speaker-series
 -moinak-banerjee-362842
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