Research Talk | ‘Composing Violence: Notes on Hindu Nationalism and the Legal Archive’

NLSIU will be hosting a research talk by Dr. Moyukh Chatterjee, Faculty at the University of Edinburgh and author of ‘Composing Violence: The Limits of Exposure and the Making of Minorities‘ (Duke University Press, 2023), at the Training Centre Conference Room at 3 PM, on Tuesday, July 9, 2024.

About the Session

The idea of a research talk is about discussing how the book was researched, methodology and writing. So this will not be a “talk” in the conventional sense. Attendees are all expected to read the introduction to his book before coming for the talk, which is available here. The talk would happen on campus in person, and in hybrid mode.

Abstract 

To compose violence is to describe violence as a constitutive force that produces and reproduces the majority and the minority – on the street, in the courtroom, in the police archive, and within mainstream media. In my work on the afterlives of Gujarat 2002, I examine the role of legal archives, everyday police reporting, and courtroom rituals in the production of new kinds of majorities and minorities. By moving from exposure to composition – the power of violence to produce new attachments, subjects, and subjectivities – we will discuss two related questions: What scholarly work is possible when violence is not repressed, not located at the margins of the state, and not even disguised by the participants? What forms of everyday legality transform anti-minority violence into durable order? We will focus on police archives, legal activism, and mainstream media coverage, to understand the role of everyday law in sustaining supremacist regimes.

About the Speaker

Dr. Moyukh Chatterjee is a political and legal anthropologist and his work explores the afterlives of political violence. He teaches in the department of social anthropology at the University of Edinburgh. His book Composing Violence: The Limits of Exposure and the Making of Minorities (Duke University Press, 2023) examines how political violence against minorities acts as a catalyst for radical changes in law, public culture, and statecraft. More broadly, his work explores the limits of the politics of exposure to understand majoritarian politics and anti-minority violence in India and beyond.

Over the last decade, he has been trying to understand the relationship between crowds and power, impunity and state formation, and the law and supremacist regimes as part of a broader effort to grasp the role of violence within liberal democracies. His current research examines the everyday life of far-right supremacist regimes, including the life stories of precarious young men who join far-right organisations, the creation of muscular, religious publics, and the relationship between authoritarian rule and public religiosity.