South Asian Futures

UH Mānoa Center for South Asian Studies Spring Symposium 2024

DATE: April 10-12, 2024

LOCATION: University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, Hamilton Library, Room 301

About the Symposium

The symposium aims to provide a platform for scholars and visionaries to engage in discussion, share insight and explore the diverse dimensions of futures as imagined, and as people have striven to realize them, from South Asian perspectives, including diaspora and transnational perspectives.

The Call for Papers invited contributions that engage with ideas of the future from a variety of approaches. We welcome work that considers the possibilities of various alternative future trajectories; critical analysis of futurisms in fiction, visual arts, film, performance, or other expressive practices; historical engagement with prior orientations toward the future and their continued impact; ethnographic and historical analysis of movements aiming to build better futures; and more. We are especially interested in work oriented toward futures that are just, inclusive, equitable, sustainable, and allow collective flourishing.

The full program is viewable at the link below.

View Full Program with Abstracts

2024 CSAS Spring Symposium: South Asian Futures

Hamilton Library 301

Schedule at a Glance

April 10

4:00 pm Keynote: Vijay Prashad – South Asia and the New Cold War

April 11

8:45 am *Continental Breakfast – Hamilton Library 301

8:45 am Welcome

9:00 am Panel 1: Literary Futures

10:15 am Keynote: Sadaf Padder – Coasting the Topography of South Asian Futurisms in Contemporary Art

11:45 am *Lunch – Bentos served in Hamilton Library 301; please take outside

12:45 pm Panel 2: Recognition, Rights, Sovereignty

2:00 pm Panel 3: Futures Past

3:15 pm Roundtable: The Road Beyond Ningwasum

4:30 pm Film Screening of Ladhamba Tayem: Future Continuous followed by talk and Q&A with Director Subash Thebe Limbu.

6:15 pm *Dinner – Tokioka Room – Moore Hall 319

April 12

8:45 am *Continental Breakfast – Hamilton Library 301

9:00 am Panel 4: Imagination and Action

11:00 am Keynote: Ritodhi Chakraborty: Witnessing the Himalayan (M)Anthropocene

12:30 pm Closing

*Meals are provided for participants. Must show symposium badge.

We welcome original research in the form of theoretical explorations or case studies. This interdisciplinary symposium encourages conversations among the arts, humanities, and social sciences, including but not limited to approaches and disciplines such as Anthropology, Architecture and Design, Art History and Criticism, Dance Studies, Disability Studies, Economics, Education, Futures Studies, Geography, History, Human-Computer Interaction, Indigenous Studies, Languages and Linguistics, Literary Studies, Music Studies, Political Science, Performance Studies, Queer Studies, Religious Studies, Sociology, South Asian Studies, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, etc.

Themes

Imagination: In what visionary ways are futures being imagined and expressed through artistic and activist praxis, and combinations of the two? How do imaginative works, practices, and processes challenge current orders and envision and shape new ones?

Futures Past: Imperialist projects of surveillance and categorization of humans and nonhuman entities toward orderly colonial governance laid the divisive groundwork that still influences South Asia’s present social, political, and economic orders. Twentieth-century ideologies of modernization and development set the wheels of these same social, political, and economic orders turning toward an imagined future of material prosperity and freedoms defined in terms of the global north. Various future-oriented movements have arisen and faded away; what did they offer in their times, and what are their legacies and residual appeals? How were they countered?

Trends and Trajectories: Multiple current trends have implications for the future of South Asia and the world. For example, the rise of authoritarianism and movements resisting its reach; technological advancements and disruptions; global climate change; geopolitical shifts and realignments; and cultural and societal transformations at multiple levels. How might these current trends and trajectories lead us to envision various scenarios of the future and to act accordingly? Also, how might historical trends and trajectories serve as predictive models for envisioning and shaping futures from a variety of perspectives, from policy to design to social and environmental justice and more?

Keynote Speakers

Vijay Prashad

Historian, Author, Journalist

South Asia and the New Cold War

Wednesday April 10, 4:00 pm, Hamilton Library Room 301

For the past decade, the United States has imposed a set of policies to ensure the continuation of its leading role in the Asian region. These policies are largely – but not exclusively – directed toward China. One feature of these policies is the Indo-Pacific Strategy, which has drawn South Asia into the New Cold War. The countries of South Asia, which have been unable to forge any serious integration for historical reasons, are now less likely to advance a South Asian regional project in the midst of this New Cold War.

Sadaf Padder

Curator

Coasting the Topography of South Asian Futurisms in Contemporary Art

Thursday, April 11, 10:15 am, Hamilton Library Room 301

Abstract: Artists, thinkers, and activists around the world are creatively adapting existing terminologies to describe their visions of futurism, pivoting away from the homogenizing term “Indo-futurism.” Independent curator Sadaf Padder aims to map a topography of South Asian futurisms, and render visible the multiple strategies used by artists to adapt and develop new futurisms, including Dalit futurism, subaltern futurism, Queer Muslim futurism, eco-futurism and Sufi Sci-Fi futurism. Using various modes of technology as a tool to mine archival and oral histories, the artists highlighted craft hybridized and mutated beings, new mythologies, rituals, and concepts of time toward speculative, expansive, and posthuman futures.

Subash Thebe Limbu

Filmmaker & Sound Artist

Film: Ladhamba Tayem – Future Continuous

Thursday, April 11, 4:30 pm, Hamilton Library Room 301

Followed by a talk and Q&A over Zoom with Subash.

Ladhamba Tayem; Future Continuous ᤗᤠᤎᤠᤶᤒᤠ ᤋᤠᤕᤧᤶ borrows its name from verbal inflection that specifies time of action or state, where tayem is future and ladhamba is continuous in our indigenous Yakthung (Limbu) language. In line with my current practice, Adivasi Futurism (as I call it), It imagines futures where Indigenous peoples’ actions and existence will still be in the space-time continuum. This work imagines a conversation between two indigenous people from very different timelines, one being a historical figure – a 16th century Yakthung warrior called Kangsore fighting the colonial army, and the other being an indigenous astronaut or time traveller from distant future. They talk about time and space from their perspective timelines, and in doing so it asks the viewer- people in between their timelines – to investigate their own role or potential role in the space-time continuum. The time traveller indicates what the future might look like for us or possibilities we want to strive for, while the warrior reminds us of the fight against colonialism and struggles we shall overcome.

In the future, the Indigenous nationalities will have created a technique called thakthakma – which literally means to ‘weave handloom’, a term inspired by our ancestors’ weaving practice – a technique of entering different timelines or in other words weaving time. So, in a way I think of my works as weaving stories that are not linear but intricately interwoven. And along the same vein, this work plays with the idea of time as not something rigid but ductile or weavable, which in turn paves the way for questions like how we might want to weave the future.

Ritodhi Chakraborty

Geographer

Witnessing the Himalayan (M)Anthropocene

Friday, April 12, 11:00 am, Hamilton Library Room 301

In 2014 economist Kate Raworth asked, “Must the Anthropocene, be a (M)Anthropocene?” She was referring to the overrepresentation of men in the Anthropocene Working Group and to a variety of other committees and gatherings examining, exploring and giving voice to our current age. A decade since this self-evident question, have things really changed? Elite (white, upper caste, university educated, wealthy, from the Global North) men still control the production and application of knowledge about the Anthropocene, despite significant challenges to their hegemony. One such challenge presents the idea of ‘Ecological Masculinity’ . Arguing for a system of being and action which emerge from an ethic of ecological stewardship and care, eschewing both industrial and ecomodernist masculinities. My work explores the promises and pitfalls of this framing in the Indian Himalayas. Working through more than a decade of engagement with rural communities in Uttarakhand state, using feminist and radical epistemic perspectives, I draw upon interviews, oral histories, visual ethnographies, social media data, surveys and participatory mapping to ask the following questions: Is Ecological Masculinity a sustainable & inclusive response to the (M)Anthropocene? Does it support or challenge historical (ongoing) mobilizations towards environmental and social justice in the region? What are the ways in which the production of regional climate knowledge, mirror the existing intersections of caste and elite/non-elite patriarchy? Can Ecological masculinity be wielded to address the structures of the Himalayan (M)Anthropocene? If not, then what are its conceptual and material limits and can (should) they be transgressed?

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Viewing Subash Thebe Limbu’s Films

Subash Thebe Limbu has kindly shared links to his films Ningwasum and Ladhamba Tayem: Future Continuous, for us to watch before and after the symposium.

by Anna April 1, 2024

Workshop In Conjunction: Digital Storytelling for Interdisciplinary South Asian Studies and Language Teaching

Are you interested in presenting aspects of your scholarly or creative work using your South Asian language? In this workshop we will learn about making creative video resources for teaching across the humanities and social sciences, toward promoting collaborative, creative pedagogies and intercultural understanding, linking languages with lived experiences.

by Anna March 29, 2024April 2, 2024