Binuraj: On academic and non academic divide
Binuraj, doctoral scholar in School of Social Sciences, Mahatma Gandhi University and formerly faculty and student of this college delivered a lecture On academic and non academic divide on 16th of October, 2015 in the department of History. Following is a brief note on his lecture which was developed from the spring board of his own research problem.
Before considering the ‘taken for granted’ divide of academic and non academic it is worth to enquire about the ensemble of rules according to which the mentioned academic and non academic divide is made. At a glance itself we get an obvious answer that the divide is made by the academic community and in its implication we see the naturalization of a particular methodology and its claim to the status of the only history. The claim is so naturalized that any discourse in academic history fails to capture the difference between ‘a’ and ‘the’ prefix attached. Foucault’s observation on knowledge/power is insightful to read this naturalized claims.
Academic as by its meaning and etymology is connected with education, especially studying in schools and universities. But academics have been addressed from various perspectives so as to fulfill the streams of thoughts attached to it. A Sociological and ethnological view on academics and its practice analyses its relation with truth, its objective of scientificity, representation and its defensive strategy of resistance. The scientific authority (the claim of academic) is also considered as a struggle for a particular kind of social capital which gives power over the constitutive mechanisms of the field and which can be converted to other kind of capital. What we get here is an impression of academics as industry. A self-reflexive attempt in understanding the form and content of academics thus can open up various possibilities of analysing its claims.
Notions about past addressed by historiographic scholarships has been revisited with the availability of concepts triggered by the post modern thoughts. One such concept that is instrumental in understanding the complexities of past is that of what Derrida described as difference which details on the instability of signifiers. As by which; No word, is meaningful in and for itself, then, because no signifier’s meaning is immediately obvious outside of all context, then signifiers necessarily get their specific meanings relative to other signifiers. Consequently, a signifier always needs what Derrida calls supplementing by other signifier or set of signifiers to become a concept. But because the relationship between any two signifiers is never automatically derived or fixed or uniformly patterned, then the potential meaning that occurs when signifiers are connected is always contingent, arbitrary and logically unstable. Such revelation in knowledge system provide space for asking new questions towards over simplified notions such as that used in addressing the ways of appropriating meanings, historical context and similar engagements to which a historian engage with.
As for matters concerning pre-modern period this aspect of concepts mentioned above is crucial. No doubt that modernity/modernities (with various defining moments and which is complex) has ‘enabled’ modern subject in various ‘capabilities’ (intention of the researcher here is not to judge them) but it is also to be realized that it has imposed various constrains on our thinking particularly in imagining a pre-modern situation. As by this various scholarships produced by academic historians are problematic. Few examples to add in this respect are the way how political structures are identified and the way how so called the political, social and religion are demarcated. A kind of oversimplification is one of the net results of such exercise.
It is acceptable that one can identify and accept the logic of critical claims made by academic over non academic scholarship. But we saw a glimpse of a different logic by which one can problamatise the claims made by the academic scholarships. So while considering an engagement on ‘formulisation of Kerala in historiography’ the researcher finds both academic and non academic works equally approachable. For justifying this approach a perspective of bifurcation has been worked out. As by which the two movements mentioned i.e. ‘academic’ and ‘non-academic’ is considered as not something opposites or parallel. It is perspective of a bifurcation that is appropriated. Not in the strict sense of its dictionary meaning; the division of something into two branches or part, which gives us an impression of something concrete and two to its prior. Bifurcation is perceived here as that of a flowing stream which bifurcate. Bifurcated streams may flow through different terrain and the attempt here is to consider the form (as we saw the content of both can be problamatised from different logic) it takes better not by judging it.
Dr. Sebastian Joseph introduced and welcomed the presenter. Tresa Divya, Meera G M, both faculty members of the department, Post Graduate students and researchers from other universities attended the programme. The lecture was followed by a live interactive session in which Binuraj explained his perspectives.
