Differential and changing access to the Internet in India has led to an explosion of user-created content across various platforms and media. This turn to the digital also has political and economic consequences, as seen in the imposition of AADHAAR and demonetisation. While the digital divide intensifies social hierarchies of caste, class and gender, it can also become part of post-capitalist ecologies, traversing the formal and informal sectors, even as the digital becomes central to social and political practices in different marginalised communities.
Diginaka: Subaltern Politics and Digital Media in Post-Capitalist India explores this complex space of the digital from multiple perspectives and locations.
This book explores various aspects of the digital in India, from documentaries, digital video activism in Mumbai, free WiFi and digital populism, to more intimate representations of the digital through circuits of affect, care and motherhood. The chapters focus on crucial areas of study such as the city, documentary and cinematic texts, gender and sexuality, labour, censorship and digital archives.
Ultimately, the volume seeks to diagram various entry points into post-capitalist media ecologies as channels connecting the local and the digital in India.
Anjali Monteiro is Professor and Dean, School of Media and Cultural Studies, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai.
K. P. Jayasankar is Professor and Chair, Centre for Critical Media Praxis, School of Media and Cultural Studies, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai.
Amit S. Rai is Reader in and Convener of the MA in Creative Industries and Arts Organisation, Queen Mary, University of London, London.
List of Images List of Abbreviations Acknowledgements Glossary
Introduction: A Test of Time: Digital Commoning against Neoliberal Precarity Amit S. Rai, Anjali Monteiro and K. P. Jayasankar
PART I: DIGITAL POLITICS
1. Interactive Documentaries: The Politics of an Emerging Genre Paolo S. H. Favero
2. Mumbai Sub-version: The Place of Affect in Digital Video Activism Anjali Monteiro and K. P. Jayasankar
3. ‘Gauseva’ by WhatsApp: Hindu Nationalism and Online Mobilisation Abir Dasgupta
4. Whose Free Wi-Fi is it Anyway? Politics of Online Access and the Rise of Digital Populism in Urban India Aasim Khan and Faiz Ullah
5. Dalit Aesthetics in Digital Mumbai Amit S. Rai, Rachna Ramesh Kumar and Shiva Thorat
PART II: DIGITAL NEGOTIATIONS
6. Cinema, in Your Pocket: Theorising Film-watching on a Mobile Screen Maanvi
7. Digital Devices and New Narratives of Bengali Cinema Kunal Ray
8. The Other Cinemas: Recycled Content, Vulnerable Bodies, and the Gradual Dismantling of Publicness Nikhil Thomas Titus
9. Digitising Memories: A Digital Archive of Kolkata’s Forgotten Colonial Cemeteries Souvik Mukherjee
PART III: DIGITAL AFFECT
10. Interface Intimacies Namita Aavriti
11. Circuits of Affect, Care and Materiality Radhika Gajjala and Sriya Chattopadhyay
12. Isolated Bubbles: Reflections on Performing New Motherhood on Facebook Shilpa Phadke Notes on the Editors and Contributors Index