Reinventing Anthropology of Caste 

The abjection of dalits/low caste has been studied extensively by anthropologists, as a way to understand caste inequality in India. Instead of focusing on dalits as a site of caste’s production, I reverse the gaze to consider the deployment of ‘woundedness’ by non-dalit or upper castes. I look at how upper castes take hold of the language and performance of subalternity as a means of situating themselves favorably in Indian democratic politics and ask - in what ways do upper castes construct their personhood and identity through victimhood and woundedness? In interweaving cultural analysis and ethnography, I engage the complex relationship between regimes of affect, power, and caste as they implicate the production of a twisted, weaponized form of vulnerability.

By ‘studying up’ caste, I re-create modes of citation and knowledge production using a language which doesn’t imagine the marginalized body to hold the burden of doing the work of pain, trauma, and violence. Through upper caste victimhood and woundedness, I make sense of simultaneous humanity and inhumanity of those who inflict violence onto the disenfranchised while purporting to the world that their own communities are under siege. My work draws on ethnographic research with two upper caste communities – jats and brahmins – in north India.

Akhil Kang is a PhD candidate in Socio-cultural Anthropology at Cornell University. Akhil is academically and politically invested in shifting the anthropological gaze away from the marginalized and towards the elite. Their PhD project builds an anthropology of the elite and they study upper caste victimhood and woundedness in parts of North India. With a focus on questions related to affect and body politics, Akhil is ethnographically exploring what makes an upper caste - an upper caste. They are an interdisciplinary scholar working at the intersection of several fields including critical caste and dalit studies; feminist and queer studies; affect and media studies; biopolitics and postcoloniality. Their project has received support from the Wenner Gren Dissertation Fieldwork Grant.  

Prior to enrolling at Cornell, Akhil received their B.A. LLB (Hons.) from NALSAR University of Law, Hyderabad and is a registered Advocate with Bar Council of Delhi. They worked as a human rights lawyer in Delhi before pursuing their PhD. Born and raised in Jalandhar (Punjab, India), they have been involved in queer and anti-caste activism. They have worked on several projects including, role of men and masculinity in child marriages in India, feminist law archiving, and understanding gender and sexuality in institutional student movements & political formations in India. They write about sex, politics and desire at their blog Desi Underground Gay. Their academic works can be found on their Academia profile.

Recent Publications -

Savarna Citations of Desire: Queer Impossibilities of Inter-Caste Love 

Brahmin Men who love to Eat A**