University Lecture Series – Caste, Outcaste, Anticaste: Reflections on Worldmaking

Anupama Rao - 

In this presentation I engage arguments about literary destitution in particular, and about touch and sociality more generally (Jaaware, 2018) to address the forms of refusal and practices of insurgence that define and distinguish Dalit thought as a genre of political thought bound together by a set of thematic preoccupations including: the historicity of caste, the operation of Brahminism, caste poverty, and the itineraries of Dalit emancipation. I structure my presentation as an exploration of Dalit thinking as it unfolds at the intersection of the word and the world, of aesthetics and politics.