Stanford Humanities Center
Caste, Culture, and Aesthetics
This workshop emphasizes the need for recognizing caste as a critical node for theorizing marginalized cultural-aesthetic practices. The caste system adversely affects more than one billion people across the globe, in South Asia and its diasporas around the world. As a marker of deep inequity, caste is woven into every aspect of social life. Despite this, caste-oppressed communities have historically nourished sturdy counter cultures comprising a range of sociocultural forms and artisanal practices. However, the relationship between caste and cultural production is under-studied. This workshop will investigate the ways in which the graded social hierarchy of caste informs dominant aesthetic standards and values. It pays close attention to the counter-cultural assertions of Dalit and other marginalized communities that demand an anti-caste revisioning of categories like art, aesthetics, and culture. The workshop will create a space of dialogue, access, and interaction between scholars and practitioners of anti-caste art and culture. Rather than separate the realms of practice and theory, this workshop finds points of contact and complementarity between creative and critical practice. This approach is inspired by the ethos of anti-caste art which consciously blurs the boundaries between art, activism, and philosophy.
Co-sponsored by the Stanford Humanities Center and Stanford Global Studies
Image credit: "Desecrated Dreams," Madhukar Mucharla. Leather, Canvas cloth. 5ft x 4.5ft, 2023.
