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Title Pages
Cultural Labour: Conceptualizing the 'Folk

Performance' in India
Brahma Prakash
Print publication date: 2019

Print ISBN-13: 9780199490813
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: May 2020
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780199490813.001.0001
Title Pages
Brahma Prakash
(p.i) Cultural Labour (p.ii)
(p.iii) Cultural Labour
(p.iv) Copyright Page
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Preface

Brahma Prakash

Print ISBN-13: 9780199490813
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780199490813.001.0001
(p.vii) Preface
Brahma Prakash
names, in their languages, in their environment, in their heritage of

struggle, in their unity, in their capacities and ultimately in themselves.
A place I remember from my childhood is an abode of the deity on the outskirts

of my village. I remember there was a huge peepal in
its cave and its branches spreading out. The tree had a terrifying effect, as we
children would imagine spirits hovering over it. The memory of it still makes me
shiver. As soon as I would reach that place, I would chant the name of Dihvar,
the village deity, who was supposed to save us. I wished to run away but could
not as I was afraid that it would wake the sleeping spirits. Of course, once they
woke up, one could not run faster than them. They could have stuck to our
clothes. They could have spread like smoke. They would have strong body odour.
It was the scent that used to announce its presence. Only a few people
possessed the power to see and smell them. It was a folk world of beliefs. It was
an animated world of spirits and energies. Places had stories, the tree had
spirits, and the spirits had names. The names had spirited qualities associated
with them. It was a forest of signs and symbols! It was an incredibly complex
network of stories. It was a terrifying world of spirits, deities, shamans and
witches. Spirits were oppressed, (p.viii) deities were victims, witches were the
weakest and shamans were the powerful healers. It was a world of deformed
deities and displaced souls trying to find their own solace in human imagination.
These beliefs were often enslaving.
Page 1 of 8

Preface
On the one side the spirit world was frightening and enslaving, on the other side
it was also empowering and enabling. One who believed in that world also
accumulated immense power. They could see forests moving and mountains
dancing. They could mobilize the symbols at will. It enables people to fight the
higher enemies. It enables members to cooperate and work as a community.
With such animated power, Dina and Bhadri, two Dalit brothers, could fight big
feudal lords in Bihar in stories and ballads. It may not be in real life but in
imagination. I would make figures from terracota or clay and believe that one
day they will fire at my enemy camp. I would imagine they are flying in the air
and showering bows and arrows on the enemy camp. If we were not in the
position to fight the powerful, we would indulge in shadow boxing. Beliefs mixed
with imagination would create a reality that was more than real. It would work
as an escape, it would work as a utopia, it was leaning in the past, it was a
projection in the future. It was here and now with its presence. It was a livid,
vivid experience of feeling and imagination. The folk world is full of such
portrayals and imaginative praxis.
Unlike the institutionalized religions, such cultural practices are viewed as

superstitious and irrational beliefs. Studies also show how such ideas are
enslaving and self-defeating for the subaltern communities. There is no denying
of such criticisms, particularly in the Indian context where caste and gender
oppression exist in various ritualized forms. But besides these criticisms, the
and artistic activities. It is important because telling and creating affective

stories is not easy. When it succeeds it gives believers immense power, it enables
Apart from the critical analysis of the cultural practices, this work aims to
explore the creative potential of such practices. While the work aims to analyse
shows the power of performances (p.ix) and their transformative potential. The
performance can be politically problematic, but creatively powerful. We have
examples of the use of Greek myths in secular theatre. The Noh theatre of Japan
has been using ghosts and spirit worlds to create characters and express
unfulfilled desires. We have examples to show how Dalit artists transformed the
meanings of gestures and the role of instruments (such as dappu) to resist
traditional oppression. Can we think and bring the spirits to tell their stories to
discuss the injustices done? I approach the world from the perspective of one
himself by commenting on it. I do not have any option but to continually vacillate
narrative. My intention here is not to bridge the gaps but to create holes in
which the spirits can breathe and make their presence felt on the landscape as
de
Castro (2015)
Page 2 of 8

Preface
engaging with the world, which models a different conceptual universe than
ours.
Ritualized in structure and flexible in operation, folk performance creates an

animated world. They are often full of animistic and mythical beliefs. The
every animal, every plant, and every natural phenomenon has awareness and
feelings, and can communicate directly with humans gives it advantage in the
creative contexts. These cultural practices may offer us a conceptual model to
think how object and materials in theatre and performance, with feeling,
awareness, potency, and agency, can subvert our world of thoughts however with
a question as to what happens to this animated world in a caste society. This
aspect is intricately connected to the aesthetic question of the distribution of
sensibilities. The change in our conceptual thinking can enrich our artistic and
creative engagements.
Folk world is a world of animated beliefs. They think through an animated world.
From stones to forests, objects and materials acquire deeper meanings and
complex thinking. Animists believe that there is no barrier between humans and
other beings. They can all communicate directly through speech, song, dance,
(p.x) and ceremony. While we need to recognize the problems associated with
the performance culture, the idea is not necessarily to believe in ghosts or
create a forest but create ghost-like sensations and to bring theatre under what
Sontag 1976: 215).
The flock of crows would come in the morning. They would fill the soundscape
with their cawing orchestras. Many times, we would get irritated; many times,
we would read them as messengers. Some would ask them to jump and tell who
is coming. By seeing how the crow jumped, they would decipher the movement
of the guest; in the sound, they would find the message. But a dark black crow
would be a bad omen, a signal that someone has died or someone is going to die.
Birds would have castes, animals would have names, and trees would have
figures. Not only living beings, but ordinary objects were also supposed to
possess lives and spirits. The broom deity had to be kept properly or else she
would get angry, the kitchenware would gossip once people went to sleep, the
sickle would sing, and the trowel would go dancing in the fields. It was an
animated world, a world of sensorium, wherein senses could have mobilized at
As the crows caw-cawed

We opened our doors to speak to them
Tell us who is coming,
We stand waiting
Will you come as crows, our children?1
Page 3 of 8

Preface
I could see from where he is drawing this connection in his revolutionary songs.
The treatment of broom gives me a sense of materiality and caste relationship in
Indian society. Not only is performance at the centre of the community, but it is
the performance that creates this set of connection and affective values around
dances, songs, music, and activates (p.xi) memory. Though the performance
constitutes an extremely imaginative understanding of the world, they are also
part of the hegemonic social structure. Often, they are the product of those
social relations that absorb those structures in their manifestations.
If that was the world of flow of spirits, then it was also a world of slavery. It was
the world of violent acts and imaginations. There was no space for individual
freedom and thinking. There was no distinction between nature and culture. It
was a fatalistic world in which every other explanation would end in the name of
fate. Spirits would speak the language of power. It was a terrifying world of
ghosts and spirits with fatalistic beliefs in which any imagination of social
transformation would appear impossible.
I am no longer part of that world, but those people are there, a world is there, a
world of belief is there. The world was a sensual and animated world where cats
meowing, dogs crying, and foxes howling expressed signs that had meanings.
They have something to say, something to share. That world needs to be
engaged, whether we like it or not. It has a mobilizing power, whether we
believe it or not. Either we want to counter it or reclaim it, we cannot merely
escape that perceptual world. But can we think of this world without
performance? So much in this society depends on performance that our world
appears to be an extra-performative world. There is a kind of performativity all
around. We must engage with this popular culture with its tastes and tendencies
and with its morality and sensibility, even if it is backward, conventional, and
oppressive.
This work tries to understand the conceptions of the folk world and its presence
in the marginalized sections of the caste-based society of India. Most
importantly, it tries to understand how these cultural practices produce values?
people think, believe, and act. It can be hegemonic, but it also has radical
potential. What is interesting about this mode of conceptualization is its
immediacy with community life. It is not simply a spirit world, but materiality is
baggage and (p.xii) has emerged as a problematic term in an academic world; I
term. Unfortunately, we do not have any other term that can capture the specific
Page 4 of 8

Preface
with this inherent problematic.
weapon wielded and unleashed against collective defiance of the people (1986:
3). This attack is carried out through market, religion, language, education, and
the media. Once the cultural bomb is planted, it can be easily internalized and
executed by the victims themselves. Whether through imperialism or caste-
based colonization, colonialism in all forms has continuously annihilated the
creative power of the individual as well as of the collective. A cultural bomb
creates a chain of reactions and a cycle of violence whose patterns are
everywhere but is difficult to pin down. This can be found in our behaviour,
practices, and education. It would not be an exaggeration to say that most of us
While modern education works as an emancipatory tool, it also has a colonizing

aspect. As figures of contradictions, we have cops in our heads and bombs in our
and cultures, but also annihilate themselves in the process.
While growing up in a north Indian village in the 1980s and 1990s, I strongly felt
the impact of the cultural bomb. I would like to critically reflect on that situation
and draw some connections. I started attending primary school from the fourth
standard. I believed in magic, spirits, fairytales, and ancestor worship. I believed
in totemic figures and hoped that they would perform real magical acts some
day. I would arm them with bows and arrows in the hope that they would fire at
reached the eighth standard, the Hindu deities were dominantly becoming a part
of my cultural and religious beliefs. I would consider spirit cults to be
(p.xiii)
practices. At that stage, the most important lesson I internalized was the
worshippers. My mother would often ask me to go and seek blessings from the
bhagat (the village shaman). I would ridicule her belief as irrational and
unscientific. But oddly, I would perform the aarti of goddess Saraswati for the
same blessings. Education was creating a divide, not between rational and
irrational beliefs or traditional and modern culture. Instead, it was working on
the basis of social hierarchies and cultural divisions.
Education, supposed to be a liberating force, was perpetuating hegemonic

values. It was instilling the sense of inferiority in our minds. Coming from an
agricultural family, it was common for us to work in agricultural fields. But I was
Page 5 of 8

Preface
gradually developing a sense of shame and disgust for it. My new education did
not consider agrarian labour dignified enough. While cutting grass for fodder, if I
would see an educated person approaching, I would hide in the fields. What
would he think about me? I was developing a sense of insecurity and was trying
to become somebody else. In school, I would avoid sitting next to Dalit and
lower-caste students and would try to befriend students from upper castes. That
would give me a sense of superiority, and I would try to display that attitude
among students from my own caste. The alienation was further getting
consolidated as I was growing up and getting ahead in studies. In the tenth
standard, I would feel ashamed seeing my mother and sisters working in the
fields. My concern had nothing to do with their labour and exploitation, rather
the shame and disgust attached to that labour. The idea of shame, disgust, and
status was intensely shaping my cultural sensibility and political consciousness.
Occasions like weddings and festivals were the time of social gatherings. Bidesia
and orchestra party would come to the village to perform. Students would feel
dizzy and sleepy in class after watching days and nights of performance. The
teachers would make a sarcastic remark, raat bhar nach dekh rahe hoge (must
(p.xiv)
nach
distancing myself from the performance culture. What I am indicating is a

broader phenomenon in which land, labour, materiality, and the cultures
associated with subaltern communities was getting disparaged. Though there
could have been several other reasons to hate that society, my hatred was
precisely coming from my newly acquired social and cultural status.
This book is a personal journey, a passage of time in which I get transformed

several times. The centrality of labouring bodies defines the aesthetics and
politics of this performance world. The performance produces a set of values and
in nature, wherein art, culture, and aesthetic values are invested in labour.
Cultural Labour offers a conceptual framework to examine various ways in which
This conceptual framework does not place culture against labour, but labour as a
culture, and culture as labour in performance practices. It examines the way
cultural labour presents an affective and aestheticized labour and laboured
to bring the tensions and fissures present in the community-based culture and
performance.
I delineate five significant tropes from the theories of theatre and performance
studies to draw a conceptual framework: landscape, materiality, viscerality and
(syn)aesthetics, performativity, and choreopolitics, to analyse this connection
Page 6 of 8

Preface
and explore the politics and aesthetics of the folk performance with a focus on
Bihar and Telangana. I do not claim that this work offers the last reading and
understanding of such performances. This is one of the several ways of
approaching the folk performances as part of a strategy for a new culture.
the University of London, in 2013. It is based on an extensive fieldwork of 15

months on (p.xv) bhuiyan puja (a
land worship celebration), bidesia (the theatre of migrant labourers), Reshma-
Chuharmal (a Dalit ballad), and dugola (singer-duels) in the north Indian state of
Bihar. I have also included the performances of Gaddar and Jana Natya Mandali
from the southern Indian states of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh. Unless
otherwise indicated, all translations in this book are mine. The project was
supported by the Reid Research Scholarship, the Central Research Fund of the
University of London and a research grant from the Charles Wallace Trust India.
It would be difficult to recall all those people who helped me in carrying out this
research. Too many people have helped me in too many ways. I cannot recall all
the names but I would like to express my gratitude to all of them. Foremost, I
directly and indirectly helped me in this research. I thank my PhD thesis

supervisor, Helen Gilbert, for her invaluable support, more so beyond any
academic expectation. Her erudite knowledge, insightful comments appreciation
of works helped in many ways. I would also like to thank Professor Matthew
Cohen for being my co-supervisor and for encouraging me to write in critical,
creative ways. I am indebted to my thesis examiners, Francesca Orsini (SOAS)
and Sudipto Chatterjee for their in valuable comments and for enriching this
work in various ways. I thank the anonymous reviewers whose comments have
greatly improved this work. I am grateful to the team at Oxford University Press
for their immense cooperation and meticulous work in production of this book.
Thank you Sudheesh Kottembram and Oxford University Press for the cover
design and Seetharamulu and Govinda for helping me with Telugu language
transcripts.
At crucial stages of the research, I received invaluable supports from friends: R.
Dhivya Janarthanan, and Pradeep Shinde. I owe my thanks and deep gratitude to
my teachers and colleagues at JNU: Bishnupriya Dutt, H.S. Shiva Prakash,
Urmimala Sarkar, Soumyabrata Choudhury, Rustom Bharucha, Y.S. Alone and
RK. Rajarajan for their immense love and support (p.xvi) and for nurturing me
in my academic life. I also thank faculty members and staff at the School of Arts
and Aesthetics, JNU, New Delhi, for their unforgettable sharing of ideas and
experiences. Words are always insufficient to thank my mentors and friends
Page 7 of 8

Preface
Vijay Kumar Yadavendu, Santosh Raut, Nilanjana Sengupta, and Bikaramaditya

Choudhary for inspiring me and shaping my life and ideas. I do not think I would
have been able to come so far without you people. I express my deep gratitude
to Mritunjay, Varunika Saraf, Ashish, Kalaiyarasan, Shashank Yadav, Chandrika,
Sushma, Vinay, and other friends in Delhi for being such wonderful friends at
every juncture. Academic life would have really boring without them. Thank you
again Tuni, for introducing me to JNU and shaping my ideas and feelings. I
express my special love and thanks to my students and co-travellers at the SAA
who always offered me more than what I could offer them.
I am indebted to my family members and friends from village. Thanks to Mantu,

Mangal, Alok, Komal, Kranti, Anupama, Tanu, and Manu for tolerating my
carelessness. Above all, I cannot express my gratitude in words for my best
friend and companion, Sharmistha, for her immense love and warmth and for
immersing me in the music of life. I would also like to thank her family and
friends for being a great support at every juncture.
I dedicate this work to my mother who had to work and struggle hard to send us
to school. She has been an immense support but the biggest critic of this work.
She is the one whose stories have inspired me to take up this work, but she is
the one who refuses to accept my authority on this subject.
Notes:
(1
Rao and Antara Dev Sen. The Little Magazine, 2007.
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Page 8 of 8

Introduction

Brahma Prakash

Print ISBN-13: 9780199490813
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780199490813.001.0001
Introduction
Brahma Prakash
DOI:10.1093/oso/9780199490813.003.0001
Abstract and Keywords

The introduction foregrounds the field of study and introduces the concepts and
specific contexts in which the study is undertaken. It problematizes the existing
binaries that remain between culture and labour and uncovers the uncanny
relationship between them. The chapter asks what happens to culture and
in India when labour becomes a performance, performance becomes labour. The

irreducibility of such practices to culture or labour demands the formulation of
some other category, and I designate it as cultural labour. Cultural labour is the
core of the folk performance in South Asia and therefore the chapter argues that
it can also work as a framework to study the performance cultures of subaltern
communities. The chapter also discusses research method and methodology and
introduces the five performances which have been undertaken in this work.
Keywords: Cultural labour, performance studies, methodology, affective and performative turn,
aesthetics
[I]n order to achieve the desired end, the spirit of folklore studies should
be changed, as well as deepened and extended. Folklore must not be
considered an eccentricity, an oddity or picturesque elements, but as
something which is very serious and is taken seriously. Only in this way will
the teaching of folklore be more efficient and really bring about the birth
of a new culture among the broad popular masses.
Antonio Gramsci (2014b:362)
Page 1 of 40

Introduction
Time: 10:30 pm, Birpur, a remote village in Bihar Situation: To announce the play
of the night, the USTAD (DIRECTOR-MANAGER) of the theatre party came on
stage. He began a conversation with the joker, a comic character in Bidesia. A
performance of cultural labour then commenced.
USTAD:
[to the joker] who are you? Are you a (political) leader or an artist?
JOKER:
khadi kurta. I think I am an artist.

USTAD:
you know how to sing and dance?

JOKER:
How stupid of you to ask! Of course, I know how to sing and dance! Otherwise,
how would I be an artist? [Singing and dancing are considered as the
fundamental skills of these artists] (p.2)
USTAD:
Can you sing something?

JOKER:
Of course, I will sing even if you do not ask me. This is what I love and what I
have devoted myself to ... [The joker takes a round on stage. He walks around
the stage and sings]
Sagro umar ham nachahun mein bitayali
The life I spent in dancing.

So my father forced me
To get married to a girl
I got married, but I continued to dance
So my wife ran away with someone else
But I am not any less a fucker
But I continued to dance

My [new] wife bore a bastard kid
The fucking kid also died
USTAD:
What else happened?

JOKER:
I had two acres of paddy field

And an ancestral mud house
All have been washed away in the rains
Page 2 of 40

Introduction

USTAD:
What happened then?

JOKER:
[laughs
Lata Singh interviews a woman tamasha artist, Shantabai, who narrates her
passion for the art:
Many a time, my sisters and parents have requested me to give up this life
nasha
cigarettes. An empty day without a programme makes me sad. A show not

only brings us daily bread but also provides recreation for both our body
and mind. While on stage, during performance, we have continuous
communication with the audience, which gives us enjoyment and
satisfaction. Their whistles and claps take away all our stress and strain.
(p.3) we see our audience enjoying our
show, it brings joy to our life. At the end of the day, this profession gives
me both my livelihood and happiness. (Singh 2017
It is the sense and enactment of intense, passionate, ritualized, and aestheticized

forms of production of values in specific cultural contexts that I call cultural
labour. Cultural labour is a creative economy placed in a hegemonic local
context. Like immaterial labour, which maintains its global networks, cultural
labour maintains its local networks. In this background, Cultural Labour is an
attempt to bring culture and labour both in its entwined as well as in intertwined
performative mediation. It postulates that the question of aesthetics is
bondage between culture and labour that aestheticize labouring bodies in their
exhaustive work environment and performance context. The society produces a
condition of performativity in which the body and work can only be realized
through cultural performances. While the body becomes an actor, work becomes
Workers have to play their roles or assigned caste roles to get the production
values of their works recognized. In other words, the merit of their works do not
exist outside their assigned roles. While caste society as a whole habitually
functions in a performative context, it is only in the performance context that
one can imagine and think of reversal or subversion of these roles. The
performances of cultural labour are potentially so double-edged in their
Page 3 of 40

Introduction
consequences that they can neither be appreciated and nor can be escaped in
the production of new culture.
Sagro umar ham nachahun mein bitayali (the life I spent in dancing) is a self-
India. The above skit is an excerpt of a comedy scene enacted by bidesia artistes
in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. The excerpt conveys some of the key concerns this
work explores. Likewise, the interview of tamasha artist Shantabai reveals the
nature and intricacies of performance embodied in culture and labour. Such
performances produce labouring bodies if not always in an empirical sense but
very much conceptually (p.4) so. Who are these artistes and what is their
background? What do they perform, for instance, what do singers and drummers
produce in a ritual worship of bhuiyan puja or what do the performers produce
they affect their self, environment, and society at large? And, what do the
performers invest and for whom do they perform? For example, what does the
balladeer Gaddar invest and produce in his singing of revolutionary songs? What
are their idea, conception, and the world of performance? And, what is the
labour of such performance which produces such an animated, affective and a
real world of beliefs? This work asks several such questions at the most
fundamental level.
folk performance encompasses a diverse range of enactments ranging from

ritualistic observances to theatrical performances, including storytelling, rites,
homogenous expression, the field of study is full of contradictions. These

nomenclatures tend to dehistoricize this field of studies and neglect social
hierarchies based on caste, class and gender, and inequities based on genres
and places. The existing studies around the performance have remained shallow
Even
within the field of traditional performances, the problems are more acute with
the study of the performance of the subaltern communities. Scholars have used
various methods and approaches to explore this field of study. But, in most
cases, their writings have focused on what Gramsci indicated (as quoted in the
epigraph) as the descriptive and picturesque representation. They are viewed
through stereotyped images, and as superstitious, animistic, and primitive
beliefs. Such views largely come from the upper rungs of the society. The field of
study remains insufficiently theorized and lacks a methodological and
conceptual approach at the most basic level. This lack has been one of the major
reasons for the oblivion and misrepresentation of the performance in larger (p.
5)
category, and therefore there is a need to approach the field creatively from a
Page 4 of 40

Introduction
more critical perspective. Besides, in most of the cases, existing studies with
sociological and historical perspectives focus on the representational aspects of
the performance and denies its aesthetics and performative dimensions. Using
affective (includes aesthetic as well) and performativity as two important
its production of social and cultural values in Indian caste-based society.
In most folk performances, this affective relationship is embodied. In paddy

songs, agricultural labourers sing and ask crops to follow their movements.
George Thomson (1954) gives an example of potato dance among Maori
communities of New Zealand, where young girls dance and ask potato plants to
voriselu adiginayi, basmati rice and cotton
will not ask questions; paddy and potato will not follow their movements. The
songs may not have any direct effect on the crop. But these practices have a
palpable affect on the farmers and labourers who believe that their song will
nurture their crops with great care. With this belief, they proceed to the task of
tending the crops with greater confidence and energy than before, and that does
have a real effect on production. It is obvious that this effect on the crop is made
possible through the affective dimension of performance. One can also think of
an adverse example in which this affective quality of performance becomes an
enslaving force. For example, service castes receive daan (ritual gift) from their
jajman (patrons) and produce life-long servitude in many ritual practices in
India. Receiving dan is also an act of giving consent. Gyan Prakash (1986)
examines the spirit cult practice in south Bihar to show how they produce
unequal relations between kamias (lower caste) and maliks (upper caste).
Folk performance is full of such examples in which the affective dimension is

brought forth in both affirmative and negative ways. The performance, at times,
allows the distinction between art and labour to appear and at times
accommodates the differences to produce an aestheticized labouring body by
disavowing (p.6) the sense of labour. These enactments engender passionate
labour and a radical affirmation of life, but they can be the root of ritualized
exploitation as well. Thinking through the performances of the subaltern
communities, I delineate a few key aspects of this specific cultural practice that
in my view represent the basis of the performance but ironically, also become
the reason for its marginalization. For example, materiality is the vital aspect of
the performance culture, but the same materiality leads to the performance
being marginalized in the public sphere. There is no denying that such
performances differ significantly in detail from one region to another and one
community from the other but maintains some fundamental characteristics.
Based on those aspects, I offer a conceptual framework to study these
performance traditions.
Page 5 of 40

Introduction
The performance traditions are diverse, full of differences, and wide-ranging in

terms of their locations but any claim of a single holistic approach, therefore,
would not be only tautological but also impossible. With an understanding of
these complexities, I focus on some of the very specific questions that I have
raised so far.
Folk performance can be considered as a specific kind of cultural performance

with the endowment of values. Conquergood underlines the importance of
cultural performances in the context of endowing of values and interpretation.
He elaborates,
Cultural performances, such as rituals, ceremonies, celebrations, myths,

stories, songs, jokes, carnivals, contests, games, parties, politesses, and
other expressive traditions are culturally reflexive events that focus,
interpret, punctuate, and endow meaningfulness to experience. (2013: 19)
The performance, however, is not merely a representational object, but like any
Lyotard 1991: 93). I
term the potential of association sanskrutik sram (cultural labour). Cultural
labour produces aesthetic and cultural values. I posit this working definition of
sanskrutik shram or the cultural labour: sanskrutik sram ka tatparya aesi
sanskrutik aur performance kriya se hai jisme vyakti ya samuday sanskruti ke
dwara sram mein yogdan karta hai aur (p.7) aesthetic aur sanskrutik mulyon
ka utpadan karta hai (The cultural labour stands for the culture and performance
activities in which individual or community produces aesthetic and cultural
values through the modes of cultural expressions). Unlike immaterial labour,
which is a global phenomenon, cultural labour is a local phenomenon. It
operates through its mnemonic networks. Despite its universal encompassing
characteristics in a jati
and location. The performance of cultural labour produces a set of relationships
with people and places. While they renew, reinforce, and rupture the existing
bond, they may also strengthen the same and has the potential to create a new
set of relationships. The performance encodes the aesthetic distinction and
suggests relations of power (Conquergood 2013; Sax 2002). This work tries to
bring the potentials of associations produced by the performances of cultural
labour in specific contexts.
homogenous category: as a pre-political formation or as a pure political act of
assertion of the desire of the ordinary people. Using affective and performative
approach to theatre and performance studies, this work tries to bring such
political understanding. Theatre and performance studies offer a broader

theoretical perspective to combine segregated, disparate, and differently valued
Page 6 of 40

Introduction
knowledge by placing the performance at the centre of social and cultural

activities of the subaltern communities.
What is significant in this kind of performance, apart from meaning, message,
effects. Ritual and performance in their affective turn produce corporeal values
in the form of impulses, feelings, sensations, and passions. Deeply rooted in the
ritualized context, the performance reveals the most vivid exemplification of
formation of cultural and aesthetic values in society. I aim to explore, also, how
the performance produces meanings and values and help sustain them at what
(p.8) structures of
feeling is performative values, which creates, what James Scott (1990) would
Focusing on the wide-ranging array of the folk performances of subaltern
brings the understanding of culture in relation to its body and materiality. This
work also indirectly proposes a novel way of understanding the affective
relationship between culture and labour. The underlying problem is that artistes
and performers from the subaltern communities fit neither as artistes nor as
labourers. Yet they are artistes and labourers, and therefore their contributions
need to be recognized on both fronts. By explicating cultural labour, the work
brings the materiality of manual labour and labouring bodies in aesthetic
discourse. While the body has its own creative dimension in the postmodernist
Pang 2009). Materiality is important because, in such
relation between the subject who experiences and the context and content of
Guru and Sarukkai 2012: 36).
The performance traditions, despite changes, continue to be an important part

of the social and cultural life of the majority of subaltern communities in many
parts of India. It serves a vital function in creating a system of meanings,
feelings, values, and a set of relationships. The performance becomes a site of
symbolic struggles as well as a field of contestations. With the democratization
of social and political spheres, the performance is becoming a contested set of
socio-political claims. While in context of the aesthetics of affect, the
performance produces taste, judgement, attitude, and experience, in the context
of performativity, it generates a set of actions and representations.
Cultural Labour examines that which the performances of subaltern

communities invest and produce in a caste-based society. It explores the
precise means of interpretation by which we can analyse the affect of specific

performances, not just in its own immediate performative context but also in
Page 7 of 40

Introduction
relation to (p.9) its socio-political context. When it comes to the performance

tradition of subordinate communities, artists and performers work as labourers
in several performance genres. In this case, performance as labour and
performers as labourers become a hypothetical as well as an empirical claim to
analyse this connection.
The performers often survive and earn their livelihoods through performance.
They are cultural labourers in an economic sense. We can take examples of
bidesia, nautanki, and other rituals as well as commercial performances where
performers are workers. The performers, however, not only entertain and
exhaust their bodies, but also produce social and aesthetic values, which are
immediate in nature. In other words, performance becomes labour because it
provides social and artistic values and a particular kind of self-conception
through it. In another case, performance is labour because it produces specific
values, knowingly or unknowingly. For example, in ritual and festivals,
communities mobilize symbols and memories to create a conception of world
and life. Performance is a value-producing act, and thus, so is labour.
Performers are labourers in two different ways: as workers like any other worker
and as cultural workers who create value. In the first case, raw materials
become a commodity; in the second case, the performers themselves may
become a commodity or can change a product to an object of art. Put differently,
what a performer labours is performance, and what performers perform is
labour. Cultural labour is a labour carried out through the means of performance
and cultural enactments. What it produces is a set of meanings, feelings,
interpretations, and associations. The associations can be real or imagined;
feelings can be fake or genuine. The values can be enslaving or liberating or
both. In the same way, performance can be free labour as well as un-free
(bonded) labour. At one time, performers can become willing slaves of the
powerful, and at another, they may subvert the power relationship.
Unlike other forms of artistic and cultural practices, such performances remain
denigrated in the eyes of the social elites and the feudal upper castes for
different reasons. A significant number of folk performances across India fall in
this category. Spirit worship traditions across South Asia, for example, (p.10)
bhootaradhane (worship of Bhoota, the spirit) in Karnataka, theyyam in Kerala,
and land worship ceremonies, represent the performance tradition. Kuttu
traditions of south India (e.g., therakuttu), nach traditions of north India (for
example, launda nach (dance of men) of Bihar, nachni of Bengal and nacha of
the most visible examples of the performance of cultural labour. What are the
constitutive elements of these performances that create the aesthetics of disgust
and marginalize the performance traditions in the dominant discourses? How
Page 8 of 40

Introduction
does the category of cultural labour and aesthetics figure within such a
relationship?
Based on an extensive field study of five such folk performances, I examined the
role played by cultural labour in (un)production of values and associations in
Indian society. The performance includes bhuiyan puja (a land worship
celebration or worship of bhuiyan cult), bidesiya or bidesia (the theatre of
migrant labourers), Reshma-Chuharmal (a Dalit ballad), dugola (singer duels)
from the Indian state of Bihar and the performances of Gaddar and Jana Natya
Mandali (JNM) from Telangana. Using ethnography, archival material, and
personal memory, this work offers a conceptual frame to study the performance
of cultural labour in particular, and the status of the marginalized folk
performance in general. While performance here functions as an object of study
as well as an analytical tool, critical ethnography provides an ethical
responsibility. In the case of bhuiyan puja, the performance mobilizes stories and
memories to produce a landscape. Stories and narrative mark the places and
endow value in them. Place and landscape are the affective productions of
cultural labour that communities mobilize. In the case of bidesia, the connection
is overt with migrant labourers producing certain kinds of bodies and materiality
through the performance. In the case of Reshma-Chuharmal, performativity
creates self and community in various ways. In the context of Gaddar and Jana
Natya Mandali, revolutionary performers rupture the world of cultural labour
through their radical intervention. They redefine cultural labour, labouring
bodies, and symbols and values around them in new ways. As a result, the (p.
11) performance produces a new political subjectivity and a new set of cultural
values.
In this work, labouring body and its affective performativity is the single most
channelizing theme that underlines one performance to others, and one issue to
others. Morja Puncer locates affective performativity upon the body such that
perfectly it applies in the construction of a labouring body:
Affective performativity underlines body performances of specific, non-

normative artistic subjectivities. A performative body adds value to the art,
a value which is not brought in, neither by static description or
representation: the performance of a body with specific social and gender
mark is exactly the tool used by an artist to cut into the mythology of a
coherent subject. (2011: 409)
The affective performativity aligns an individual with the community, bodies with
places, and real with the imagined in its liminality. The relationship changes the
way things and relationships appear. It may or may not have a direct impact on
the social relationship. Even though the performance embarks on the question of
survival, that is, day-to-day struggles, it would be impossible to reduce it to the
Page 9 of 40

Introduction
concern of the everyday-ness. Likewise, the performance does not remain

restricted to the sphere of culture and often slips into the larger social structure.
Cultural Labour
contested in the field of anthropology and cultural studies. They include a
art, law, morals, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by a man
external approaches. M.J. Herskovits (1948) has viewed culture as a man-made

part of the environment, while for Margaret Mead culture was the total shared,
learned behaviour of a society of a sub-group (1956: 22). One of the most
influential (p.12) definitions has come from Clifford Geertz, who defines
culture as a historically transmitted pattern of meanings embodied in symbols
(1973). But scholars have increasingly realized that internal and external
external as well as internal, reflection of the internal to the external or vice-

versa.
The definition of culture, in addition, has to do with the development of ideas.

With the formation of class society, culture fell apart from the labouring
activities and production process. It only represented the civic sense of society
and the intellectual side of history. This development suggests that the definition
embodies not only the issues but also the contradictions through which it has
developed (Williams 1977: 11). The contradictions had their deep roots in
specific regions and cultures as well. While artistic and cultural practices of the
that relationship. This distinction has led to a severe problem in the

understanding of culture. For the social elites, the separation of culture from
labour becomes the yardstick to understand culture and aesthetics. While for
others, culture and labour were never in separation, they developed in strong
interactions.
Raymond Williams has proposed the most focused and, at the same time, the
most widely applicable definitions of culture. He argued that the complicated
transition of the concept of culture is still underway. Culture and labour in the
present discourse appear as two separate activities remotely connected to each
of meanings: inhabit, cultivate, protect, honour with worship (Williams 1977:

87). The culture had a strong association with tending and developing
agriculture. Cultural activities included the growth and tending of human
faculties too. In the form of cultivation, culture was also a laborious activity that
gradually reduced to the cultivation of human faculties.
Page 10 of 40

Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
eased by now, and then again, perhaps Deucalionis Regio had turned
into the Valley of the Shadow of Death.
I turned and began walking back to the ganglion tower whence Betz's
alarm had summoned me. Betz hailed me when I approached tower
6, and I paused. I could see his round youthful face in the moonlight.
The silvery albedo made it seem like a small moon itself as he peered
down at me from his eyrie. I had never thought much of him—
probably because he had applied for a wife nine years before he
needed to and was already a married man. I thought even less of him
now.
"I can't understand how they got down without my seeing them," he
said.
"I can't understand either," I said.
"It's these damn trees," Betz said. "Some of them are higher than the
towers. I don't see how the Sexton expects us to do a good job of
guarding when we can't see what we're trying to guard."
"It helps if you keep your eyes open," I said, and walked away.
But whether I liked it or not, his objection was valid. While the
Cadillac Cemetery had none of the sprawling vastness of Ford Acres,
its decorative landscaping made the deployment of a limited guard
detail a difficult proposition. The ancient automakers anticipated
neither the future value of their enshrined products nor the
sacrilegious exhumings that were to begin a century later, and when
they laid out their car cemeteries, they stressed beauty rather than
practicality. I could not feel any kindness toward a long dead
manufacturer with a penchant for lombardy poplars, weeping willows,
and arborvitae; who, seemingly, had done everything in his power to
make it easy for twenty-second century ghouls to dig up car-corpses
right under sentries' noses and whisk them away in swift cargo
'copters.
As I made my way toward the ganglion tower, I thought of what I
would say to the Cadillac Sexton in the morning. I prepared my words
carefully, then memorized them so that I could deliver them without
faltering: The time has come for the authorities to decide which is the
more important—the scenic beauty of the ground itself, or the security
of the sacred corpses beneath the ground. No sentry, however alert
he may be, can be expected to see through trees, and now that the
rains are over and the new foliage has reached maximum growth, the
situation is crucial and will remain so until fall—
I went all out. The more responsibility I could foist on the time of the
year, the less I would have to assume myself. The Ford Acres Sexton
had given me a glowing recommendation when I'd applied for the
post at Cadillac several years back, and I hated to lose face in the
Cadillac Sexton's eyes. The money was good, much better than at
Ford, and with a wife on the way I couldn't afford the cut in salary that
relegation to an inferior cemetery would entail. Anyway, the time of
the year was to blame. What other reason could there possibly be for
my losing so many car-corpses?
But the Cadillac Sexton took a dim view of my suggestion when he

showed up the next morning. He glowered at me from behind his
desk in the caretaker's office and I could tell from the deepening of
the creases in his bulbous forehead that I was in for a lecture.
"Trees are rare enough on Earth as it is without wantonly destroying
them," he said, when I had finished talking. "And these particular
trees are the rarest of the rare."
He shook his head deploringly. "I'm afraid you don't quite understand
the finer points of our mission, Bartlett. The scenic beauty which you
would have me devastate is an essential part of the mechanistic
beauty, the memory of which we are trying to perpetuate. There is a
higher purpose behind the automobile trust funds than the mere
preservation of twentieth century vehicles. In setting those funds
aside, the ancient automakers were endeavoring to return,
symbolically and in a different form, the elements they had taken from
the Earth. It was a noble gesture, Bartlett, a very noble gesture, and
the fact that we today disapprove of the Age of Wanton Waste does
not obviate the fact that the Age of Wanton Waste could—and did—
produce art. The symbolic immortality of that art is our responsibility,
our mission.
"No, Bartlett, we can never resort to the sacrilegious leveling of trees
and shrubbery in an attempt to solve our problem. Its solution lies in
greater vigilance on the part of sentries, particularly senior sentries.
Our mission is a noble one, one not lightly to be regarded. It
behooves us—"
He went on and on in the same vein. After a while, when it became
evident that he wasn't going to relegate me to Chevrolet Meadows or
Buick Lawn, I relaxed. His idealism was high-flown, but I could
endure it as long as the money kept coming in.
When he finally dismissed me, I started back to the hives. I couldn't
help thinking, as I walked along the crumbling ancient highway, that if
the manufacturers of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries
had been a little less zealous in their production of art, the Mesabi
iron range might be something more than a poignant memory and
there might have been enough ore available to have made mass
'copter production something more than an interrupted dream. There
was an element of irony in using a super-highway for a footpath.
I hailed a rickshaw at the out-skirts of the city and rode in style to my
apartment. There was a letter in my mail receptacle. The return
address said: MARRIAGE ADMINISTRATION HEADQUARTERS. I
waited till I got to my roomettes before I opened it. I wouldn't have
opened it then if I'd dared not to.
The message was brief:
Report 1500, City Cathedral, Chapel 14, for marital union with one
Julia Prentice, cit. no. 14489304-P, as per M. I. directive no.
38572048954-PR.
I read it again. And again. It still said Julia Prentice.
I knew my heart was beating a lot faster than it normally did and I
knew my hands were trembling. I also knew that I was reacting like a
fool. There were probably a hundred Julia Prentices in the hive sector
alone and probably a hundred more in the other residential districts.
So the chance that this Julia Prentice was the one I wanted her to be
was one in two hundred.
But my heart kept up its rapid pace and my hands went right on
trembling, and I kept seeing that beautiful flowing river with the green
sweep of meadow just beyond, the lovely forested hills and the white
cloud; the dark and forlorn speck of the soaring bird....
She was there waiting for me, standing in the Cathedral corridor
before the little door of Chapel 14, and she was the Julia Prentice. I
asked myself no questions as to why and wherefore. The reality of
her sufficed for the moment.
She looked at me as I came up, then quickly dropped her eyes. The
blue polka dots of her new sunbonnet matched her new Priscilla
Mullins dress.
"I never thought it would be you," I said. "I still can't believe it."
"And why not me?" She would not raise her eyes but kept them
focused on the lapel of my John Alden coat. "Why not me as well as
someone else? I had a right to apply for a husband. I'm of age. I had
nothing to do with the Marriage Integrator's decision."
"I didn't say you did."
"You implied it. I think you are conceited. Furthermore, I think you're
being quixotic about a perfectly prosaic occurrence. There's nothing
in the least romantic about two pasteboard cards meeting in the
digestive system of the Marriage Integrator and finding themselves
compatible."
I stared at her. I'd been under the impression, during the brief interval
I'd talked with her the preceding day, that she liked me. But perhaps
liking a total stranger whom you never expected to see again was
different from liking a near total stranger who was very shortly going
to be your husband. For the second time during the past twenty-four
hours I found myself wallowing in the Slough of Despond.
"I didn't have anything to do with the Marriage Integrator's decision
either," I said flatly. I turned away from her and faced the chapel door.
It was a real wooden door, with a stained glass window. The design
on the window depicted a stoning in the Coliseum. There were two
people standing forlornly in the arena—a man and a woman. They
stood with their heads bowed, the scarlet letters on their breasts
gleaming vividly. The first stone had just struck the ground at their
feet; the second stone hovered in the air some distance away. The
encompassing stoning platform was crowded with angry people
fighting for access to the regularly spaced stone piles, and high
above the scene the Coliseum flag fluttered proudly in the breeze, its
big red letter proclaiming that a chastisement was in progress.
There were a dozen other couples waiting in the corridor now, shyly
conversing or staring silently at the stained glass windows before
them. I wondered if they felt the way I felt, if they had the same
misgivings.
The minutes inched by. The silence between Julia and myself
became intolerable. I pondered the meaning of the word
"compatibility," and wondered why unconscious rapport should
manifest itself in conscious hatred.
I remembered my own lonely childhood—the long evenings spent in
my parents' hive apartment, the endless dissension between my
mother and my father, my father's relegation to the parlorette couch
and my mother's key in the bedroomette door, their suicidal leap
twenty stories to the street when I was nineteen years old.
I thought of how crowded the hive school had been when I attended it
and I wondered suddenly if it was crowded now. I thought of the
increasing number of empty apartments in the hive sector, and the
cold breath of a long dormant suspicion blew icily through my mind.
The world quivered, began to fall apart—
And then Julia said: "I was very rude to you. I didn't mean to be. I'm
sorry, Mr. Bartlett."
The world steadied, came back into proper focus. "My name is
Roger," I said.
"I'm sorry, Roger."
The marriage chimes began to sound, appending a tinkling ellipsis to
her words. I opened the door with trembling fingers and we stepped
into the chapel together. The door closed silently behind us.
Before us stood a life-size TV screen. At our elbows, electric candles
combined their radiance with the feeble sunlight eking through the
narrow stained glass window above the screen and made a half-
hearted attempt to chase away the gloom. A basket of synthetic
flowers bloomed tiredly at our feet.
Julia's face was pale, but no paler, probably, than mine was.
Suddenly sonorous music throbbed out from a concealed speaker
and the TV screen came to life. The Marriage Administrator
materialized before us, tall, black-garbed, austere of countenance.
He did not speak till the marriage music ended. Then he said: "When
I raise my left hand the first time, you will pronounce your own names
clearly and distinctly so that they can be recorded in the tape-
contract. When I raise my left hand the second time, you will
pronounce, with equal clarity and distinctness, the words 'I do.'
"Do you—" He paused and raised his left hand.
"Julia Prentice."
"Roger Bartlett."
"Take this man-woman to be your lawful wedded husband-wife?" He
raised his left hand again.
"I do." We spoke the words together.
"Then by the power invested in me by the marriage amendment, I
pronounce you man and wife and sentence you to matrimony for the
rest of your natural lives."
CHAPTER IV
It was some time before I remembered to kiss my bride. When I did
remember, the twentieth century landscape spread out around me
and I had the distinct impression that the world had stirred beneath
my feet, had hesitated, for a fraction of a second, on its gargantuan
journey around the sun.
The voice of the Marriage Administrator was deafening, his face
purple. "There will be no osculating in the chapels! The chapels will
be cleared immediately for the next applicants. There will be no—"
Neither of us had known that the screen was a transmitter as well as
a receiver, and we moved apart guiltily. A shower of plastic rice
poured down on us as we stepped through the doorway. We ran
laughing down the corridor, picked up our marriage contract at the
vestibule window, and stepped out into the Cathedral court.
The afternoon sun was bright in the coppery sky but the shadow of
the pulpit platform lay cool and dark across the eastern flagstones.
We walked across the congregation area to the vaulted entrance that
led to the street. I hailed a double rickshaw and we rode to the YWCA
and picked up Julia's things. Then we headed for the hives.
I'd called in the converters, of course. They'd done their work rapidly
and well. I noticed the changes the moment I opened the door.
There were two chairs in the parlorette now, both smaller than the old
one had been, but charming in their identical design. A table had
replaced the table-ette in the kitchenette and an extra stool now stood
by the enlarged cupboard. Through the bedroomette doorway I could
see one of the corners of the new double bed.
I stepped into the parlorette, waited for Julia to follow me. When she
did not, I returned to the passageway. She was standing there quietly,
her eyes downcast, her hands folded at the waist of her new blue
dress. It struck me abruptly that she was the most beautiful thing I
had ever seen and simultaneously it dawned on me why she hadn't
followed me in.
The custom was so old—so absurd. It was almost a part of folklore, a
tattered remnant of the early years of the twentieth century when
newlyweds had tried to insure by fetish the conjugal permanence that
was now enforced by law.
And yet, in a way, it was beautiful.
I stood for a moment, memorizing Julia's pale fresh loveliness. Then I
lifted her into my arms and carried her across the threshold.
Guarding interred Cadillacs was far from being an ideal way to spend
my wedding night, but after the way things had been going I hadn't
dared to ask the Sexton for an extra night off. I donned my sentry suit
in the darkness, moving quietly so as not to awaken Julia, then I
descended to the street and hailed a rickshaw. It was past 2300 and I
had to ride all the way to the cemetery in order to get there on time.
After posting the other sentries, I relieved the 1600-2400 senior
sentry in the ganglion tower. He had nothing of interest to report and I
sent him on his way. Standing beneath the big rotating searchlight,
watching him descend the ladder, I envied him his night's freedom.
The searchlight threw a moving swath of radiance over artificial hill
and dale, shone like an ephemeral sun on arborvitae patterns, blazed
on the green curtains of lombardy stands. I cursed those
noncommittal curtains for the thousandth time, deplored my inability
to do anything about them.
The size of the cemetery precluded any practical patrol of the
grounds. All I could do was hope that I, or one of the other sentries in
the strategically located towers, would spot any unusual movement,
hear any unusual sound.
I touched the cold barrel of the tower blaster. My fingers were eager
for the feel of the trigger, my eyes hungry for the spiderweb of the
sight. I had never brought down a ghoul 'copter—for the simple
reason that I had never had a good shot at one. But I was looking
forward to the experience.
It was a cool night for June. The wind had shifted to the northeast,
washing the haze of the western dust storms from the atmosphere,
and the stars stood out, bold and clear. Mars was no longer an
inflamed red eye but a glowing pinpoint of pure orange. Deucalionis
Regio, however, was as much of an enigma as ever.
An hour passed. The sentries phoned in their reports and I recorded
them on the blotter.
0100—all quiet on the Cadillac Front.
My thoughts shifted to Julia, and the magic of the night deepened
around me. I pictured her sleeping, her hair dark against the pillow,
the delicate crescents of her lashes accentuating the whiteness of her
cheeks; her supple body curved in relaxed grace beneath the sheets.
I listened to the soft sound of her breathing—
Soft? No, not soft. My Julia breathed loudly. Moreover, she breathed
with a regularity hard to associate with a human being—a regularity
reminiscent of a machine. Specifically, a malfunctioning machine, and
more specifically yet, the turning of a borer shaft in a well-oiled, but
worn, sleeve.
Alert now, I tried to locate the sound. At first it seemed to be all
around me, a part of the night air itself, but I finally narrowed it down
to the northeast section of the cemetery. Tower 11's territory.
I called 11. Kester's lean young face came into focus on the
telescreen. "You should be hearing a borer," I said. "Unless you're
deaf. Do you hear one?"
Kester's face seemed strained. "Yes. I—I think so."
"Then why didn't you report it? I can hear the damn thing way over
here!"
"I—I was going to," Kester said. "I wanted to make sure."
"Make sure! How sure do you have to be? Now listen. You stay by
your blaster and keep your eyes and your ears open. I'm coming over
to see if I can locate the 'copter. If I do locate it I'll throw a flare under
it, and if they try to rise, you burn them. If they don't try to rise and we
can take them alive, so much the better. I'd like to see a real live
ghoul. But otherwise, you burn them! If we lose another car-corpse,
we'll all be out on our ears."
"All right," Kester said. The screen went blank.
Descending the tower ladder, I wondered what kind of a guard detail I
had. Last night, Betz's negligence had cost me a Cadillac. Tonight,
Kester's negligence had very nearly cost me another—and might yet,
if I wasn't careful.
I couldn't understand it. They were both newly-married men (Kester
had applied for a wife the same day Betz had) and, since women
were forbidden to work after marrying, both of them certainly needed
the better wages Cadillac paid. Why should they deliberately
jeopardize their status?
Maybe Betz really hadn't seen or heard anything until it was too late.
Maybe Kester really hadn't been sure that the sound he was hearing
was the turning of a borer.
But I was sure, and the closer I got to Tower 11, the surer I became. I
timed my approach with the swath of the searchlight, made certain
there was plenty of concealment available whenever it passed my
way. That wasn't hard to do, with all the lombardies, the arborvitae,
the hills, dales and gardens that infested the place. But for once the
ancient automakers' passion for landscaping was benefitting me
instead of the ghouls.
Tower 11 was a tripodal skeleton stabbing into the cadaverous face of
the rising moon. It loomed higher and higher above me as I neared
the source of the sound. I swore silently at Kester. He was either
stone deaf and blind as a bat, or a deliberate traitor to the Cadillac
cause. The exhuming was taking place practically under his nose.
I crept beneath the hem of a lombardy curtain and lay in the deep
shadows. I could see the cargo 'copter clearly now. It squatted over a
grave mound less than twenty feet from my hiding place, its rotating
borer protruding from its open belly like an enormous stinger. The
grave mound was already perforated with a score of holes, spaced so
that when the car-casket was drawn upward, the hard-packed earth
would crumble and fall apart.
The borer was now probing for the eye of the casket. Even as I
watched I heard the grind of steel against gun metal, saw the borer
reverse its spiral and rise swiftly into the hold of the 'copter. A bright
light stabbed down into the new hole, was quickly extinguished. I
thought I heard the sound of a breath being expelled in relief, but I
wasn't sure. Shortly thereafter, I heard the almost inaudible hum of a
winch motor, saw the hook dangling on the end of the steel cable just
before it disappeared into the hole.
I pulled a flare from my belt, broke the seal. My aim was excellent.
The flare landed in the center of the grave mound, went off the
minute it hit the ground. The light was blinding. The whole northeast
section of the cemetery became as bright as noonday, the interior of
the 'copter leaped into dazzling detail. I could see the dungaree-clad
ghouls standing on the edge of the open hatch. I could see the winch
operator's face——
It was a striking face. It was a twentieth century landscape. The
smear of grease on one of the pink cheeks had no effect whatsoever
on the white cloud. The blue eyes, blinded by the unexpected light,
flowed their blue and beautiful way along the green lip of the
nonpareil meadow. The forested hills were more exquisite than ever
—
But the solitary bird was gone, and the sky was empty.
And then, suddenly, I could not see anything at all. The ground
erupted as the casket broke free, and a shower of dirt and broken
clods engulfed me. I staggered to my feet, shielding my eyes with my
arms, gasping for breath. By the time I regained my vision the 'copter
was high above the lombardies, the exhumed car-casket swinging
wildly beneath the still-opened hatch.
Don't shoot! my mind screamed to Kester. Don't shoot! But the words
were locked in my throat and I could not utter them. I could only stand
there helplessly, waiting for the disintegrating beam to lance out from
the tower, waiting for the 'copter and the ghouls—and my conniving
Julia—to become bright embers in the night sky.
But I needn't have worried. Kester missed by a mile.
I turned him in. What else could I do? I'd spent nine years languishing
in lonely towers through long and lonely nights, faithfully guarding the
buried art of the automakers. I couldn't throw those years away out of
foolish loyalty to a man as obviously indifferent to the cause as Kester
was.
But I didn't feel very proud of myself, standing there in the Cadillac
Sexton's office the next morning, with Kester, his face cold and
expressionless, standing beside me. I didn't feel proud at all. And the
Sexton's praise of my last night's action only turned my stomach.
I was cheating and I knew it. I should have turned in Julia too. But I
couldn't do that. Before I took any action, I had to see her, question
her myself. There had to be a reasonable explanation for her
complicity. There had to be!
After the Sexton dismissed me I waited outside for Kester. He didn't
seem like a chastened man when he stepped into the morning
sunlight. If anything, he seemed relieved—if not actually happy.
He would have walked right by me without a word, but I touched his
shoulder and he paused. "I'm sorry," I said. "I didn't want to turn you
in but I had no choice. But the Sexton let you go?"
He nodded.
"I'm sorry," I said again.
He looked at me for a long moment. Then he said: "Bartlett, you're a
fool," and turned and walked away.
CHAPTER V
Julia wasn't in the apartment when I got home. But Taigue was.
He was sitting in one of the new chairs as though he owned the
place. This time he hadn't come alone. The other chair was occupied
by an MEP patrolman armed with a bludgeon gun.
"Come in," Taigue said. "We've been expecting you."
I don't know why I should have cared after the events of last night, but
the thought of what he might have done to Julia crystallized my blood.
"Where's Julia?" I said.
"Why, what a unique coincidence, Mr. Bartlett. Truly, our minds run in
the same channel, to coin a cliché. I was about to voice the same
plaintive question."
He was still fasting, and the increased gauntness of his face
accentuated the fanatical intensity of his eyes. "If you've hurt her," I
said, "I'll kill you!"
Taigue's ugly, dolichocephalic head swiveled on his thin neck till he
faced his assistant. "Look who's going to kill someone, Officer Minch.
Our esteemed candidate for the Letter himself!"
That one set me back on my heels. I felt the strength go out of my
legs. "You're out of your mind, Captain. I'm legally married and you
know it!"
"Indeed, Mr. Bartlett?" He reached into the inside pocket of his coat,
withdrew a folded sheet of synthetic paper. He tossed it to me
contemptuously. "Read all about your 'marriage,' Mr. Bartlett. Then
tell me if I'm out of my mind."
I unfolded the gray document, knowing what it was and yet refusing
to accept the knowledge. All warrants for arrest are unpleasant to the
recipient, but an MEP warrant is triply unpleasant.
In addition to being a warrant, it is an indictment, and in addition to
being an indictment, it is a sentence. A marital offender has
automatically waived his right to a trial of any kind by the very nature
of his offense. The logic of the first Puritanical legislators was
muddied by their unnatural horror of illicit sex—an inevitable
consequence of their eagerness to atone for the sexual enormities of
their forebears.
I read the words, first with disbelief, then, as the realization of Julia's
motivation dawned on me, with nausea:
CHARGE: Adultery, as per paragraph 34 of the Adultery Statute,
which states in effect that all unofficial marital relationships,
regardless of potential ameliorating factors, be construed as asocial
and classified as adulterous acts.
CORRESPONDENTS: Roger Bartlett, cit. no. 14479201-B: Julia
Prentice, cit. no. 14489304-P.
PARTICULARS: M. I. check, suggested and carried out by MEP
Captain Lawrence Taigue, disclosed discrepancy in compatibility
factors of aforementioned correspondents. Further check revealed
deliberate altering of data cards before M. I. computation, rendering
said computation invalid and resultant 'marriage' unofficial and
therefore adulterous.
SENTENCE: Public chastisement in the arena of the Municipal
Coliseum.
DATE OF CHASTISEMENT: June 20, 2151.
AUTHORIZED ARRESTING OFFICERS: MEP Captain Lawrence
Taigue; MEP Patrolman Ebenezer Minch.
(signed) Myles Fletcher
MARRIAGE ADMINISTRATOR
June 8, 2151
"Well, Mr. Bartlett? Must you read the words off the page to get their
import?"
My mind was reeling but it still rebelled against the reality of Julia's
guilt. I grabbed at the first alternative I could think of. "You changed
the cards, didn't you, Taigue?" I said.
"Don't be ridiculous. The mere thought of bringing an oafish clod like
yourself into even transient intimacy with a sublime creature like Julia
revolts my finer sensibilities. Julia altered the cards—as you perfectly
well know. But she did not alter them of her own free will. You forced
her to alter them."
I stared at him. "For God's sake, Captain, use your head! Why should
I do such a thing? How—"
"Why?" Taigue had risen to his feet. His eyes were dilated. He
breathed with difficulty. "I'll tell you why! Because you're a filthy
animal, that's why. Because you looked at an ethereal woman and
saw nothing but flesh. Because your carnal appetite was whetted and
your lecherous desires had to be fed at any cost.
"But you're not going to get away with it!" He was shouting now and
his trembling fingers were inches from my throat. "I myself will cast
the first stone. But before I do, you'll confess. When the Hour is near,
you'll realize the enormity of your lust, just as they all do, and you'll
fall on your knees and ask forgiveness. And when you do, you'll
automatically absolve Julia of all guilt. All guilt, do you understand,
Bartlett? Julia's purity must be restored. Julia's purity has to be
restored!"
I brought my right fist up into his stomach then. Hard. I had to. In
another second those yearning fingers would have clamped around
my throat.
But I forgot about Patrolman Minch and his bludgeon gun. Even
before Taigue hit the floor, the first charge struck me in the shoulder,
spun me around so that I faced the wall. The next one caught me
squarely in the back of the neck, turned my whole body numb. I
sagged like a cloth doll. The floor fascinated me. It was like a dark
cloud, rising. A dark cloud, and then a swirling mist of blackness. And
then—nothing.
Prison cells are ideal for objective thinking. There is a quality about
their drab walls that brings you face to face with reality.
The Coliseum cell in which I was confined possessed the ultimate in
drab walls. The reality with which I was faced was the ultimate in
unpleasantness....
On our wedding night, Julia had told me that she had worked at
Marriage Administration Headquarters for three years. But when I
mentioned Taigue's concern over her, she was amazed. She said she
hardly even knew him, that he had never spoken a word to her, had
never—to her knowledge—even looked at her.
But he had looked at her without her knowledge. Of that I was sure.
He had looked at her a hundred, a thousand, a million times. He had
sat at his desk for three years, admiring her, adoring her, worshipping
her.
Beyond her physical appearance, however, his Julia bore no relation
to the real Julia. His Julia was far more than an ordinary woman. She
was the exquisite vase into which he had thrust the flowers of his
idealism.
The celibacy vows he had taken when he was ordained an MEP
officer were only partly responsible for his attitude. The real key lay in
his physical ugliness—an ugliness that had probably influenced his
decision to become an MEP officer.
He had never spoken to Julia, or looked at her openly, because of a
deep conviction that he would repel her; and he had rationalized his
reticence by attributing it to his rigid interpretation of his duty as an
MEP officer. The only way he could realize his love for her was by
elevating that love to a higher plane. This had necessitated his
elevating Julia also.
Taigue loathed sex. He could tolerate it only when it came as a result
of a society-sanctioned marriage. With respect to Julia, he could not
tolerate it at all, because the intrusion of sex upon his exquisite vase
of flowers sullied both flowers and vase.
When he discovered that the Marriage Integrator had matched Julia
with an ordinary mortal, he could not accept the validity of the
computation; neither could he accept the fact that Julia had applied
for a husband. He had to find a loophole somewhere, a means to
rationalize the danger to his flowers. When he learned that Julia
herself had contrived the computation, he immediately transferred the
blame to me, thereby absolving Julia.
But his logic was shaky, and he knew it. He couldn't quite believe the
lies he had told himself. His edifice was tottering and he needed my
confession to shore it up. Therein lay my only hope.
For Taigue would buy that confession at any price. And I would sell it
for only one price—
My life.
And so I sat there in my lonely cell, through the gray daytime hours
and through the dark nights, waiting for Taigue.
I thought often of Julia. In spite of myself I thought of her, and in spite
of myself I kept hoping that she would continue to elude the country-
wide search which Marriage Enforcement Headquarters had
instigated the morning of my arrest.
I thought of her not as Taigue's vase of flowers, but as the pale girl
who had said "I do" with me at the mass-wedding ceremony; as the
lovely girl who had lingered in the hive passageway, waiting for me to
carry her across the threshold; as the unforgettable girl who had been
my wife for a dozen precious hours.
But most of all, I thought of her as the deceitful woman who had
intended to use me as an instrument in the ghouls' exploitation of the
Cadillac Cemetery.
As she had used Betz and Kester before me.
I had her whole modus operandi figured out. Her system was simple.
When a cemetery sentry applied for a wife, she simply notified an
available sister-ghoul, entered her application along with the sentry's,
and then altered the resultant data cards so that they came out of the
integrator in the right combination. It took a lot of know-how, but she
hadn't worked at Marriage Administration Headquarters three years
for nothing. She hadn't taken the job in the first place for nothing,
either.
Being a senior sentry, I had rated her personal supervision. I had no
idea as to what wiles she would have employed to make me
voluntarily neglect my duty to Cadillac; but I had an uncomfortable
suspicion that they would have worked.
Taigue didn't come until the last day—the last hour, in fact. I was
sweating. The Coliseum seamstress had already sewn the big scarlet
letter on the breast of my gray prison blouse and the Coliseum barber
had just been in to cut my hair. I could hear the distant shuffling of
feet on the stoning platform and the faraway murmur of many voices.
Taigue was still fasting. Ordinary MEP officers were usually content to
fast their required day per week and to let it go at that. But Taigue
was not an ordinary MEP officer. He stood before me like a
Bunyanesque caricature. Caverns had appeared above the ridges of
his cheek bones and his eyes had retreated into their depths where
they burned like banked fires.
"Short hair becomes you, Mr. Bartlett," he said, but his irony lacked its
usual edge. Moreover, the ghastly paleness of his face could not be
wholly attributed to his physical condition.
"Did you come to receive my confession, Captain?"
"Whenever you're ready, Mr. Bartlett."
"I'm ready now."
He nodded solemnly. "I thought you might be. I discounted Julia's
insistence that she acted of her own free will."
That shook me. "Julia? Is—is she here?"
He nodded again. "She gave herself up a week ago. She confessed
to altering the data cards—insisted over and over that she alone was
to blame. I tried to tell them, I tried to explain to the Marriage
Administrator that she couldn't possibly be to blame, that she was an
innocent tool in the hands of a hardened adulterer. But he wouldn't
listen. No one would listen. They sewed the letter on her this morning.
They—they cut her hair."
I tried to tell myself that she had it coming, but it wasn't any good. I
felt sick. I kept seeing her crumpled body lying in the arena and the
cruel stones scattered in the dirt and the blood on them. Julia's blood
—
"Well, Mr. Bartlett? You said you were ready to confess."
"Yes," I said. "I presume you're ready to pay my price?"
"Price?" The emaciated face showed surprise. "Do you expect to be
reimbursed for relieving your conscience, Mr. Bartlett?"
"You can put it that way if it makes it easier for you."
"And what do you think your confession is worth?"
"You know how much it's worth, Taigue. It's worth Julia's life—and
mine."
"You try my patience, Mr. Bartlett."
"You try mine too."
"My wanting your confession is a purely personal matter. Both you
and Julia will die in the arena regardless of your decision. Adultery
charges are irrevocable."
"I'm not asking you to revoke any charges," I said. "All I'm asking you
to do is to get Julia and me out of here alive. You can do it."
He stared at me. "Mr. Bartlett, your incarceration has affected your
mind! Do you really think I'd free you, even if I could, and give you
further opportunity to vitiate Julia?"
My thinking hadn't been nearly as objective as I'd imagined. I should
have realized that Taigue would rather see his flowers dead than
expose them to additional "defilement." I was desperate now, and my
desperation got the better of my judgment. "Is my confession worth
Julia's life then?" I asked.

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Cultural Labour: Conceptualizing the

‘Folk Performance’ in India Brahma

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Cultural Labour: Conceptualizing the 'Folk

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(p.i) Cultural Labour (p.ii)

(p.iii) Cultural Labour

(p.iv) Copyright Page

Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.

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© Oxford University Press 2019

The moral rights of the author have been asserted.

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Cultural Labour: Conceptualizing the 'Folk

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names, in their languages, in their environment, in their heritage of

A place I remember from my childhood is an abode of the deity on the outskirts

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Unlike the institutionalized religions, such cultural practices are viewed as

and artistic activities. It is important because telling and creating affective

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Ritualized in structure and flexible in operation, folk performance creates an

As the crows caw-cawed

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baggage and (p.xii) has emerged as a problematic term in an academic world; I

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with this inherent problematic.

While modern education works as an emancipatory tool, it also has a colonizing

and cultures, but also annihilate themselves in the process.

Education, supposed to be a liberating force, was perpetuating hegemonic

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distancing myself from the performance culture. What I am indicating is a

This book is a personal journey, a passage of time in which I get transformed

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the University of London, in 2013. It is based on an extensive fieldwork of 15

directly and indirectly helped me in this research. I thank my PhD thesis

At crucial stages of the research, I received invaluable supports from friends: R.

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Vijay Kumar Yadavendu, Santosh Raut, Nilanjana Sengupta, and Bikaramaditya

I am indebted to my family members and friends from village. Thanks to Mantu,

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Cultural Labour: Conceptualizing the 'Folk

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Abstract and Keywords

in India when labour becomes a performance, performance becomes labour. The

Antonio Gramsci (2014b:362)

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khadi kurta. I think I am an artist.

you know how to sing and dance?