CRITICAL STUDIES CONFERENCE
First Conference on Critical Thinking
( 29-30 July 2005)
PANEL STATEMENTS
Panel 1: The Birth of the Autonomous Subject
While autonomy has now become a preferred goal of almost everyone’s social and political agenda, its deeper implications in terms of our historical and ethical existence are often ignored. We tend to lose sight of these implications in commonsense parlance. Even in more serious political writings, there is hardly any probing into the philosophical and social implications.
In this background, the panel seeks to (a) foreground our everyday political experiences of engaging with the issue of autonomy in India with special reference to collectivities and groups demanding it, and, (b) to investigate their deeper implications in terms of the historical evolution of the notion of autonomy with a view to understanding and appreciating the problems that are associated with them. The comparative experience of diverse groups and collectivities may serve as our point of departure in our inquiry.
The panel is expected to focus on the following overlapping questions:
- How is a subject born? More particularly, what are the processes – historical, institutional, and discursive – through which a collective subject comes into being?
- What are the conditions predicating the emergence of the autonomous subject? Is autonomy a precondition of the birth of a subject? Or, can only a subject already born claim it?
- Can autonomy be called a right per se or merely a condition of claiming and enjoying rights?
- Given that autonomy is necessarily relational, how does one understand the fact that the autonomy of the subject may interfere with that of another? How is autonomy negotiated between diverse autonomous subjects? Is autonomy then negotiable? If so, what can be the standards of negotiation? What have been indeed historical standards?
- Does negotiability of autonomy presuppose responsibility towards and recognition of other autonomous subjects? Can an ethic of responsibility be elaborated without decentring the subject? How can recognition be the basis of inter-subjectivity?
- How can we relate experiences of autonomy with its principles? Is thinking of autonomy and demanding autonomy then a social activity?
Panel 2: Autonomy as an Idea for Mass Politics
The dominant form of politics of autonomy in India has been the territorial and administrative arrangements for devolution of power that frequently occurs within the constitutional framework. However, it is also true that autonomy does not flow from constitutional edicts alone. Movements challenging the structure of power and control over resources have been the omnipresent alter-ego in the history of the postcolonial nation-state. These movements raise issues of identity, deprivation and oppression and attempt to transform political language and landscapes. “Autonomy” is one expression of the search for a political alternative. The language of autonomy is articulated as an integral element of the politics around issues of gender, ethnicity, class, race, and caste in India. Very often, these experiences have been coloured by violence, especially in the case of territorial autonomy. If the invocation of the autonomous subject is problematic due to the violence that is associated with its articulation, what then is one supposed to understand about political processes that use such a language? Are these processes merely about the legality of the manner in which power is to be devolved? Or could it be that the violence associated with autonomy are inchoate attempts to give voice to local injustice in a universal language where rights and obligations are part of a violent political process against power?
This panel seeks papers that deal with the complexity of political voices against power and the manner in which notions of autonomy recur in the mobilisation of such voices. The questions that may be addressed in this panel are:
- Why is violence so associated with the movements for autonomy?
- What are the “possible forms of autonomy?” in terms of the public imagination of those who demand autonomy? How do we relate the two principles of right – autonomy and justice in the demand for autonomy?
- Why is the “reservation of seats” issue now at the centre of the women’s autonomy question – what sense do we make of the politics of representation in this context?
- What is the role that women occupy in indigenous people’s movements for autonomy? How do these two autonomies intersect – women’s autonomy and indigenous people’s autonomy?
- What are the principles of autonomy as a political demand and as an institutional form?
- What are the issues involved in the demands for cultural autonomy and autonomy for religious minorities?
Panel 3: Laws of Autonomy
One of the major concerns in global politics today is the issue of national self-determination. Disobeying the established borders of states and the established states-system in the region, the issue of self-determination puts to disarray even the best-laid plans for democratic order in the world. The trouble to the states-system gets compounded when a “minority” refuses to see itself as a minority, reconciled to that status, and claims the status of a people and thus the right of self-determination. All these take us back to the historical question of power relations in global politics. If nations have a right to statehood, then the international community cannot deny some nations this right and privilege others. For honouring the aspirations of self-determination, there is a need to “un-bundle” the traditional concept of sovereignty.
To evaluate the opportunities of autonomy and self-determination of minorities and indigenous peoples in this context, this panel would have a critical engagement with the system of international law as well as with the respective national laws. The panel aims to explore and survey new avenues in the legal discourse to accommodate rights to self-determination of different peoples from the perspectives of justice and human rights. The presentations are expected to offer critiques of the dominant doctrine of “national interest” and positions of legal absolutism in order to explore the concept of autonomy as the substantive form of self-determination rights. Through this academic exercise the panel proposes to find out the constitutional and juridical thoughts shaping the universe of autonomy.
Indian experiences of autonomy as laid out in the Indian Constitution are worth discussing in this context. Evolving out of long colonial experiences of making certain areas excluded and semi-excluded, treating certain other areas as “frontier” areas, also flowing from ideas of self-dependence, decentralization and devolution of power as the core ideas of autonomy and freedom, the theme of autonomy has acquired a nuance that the language of laws simply cannot exhaust. Studies of legal and administrative practices, of the demands for legal reforms that political subjects make from time to time to make autonomy genuine or substantive, and of the history of law making on autonomy in India have become now essential. Also relevant are the issues in this context relating to women’s autonomy, or paradoxically Indian legal thinking on caste as an autonomous association except in the domain of public interaction.
In the context of these themes relevant to the domain of law, the panel may raise the following questions:
- Can autonomy be legally defined as a form of self-determination?
- Is autonomy only for the minority communities or people as a legal entity can claim autonomy as a universal standard?
- Does the legal doctrine of “national interest” make any allowance for autonomy?
- How do we situate two legal concepts – autonomy and sovereignty?
- What are the components of the Indian legal thinking on autonomy
- In the context of the popular movements for autonomy, what are the emerging themes that a new legal thinking on autonomy can address?
Panel 5: Panel on Autonomy of the Autonomies
The notion of Autonomy of the autonomies, while aiming at a paradigm shift from domination to non-domination as the fundamental principle of a humane governance at all levels, treats diverse understandings of and claims to autonomy as integral to democratisation process. The ontological criticality here lies in a relentless questioning of categorically framed and territorially marked ethno-religious identities and their manipulation by the centres of power and privilege. Whereas the epistemological criticality implied in such a notion demands and deserves acknowledgement of the fact that there is not one but several knowledges of autonomy, produced at diverse sites, which remain in a perpetual state of competition with one another for greater salience, legitimacy and authority.
The methodological challenge posed by the visualization of ‘Autonomy of autonomies’, therefore, is not simply restricted to how we might go about accessing and assessing knowledge claims that are officially authorized for the purposes of delegating and distributing autonomy from above. Far more crucial is our willingness as well as ability to incorporate within the mainstream analytical thinking on Autonomy the perspectives from below on equitable power sharing that continue to be marginalized by the dominant ‘empowering’ discourses operating within a hierarchical social order on the one hand, and trivialized at the same time by the state-centric geopolitics of domination and denunciation.
Some of the key questions that the panel is expected to address are:
- What is the so-called ‘genuine’ Autonomy made of? What are its constituents and how do they hang together?
- Are these constituents historically and culturally invariable universals, or are they relative to context?
- How do we ensure that none of the various competing knowledge claims to Autonomy, flagging ‘national’ or ‘regional’ or ‘local’ interests, monopolizes the right to speak authoritatively about particular places and peoples? How do we preempt a situation whereby a particular hegemonic knowledge claim gets generalized and naturalized, far beyond the immediate spatial as well as temporal context in which it was initially made?
- How can the fundamental democratic right of having one’s moral worth recognized be ensured for one and all, especially for those who remain on the margins of both the dominant discourses on Autonomy and the practices that flow from them?
- As an alternative to a monolithic ‘Autonomy’ associated with a particular demand for power-sharing, can we visualize ‘Autonomy of autonomies’ as an ongoing democratisation process from below, involving multi-spatial, multi-temporal, and multi-system interaction among institutions which blend the different forms of organizational reach; a process dictated and driven by a facilitative-enabling conception of power (as a medium) rather than a state-centric, instrumental conception of power (over others) which is delegated or distributed from a centralized point to authoritative locations across a given territory?
Panel 6: Access, Ownership and Resources – Private Property as a Problem for Autonomy
What is private property? Is property a form of work or material thing or both? Do questions of autonomy have any association with property – private or otherwise? Is private property facilitator or hindrance of personal autonomy or group autonomy? How far is it valid to claim that without some form of private property, personal autonomy cannot be guaranteed? Is it a fair claim that private property may have some positive associations with autonomy rights? For example, Lenin’s short-lived NEP anticipates this question. Conversely, it may be asked: is private property necessarily negatively linked with autonomy rights? The cry for nationalization (state-ownership) of private property by Luxemburg, ironically echoed by Stalin, bears out such a question. Does nationalization however confer economic independence to property-less people? Is there any via media between family/male-centric private property and nationalized state-centric property that may guarantee greater economic independence as for example anticipated by Mao’s commune system or Gramsci’s factory council movement or Kanoria Jute workers’ movement? Do we need to recognize a plural conception of property – private /commune /cooperative /common /factory /state ownership – for different economic situations obtained within a particular national context as anticipated by Lenin’s NEP? How do then these many forms of property guarantee economic independence of property-less people?
I am afraid we cannot answer such questions without looking into the history of socio-political movements of property-less people especially in Indian context. It is from their vantage point our answers need to be formulated. We should look into such questions as follows:
- Who are property-less and when does property-less-ness arise? Do property-less people struggle for property-based independence?
- If property also means work a la John Locke, how many ways people suffer from loss of work and a consequent loss of forms of independence?
- What are the forms of independence they lack due to the fact of being property-less?
- Why Dalits who suffer from caste bondages are also by and large property-less in India? Why do women handicapped by patriarchy and lack of private property look for their freedom in economic independence in work?
- In the land reform struggles in India, do we find notions of autonomy implicit and if so, how are they linked with what kind of property – private/cooperative/community, etc?
- How does a nationalization/cooperative form help in realizing economic capacity of each?
- Where actually private form of property may be hindrance or facilitator of financial autonomy of each?