Date and Time: Dec. 13(Fri.), 2019, 16:00-18:00
Venue: Conference Room, West Hall (Sei-koh), Omiya Campus, Ryukoku University
[Location and Access]
http://www.ryukoku.ac.jp/engli
[Campus Map]
http://www.ryukoku.ac.jp/engli
Prof. Lawrence Cohen (University of California, Berkeley, USA)
“The Haunting of the Database: On the Remaking of Life and Death in D
igital India”
Abstract:
Digital forms of control society have recently emerged in India to reorganize
the distribution of state benefits and private capital to persons on the socia
l and economic margin, including the creation of a national biometric identity
increasingly essential for survival. From their inception, these digital form
s have been deployed to remove “dead” data–so-called “ghost” identities”–fro
m the various databases that increasingly organize persons’ and communities’ r
elation to life and to value. And yet, far from databases becoming deathless,
they seem to be sites for the emergence of new forms of death–mobile, active,
perhaps vital death. This talk will examine several ways that the control soc
iety is haunted by the dead: through the experience of religious minorities wi
th the resurgence of Hindu nationalism, and through the particular politics of
the living body that have emerged in digital India. In order to think with th
ese new emergent forms of life and death, the talk will then return to earlier
cosmologies of distribution and sovereignty, working through questions of rel
igious kingship, the sovereign gift, and the importance of the lively dead to
moral and cosmic order.
—————-
Contact: Katsuyuki IDA（井田克征）
E-mail: ida@ad.ryukoku.ac.jp