Speaker: Prof. Brahma Prakash
Thinking through the aesthetic category of erotic, Brahma Prakash’s talk examined the problem of sringara in Indian aesthetics and cultural productions. To elaborate on this problem, he placed examples from Indian classical dance and popular and folk-dance forms such as launda naach and arkestra dance in parallel. What makes one form emblematic of sringara (“good erotic”) and others kamuk (“bad erotic”)? While sringara claims divine pleasure, kamukata is considered full of senses—coming from the low standard that aims for the body and ends on the body, a formulation of aesthetic perversion. What is the basis of this aesthetic distinction? What makes folk performers (such as the figure of launda, joker, and Archestra girls) disdain figures in the larger aesthetic discourses?
Dr. Brahma Prakash is a writer, cultural theorist and an Assistant Professor of Theatre and Performance Studies at the School of Arts and Aesthetics at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He is a scholar of South Asian folk culture and performance traditions, and the author of the critically acclaimed book, Cultural Labour: Conceptualizing the ‘Folk Performance’ in India (Oxford University Press, 2019) and Body on the Barricades: Life, Art and Resistance in Contemporary India (LeftWord 2023).