Conclusion

The conclusion reiterates problems and challenges associated with the field of study. It reflects on the themes of cultural labour and its marginalization. I the ongoing problems and new hopes emerging from the field of artistic and cultural production. I conclude the work by suggesting that in coming days the site of cultural labour is going to be the site of cultural struggle. It may create spaces of hope not only in terms of cultural resistance but also for the reconfiguration new arts and creative practices.

Viscerality

This chapter discusses dugola (singer-duels) performance in the context of (Syn)aesthetics, which is a unique and sensual approach to the creative process (thinking, producing, receiving). It tries to contextualize the immersive environment in which the music is created, learned, and performed by the performers. Drawing from Eugenio Barba’s claim that performer’s energy is a readily identifiable quality, this chapter studies the principles on which the performers model their muscular and nervous power to intensify their performing capacity. As the intensity between two singer competitors grows, the performance space becomes a magnetic field and creates its affective presence. The performer’s body vibrates with full energy and songs and stories seem to flow in that energy. This chapter will discuss the creative process in which the ‘folk performance’ works in a local cultural context. In caste based Indian society, this (syn)aesthetics offers some unique characteristics of these performers.

Historiography

The historiography of ‘folk performance’ discusses the existing studies on the subject from the colonial period to the present and points out the discrepancies leading to methodological problems. Scholars have discussed the politics of cultural practice in the context of the colonial and nationalist politics, neo-colonial state’s cultural policies, and in the context of bourgeois morality and sexual politics. These criticisms have exposed the inherent class and gender biases of the colonialists, the nationalist and the middle class that lead to the disavowal of such performances. Nevertheless, these criticisms have remained primarily confined to the level of theatre historiography and counter-discourses. The work is an attempt to go beyond theatre the historiography and counter-discourse modes. It aims to take account of the mode of articulation coming from the alternative sources. Broadly, it discusses the legacies of marginalization that have become part of this performance tradition.

Introduction

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 labour in their affective and performative turn, especially in ‘folk’ performances 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.

Choreopolitics

Whether it has been the case of Kabir Kala Manch (KKM) in Maharashtra or Jana Naṭya Manḍali (JNM) in Andhra Pradesh, the labouring bodies of subaltern communities have made their presence felt by reconfiguring the language and aesthetics of political theatre performance in India. Expounding on the choreopolitics of labouring bodies, the chapter while discussing the shortcomings of the middle class led left cultural movements, also offers a critique to the ongoing criticisms coming from an essentialist and ahistorical reading of art and politics. The chapter takes up cultural labour and its transformative potential in the context of Gaddar and JNM. It shows the ways in which the ‘folk performance’ can be radically constituted for a transformative politics. Gaddar and JNM reconstitute the cultural labour by reclaiming the radical language and revolutionary subjectivities of labouring body.

Materiality

Bidesia can be literally translated as ‘the theatre of the migrants’ or theatre of the indentured labourers. It is a popular ‘folk performance’ from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh regions in eastern India. The performance emerged as a cultural response to the British era colonial out-migration of the nineteenth and early twentieth as a text of tribulation of those who were left behind, remembering those who often forcefully migrated to bides (foreign land) and pardes (another region). Based on the contemporary Bidesia (theatre of migrant labourers) in Bihar, this chapter argues how materiality remains core to the aesthetics of cultural labour and perhaps one of the main reasons for the denigration of ‘folk performances’ of the subaltern communities in India. While the power of bidesia rests in its materiality, the chapter shows how the same materiality become the problem of the bourgeois discourse.

Landscape

Bhuiyan puja is a land and ancestor worship in Bihar observed by the subaltern communities. This form of ritual worship is enacted across India and South Asia with different names. During the performance, the ancestor spirits enter the body of a shaman who represents ancestral figure who performs along with the drummers while praising the land and landscape. This chapter studies the production of the landscape in the light of mnemonic memory and lived experiences. What cultural labour produces is not just a piece of land, but rather a set of relationships with the land and a nexus of inhabitation, place and value. The landscape of the performances of cultural labour presents a complex system of relations of social and material forces in the context of time and cultural geography. This chapter examines the ways performance endows values in the landscape and changes space into place.

Performativity

Reshma-Chuharmal is a story of Reshma, the daughter of an upper-caste feudal landlord and Chuharmal, an untouchable warrior. For several decades, this particular story has been a bone of contention between the upper castes and lower castes in the south Bihar region. Performances based on the lower-caste versions have led to several caste atrocities and caste wars in Bihar. The chapter discusses how an oppressed caste uses all possible performance strategies and symbols, from subversive to regressive, in order to overcome its social and cultural marginality. The chapter not only shows the paradoxical nature of identity discourse but also reveals the paradoxical nature of these performances whose meaning and affect change with time, space, and genre.