‘The Protester, the Performer and a Common Political Imagination ‘ by Ruchi Chaturvedi

28th December 2019 / Event, Sociological Research Colloquium

Ruchi Chaturvedi presented his research entitled ‘The Protester, the Performer and a Common Political Imagination’ at the Sociological Research Colloquium.

When: Friday, 06th January 2017 at 3:00 p.m.

Where: Seminar Room (First Floor), Department of Sociology, University of Delhi 

Abstract

Recent popular protests in various parts of Africa, and the acclaimed Nigerian artist Jelili Atiku’s street performance during the 2012 ‘Occupy Nigeria’ movement are the key pivots of this presentation. It regards the protests and Atiku’s performance against the backdrop of writings on the so-called ‘lumpenproletariat,’ politics of the informal in Africa, and critical postcolonial perspectives on republican democracy. Together they enable us to reconstruct and reimagine the figure of the protester, her self, resistance, the place of the everyday common therein, and the very nature of the democracy we might aspire to.  

About the Speaker

Ruchi Chaturvedi teaches at the Department of Sociology, University of Cape Town. Her work primarily focuses on popular politics, cultures of democracy, and violence in postcolonial contexts. In the past, her research has been set in North Kerala; her present project and recent writings examine that relationship in more comparative frames—between parts of Africa and South Asia while taking greater cognizance of the current economic transformations in these regions.

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