Location
Lovejoy 212
Start Date
1-5-2014 9:00 AM
End Date
1-5-2014 10:30 AM
Project Type
Presentation
Description
The purpose of the project is to philosophically argue and elicit issues related to exclusion that arise within the framework of a community. Communities consist of a certain group of individuals with certain attributes and a set of rules governing their interactions with each other and those outside their community. This phenomenon of a communitys existence is characterized by its social rules: who constitutes it, who is excluded from it, how one is excluded and why. This is the idea I want to invoke when I refer to community. Understanding that the rules vary according to communities, I look at the nature of exclusion, given a community and its specific rules and agents, in relation to power hierarchies.I explore this discourse on community by focusing on the Hijra community in Dhaka city, Bangladesh, a social group excluded from the civil sphere of mainstream community life. The Hijra are a historical subculture of transwomen in South Asia whose exclusion from the civil sphere in Bangladesh has been forcing them into begging and prostitution. Through these studies, I investigate what assumptions, of personhood and rules, the agents have within the Hijra community and in the mainstream community. These allow me to understand the foundations of the respective communities and how it connects to the exclusion of the Hijras from the civil sphere.I analyze the community issues as they pertain to the Hijras using Charles Mills concept of racialized spaces, invisibility, ideological conditioning and violence, Michel Foucaults disciplinary power and biopower, Frantz Fanons over-determination due to ones racial embodiment, Robert Gooding-Williams usage of Jean-Paul Sartres seeing, being seen, seeing as being seen, and Wendy Browns critique of depoliticization of identity issues.
Faculty Sponsor
Laine Thielstrom
Sponsoring Department
Colby College. Philosophy Dept.
CLAS Field of Study
Social Sciences
Event Website
http://www.colby.edu/clas
ID
626
Issues of Community: Rules of Exclusion ft. the Hijras of Dhaka City, Bangladesh
Lovejoy 212
The purpose of the project is to philosophically argue and elicit issues related to exclusion that arise within the framework of a community. Communities consist of a certain group of individuals with certain attributes and a set of rules governing their interactions with each other and those outside their community. This phenomenon of a communitys existence is characterized by its social rules: who constitutes it, who is excluded from it, how one is excluded and why. This is the idea I want to invoke when I refer to community. Understanding that the rules vary according to communities, I look at the nature of exclusion, given a community and its specific rules and agents, in relation to power hierarchies.I explore this discourse on community by focusing on the Hijra community in Dhaka city, Bangladesh, a social group excluded from the civil sphere of mainstream community life. The Hijra are a historical subculture of transwomen in South Asia whose exclusion from the civil sphere in Bangladesh has been forcing them into begging and prostitution. Through these studies, I investigate what assumptions, of personhood and rules, the agents have within the Hijra community and in the mainstream community. These allow me to understand the foundations of the respective communities and how it connects to the exclusion of the Hijras from the civil sphere.I analyze the community issues as they pertain to the Hijras using Charles Mills concept of racialized spaces, invisibility, ideological conditioning and violence, Michel Foucaults disciplinary power and biopower, Frantz Fanons over-determination due to ones racial embodiment, Robert Gooding-Williams usage of Jean-Paul Sartres seeing, being seen, seeing as being seen, and Wendy Browns critique of depoliticization of identity issues.
https://digitalcommons.colby.edu/clas/2014/program/174