| ID | 171297 |
| Title Proper | Fleeting taste of mazaa |
| Other Title Information | from embodied philology to an alegropolitics for South Asia |
| Language | ENG |
| Author | Kabir, Ananya Jahanara |
| Summary / Abstract (Note) | Through a methodology that I term ‘embodied philology’, I trace a genealogy of mazaa as an understanding of enjoyment calibrated through the indices of taste and time. Using this genealogy to mark out an ‘alegropolitics’, or a politics of happiness, I extract its political potential in two ways: first, by assessing it through scholarship on the archive, repertoire, and what Spanish calls sabor, and, second, by applying these ideas, gleaned largely through scholarship from Latin America, to the assessment of Bollywood’s masala repertoire and film star Govinda’s role therein. Govinda’s subscription to a Bhojpuri performativity leads me to relocate mazaa within a decolonising agenda for pleasure formed through transnational and cross-border communities united by an embodied memory of collective enjoyment. A vignette from the 2018–19 Kochi-Muziris Biennale allows me to demonstrate how such memory may be activated to transform the present. |
| `In' analytical Note | South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies Vol. 43, No.2; Apr 2020: p.243-254 |
| Journal Source | South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies 2020-04 43, 2 |
| Key Words | Temporality ; Taste ; Alegropolitics ; Archive and Repertoire ; Bollywood Dance ; Embodied Philology ; Enjoyment ; Govinda ; Mazaa ; Post - Colonial Pleasure ; Sabor |