Centre for the Study of Social Systems
School of Social Sciences
CSSS Colloquium
Carola Erika Lorea
(Research Fellow, University of Heidelberg)
Will be presenting a paper on
Oral Repertoires of Religion and Displacement: Performed Homeland(s) around the Bay of Bengal
Date & Time: February 22nd, 2018 (Thursday), 3.00 pm
Venue: CSSS Committee Room, SSS-II
Abstract: In the heart of the Bay of Bengal, some seventy years ago, thousands of uprooted, landless agriculturists were asked to transform a jungle into their new home. They were given a free plot of land, free agricultural tools, manure, and some musical instruments. They kept alive drumming patterns, ritual dance, and the innumerable songs 'from back home' composed by their gurus, which transmit a theology of social mobility and resistance. Partition memories of loss and displacement were re-enacted in a collective space that easily slips from the historiographer: a space of identity-making built upon performativity and soundscapes. History has been dominated by reliance upon texts and narrative testimonies, underscoring the discursive sources that can be found in musical and kinesthetic practices. Extending our notion of archive in order to include other vehicles of cultural expression, I present some examples of the ritual and performative practices of a “diaspora of untouchables” and their verbal arts, in order to investigate the confluence between displacement, religion, and transnational connectivity.
Bio: Dr Carola Erika Lorea is a scholar interested in oral traditions and popular religions in South Asian as well as diasporic contexts. After a doctoral research on the songs of a Bengali Baul guru and their performative contexts (2015, University of Rome), she was awarded postdoctoral fellowships at IIAS, Gonda Foundation (Leiden) and SAI (Heidelberg) to continue her research on Bengali oral literature and post-Partition displacement. She authored several articles on contemporary folklore and esoteric songs, translated into Italian the works of Jibanananda Das and Nabarun Bhattacharya, and was socially engaged as an interpreter for Bangladeshi refugees for several years in Italy. In her parallel life besides academia, she is a teacher and performer of aerial acrobatics. Her research monograph Folklore, Religion and the Songs of a Bengali Madman: a Journey Between Performance and the Politics of Cultural Representation was recently published by Brill (Leiden, 2016).