Educational Philosophy and Theory

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Gadfly or praying mantis? Three philosophical

perspectives on the Delhi student protests

N. Y. Manoj , Joff P. N. Bradley & Alex Taek-Gwang Lee

To cite this article: N. Y. Manoj , Joff P. N. Bradley & Alex Taek-Gwang Lee (2020): Gadfly or
praying mantis? Three philosophical perspectives on the Delhi student protests, Educational
Philosophy and Theory, DOI: 10.1080/00131857.2020.1823211

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/00131857.2020.1823211

Published online: 24 Sep 2020.

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EDUCATIONAL PHILOSOPHY AND THEORY
https://doi.org/10.1080/00131857.2020.1823211

EDITORIAL

Gadfly or praying mantis? Three philosophical perspectives

on the Delhi student protests

Introduction
Here presented are three singular, philosophical perspectives on the Delhi student protests
which took place in 2019 and 2020, before the coronavirus pandemic. The writers hail from
India, England and Korea and use a plethora of philosophical concepts – European and Asian –
to make sense of the youthful act of speaking truth to power.

1. The Jamia1 protests 2019–20: evental possibilities

To break with dogmatism, the event must be released from every tie to the One. It must be subtracted
from Life in order to be released to the stars. (Badiou, 2007, p. 42)

This is a critical reflection on my academic life, as a subject who engages in a critical dialogue
with the political present which constitutes the discussions, debates and protests at my univer-
sity. As this is an epistemic as well as ontological engagement—the act of knowing and to know
oneself—one needs to be aware of the logic of worlds (presentation) which structures the mul-
tiple. This is what Kant in his critical philosophy refers to as the transcendental, which means the
conditions for the possibility of experience. The subjective disposition hinted here seems to
invoke the position of an auto-ethnographer which combines the elements of graphy (analysis),
auto (self) and ethno (cultural experience) – (Ellis, 2004; Holman Jones, 2005). While the subjectiv-
ity of the (auto) ethnographer is contested in the theoretical context of the anti-humanist posi-
tions embraced by post-structuralist theories, Alain Badiou’s theory of multiplicity comes to the
rescue here as his mathematical ontology refutes the possibility of the One in thinking the multi-
ples as multiples. This theory also brings in a typology of situations and offers a philosophical sys-
tem which discerns the structure of disparate situations in which the subject appears. The
subject in Badiou is not a Cartesian subject, but it is one subjectivized by the event, in its fidelity
to a new development. It is a becoming subject of the individual qua the event, or the evental
subject. The subject in question is connected to the event in terms of a “generic truth”, the pro-
cedures of which are undertaken in four major areas—love, science, art and politics. Amongst
these, the generic procedures apropos politics anticipate a collective subject, unlike the individ-
ual subjects and mixed subjects in other cases. Thus apart from the discerning of structure, gen-
eric procedures also shed light on events, truths and subjects.
The Badiouan conceptual schema of the event is an interesting vantage point from which to
explore the kaleidoscopic happenings that constitute the “eventality” of the student protests of
Jamia Millia Islamia, in New Delhi, in 2019–20. The protests that started from the Jamia campus,
which eventually expanded across the country, were mainly against the Hindu nationalist gov-
ernment’s attempt to subject India’s citizens to a count, “the regime of count as one” (Badiou
2005, p. 522) that resulted in the ostensible exclusion of Muslims. The well-defined subtracted
set created out of this ‘count of the count’ was exclusionary, breaching the principles of the

1
Jamia in the Urdu language means ‘university’ and Millia means ‘national’. The nationalist spirit and radical political
activism of the university was aligned with the larger anti-colonial politics laid out by Gandhi.
ß 2020 Philosophy of Education Society of Australasia
2 EDITORIAL

“Gandhian notion of nation” based on peace and social harmony, and the Ambedkarite notion of
constitutional democracy and democratic nationalism (Guru, 2020, p. 9). One of the unique fea-
tures of this protest of national import was that it was led by female students; a collective sub-
ject connected to the event in terms of a generic truth procedure. It is at the same time an
amorphous collective invoking the ontological infinity of the situation and an intrinsic universal-
ity of thought in the political (Badiou, 2006a, p. 143).
As Badiou notes: “To exist as a multiple is always belonging to a multiplicity. To exist is to be
an element of. There is no other possible predication of existence as such. The immediate conse-
quence is that to exist is to be in a situation” (Badiou & Hallward, 1998, p. 130). It is clear here
that nothing can really surpass the count or being in a situation. The idea of the minimal found-
ing set of a situation or the “multiple as one” will always border on the edge of void, which slips
the consistent into inconsistent multiplicity. Thus the void or the empty set is always barred
from being present, though it nonetheless marks its presence in all the regimes of presentation
and leaves a trace which is unintelligible to the order of situation. It is a signification of the exist-
ence of the unpresentable and thus an existential claim (Badiou, 2005, p. 67). Ontology accounts
for this sort of exclusion governed by the metastructure pertaining to multiplicity. In summary, it
is concerned with the ways of counting, and hence the importance of mathematical ontology.

Art, protest, and the creation of the new

The ramifications of the protest that started at Jamia Millia Islamia were far-reaching as the
refrains of freedom that echoed through the walls of the institution resonated across the nation
and facilitated various forms of protest and acts of solidarity in universities across the world. The
lines of flight, the journeys outwards, were precisely the adventure of the refrain of freedom
“synthesising a multiplicity of elements without effacing their heterogeneity or hindering their
potential for future rearranging” (Massumi, 1992, p. 6). The question then arises: how can we
account for the multiplicity that the evental protest of Jamia offers? In Badiouan parlance, reality
is critically interrogated in terms of the transfinite set theory laying out a mathematical founda-
tion to ontology, which is the multiple of multiples or infinite multiples. Any given situation is a
particular ordering of this inconsistent multiplicity into a consistent multiple as one (Badiou,
2005, p. 93). In general, a set is defined as a collection of elements ordered in terms of the rela-
tion of belonging and inclusion. For Badiou, “every element of a set is itself a set. This accom-
plishes the idea that every multiple is a multiple of multiples, with no reference to units of any
kind” (Badiou, 2006b, p. 41). Ontology is no more associated with the essence of the element
but its relation is one of belonging with the particular set. Thus, it enables us to think of multi-
ples as multiples, thereby escaping the question of essence or One.
The power set of the initial set, which is the configuration of all the possible subsets and
every subset itself being a multiple, can exceed the initial set. The new assemblages that these
subsets of the protest formed, helped us to conceive it as a radical multiplicity in terms of its
grammar and language of resistance.
The set of resistance was populated by paintings, street plays, slam poetry, sartorial displays,
calligraphic art on scarfs, posters, murals, the poetry of Faiz, Pash, Jalib and Dinkar, graffiti on
the walls of Jamia and at Shaheen Bagh, art installations at India Gate marked by the names of
protestors, a huge iron installation of the Indian map pronouncing the anti-CAA slogans, the set-
ting up of libraries and reading rooms outside the classrooms for learning the language of humili-
ation and peace, and the simulation of detention centres depicting the dark days ahead. The
protest art that filled the site was performed by “a thousand artists”, hence it remained anonym-
ous. Anonymity also was a political weapon to escape the state apparatus of capture, for this
faceless artistic endeavour configured an incorporeal count, the multitude—a people yet to come.
 EDUCATIONAL PHILOSOPHY AND THEORY 3

Apart from the protest art, the sit-in women protest at Shaheen Bagh was replicated in vari-
ous places across Delhi and India challenging the stereotypical image of women in Hijab and
the anti-democratic practices attributed to Islam. The protests and street art of Jamia and
Shaheen Bagh was sustained by the internal structure of the refrains of freedom, which was
expressed in the form of civil disobedience in the line from Varun Grover’s poem, “hum khagaz
nahi dikhayenge” (we will not show the documents), the language of freedom in azadi songs like
“bol ke lab azad hain tere” (speak for your lips are yet free), and the evocation of the language
of love against hatred – “hum yuva hai baat karenge, nahi ghusa lat karenge/dilli police baat karo,
aao hamare saath chalo” (we are the youth who just want to talk, and not punch or kick/Delhi
police come to us, come together and walk with us).
Another exceptional instance of deterritorialization of the protest was the use of the trad-
itional ritual of kolam (drawing using rice flour as part of the religious tradition) as a way to
express dissent in Chennai and Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters reading out of the Aamir Aziz’s protest
poem starting with sab yad rakha jayega (everything will be remembered). The technology-art
interface – specifically the usage of instagram filters replicating the graffiti and art in a militant
manner – is another instance of the power set exceeding the initial set.
The slogans of the Lebanon protesters calling for revolution across the world, the revolution-
ary slogans of the Sudanese protestor Alaa Salah, the use of the Palestinian phrase ‘intifada
inquilab’ in protest songs, and the use of the protest song from Tahrir Square (ala ala ala tahrir,
ala ala ala soura) were all incorporated into the multiplicity of the protest. Again, this warrants
the Badiouan claim of the strange status of a subset which may not be present or represented
but can account for a different order or a different count.

Jamia as the evental site

The events at Jamia were mediated by the subject in its fidelity to the truth of the event. The
notion of belonging and inclusion in terms of presentation is central in defining the “excess”
which leads to the constitution of event (Badiou, 2005, p. 97). Certain subsets may not be pre-
sented but can be possibly represented because of the specific count that the metastructure
imposes on it. Badiou argues: “there is always – whatever a is – at least one element (here y) of
p(a) which is not an element of a” (Badiou, 2005, p. 85). This excess remains indecipherable and
different from the initial count which challenges the normative logic of constitution enunciated
by the traditional theories. In the case of the Jamia protest, the excess is presented in the Hijab-
clad women questioned and confronted the police and thereby were a faithful subject in fidelity
to the event.
The famous work by the Tamil filmmaker Ponvannan, which is entitled “One Finger
Revolution” has become the central image of the protest. To quote Ponvannan, “When I saw the
emotion on her face, that was a defining moment for me. It felt like that emotion did not need
any explanation and a new revolution has begun” (Agarwal, 2020). The image of the reprimand-
ing finger of Ayesha Renna, a student of Jamia Millia Islamia, who courageously stood up to the
shielded and armed policemen in her act of parrhesia can be considered as the evental subject,
representing a thousand faceless Hijab-clad women raising slogans, chanting prayers and
upholding the morality of the constitution and thus, the truth.
This is also a sign as to why Jamia Millia Islamia can be considered as the evental site. But
before that let us see how an evental site is different from a singular multiple and how it is con-
nected to the event. In the typology of situation as laid out by Badiou, the singular multiple –
which is present but not represented – informs the danger of inconsistency and opens up a
crack heralding the possibility of a new ordering. The proletariat in Marxist parlance could be
considered a singular multiplicity. But this excess or surplus which is unrepresented does not
really lead us to an event, and hence Badiou introduces the concept of the “evental site” which
4 EDITORIAL

he calls an abnormal multiple: “I will term the evental site an entirely abnormal multiple; that is
a multiple such that none of its elements are presented in the situation. The site, itself is pre-
sented, but ‘beneath’ it nothing from which it is composed is presented. As such, the site is not
a part of the situation. I will say of such a multiple that it is on the edge of the void, or
foundational” (Badiou, 2005, p. 175). The evental site though is present as a set, but none of its
elements are presented as such and is not part of the order (situation). This marks the difference
between singular multiplicity and evental site – the evental site at once totally singular and
anonymous (not represented) constitutes the fundamental mathematical strength of an event.
Jamia is singular in terms of its genesis, instituted not as “a clerical model of university” but
rather born out of the political reasoning of Gandhi in the wake of the Non-cooperation and
Khilafat movement (Zaidi, 2019). It is singular because of its close relationship to the community.
Although the university is spatially demarcated from the community, its belongingness has been
tested many times previously when the community structure was in question or being blamed
for crimes and misdemeanours. The evental site of Jamia is presented, but the elements of that
set, the non-literate and literate women clad in Hijabs, from which it is composed, are not pre-
sented, “as the women of Shaheen Bagh were further behind, a little beyond the unknown”
(Farooqi, 2020, p. 13). This constituent element of the protest marked its difference from that of
the standardized protests at Jantar Mandir, “as the protestor is endowed with a different vantage
point of belonging” (Farooqi, 2020, p. 14). This constitutes the fundamental void on whose edge
is the event. The evental site is not the pure multiple, but borders on the edge of the void leav-
ing behind a trace of appearance provoking a new thought vis-a-vis being qua being. This is pos-
sible through a specific transgressive self-referential multiple that belongs to the evental site, the
event, “the being of non-being” or “trans-beings” (Badiou, 2005, p. 183), the appearance of which
is the vanishing itself. Badiou also argues that the events belonging “to the situation of its site is
undecidable from the standpoint of the situation itself” (Badiou, 2005, p. 18). This undecidability
of its belonging opens up the possibility of a subjective enunciation of truth or the birth of an
evental subject through the truth procedures laid out by art, politics, love and science. As the
protest poet Amir Aziz writes “tum zameen pe zulm likh do/aasmaan pe inquilab likha jayega”
(You will write injustice on the earth/we will write revolution in the sky); it heralds new forms of
resistance and the possibility of new subjectivities. The student protest at Jamia Millia Islamia
raises the question of being, truth procedures, and the evental transformative and disappearing
subject which exposes us to the risk of truth. Hence the relevance of this event – the student
protests of Jamia Millia Islamia.

2. Gadfly or praying mantis?

I had been writing on the Greek concept of parrhesia [paqqgrίa] before I travelled to India, hav-
ing come across a strange translation of parrhesia in my Japanese dictionary rendered as 蟷螂の
斧を振るう [to shake a sword in vain at a praying mantis] – meaning to kick against the pricks. As
far as I can discern in some of the interpretations I have read, the mantis prays like an inspired
prophet full of passion and spirit yet is also full of cruelty and greed hidden in hypocritical
prayer. The point is that confronting this insect is an ephemeral, useless act of resistance.
Nevertheless, it demands courage which is much prized in Japanese and Chinese. At first glance
and for the most part, the translation of the idiom sounds defeatist and is probably derived from
a translation from the Acts of the Apostles in the Bible which has a reference to the kicks from
cattle prodded to move. Other idioms close to this interpretation include: to throw straws
against the wind; the elephant does not feel a flea-bite; a grasshopper leaping against the sun
and the fly trying to bite the tortoise, all of which suggest the impotence of speaking truth
to power.
 EDUCATIONAL PHILOSOPHY AND THEORY 5

Yet in India, all of these ethereal etymological and metaphysical meanderings soon evaporated
and parrhesia became actual; the students at Jamia taught a striking lesson. Against the idea that
it is no use kicking against the pricks of life as the praying mantis will inevitably win out, the other
view is to insist that not to speak freely and openly is tantamount to slavery. There must be fear-
less honesty, a frankness of speech, a difficulty in telling the truth (Besley & Peters, 2007), in other
words, the task of speaking plainly and contrary to the way of the world. Against empty speech,
truth telling puts everything in question and much at risk. There must be the corruption of corrup-
tion (Badiou, 2015; Badiou et al., 2018; Badiou & Spitzer 2017; Besley & Peters, 2019).
Throughout the month of February 2020, I was staying on the sprawling campus of Jamia
Millia Islamia in the south of New Delhi. I had been there several times but not under these
unique political circumstances. This time, something quite different was happening as many of
the walls of the campus were freshly painted with graffiti expressing the students’ desire for
transformation and revolution – Inquilab Zindabad – Long Live the Revolution. Something had
been put into motion by the student body.
Outside the gates of the otherwise quiet campus was an almighty racket continuing into the
wee hours every night. A maelstrom of songs and chants and cheers. The students had built an
enclave to protest the Modi government’s decision to pass the Citizenship Amendment Bill in
December 2019. Critics say the changes to India’s Citizenship Act of 1955, that is, changes to the
naturalization process for acquiring citizenship, inherently discriminate against Muslims, and may
leave millions of Muslims effectively without citizenship. Given the student demographic at
Jamia, which has more 19,000 students and a substantial Muslim student body, the university
soon became the epicenter of protest, with police entering the campus, intimating the staff and
students, under the pretext of quelling unrest.
As I walked from the guest house to the research center where I was teaching, I passed
through this enclave and saw students painting, singing, discussing, reading, and listening to the
many speeches aired over loud tannoys. On my way to and fro, I walked through the dozens
and dozens of Indian policemen and armed soldiers, policemen and soldiers who were waiting
for something to happen on either side of the barricades; policemen and soldiers who were
there to ostensibly protect the students from acts of retaliation by the public at large or to cur-
tail any unlawful activity by students, should it manifest.
The Indian students were kicking against the pricks. I came to appreciate the meaning of the
act of kicking against the pricks. But this cannot be simply taken in the slang sense of acts of
violence against the male genitalia. And the etymological, biblical meaning is somewhat differ-
ent. The sense given to it by the students seems to me to be consistent with Gandhi’s teachings
of satyagraha [सत् य ाग् र ह] or non-violent civil disobedience, which again is somewhat different
than the straightforward sense of passive resistance. I find a connection between satyagraha and
parrhesia (see Cervera-Marzal, 2012, pp. 1–2) as satya means truth and implies both love and
firmness and agraha can be seen synonymous with force. Together they suggest a force born of
truth, love and non-violence. I have been fascinated with the concept of parrhesia ever since
Foucault popularized the concept in lectures at the University of California at Berkeley and upon
his return to France in lectures delivered at the College de France in 1982–1983. In those classes
Foucault describes parrhesia as the “foundation of free-spokenness” (Foucault et al., 2010, p.
114), the “foundation stone” of democracy (p. 155). Foucault asks: what does it mean to tell the
truth, to speak truth to power and how does one do this all the while aware of the prospect of
violence and in fear for one’s life? In modern democracies, it seems to me this is the philoso-
pher’s question par excellence. The philosopher is the one who must tell the truth. Writing in
Indian Opinion in 1908, this is indeed the message of Gandhi who says of Socrates that he was
the incarnation of a satyagrahi, a “soldier of truth” (satyavir) – (Gandhi, 1962). Gandhi says we
must learn to live and risk dying like Socrates. To corrupt youth like Socrates then in some sense
is to be both a satyagrahi and to practice epimeleia heautou or the care of the self – (Foucault &
Pearson, 2001, p. 92).
6 EDITORIAL

Parrhesia seems to me to be consistent with satyagraha in the sense that it is to “fight a spir-
itual war” within oneself (Foucault & Pearson, 2001, p. 133). It can be read as a “psychagogical,”
that is, as “the transmission of a truth whose function is not to endow any subject whomsoever
with abilities [defined in advance], but whose function is to modify the mode of being of the
subject to whom we address ourselves” (Foucault, 2005, p. 407). More than this, it is an ascetic
practice, a care and cultivation of the soul – a naked transmission. What is at stake is the forma-
tion of the self or what Guattari (1995) calls the resingularisation of subjectivity.
Throughout February, I came to understand the importance of Gandhi’s concept of satyagraha
or truth-force (Caygill, 2015). After all I was staying in Jamia, the university which Gandhi sup-
ported in its establishment in 1920. Now the students were practicing satyagraha or peaceful
protest. At risk, in fear, they spoke, freely, boldly and joyfully – as parrhesiastes, epimeleia heau-
tou, that is the one who uses parrhesia, the “one who speaks the truth” (Foucault & Pearson,
2001, p. 11). The active practice of satyagraha was evident in everyday life. The students tidied
the streets, orchestrated the busy traffic which was contorting its way around the barricades.
Students sang, painted, discussed and studied nonviolently and earnestly. They saw something
profoundly wrong with their society and struggled against it.
Growing up in Northern England, I fell in love with Gandhi’s philosophy when I was a teen-
ager after reading his autobiography The Story of My Experiments with Truth published in 1927
(Gandhi, 2018). From my mother, a cotton mill worker from Burnley, I learned that Gandhi came
through Bolton to explain to workers in Blackburn and Darwen in Lancashire that the Indians
were going to make and sell their own textiles. Gandhi traveled to the home of the industrial
revolution to explain to Northern English workers the necessity for India to become self-suffi-
cient. This deeply impressed me. And now with my own eyes, in Jamia, I saw firsthand how
many years later the students and indeed teachers were practicing satyagraha, parrhesia and
ahiṃsa  (अहिं स ा) or nonviolence. They were putting philosophy both ancient and modern, both
European and Indian, to work, to change the world for the better. I remain deeply humbled by
this. I wonder why students in many countries around the world, like those in Japan, South
Korea, Singapore or mainland China, do not feel the necessity to change the existing order of
things for the better, to reclaim their right to speak freely and honestly and totally. I wonder
where the fervor and energy has gone to transform the world for the better.
Through the creation and experimentation with art and graffiti, students wrote and painted in
a wonderfully humorous and ironic sense, although there was evident anger on the streets and
in their hearts. They students opened up a new space, an “irruptive event” as Foucault calls it,
which “creates a fracture and opens up a risk” (Foucault et al., 2010, p. 38; Simpson, 2012, p. 99;
). As there were intermittent blackouts of Internet data services in politically tense areas in the
capital, which critics believe was a deliberate attempt by the Modi government to stop people
gathering to protest against the citizenship law, students remained defiant of established power
relations and demonstrated concretely that one can create, organize and protest without SNS,
communication devices, and text messaging.
Some of the posters and placards around Jamia Millia Islamia had messages in English which
read “ideas are bullet proof” – (a film quote from V for Vendetta), “no flag is large enough to
cover the shame of killing innocent people”, "no to citizenship on the basis of religion”. A Jamia
Coordination Committee poster urged “read for revolution: a protest of its own kind” and contin-
ued “Our library might have been vandalised but this cannot stop us from reading”. I noticed
some graffiti inside the campus read: “India reads that’s why India resists” and others said “have
the courage to speak before it’s too late”. Others were more overtly political: “Let people of all
faiths come together to fast as a form of remembrance, prayer and protest against NRC-CAA-
NPR” [National Register of Citizens, the Citizenship Amendment Act, National Population
Register], “no to saffronization” (which pertains to right-wing policies which impose a Hindu
nationalist agenda onto Indian history) and “the students of Jamia Millia Islamia have been vio-
lently attacked by the police”.
 EDUCATIONAL PHILOSOPHY AND THEORY 7

On the walls and indeed underneath one’s feet on the roads of the city, students practiced a
visual parrhesia or direct speech, despite the acute awareness of the dangers of what they were
doing. I say this because on more than one occasion students had been attacked and indeed
fired upon by disgruntled political opponents, Hindu nationalists or fanatical supporters of the
Modi government. The protest which had been ongoing since December also took place amid
other high political tensions as Jamia commemorated the 72nd anniversary of Gandhi’s assassin-
ation on January 30th. This led to heightened police presence around the campus to prevent a
backlash against the Muslim student community. Speaking truth to power has its cost. Moreover,
news reports abound that Delhi’s police were “complicit” in anti-Muslim riots, which took place
in February, the violence of which led to the deaths of 53 people, mostly Muslims. Police have
since been criticized for serious human rights violations during the riots.
Yet, the students in their enclave and behind their barricades created a temporary autono-
mous zone, a heterotopia (Foucault & Miskowiec, 1986). The students made a heterotopia,
painted the streets and the roads, put into effect a critical practice and proposed a vision of
another life. They created a nomos – a nomadic distribution as Deleuze says – as they literally
smoothed over the striated spaces of the polis with instances of graffiti and art painted on the
roads which passed the gates of the campus. Despite the chaos and danger, they put into prac-
tice an aesthetics of existence and imagined a new social configuration. This was in effect the
expression of the corruption of the corruption of language and power. Moreover, their language
concretely expressed what has become something of a mantra for Deleuze acolytes like the writ-
ers here – to produce circuit breakers that elude control, that is, to speak beyond the corruption
of rational communication (Deleuze, 1995, p. 175). Deleuze writes:
What relationship is there between the work of art and communication? None at all. A work of art is not an
instrument of communication. A work of art has nothing to do with communication. A work of art does not
contain the least bit of information. In contrast, there is a fundamental affinity between a work of art and
an act of resistance. (Deleuze & Lapoujade, 2007, pp. 322–323)

Ritornello
The time of protest follows a different rhythm or different ritornello in desiring and dreaming
assemblages. Time follows a different rhythm in manic construction, in assemblages of dance or
collective social production, in student protest and creative production. At Jamia, new refrains
emerged, escaping the obsessive, fixated and compulsion disorders of the police and authorities.
Students seized the emergent nomos – a new kind of open space or existential territory in once
occupied striated spaces:
It is necessary to try to register, through a concrete cartography of the assemblages of enunciation, how
the phenomena of the planes of consistency are jumped, what are the semiotic systems that allow passage
from the world of recognized significations to the world of a-signifying ritornellos constitutive of new
existential territories? (Guattari & Genosko, 1996, p. 133)

The students put philosophy to use, creating a refrain as “nomos” as Guattari says in The
Machinic Unconscious (Guattari, 2011, p. 107). They set out the constitutional stakes of Indian pol-
itics. They occupied a space and practiced music and song. Their territory was in song. They held
the street peacefully, meaningfully, creatively, with song and art, even as bullets whizzed by. This
was their existential territory and refrain. Students peacefully bypassed the logocentric position
of dictates from central government through a return to Gandhian philosophy and protest. They
developed a “co-operative intersemiotics of the multitude” (Fieni, 2016, p. 358) and occupied the
street. They manifested “a position of desire” (Deleuze & Guattari, 2006, p. 55). Graffiti on the
walls tagged the mobility of protest, while revealing the immobility of the police and authorities.
Art was a detournement of established convention, a little machine of change and
transformation:
8 EDITORIAL

We will never ask what a book means, as signified or signifier; we will not look for anything to understand
in it. We will ask what it functions with, in connection with what other things it does or does not transmit
intensities … a book itself a little machine. (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 4)

Students put technology to use to put desire into action. The interaction of graffiti and the
digital mobilized a fluid meshwork of street and digital networks. From handwritten leaflets to
online information sharing – open and joyful in the face of adversity. I agree with Fieni that the
graffiti and street art demand “new forms of literacy from us” (p. 362).
In this moment, if the true life was perceived as conspicuously absent in India, the students
nevertheless seized the opportunity to search for a new one. In this perilous time, students
related themselves truthfully to the impositions of false-speech and responded to the needs of
others in the manner of a hybrid Gandhi-Badiou subtractive destruction. This act of candid or fear-
less speech is always perilous and always a question of risk-taking but I am sure Gandhi would
have been proud to hear and bear witness to this ethic of steadfast speech.

3. Amateurism and the revival of art in the world of technology

In the interview with Cahiers du cinema in 1995, Jacques Ranciere suggested a reinterpretation
of the political meaning of cinephilia, a term which can be traced back to the heyday of the
French film production in the 1910s. Ranciere connects the cinephilia of the nouvelle vague, the
experimental movement of French cinema in the 1950s, and the crisis of cultural legitimacy.
Ranciere argued that the revival of cinephilia is necessary to resist the heritagization of the cine-
matic movement. He criticized its artificial homogenizing tendencies against the multiplication of
heterogeneous perspectives. Ranciere’s defense of cinephilia can be understood as the valoriza-
tion of amateurism in artistic practice.
Even though Ranciere did not mention the non-European dimension of cinema, it is note-
worthy to remark here that cinephilia re-materialized in the Korean nouvelle vague from the late
1980s and early 1990s. The boom of French cinema that Ranciere observed deeply influenced
the rise of the Korean cinematic movement. In my view, the reception of French cinephilia
brought forth the aesthetic dimension of the Korean new wave cinema, which emerged side by
side with the principle of equality in the process of Korean democratization. Bong Joon-ho’s
Parasite is a recent expression of this long revolution. Ranciere’s conceptualization of cinephilia is
firmly rooted in mass art as a key aspect of cinema. Here, technology is consistent with the main
feature of mass art. Ranciere puts forward the view that technology is not the mere medium of
art, but the milieu of artistic performance.
Before Ranciere, Walter Benjamin discusses how the introduction of the machine, e.g., photog-
raphy and cinema, into the artistic production changed the ontological condition of an artwork.
A machine as artist, the automatic operator of the technological sensorium, preserves the invis-
ible dimension of representation, or in Benjamin’s terms, the optical unconscious. However,
Benjamin hesitates to accept the artistic aspect of technology, but acknowledges the role of a
machine in technological reproduction as a replacement for the traditional concept of the artist.
Benjamin views the mechanical representation as traces and signs, not the re-distribution of the
sensible. Ranciere argues that the significant point of Benjamin’s discussion lies in the frag-
mented experience of technological reproduction, not in the series of mechanical reproduction.
According to Ranciere, what must be stressed in Benjamin’s conceptualization of technological
reproducibility is not the fact that specific photographs are infinitely reproducible, but rather
that “they are products of the machine age, the age of mass existence and the man of the
masses; and, moreover, that these products are also ways of training contemporaries how to
decipher this new lived world and orient themselves in it” (Ranciere & Corocoran, 2011, p. 37).
Technology, as the operation of mass art, is linked to an “indifferentiation” of technologies,
the “de-technologization of technology” in Ranciere’s terms. Meanwhile, Ranciere turns to
 EDUCATIONAL PHILOSOPHY AND THEORY 9

another view on the nature of technological effects, which regards the medium as milieu. This
perspective, identified in surrealism and futurism and so on, considers that the technological
medium like photography gives rise to a new sensory world in so far as its particular use resists
its generalized exercise. Away from these two points of view, Ranciere defends his own thesis
that “the idea of the medium’s specificity is always an idea of mediality” (Ranciere & Corocoran,
2011, p. 37). The technological medium, such as photography and film, is not only the technē of
recording the new sensory world, but also the very element of its construction. Ranciere’s notion
of technological mediality indicates the unity of three ideas: “an idea of medium, an idea of art
and an idea of sensorium within which this technological apparatus carries out the performances
of art” (Ranciere & Corocoran, 2011, p. 36). In this sense, the medium is not the means to an
end, but what always already lays down its end.
Ranciere’s conceptualization of the relationship between technology and art seems to grant
an insightful consideration into the exercise of mass art on the street, for instance, the perform-
ance of graffiti. The birth of cinema marked a transitory moment of artistic production, which
came along with the development of technology. After the Industrial Revolution, technology is
simply designated as an instrument. However, the idea of technē always exceeds the purpose of
the apparatus. Marx clearly understands the essence of machines as unnatural. For him, these
machines are “products of human industry; natural material transformed into organs of the
human will over nature, or of human participation in nature” (Marx & Nicolaus, 1993, p. 706). The
artistic use of technology is the transgressive dimension of the machines, which is sealed within
their formations. I would say, this excess of technology is where the amateurism of mass art
takes place, and the “multiplication” of machines creates the neutralized zone between what is
and what is not art (Ranciere & Corocoran, 2011, p. 43).
When I visited New Delhi in 2020, I encountered the Citizenship Amendment Act protests organ-
ized by students at Jamia Millia Islamia. What impressed me was the many graffiti and paintings on
the street. Sometimes, those images displayed the parody of official pictures, but most of them
were the symbolic representation of their political imaginations. They delivered various messages
and slogans about the meaning of the Indian constitution. Some pedestrians took pictures in front
of those works of art on the wall as they passed by. All the performances I witnessed at the venue
had neither organizer nor director, but also no distinction between artists and audiences, or further,
between art and non-art. The audiences who enjoyed the aesthetic performance on the street
seemed common folk, but nevertheless understood the artistic meaning of the messages. They sim-
ply used their mobile phones to join the cultural scenes and sang along with the songs that the pro-
testors performed. With technological instruments, they carried out multiple forms of participation
in the protests. Is this not the ignorant use of art regarded as non-artistic? It seems to me that tech-
nology extended the exercise of artistic performance to common audiences during the political
demonstrations and enhanced the aesthetic experiences on the street.
My experience of the Indian protests in 2020 allows me to question Benjamin’s hesitation in con-
sidering technological reproducibility as he separated the technical aspect of artistic reproduction
from the aura of an artwork. For him, technological artefacts like a photograph or film always reserve
the optical unconscious and thus must be interpreted accordingly. This idea leads him to the presup-
position that an author is a producer. In Benjamin’s sense, an author as a producer is an “operating
writer,” who discovers “situations,” not reproducing them, and an exemplary one who teaches other
writers (Benjamin & Jennings 1999, p. 777). As an intellectual, according to Benjamin, an author has
the feeling of solidarity more with the means of production than with the proletariat, owing to his or
her bourgeois education. There is a fundamental gap between a specialist and the proletariat. “New
Objectivity” produced by technology comes along with activism as far as the mediating activity can
make audiences pleased (Benjamin & Jennings 1999, p. 780). An author as a producer is the betrayer
of his or her origin, i.e., their orientation to the bourgeois class, and the destroyer of artistic tradition.
Benjamin’s conceptualization of the author as producer is the quintessential strategy of mod-
ernism. His defense of avant-garde art here aims at a political aesthetics opposed to rise of
10 EDITORIAL

fascism. However, his tactical aesthetics is not enough to explain the political implication of
mass art. The generalization of technology allows common audiences to reproduce what they
experience. Unlike Benjamin’s assumption, their technological reproduction is not the mere
recording of the worldly sensible, but instead the testing practice of it. Sometimes, their prod-
ucts seem more political than an author’s normative message. The amateurism of artistic practice
does not mean lower quality but rather a greater sense of the experimental and political.
Benjamin recognizes how political art is possible, that is, the re-composition of artistic appara-
tuses, in other words, the different use of technē against its original purpose, but he fails to
understand the neutralizing effects of technology. Amateurism must be viewed as the multiplica-
tion of apparatuses. The “technological turn” of art gives rise to the global scope of artistic ama-
teurism. Far from its instrumental purpose, technology embraces artistic moments within its
operation. Technology annihilates the particularity of the art and brings forth the “creating zones
of neutralization wherein technologies are indifferentiated and exchange their effects, where
their products present a multiplicity of gazes and readings, of zones of transfer between modes
of approaching objects, of the functioning of images and of the attribution of meanings”
(Ranciere & Corocoran, 2011, p. 43). The different use of technology against its end, i.e., the
experimental exercise of artistic reproduction, is nothing less than the political effects of ama-
teurism. This excessive practice of apparatuses promises the revival of art against the dissolution
of art in the globalized world of technological generalization.
The Delhi protest in 2019 and 2020 proves how the amateurism of art turns political through
the betrayal of what is perceived as art.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributors
Dr Manoj NY teaches at the Centre for Culture, Media and Governance, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi, India, and
is a visiting fellow at Kyung Hee University, Seoul, South Korea. He is the General Secretary of Deleuze and Guattari
Studies in India Collective.

Joff P.N. Bradley is Professor of English in the Faculty of Foreign Languages at Teikyo University, Tokyo, Japan.
Bradley is a visiting professor at Jamia Millia Islamia in New Delhi, India, and a visiting research fellow at Kyung
Hee University in Seoul, South Korea.

Alex Taek-Gwang Lee is Professor of Cultural Studies at Kyung Hee University in South Korea and a visiting profes-
sor at Jamia Millia Islamia in India. He is a member of the advisory board for The International Deleuze and
Guattari Studies in Asia and one of the founding members of Asia Theory Network (ATN).

ORCID
N. Y. Manoj http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1665-1396
Joff P. N. Bradley http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1036-2246
Alex Taek-Gwang Lee http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6315-6630

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N. Y. Manoj
Centre for Culture, Media and Governance, Jamia Millia Islamia [‫]ﺟﺎﻣﻌﮧ ﻣﻠﯿﮧ ﺍﺳﻼﻣﯿﮧ‬, New Delhi, India
manojny.net@gmail.com

Joff P. N. Bradley
Faculty of Foreign Languages, Teikyo University [帝京大学], Tokyo, Japan
joff@main.teikyo-u.ac.jp

Alex Taek-Gwang Lee

Global Centre for Technology in Humanities, Kyung Hee University [慶熙大学校], Seoul, South Korea
tglee@khu.ac.kr