The Rumour of Globalisation

Drawing from recent theories of virtuality, performativity, and governmentality, and on post-colonial activist scholarship from the global south, this book presents a series of ethnographic and archival studies of what Mukhopadhyay terms 'vernacular globalisation' in India. The book's six provocative but substantive chapters of the book engage a wide range of events, objects, histories, narratives and episodes with the intent of interrogating what Franz Fanon called the 'zone of occult instability where the people dwell.' these chapters recount tales of quotidian commodity fetishism of rural cargo cults thriving on bazaar rumours about Chinese dumping in communist Calcutta, signpost desi cyberporn showcasing 'fat aunties' and Gandhi, dig deep into Indo-Persian travelogues about england and women's travel narratives to Japan embodying local traditions of cosmopolitanism, interrogate folk scroll paintings about 9/11 in the art historical mode and seek to uncover vernacular civic traditions of urbanism through an analysis of grotty slum photographs. The Rumour of Globlization presents facades of vernacular india negotiating globalising forces through a distinctive style of ethnography (fabulation) which is sensitive to subaltern political aspirations while maintaining a broad commitment to Marxist theory, Subaltern Studies scholarship and post-structuralist theory.