Neurotic Realism Cinema, Otherness and the New Indian Middle Class

<strong>CENTRE FOR MEDIA STUDIES SCHOOL OF SOCIAL SCIENCES</strong> a talk by <strong>Dr. Sarunas Paunksnis</strong> (Assistant Professor, Kaunas University of Technology, Kaunas, Lithuania &amp;Visiting Fellow, CMS, JNU.) <strong>on</strong> <strong>Neurotic Realism Cinema, Otherness and the New Indian Middle Class</strong> <strong>DATE: 13th April 2016</strong> Neoliberalism in India has created spaces not belonging to "shining", neoliberal India and signifying everything the "new" self is not. New realism, a peculiar film form as part of "new" India's visual culture is instrumental both in constructing, and representing the new dichotomies of self and Other. Other in this case might mean otherness that manifests itself as formless outside space infused with fear, violence and barbarity – a space of north Indian village. New realist films often focus on the space that is peripheral to the class they are aimed at – this space can be the urban underworld, uncanny middle class space, or a mofussil periphery. The films construct what I would like to term the Other India, but in any case, gazing is performed from the metropolis, and it is directed at the space in-between, both real and imagined at the same time, a space we may call heterotopian. These problems – of the self, of the Other, of home and border – are articulated throughout the new realism, the new entertainment, or what one can call a neurotic realism. Neoliberalism can be understood as working through neurosis, forging a neurotic subject: subject who experiences constant anxiety at home (home must be protected from the outside threats), as well as outside the homely space. The paper shall address these issues by looking at two recent films that evoke these tensions – NH10 (dir. Navdeep Singh, 2015) and Highway (dir. Imtiaz Ali, 2014). Sarunas Paunksnis is an Assistant Professor in Media Philosophy at Kaunas University of Technology in Kaunas, Lithuania, and a Visiting Fellow at Centre for Media Studies, JNU. Previously he held visiting fellowships at SOAS, London; Columbia University, New York; as well as JNU. His main research areas include but are not limited to Indian cinema, postcolonial theory, cultural theory, postmodernism, Globalization. He has recently edited and published a book titled Dislocating Globality: Deterritorialization, Difference and Resistance (Brill, 2015), and is currently working on a book on Hindi cinema.