Date: December 8, 2016 (Thursday) 15:30-17:30
Venue: CSEAS (Center for Southeast Asian Studies), Kyoto University, Inamori Foundation Memorial Building, 201 (Tonan-tei)

Program:
15:30－15:35
Introduction

15:35－16:35
*”Looking Askance: Historical time and the recovery of new scripts in South and Southeast Asia”*
*by Dr. Nishaant Choksi　(JSPS Postdoctoral Fellow, Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Kyoto University.

16:35-16:50
Discussant: *Dr. Ken MacLean* (Associate Professor, Department of
International Development, Community, and Environment, Clark University and
Visiting Research Scholar, CSEAS, Kyoto University)

16:50-17:30
Open Discussion

ABSTRACT:
*Dr. Nishaant Choksi　”Looking Askance: Historical time and the recovery of new scripts in South and Southeast Asia”*

In the twentieth century, minority language communities throughout out South and Southeast Asia have been involved in the creation of unique orthographic scripts to represent their languages. While many outsiders have seen this as the result of literacy initiatives and the rise of identity-politics in the postcolonial nation-state, the narratives surrounding these scripts within communities ranging from the Santal (India) to the Lahu, Kachin, and Hmong (Southeast Asia) talk about these scripts as having been “recovered” from the hoary past.

These recovery narratives of the recently developed orthographies contradict the developmental view of literacy, in which reading and writing are seen as markers of progress, instantiating a view of time that saturates the present with a lost past recovered from the dustbin of history. The talk will draw on Walter Benjamin’s discussion of the “angel of history” who looks ask askance to the past as it moves forward, suggesting that scripts arise in a political moment of suturing, where communities seek to assert alternative historical visions following the violence of dislocation, migration, and upheaval brought about by state-formation in the Asian post-colonies.

*Nishaant Choksi* received his PhD from the University of Michigan in Linguistic Anthropology. His research focuses on the Austro-Asiatic speaking ethnic minorities in eastern India such as Santal and Munda. He has written on script politics, media production, minority-language education, and on issues in Austro-Asiatic linguistics. He is currently a JSPS Postdoctoral Fellow affiliated with the Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Kyoto University.

Zomia Study Group contacts: Koichi Fujita, Hisashi Shimojo, Mio Horie