Nicolas Martin

El abordaje especulativo de los problemas artísticos realizado por el philosophe Denis Diderot (1713-1784) a lo largo de su carrera, desde sus tempranos Pensamientos filosóficos (1746) hasta El sobrino de Rameau –obra póstuma que fascinó a Goethe– ha sido objeto de estudio de una bibliografía vastísima, algunas de cuyas tesis no dejan de sorprender al estudioso: no tanto por el carácter original o provocativo que presentan sino por el mucho más simple hecho de que, a menudo, suelen contradecirse entre sí.Esto resulta evidente cuando se revisa el modo en que nuestro autor, en consonancia con las preocupaciones epocales, concibe y elabora la relación entre las artes particulares, específicamente, entre la pintura y la poesía. En efecto –y aquí está lo que nos ha llamado la atención en nuestra investigación– críticos e historiadores del arte y de la literatura que han abordado desde una perspectiva histórica y teórica las implicancias del tópico ut pictura poesis en la tradición estética occidental toman frente a Diderot.

Ces entretiens sont le fruit de quatre rencontres qui, du mois de mai au mois de septembre 1999, ont eu lieu dans les environs de Paris. C'est dans l'ombre glacée du fascisme que Robert Misrahi, adolescent, entreprend de relier le désir et la réflexion. Doit-on s'étonner de ce premier pas philosophique? Précisons : pour Misrahi, ce n'est pas le refus de la barbarie mais la référence active au désir de joie qui ordonne le combat contre la barbarie. Contre le triomphe aveugle de l'économie de marché il installe la joie d'exister et la liberté. Et rien n'est généreux comme l'engagement qui fonde cette philosophie intempestive : ouvrir pour tous, les portes du bonheur véritable. En jetant cette philosophie de " la joie en acte " dans les contradictions de la société, nous avons demandé à Robert Misrahi de dire les conséquences politiques d'une utopie, concrète. Il s'engage sur des thèmes précis : " Il appartient à la puissance publique de légaliser l'euthanasie " ; " l'entrepreneur doit fabriquer de l'utile ou du beau, et pas seulement du profit " ; " La dépression c'est, peut-être, un peu comme l'hystérie à la fin du XIXe siècle, une habitude collective. " C'est ainsi que l'on découvre un philosophe impatient de répondre, serein souvent... vivant toujours.

Ethnographic studies from the decades after Indian independence showed how subordinate castes once delivered their votes to upper caste patrons in exchange for patronage, credit and employment, and out of a sense of hierarchical deference. Literature on rural India suggests that such relations of dominance, and the vote banks associated with them, are a thing of the past, not least because the secret vote has enabled the lower castes to vote against their dominant caste patrons without fear of retaliation. While acknowledging broader shifts in power, this paper on local elections illustrates the persistent but shifting contours of vote-bank politics.

Control over means of violence and protection emerge as crucial in much research on corruption in non-South Asian contexts. In the Indian context, however, we still know little about the systems of organised violence that sustain the entanglement of crime, capital and democratic politics. This timely comparative ethnographic piece explores two different manifestations of what our informants identify as “Mafia Raj” (“rule by mafia”) across North India (Uttar Pradesh and Punjab). Drawing on analytical concepts developed in the literature on bossism and “mafias”, we explore protection and racketeering as central statecraft repertoires of muscular styles of governance in the region. We show how a predatory economy together with structures of interand intra-party political competition generate the demand for and the imposition of unofficial and illegal protection and shape different manifestations of Mafia Raj. In doing so, the paper aims to contribute to debates on the relationship between states and illegalities in and beyond South Asia.

Despite official reports and widespread popular accounts of electoral fraud, manipulation, and violence in India and Pakistan, this topic has not been systematically addressed by the scholarly literature. This special issue explores how electoral malpractices are performed across a variety of settings (villages, small towns and cities) in criminalised political contexts. Our in-depth ethnographic studies of the electoral seasons show how fraud and manipulation of electoral processes are a diffuse and pervasive assemblage of practices, discourses and representations which shape and are shaped by local modes of governance and by the idea of free and fair elections.

Drawing on fieldwork conducted in Indian and Pakistani Punjab, this paper focuses on how, despite membership in or conversion to majority religious communities, former untouchables in both countries continue to experience caste-based discrimination. In India, a rights-based idiom for caste politics is limited by fragmentation within the Dalit community and the compromises required by electoral politics, while the imposition of a totalising Islamic identity by the state has resulted in the erasure of caste from the political discourse in Pakistan. This paper suggests that class-based mobilisation may be a better route to Dalit empowerment on both sides of the border.