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SUMMARY:Script Boxes and Story Boxes: The Material Culture of Oral Narrati
 ves in India - Professor Rukmini Bhaya Nair (Indian Institute of Technolog
 y\, Delhi)
DTSTART:20120601T153000Z
DTEND:20120601T163000Z
UID:TALK38279@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Claire Wheeler
DESCRIPTION:How are the oral repertoires of cultures reconstituted by thei
 r acts of writing? Writing\, this paper argues\, is a sort of ‘box’ th
 at serves to contain the creative productions of script cultures. Like a b
 ox\, it stores and preserves the legends and stories\, the quotidian speec
 h acts of greeting\, declaring\, promising or ordering as well as the fund
 amental scientific conjectures and dreams that animate all speech communit
 ies. Unlike a run-of-the-mill box\, however\, writing acts upon and redesi
 gns the cognitive materials that it holds\, formatting inchoate informatio
 n into ‘knowledge packets’ that can be efficiently transmitted across 
 time and space. In this unique characteristic lies its almost unlimited po
 wer over the human imagination. Yet it is worth noting that writing is a r
 elatively recent linguistic invention which experts calculate is no more t
 han eight or nine thousand years old at most. To put things in perspective
 \, written scripts came along at least 40\,000 years after humans began to
  talk and exchange meanings.\n\nThis paper will examine some of the cognit
 ive and cultural issues that arise from a near exclusive concentration on 
 the powerful and often hegemonic\, yet still evolving\, medium of writing 
 in a region like the Indian subcontinent that comprises nearly half the fo
 rmally illiterate population of the world. It will do so by looking at a d
 evice commonly known as a kavad or ‘story-box’. The kavad\, sometime a
 lso called a ‘portable shrine’\, is used to illustrate and amplify ora
 l performances of story-telling. In contrast to the metaphorical ‘writin
 g-box’ that I have invented for the specific purposes of this paper\, it
  is a longstanding and integral part of material culture in northern India
  and in particular the state of Rajasthan. It has a tangible presence and 
 can be handled\, opened\, closed\, broken\, mended\, reassembled and even 
 carried on one’s shoulders. Most importantly\, it is a shared narrative 
 resource and a reservoir of emotional empathy. 
LOCATION:McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research\, Downing Site
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