Yogesh Maitreya and Shiva Thorat
While living in an academic ‘space’; one gets updated from time to time on acceptances and rejections of academic works. While one sees the accepted works celebrated by its producers but none in academic space give any response to rejected producers. How one receives a rejection in academia has a long history; and many rejections are based on style, form, language and lastly, content. Rejection inherently carries with it humiliation; while some try to rise above it, some ideas never see the light of day. On observing the murder of many such ideas in academic spaces, one finds such acts of rejection almost criminal.
An attempt to publish such ‘rejected works’ is just an attempt to save those ideas. If Babasaheb Ambedkar hadn’t thought of publishing Annihilation of Caste – a speech originally rejected by Jat Pat Todak Mondal, the academic space wouldn’t have been forced to adapt its content. We are not claiming that all rejected works have the same calibre as AoC, but they definitely carry some knowledge, which we are denied from accessing due to rejection. Is this not a loss of freedom? Rejected Works is an assertion against this loss of freedom.
‘Rejected Works’ intends to bring together works from various field in the domain of textual production which has been rejected on the presumption of caste as well as content which of course doesn’t suit to the interests of those who are the producer of this works and who decides its circulation among masses. The reason for rejection can be many, however it must be noted that ‘rejection’ as an experience for a creator of the work, especially when he/she hails from dalit/bahujan background, is an experience that makes them perceive the mechanism of oppression in academic circles more clearly hence their work too talks differently. Not only this, the content of their work which is essentially an anti- caste production in an academic domain, is further undermined and made inferiorised by the act of rejection.
Thus, ‘Rejected Works’ not only will be a book which accommodates the ‘rejection’ as an assertion against brahminical narratives but it would be an attempt to show that the experience of rejection doesn’t necessarily weaken those who are rejected in India, both historically and in the present time because of their anti-caste ideological standing. Rejected Works comprises essays, poems, film proposals, research papers, interviews, recordings etc. The common thread between them is: they have been rejected on various bases. We have also attached the contents of the book here.
Interested people can send their work/s to:
pantherspawpublication@gmail.com
shivathorat92@gmail.com
Contents of ‘Rejected Works’
Preface
Acknowledgement
Introduction
Foreword
Chapter 1
Importance
Chapter 2
Interviews and Reportings
Interview With Mridula Mukherjee – Ramesh Kumar
The Story of Shirpur Bullock Market – Shiva Thorat
Bajwa: An Untold Space Where Historically Migrated Breath – Shiva Thorat
Chapter 3
Student and Politics
The Post Mondal Universities – Pramod Mandade and Firdaus Soni
At Least one article needed
Chapter 4
Research
Geopolitics As Experience And Space: Contextualising Ambedkar’s Experience In America And Europe – Yogesh Maitreya
Decoding The Act of Oppressive Rituals And Possessed Women in Baby Kamble’s The Prison We Broke – Ruchi Rana
Clothes: Seeking ‘Identities’ Through Cinema, History, Politics and Gender – Rachna Kumar and Shiva Thorat
Banjo/Brass Parties And Its Contemporary Political Economy in Khandesh Region –
Shiva Thorat
Enlightenment of Dalit Politics in Indian Society: Short Introduction of Social Democracy As Citizenship – Amol Nimsadkar
Chapter 5
Short Stories
Yudhisthir is Bored – Akshat Jain
Why I am Not A Brahmin. A Dialogue – Amit Rai
~~~
Yogesh Maitreya is from Nagpur and has done his M.A in Criminology and Justice from TISS (Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai).
Shiva Thorat is at the Connected Learning Initiative (CLIx) project by Tata Institute Social Sciences and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He assists in media production for the digital student modules and the online teacher professional development courses and research.
