Following Amita Baviskar’s response, “Resisting Distorted Readings” (EPW, 9 October 2010) to my article “Writing Resistance, Revisiting Ruptures” (EPW, 4 September 2010), this opportunity to elaborate and urgently clarify my claims is a welcome one.
Most ethnographies of resistance are found to be around the issues of ethnicity and indigeneity. This article attempts to interrogate this encounter by analysing two ethnographic works - In the Belly of the River by Amita Baviskar and Of Revelation and Revolution by Jean and John Comaroff - which consciously attempt to move away from the earlier traditions of "studying" cultures that were often seen as timeless on the one hand, and as predecessors of modern civilisation within a linear evolutionary paradigm, on the other. Both of them attempt, instead, to historicise cultures and identities.
