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About the Talk:
This talk weaves a narrative through the photographs taken by Prof Robin Jeffrey in the 1980s of tharavadus and people in southern Kerala. This was a period in which Kerala was addressing both the prosperity of the Gulf boom as well as the social anxieties it engendered regarding shifting hierarchies and the corrupting influence of wealth. This anxiety was reflected most in the Malayalam films of the 1980s, particularly those starring Mohanlal, which addressed Hindu upper caste resentment about an emerging nouveau riches that threatened an existing order of deference and respect. The tharavadu became the site of nostalgia and arguably the focus of an emergent consciousness of a new Hindu identity.
About the speaker:
Dilip M Menon is Professor of History and International Relations at the University of Witwatersrand and a historian of Kerala.
He has recently been working with oceanic histories and questions of epistemology from the Global South. His recent publications include the co-edited volumes Capitalisms: Towards a Global History (2020) and the forthcoming Ocean as Method: Thinking with the Maritime (Routledge, 2022), and is recipient of the 2021 Falling Walls Foundation Prize for Social Sciences and Humanities.
Social anxieties caused by shifting hierarchies post the Gulf boom as reflected in malayalam cinemas of 1980, particularly the ones starring Mohanlal.
