Ungiven: Philanthropy as critique
Drawing on field research principally from contexts of medical blood donation in North India, this article describes how gifts that are given often critique—by obviation—those that remain ungiven: the care not provided by the Indian state for Bhopal survivors, the family members unwilling to donate...
| Main Authors: | , |
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| Other Authors: | |
| Format: | Article |
| Language: | en_US |
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Cambridge University Press
2018
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| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/118653 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9786-796X |
| _version_ | 1811096849652645888 |
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| author | Banerjee, Dwaipayan Copeman, Jacob |
| author2 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Program in Science, Technology and Society |
| author_facet | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Program in Science, Technology and Society Banerjee, Dwaipayan Copeman, Jacob |
| author_sort | Banerjee, Dwaipayan |
| collection | MIT |
| description | Drawing on field research principally from contexts of medical blood donation in North India, this article describes how gifts that are given often critique—by obviation—those that remain ungiven: the care not provided by the Indian state for Bhopal survivors, the family members unwilling to donate blood for their transfusion-requiring relative, and so on. In this way, giving can come to look like a form of criticism. The critiques that acts of giving stage are of absences and deficits: we present cases where large paper hearts donated by survivors of the 1984 Bhopal Gas Disaster to the prime minister of India signal his lack of one, where donated human blood critiques others' unwillingness to do so, where acts of blood donation critique and protest communal violence, and where similar acts of giving over simultaneously highlight a deficit in familial affects and an attempt to resuscitate damaged relational forms. We thus illustrate how critique can operate philanthropically by way of partonomic relations between the given and not-given. |
| first_indexed | 2024-09-23T16:49:59Z |
| format | Article |
| id | mit-1721.1/118653 |
| institution | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| language | en_US |
| last_indexed | 2024-09-23T16:49:59Z |
| publishDate | 2018 |
| publisher | Cambridge University Press |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | mit-1721.1/1186532022-09-29T21:51:58Z Ungiven: Philanthropy as critique Banerjee, Dwaipayan Copeman, Jacob Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Program in Science, Technology and Society Banerjee, Dwaipayan Banerjee, Dwaipayan Drawing on field research principally from contexts of medical blood donation in North India, this article describes how gifts that are given often critique—by obviation—those that remain ungiven: the care not provided by the Indian state for Bhopal survivors, the family members unwilling to donate blood for their transfusion-requiring relative, and so on. In this way, giving can come to look like a form of criticism. The critiques that acts of giving stage are of absences and deficits: we present cases where large paper hearts donated by survivors of the 1984 Bhopal Gas Disaster to the prime minister of India signal his lack of one, where donated human blood critiques others' unwillingness to do so, where acts of blood donation critique and protest communal violence, and where similar acts of giving over simultaneously highlight a deficit in familial affects and an attempt to resuscitate damaged relational forms. We thus illustrate how critique can operate philanthropically by way of partonomic relations between the given and not-given. 2018-10-22T17:33:50Z 2018-10-22T17:33:50Z 2018-01 Article http://purl.org/eprint/type/JournalArticle 0026-749X 1469-8099 http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/118653 Banerjee, Dwaipayan, and Jacob Copeman. “Ungiven: Philanthropy as Critique.” Modern Asian Studies, vol. 52, no. 01, Jan. 2018, pp. 325–50. https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9786-796X en_US https://doi.org/10.1017/S0026749X17000245 Modern Asian Studies Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ application/pdf Cambridge University Press Banerjee |
| spellingShingle | Banerjee, Dwaipayan Copeman, Jacob Ungiven: Philanthropy as critique |
| title | Ungiven: Philanthropy as critique |
| title_full | Ungiven: Philanthropy as critique |
| title_fullStr | Ungiven: Philanthropy as critique |
| title_full_unstemmed | Ungiven: Philanthropy as critique |
| title_short | Ungiven: Philanthropy as critique |
| title_sort | ungiven philanthropy as critique |
| url | http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/118653 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9786-796X |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT banerjeedwaipayan ungivenphilanthropyascritique AT copemanjacob ungivenphilanthropyascritique |