Polyrhythms of Citizenship

by Anupama Roy    |   Articles, Issue 5.2 (Fall 2016) — Leveraging Justice

ABSTRACT     This talk was presented as a keynote address at the Gendered Citizenship: Manifestations and Performance Conference, January 6, 2015, at the University of Warwick. In this forty-two minute audio-essay, Roy theorizes what she calls polyrhythmic citizenship, the way the intelligibility of the concept of citizenship plays out, much like music, across different contexts and cultures. She discusses “transformative constitutionalism” and “insurgent citizenship” as the component parts of this citizenship, and takes for her key examples the founding of the Indian state and its constitution, and the Delhi gang rape case of 2012 which resulted in the death of Jyoti Singh.

Editors’ note: “Polyrhythms of Citizenship,” by Anupama Roy was presented as a keynote address at the Gendered Citizenship: Manifestations and Performance Conference, January 6, 2015, at the University of Warwick. In this forty-two minute audio-essay, Roy theorizes what she calls polyrhythmic citizenship, the way the intelligibility of the concept of citizenship plays out, much like music, across different contexts and cultures. She discusses “transformative constitutionalism” and “insurgent citizenship” as the component parts of this citizenship, and takes for her key examples the founding of the Indian state and its constitution, and the Delhi gang rape case of 2012 which resulted in the death of Jyoti Singh. -J.R. and M.E.F.

This audio file has been uploaded to the Internet Archive at https://archive.org/details/KeynoteRoy

Author Information

Anupama Roy

Anupama Roy is Professor in the Centre for Political Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University. She is a political scientist whose research interests straddle legal studies, political anthropology of public institutions, and women’s studies. She is the author of Gendered Citizenship: Historical and Conceptual Explorations (2005) and Mapping Citizenship in India (2010), and co-editor of Poverty, Gender and Migration in South Asia (2008). This audio-essay has been incorporated into her latest book, forthcoming by the end of this year: Citizenship in India, Oxford India Short Introduction. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2016.