Podcast Summary: "Inhabiting Technologies/Modernities: Media and Cultural Practices in South Asia"

New Books Network | Host: Khadija Amedha | Guests: P. Thirumal & Karmil Christie
Release Date: March 17, 2026

Episode Overview

This episode of the New Books Network delves into the edited volume Inhabiting Technologies/Modernities: Media and Cultural Practices in South Asia (Orient BlackSwan, 2025), co-edited by P. Thirumal and K. A. Nuaiman. The conversation explores how media and cultural practices in South Asia resist linear, Eurocentric frameworks and instead invite complex, historically layered approaches that account for precolonial, colonial, and postcolonial dynamics. Special attention is paid to concepts such as media history, modernity, the Global South, and the role of technology in shaping culture. The second half of the episode features Karmil Christie, who discusses her chapter on urban space and cinema in Kochi, bringing together themes of spatiality, affect, and representation.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Introducing the Volume: Rethinking Media Histories in South Asia

[03:53–09:00]

• Motivation and Intellectual Backdrop:

  • Thirumal explains the genesis of the volume stemmed from his teaching experiences, particularly a growing dissatisfaction with nationalist and colonial frameworks that dominated histories of Indian media.
  • The book aims to connect disparate scholarly projects—from literary to film studies—to explore tensions between modern Indian mass media and ancient Indic cultural forms.

• Core Thesis:

  • Move beyond essentialist, nationalist, or colonial readings of media history.
  • The volume explores "productive tensions" between modern and ancient/Indic forms, considering continuities across time rather than sharp colonial breaks.

"The book seeks to make available formulations about media, history, India or Indic that are open ended, uncontestatory in character. Rather than retain a hypostatized notion of history, media or technology, [it] opens it up both spatially and temporally."
—P. Thirumal, [07:43]

2. Forms of Life and Multitemporal Approaches

[09:21–15:29]

• Wittgenstein's "Forms of Life":

  • The collection applies this concept to media, examining both universal and culturally specific media practices.

• Case Studies and Chapters Highlighted:

  • Amelia’s work on telegraphy as a driver of global news flows, challenging colonial/nationalist narratives.
  • Thirumal and Amulya on Dalit media activism and the creation of digital archives as emancipatory responses to nationalist/Indological models.
  • Pangam Vipin’s chapter on script reform and state-making processes in Northeast India, highlighting ongoing contestations.

"Media appears as an event, as a thing and sometimes as a process, as do history and political institutional forms."
—P. Thirumal, [10:36]

3. Questioning Linear Modernity & The Global South

[16:04–22:27]

• Modernity as Plural and Non-Linear:

  • The idea of a single "modernity" is critiqued as Eurocentric. The editors advocate for a plural view shaped by civilizational histories.

• Global South Perspective:

  • Thirumal discusses how Western teleologies position the Global South as perpetually "waiting" to arrive at modernity, and how media becomes both a marker and maker of historical participation.
  • Emphasizes that technologies and media take on new meanings and uses in local contexts instead of uniformly diffusing from Europe.

"Such a deferred time... constitutes one axis of writing the history of South Asia and writing the media history of India. Among the several set of variables that constitute modernity, technologies of communication are considered the desired data for becoming and claiming history."
—P. Thirumal, [16:48]

4. Decoloniality, Precoloniality, and the Fabric of Cultural Modernities

[15:29–22:27]

• Bridging the Precolonial and Decolonial:

  • Drawing on Arjun Appadurai's foreword, the volume insists that decolonial projects in India are unintelligible without accounting for deep precolonial roots.

• Indeterminate Structures and Traditional Modes:

  • A call to recognize "ahistorical" practices in daily life (e.g., Brahmin rituals) that disrupt, appropriate, or coexist with the structures and institutions brought by modernity.

"In the daily working of, let us say, a Brahmin family, they seem to cut into the capitalist temporality by performing pujas or performing certain kind of rituals... These ahistorical practices interrupt... the historically constituted everyday existence of modern institutions like newspaper organizations in colonial India."
—P. Thirumal, [19:50]

5. Disciplinary Gaps: Research Traditions in Media and Performing Arts

[24:28–26:33]

• Challenges in Communication, Dance, and Theater:
  • Media and communication departments in India often lack robust theoretical or research traditions, remaining largely vocational.
  • There is a call for integrating critical, historical, and theoretical approaches into the curriculum to better engage with both past and present.

6. Textual Histories and Intellectual Ruptures

[26:33–33:53]

• Critical Indology, Vernacular Knowledge:
  • Discussion of Sheldon Pollock’s thesis on the decline of Sanskrit commentarial traditions.
  • The 19th-century privileging of select Hindu texts as representative of an Indian "essence" is challenged as a colonial and nationalist construction; precolonial India was far more heterogeneous.

"The colonial officials and missionaries retrieved these texts, and the nationalist thinkers like Aurobindo, Tilak and Gandhi had to produce a modern commentary about their cultural and ethical efficacy."
—P. Thirumal, [29:25]

• Breaks vs. Continuities:
  • Debate over whether the transition from manuscript traditions to print marked a radical rupture, or if it represents a more complex set of layered transitions.

7. Rethinking Technology and Media: Theoretical Moves

[34:42–40:48]

• Process Metaphysics and Emergent Traditions:
  • Introduction to an alternative framework where both technology and human life are seen as emergent, ongoing processes rather than static, impact-driven entities.
  • Emphasizes the unpredictability and "open-endedness" of media technologies.

"It is not always possible for human beings to comprehend the varieties of uses that technology has potentiality for."
—P. Thirumal, [37:57]

8. Brahmanic Comportment and Early Colonial Encounters

[40:48–45:01]

• Spectrum of Elite Responses:
  • Brahmanic comportment is not singular, but a range outlining cultural elites’ creative, disruptive, or restorative orientations toward technologies like print.
  • Despite early exposure to print, Sanskritic elites were hesitant, concerned with democratization and control over sacred/religious texts, only embracing print fully after gaining institutional dominance.

"Irrespective of whether it's a deficient or positive response to technology, the logic and temporality of a spectrum of orientations are shaped by the invocation of a deep time and an erratic past."
—P. Thirumal, [44:15]

9. Digital Humanities & The Question of Networked Being

[46:23–53:53]

• Entanglement Through Time:
  • The “networked being” of digital humanities is described as less of a revolution and more a continuation of longstanding human-technology entanglements.
  • The challenge is to balance universal, data-driven approaches (big data) with the specifics of ethnographic, micro-historical research.

"To be human is also to be... constituted [by] technology. ... This network being, if that is the way that we are looking at technology as artifacts, just artifacts, and not about the digital world, not particularly what is the world, we have been network beings for a very, very long time."
—P. Thirumal, [49:10]

• Incommensurabilities:
  • Media history must grapple with incommensurable variables and theoretical models to enrich understanding, rather than collapsing them into a single narrative.

10. Future Directions

[54:22–56:16]

• Ongoing Projects:
  • Thirumal outlines aspirations for further volumes on technology studies, particularly integrating them with media history to address curriculum gaps.

"There is something that is missing in the way we teach media history...and I would think that gap can be filled by having more of technological studies component in media history courses."
—P. Thirumal, [55:44]

Segment 2: Kochi, Urban Space, and Cinema — Karmil Christie’s Perspective

1. Academic Trajectory and Personal Connection

[56:58–60:57]

• Roots in Kochi:

  • Christie describes her deep affective and scholarly attachment to Kochi. Her background in urban, gender, and media studies informed her research on the city’s lived and imagined spaces.

• Interdisciplinary Approach:

  • The challenge was bridging urban studies (e.g., spatial mapping) with media studies (especially cinema), drawing inspiration from scholars on cinematic geography.

2. The City as Continuum: Material and Imagined Spaces

[61:29–66:14]

• Affective Belonging:
  • Personal memories and local geographies inform a layered, multiplicitous view of Kochi.
  • Christie borrows from Michel de Certeau and others to theorize the city not as a static entity but as a continuum of experiences shaped by both material realities and affective attachments.

"Both the city as well as cinema keep extending each other, keep extending the imaginations and materiality of each other one way or the other."
—Karmil Christie, [65:44]

3. Three Historical Urban Zones in Malayalam Cinema

[68:12–73:57]

• City on Screen:
  • Early Malayalam films (pre-1990s) portrayed Kochi primarily through landmark tourism shots, with transient characters.
  • Economic liberalization of the 1990s saw a wider range of Kochi’s spaces depicted, each associated with specific identities:
    • Metropolitan area: Protagonists are usually upper-caste Hindu males.
    • Fort Kochi: Christian, often working-class, communities foregrounded.
    • Kochi Islands: Muslim protagonists, with religious and gender markers.
  • These divisions reflect shifting narratives and the politics of space, identity, and representation.

"These three parts with distinct historical and development trajectories are conceived and presented using technologies of cinematography, screenplay, and editing to align with the social reproduction of these spaces as marked through religion, caste, and gender."
—Karmil Christie, [71:47]

4. Kochi-Muziris Biennale & The City’s Evolving Identity

[73:57–80:11]

• Symbolic Significance:

  • The Biennale is interpreted as a material and symbolic event that blends global contemporary art with historical cosmopolitanism, referencing the ancient port of Muziris.

• Accessibility & Sustainability:

  • Christie raises important questions about inclusivity and environmental sustainability as Kochi expands its cultural footprint.

"This event both symbolically and materially expands the geographical limits of what we know as the city of Kochi today."
—Karmil Christie, [79:47]

5. Forthcoming Work

[80:35–81:07]

• Christie’s upcoming book will further examine Kochi through cinema, environmental questions, and layered relations of power, aiming to conceptualize spaces as “dynamic, agential, and full.”

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the necessity of deep, longue durée history:
  "The decolonial without the precolonial is incomplete."
  —(Paraphrased from Arjun Appadurai's foreword, discussed by Khadija Amedha, [15:29])

• On technology’s unpredictability:
  "It is not always possible for human beings to comprehend the varieties of uses that technology has potentiality for."
  —P. Thirumal, [37:57]

• On affect and belonging in urban space:
  "Each part of Kochi makes me feel differently… this experience and observing with the tools I have gathered over a period of time... arriving at this idea of Kochi as a continuum..."
  —Karmil Christie, [62:08]

Key Timestamps

• [03:53] Intro to the book’s intellectual foundation
• [09:21] Wittgenstein’s “forms of life” applied to media histories
• [15:29] Precolonial pasts in decolonial projects
• [16:48] Critique of singular "modernity" and Global South perspectives
• [26:33] Indology and the problem of textual ruptures
• [34:42] Process metaphysics and emergent traditions
• [40:48] Brahmanic comportment toward technology
• [46:58] Digital humanities, networked being, and universal vs. particular
• [54:22] Future research directions in media and technology studies
• [56:58] Karmil Christie on affect, urban space, and cinema in Kochi
• [68:12] Three historical zones of Kochi in Malayalam cinema
• [73:57] Kochi Biennale and the reimagining of the urban
• [80:35] Future projects on Kochi, cinema, and urban change

Final Thoughts

This conversation offers a dense, reflective exploration of South Asian media and cultural histories, challenging normative frameworks by foregrounding plural modernities, the ongoing entanglements of technology with everyday life, and the multiplicities of place and affect. The episode is highly recommended for listeners interested in media studies, urbanism, postcolonial theory, and South Asian history.