Tamil Differences: Exceptionalism, and Multiplicity

 

Exceptionalism, as a collective articulation, is often premised on the creation of the “The Other,” framed in terms of a return to a romanticized past that needs to be reclaimed and reconstituted, or promising a future premised on selection and exclusion. How have these nostalgic yearnings and isolationist aspirations fed into Tamil exceptionalism and what kinds of tensions and instabilities have they created? How does Tamil exceptionalism or multiplicity (difference within and without) come to be articulated in different disciplines’ perspectives, through literature, history, language, films and media studies, anthropology, religion, art history, theatre, gender and sexuality, etc.? Central to Tamil both as distinct from any imaginable Other and Tamil as being more than one is the idea of difference. What, when, where, and how, are differences of or in Tamil worlds? May Tamil difference be premised on the paradox of Tamil identity being different both within and without? Taking Tamil differences as its point of departure, this symposium seeks to convene an inter-disciplinary conversation about the pasts, futures, and present times of Tamil studies, its themes, research, and teaching methodologies, in the light of what makes being Tamil other, extraordinary, and diverse.