Onscreen/Offscreen: (Studies in the Anthropology of Language, Sign, and Social Life)

Based on over a decade of ethnographic fieldwork in the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu, Onscreen/Offscreen is an exploration of the politics and being of filmic images. The book examines contestations inside and outside the Tamil film industry over the question "what is an image?" Answers to this question may be found in the ontological politics that take place on film sets, in theatre halls, and in the social fabric of everyday life in South India, from populist electoral politics and the gendering of social space to caste uplift and domination. Bridging and synthesizing linguistic anthropology, film studies, visual studies, and media anthropology, Onscreen/Offscreen rethinks key issues across a number of fields concerned with the semiotic constitution of social life, from the performativity and ontology of images to questions of spectatorship, realism, and presence. In doing so, it offers both a challenge to any approach that would separate image from social context and a new vision for linguistic anthropology beyond the question of "language."

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments Note on Transliteration, Quotation, Names, and Transcripts Introduction: Ontological Politics of the Image Introduction From Ontologies to Ontological Politics Toward a Linguistic Anthropology of Cinema A Brief History of Tamil Cinema For a "Tamil" Cinema Realism and the Mass Hero Overview of the Chapters Part I: Presence/Representation 1. The Hero’s Mass Introduction Presence of the Film Image Gravity of the Hero’s Mass Presence of Mass Image-Act of the Slaps Sociological Realism of the Mass Hero’s Image Aesthetic Realism and the Event of the Slaps Ambivalent Realisms Authorizing the Slaps, or the Principal of Animation Conclusion 2. The Heroine’s Stigma Introduction Item’s Interruption Item’s Titillation Item’s Spectacle Ontological Politics of Sexual Difference Actness of the Image Politics of Vision Explicitness of Performativity Voyeurism and Exhibitionism in 7/G Rainbow Colony Kinship Chronotopes and Sociological Traces of the Performativity of Presence Marriage and Not-to-be-looked-at-ness An Alien Presence Conclusion Epilogue Part II: Representation/Presence 3. The Politics of Parody Introduction Anti-Cine-Politics of Thamizh Padam A Politics of (Im/possible) Worlds Chronopolitics For Another Kind of Image For a Less Serious Industry A Politics of Production The Politics for an Image Conclusion 4. The Politics of the Real Introduction Questions of Realism Register of Realism Enregistering Realism in Tamil Cinema Kaadhal ("Love") Realism’s Heroism This Is a True Story Representing Taboo Caste and Sexuality in Kaadhal Frustrated Textuality and Sexual Reference Production Format of Realism New Faces and the Director’s Image Realism’s Illiberal Extimacy and the Suspension of Belief Conclusion Conclusions An End of an Era Killing the Mass Hero Performativity Representation and the Method Theory of a Linguistic Anthropology of Cinema For a Linguistic Anthropology of … Notes Interviews and Works Cited Index

About the Author :
Constantine V. Nakassis is an associate professor of anthropology and of social sciences in the College, resource faculty in Cinema and Media Studies, faculty associate in Comparative Human Development, and core faculty on the Committee on International Relations at the University of Chicago.