This presentation addresses Hindi crime-porn pulp magazines (such as Madhur Kathaein, Madhur Aadayen, Madhur Romantic, Romantic Kahaniyan, and Sachchi Dunya Kamsutr) that are mostly distributed in makeshift stalls in central and northern India. Crime-porn magazines deserve analytical attention since they refer directly to state apparatuses as well as social power structures: family, religious and socioeconomic hierarchies, and issues related to informal religious authorities and welfare mechanisms that attract underprivileged populations – the readership of these magazines. Above all, the crime-porn scene forms an apparatus within which state agents, materials and signifiers are being employed: policemen, FIR (First Information Report) forms, the courts, legislation, and political movements. By implementing a combined strategy of seduction and pedagogy crime-porn magazines turn the reader/citizen into a demeaned subject. Moreover, their visual plane displays unstable and fragmented objects, by contrast to images of the state, which are emblazoned as a single signifier of authority and stability. Through a qualitative method, ethnographic work focusing on the collaboration with police sources and a textual analysis addressing dominant narrative models, I analyse the aspiration to constitute 'moral pornography' and identify the pivots that shape and negotiate a regulated subjectivity under the authority of state signifiers.

Authors:
Ronie Parciack, Tel Aviv University, Israel

About the Presenter(s)
Dr Ronie Parciack is a University Associate Professor/Senior Lecturer at Tel Aviv University in Israel

See this presentation on the full schedule – Thursday Schedule

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