Spatialities, Materialities and Communication in South India

One version of the synoptic knowledge of the materialities and spatialities of communication since “pre-historic” times informs us that at least three modes of communication have been prevalent. These are the institutional modes, mixed modes, and non-institutional modes. The mixed modes include the institutional and the collective practices of a given community. The mode of collective practices of the physically isolated communities belongs to the “pre-historic” period. The Sangam age saw the non-institutional mode working to further the collective practices of people. The age of dynasties, beginning with the Pallavas, made the institutionalization of the cultures of communication the mainstay. The collective practices of the communities became marginalized and restricted to either the domestic spaces or public spaces which were relatively free from the institutions. The age of colonialism contributed to the emergence of discontinuities in native cultures of communication through factors ranging from the introduction of new institutions and practices imported from the west, prohibition and curtailment of native practices, as well as the introduction of new materialities and spatial logics. The advent of printing technologies strengthened the colonial factors of the institutionalization of communication. The postcolonial period is witnessing the emergence of new modes of institutionalized communication, even as mobile phone–mediated personal modes of communication are seeking to contest the institutionalized modes of communication.

The contemporary times are to be read in the contexts of postcolonialism and neo-liberalism. Such a reading reveals new modes of institutionalized communication resulting from the coming together of culture industries, news media, and state institutions. This is not made explicit by them, but the message is writ large in the characteristics of their practices—silence, conformity, and collaboration. The silence, conformity, and collaboration of news media in particular are an illustrative example. The past two decades saw the emergence of new media materialities, new media practices, new media audiences, and new spatial dimensions, but these have been defined by expressions of silence, conformity, and collaboration on account of neo-liberalism. The growing interdependence of culture industries, news media, and state institutions are a cause for concern, as their independence has been compromised. This is attested by an example concerning news media—news media materialities.

As argued earlier by the author (Ravindran, 2017), “In Thirumoolar’s conception, the form defies matter as much as matter defies form. Form becomes invisible as much as matter.” One can also postulate that the concrete nature of the form disintegrates at the site of its matter alongside the disintegration of matter at the site of the form. Thirumoolar’s notion of materiality calls into question Aristotle’s hylomorphism. In the conception of Aristotle, the form’s materiality and matter depend on the factor of change, which makes possible the transformation of matter as the form (Granger, 1996, pp. 138–141). In Aristotle’s notion of materiality, there are two types of change—substantive and accidental. The former causes a new entity, and the later causes changes in the existing form. There is no possibility of both changes to co-occur.

In Thirumoolar’s notion of materiality, both coexist as the sites of deception, as illustrated in verse 21 of chapter 8 of Thirumandiram

The simplistic definition of spatiality sees it as the quality of being spatial. It is as ambivalent and abstract as the space itself. Spatiality is also about what inheres and defines space in terms of identifiable dimensions. These are markers of areas, places, streets, buildings, and monuments. These are not distinct or alienated from spaces; these are markers of spaces or otherwise markers of spatiality. What is meant by space? This question is as problematic as another question—what is meant by place? According to Oxford Dictionary (2022), space is “a continuous area or expanse which is free, available, or unoccupied” and place is “a particular position, point, or area in space; a location.” Like society, space is abstract. Place is concrete. One might use a relative perspective to delineate the difference between the two. One may be seen as present as a part of the other. Place is in space. Place becomes locational.

This problematic poses challenges in posing and resolving questions regarding the spatialities that are being explored in terms of public communication, everyday life, and the media domains in the chapters of the book. Should we discuss the nature of place or space in the case of the marginalized communities in north Chennai (which occupies the attention of chapter 5)? Should we discuss the spatial politics of reality television or the importance of places in reality television (the medium that occupies the attention of chapter 15)? Another moot question is, should we mark the boundaries of space or places in north Chennai? We are also challenged by the need to link the three sites: place, space, and time. Here, we are reminded of the inadequacy of Innis’ notions of space-biased and time-biased media. The omission of place as one of the defining parameters of the biases of communication appears glaring as one reads Casey (1993, 1997). In 1993, Casey published Getting Back into Place. The Fate of Place: A Philosophical History was published in 1997. Getting Back into Place wants us to get back to the place. Getting back into place also means getting back to true space and true place. Questions of place and space also involve the sites of light, sound, and tactility. For instance, the following questions involve light, sound, and tactility, besides places and space. What is the politics of touch in the places of television floors? What is the politics of bodies, sounds, and touch, in the company of gadgets, in the mobile phone spaces?

Similar questions occupy our attention with regard to the materialities and spatialities of food cultures discussed in Chapter 9. One important material exemplar of contemporary food culture in Tamil Nadu is biriyani—a spicy food made of meat, spices, onion, ginger, garlic, tomato, and rice. Locating the place of the biriyani shop is made easy by the Google maps on our mobile phones. But locating them, through the wafting flavors of biriyani, their subdued colors of yellow and shades of brown, the sounds of music made by the plates in the hands of the professional biriyani handlers when they scoop out the biriyani from big vessels, is dependent on the olfactory, visual, aural, and tactile faculties. We must avoid privileging one site over the other, space over place and light over sound. One way out of the spatial conundrum is exploring the alternatives. As I argued earlier (2020, pp. 15–31), there is an alternative to the term spatiality in placiality, a hybrid conceptual site that puts space alongside place, without any hegemonic tilt on either side.

One of the important interlocutors of the discourse on materiality as a site of two conjoined meanings—one that comes from the physical dimensions of the material and the other that emerges as the content from the lived, phenomenological relationships with the material—was Karl Marx. He was the first to posit a binary opposition between the content and the physical material. Karl Marx (1857/1993, p. 183) said, “Greek art presupposes Greek mythology, i.e. nature and the social forms already reworked in an unconsciously artistic way by the popular imagination. This is its material. Not any mythology whatever…”

In the western world, Heidegger (1967) became the second important philosopher, after Marx, to get us a radical view of the material. In his conception, the material is the “thing” and things can be physical and nonphysical (as anything that emerges in our thoughts). Thinkable things are immaterialities and abstract. In such contexts emerge the notion of the immateriality of the uzh vinai mentioned in this chapter. At this juncture, one must move toward a holistic understanding of communication materialities and the epistemes that caused them or condition them.

Even though several chapters of this book anchor the temporal periods such as the Sangam age, post-Sangam period, colonial period and the postcolonial period, it must be mentioned that our journeys with materialities and material cultures may also pre-date the periods that are meant to serve as the temporal anchors. The “pre-dating” factor is native to the processes that gave birth to the materialities and material cultures we seek to engage with. There is a priori originary cause that is also the effect of other originary causes of the past. For instance, the epigraphs on granite stones have their originary cause in the Tamil brahmi engravings on the potsherds found in Adichanallur (Subramanian, 2005) and Keezhadi.

The book employs the key terms—spatiality, materiality, and communication—as a part of a critical conceptualization that factors in both the native and non native philosophical conceptions of space, place, materials, and materiels (as defined by Lefebvre, 1974/1991). According to this conception, spatiality and materiality are both the qualities of being spatial and material depending on their temporal as well as epistemic contexts. For instance, the spatialities and materialities of Puhar and Madurai examined in this chapter are divergent on account of the epistemic shift in the prevailing life philosophies of the periods. The materiality, spatiality, and communication in the spaces of Puhar and Madurai are revealed differently, thanks to the differential workings of the notions of akuzh, pokuzh, and thisaivaraidhal. As a proof of the materialist life philosophy of the people of the Sangam period, Vanamamalai (1973, pp. 29–30) cites verse 293 from Purananuru, an anthology of poems on the exterior life by 400 poets. This poem was written by Pereyil Muruvalar (c.600 BC–300 AD), a poet friend of the Pandya king, Namby Nedunchezhian, when the later breathed his last.