Marxist vs. Socio-economic Approaches

 a few days ago, I asked ChatGPT if a "Marxist" method of narrative of life is same as that we call as "socio-economic' way of thinking about life? 

It explained me that partly, it may be right, but full not so. 

The Marxist way of understanding life comes mainly from the ideas of Marx and Engels which views life through:

• Material Conditions (work, income, housing, resources)
• Class relations (who owns, who labours)
• Power and exploitation
• Historical change through conflict 

pretty standard. 

So a Marxist narrative asks:

How do economic systems shape people’s lives, identities, dreams, and suffering? Who benefits, and who is disadvantaged?

All in all, it concluded that while a socio-economic reading asks "Who lives where and at what cost?"; a Marxist reading asks: "who profits from this spatial arrangement and why?" Thus Marxist reading will necessarily weave it into the politics of capitalism as a conspiracy. 

When I further asked if 'socio-economic' thinking as a derivate of Marxist thought, it elaborated that Socio-economic analysis did not grow from Marx alone. It also comes from other traditions. For example, Max Weber argued that society is shaped by ideas as much as money, and hence culture, religion and values matter. Therefore power is not purely economic. This is different from Marx. 

Emelie Durkheim on the other hand was focusing on social cohesion through institutions and moral norms; and was looking at how societies hold together - not mainly in class conflict but shared collective life. 

Larger socio economic thinking comes from welfare and policy studies which are studied in development economics, public policy, statistics and demography. These look at socio economics through poverty index, literacy rate, HDI (human development index) or uemployment data. Thus, 

one can imagine this at three levels, says Chat GPT:

Level 1: Descriptive socio-economic
“Low-income groups have less access to healthcare.”
(No Marxism here.)

Level 2: Analytical socio-economic
“Economic structures reproduce inequality.”
(Some Marxist influence.)

Level 3: Marxist
“Capitalism structurally produces inequality through exploitation.”
(Fully Marxist.)

In fields like architecture, urbanism, and cultural theory:
Using a socio-economic lens = mapping class, income, access
Using a Marxist lens = questioning land ownership, speculation, capital flows

Many scholars use the first without committing to the second.

I asked further: Do people fall into using Marxist frames because it gives them a sense of purpose of "equalising" society?

It said:

Yes—for many people, Marxist frameworks are attractive partly because they offer a strong sense of moral and political purpose, especially around equalising society. But that is not the only reason people use them. People are drawn to Marxist frames because they combine explanation, critique, and purpose in one system.

Some people use Marxist language without deep commitment to equality. Sometimes when people adopt Marxism mainly for purpose, some risks appear: For example, there is a danger of oversimplification in framing everything as  “class struggle”. There is a projection of Moral certainty wherein the People feel automatically “right” when they are posing a certain situation as Marxist. And lastly, sometimes it can feel quite dogmatic when Other perspectives are dismissed.

This discussion seemed insightful, and worth keeping in notes here.

on Fetish

 The word "fetish" is used in different ways in psychology, culture and social theory. At its core, it means giving special emotional or symbolic power to something that is actually just an object or detail.

1. Freudan

object or detail becomes more important than the whole person

eg: someone feels especially attracted to shoes, or is very focused on the hair/fabric, or someone feels excitement mainly because of a uniform...

2. Cultural / Religious

an object believed to have special powers. The object itself is ordinary, but people believe it has hidden power.

eg: A statue thought to contain spiritual energy, a necklace believed to protect someone, etc.

3. Social/Economic Meaning (Marxist)

The commodified object looks magical..

eg: a phone might feel desirable, but one forgets the workers who made it, the factory, the conditions of working in valourising it. 

4.  Everyday Use

people having an intense liking for something.

eg: coffee, fitness

to summarise:

Fetish happens when we give too much meaning, power, or emotion to something small, symbolic or ordinary

German School and the French School of Critical Theory

I was introduced to the two schools of Critical Theory during my masters at Yale School of Architecture. While Peggy Deamer, our teacher mentioned that her course would be more to do with Marxist analysis of architecture (and that those who did not believe in it should strongly reconsider being in the course); and that there were two schools of Critical Theory - the Frankfurt School (German Tradition) and the French School - I had not quite understood what was the difference between the two.

Over the last many years after doing the course, the question took a back seat, and did not come to resolution even if I must have tried to relook specifically what separates the two in their ideological orientation. Finally last week, as a matter of time pass, I asked this question to ChatGPT and it gave me some of the most convincingly understandable response, which I want to note down here for my own understanding.

Very briefly, 

The German tradition of the Frankfurt School of critical theory has Marxist roots with strong engagement with capitalism and class. It is focused on the critique of mass culture that emerges out of it - how media and consumer culture shape consciousness. It is also concerned with the question of reason and emancipation - in other words "rationality". This is necessarily the Western notion of scientific rationality that developed through the renaissance. 

In summary, they analyze how modern society produces domination especially through capitalism, bureaucracy, technology and culture industries. Their work is generally systematic, moral-political, and reform oriented.

The French tradition mainly develops after the 1950s reacting against structuralism and classical Marxism. 

Their core features can be located in their distrust of universal explanations (like Marxism or Enlightenment theory) - in other words, the suspicion of "grand theories". They focus on how meaning, truth, and knowledge are constructed with a focus on discourse and language. They conceptualize power as "diffused", meaning, power is not only in the state of economy, rather everywhere. Furthermore they are anti-essentialists, with no belief in fixed "human nature" or stable subject. 

They examine how power operates through knowledge, language, institutions and norms. Their work is often fragmentary, experimental, and skeptical of political blueprints 

ChatGPT articulates for me that in simple terms.

German Critical theory asks:

How does capitalism and modern rationality dominate us, and how can we overcome it.

whereas, French Critical theory asks:

How do language, knowledge and institutions produce what we think is normal or true.

I came to articulate then that, the essential different between the two is that one emerges from the critique of mass, whereas the other from the critique of the body. The AI helped me lay out that the key entry points for the German and French theory  are mass/system versus body/micropower. In a more precise academic formulation, the German critical theory begins with the problem of mass domination, while French theory begins with the problem of bodily and subjective regulation. One critiques how power works from above and through systems, the other how power works from within and through bodies. 

Idea to Translation / Architecture in Urban Archipelagoes

Opolis at 25 / The _Opolis Lexicon

The _Opolis Lexicon

To be sure, one of the first impulses of the _Opolis alumni on receiving this booklet would be to look for the project that they may have worked on during their term at the office. Between images and texts, our eyes will roll between the lines that one of us may have repeatedly drafted on the computer. And in absorbing those lines, we may remember the discussions, deliberations, differences that have now settled not merely on these pages, but also in space. This book is much more than just a memoir or an intermittent archive, but a record of the collective efforts of twenty five years of “homing” by Opolis. In appreciating them, we may perhaps begin to observe certain values that now dwell in our own consciousness, our way of world-making.

To begin an architectural practice in a rapidly globalising city at the onset of a new millennium comes with its own challenges. The lure of the market, the risk of “missing out”, the seduction of shimmer, the lurch of luxury - have been the global forces that have fundamentally influenced most architectural practices during the last three decades of transforming India. As fellow participants in parsing this transformation, we may observe how Opolis lends its lexicon in attending to these forces with a contemplative stillness. The houses from geographies presented here, shaped within a forest of global choices over the last two-and-a-half decades, invite us to consider three vantage points, amongst others, from which we may choose to look back while thinking ahead in our own respective practices of spacemaking:

1. Holding the Ground

The ridge is not merely a topographical condition rather an philosophical indulgence in the works of Opolis. Many houses consciously sited along this line where two surfaces meet at an angle, do not seek attention; instead they firmly hold the ground behind them. Built as large retaining walls, the houses then appear to reserve the ground while descending us into a large open shelter on the other side. With no real “insides”, they become architectural acts of conservation. Could these be gestures of impressing oneself firm into landscapes of transition while bringing us to quietly contemplate upon the openness ahead?


2. Alignments and Deviations

Within plotted properties, the projects often establish a primary axis along which subsidiary spaces are distributed, offering a sense of order and orientation. This axial ordering is complemented by deviating roofs and deflecting walls that subtly resist alignment, introducing moments of departure within the plan and section. The axis, in this sense, functions less as a fixed directive and more as a guiding force—one that invites return rather than demands obedience. Does this dynamic tension between structure and drift serve as a compass for addressing the architectural contemporary?


3. The Open Alcove

By pushing and pulling walls, the houses offer different degrees of containment, while remaining open. Within the domestic schema, most projects demonstrate an architectural mediation of the western fireplace and the oriental tokonoma into an recessed room that is receptacle for the intermediaries of everyday life. Taking different forms within the inside and outside, these spaces become open alcoves, reversing the gaze within, and serve as internal windows into our own lived realities/lives.


When seen through the above lenses, the twenty-five homes and their drawings not only bring us together in our respective interactions with Opolis, but also revisit the values shared and learnt silently from the practice. Many of our thoughts got realigned to a certain modernist ethos assimilated by the practice from various masterful experiences from across the globe. The focus on showcasing only houses is not to overlook the important institutional and urban spaces that the firm has designed, rather celebrates architecture’s primary purpose of homing. If we must collectively look at these houses, and their drawings as an intellectual enterprise, we may be able to trace the distinct strands we carry ahead in our own practice. Ultimately, the compilation gestures to twenty-five years of professional companionship and familiarity - direct or indirect - that informs a small corner of our conceptual home.


- Anuj Daga

Different Kinds of Teachers

अध्यापक (adhyapak) - gives you information

उपाध्याय (upadhyay) - gives you information + knowledge

पंडित (pandit) - scholar, someone who has an in-depth knowledge of a subject

आचार्य (acharya) - skill-trainer

दृष्टा  (drushta) - a visionary

गुरु (guru) -  awakens within you, taking you from darkness to light

शिक्षक (shikshak) - someone who disciplines you

Bhaag Milkha Bhaag / Rocky aur Rani

Watched these two Bollywood films this weekend to destress. If I dont make notes about what I see, I never end up remembering that I have indeed seen this film.

Bhaag Milkha Bhaag is inspired from the true story of Milkha Singh, the Indian athlete who is also known as the Flying Sikh. He won for India the Gold medal for 400 metres race at the Asian Games (1958,1962) and Commonwealth Games (1962). The film looked at the personal life of the player rather than his life as a sportsperson. Milkha migrated to India during the partition at a young age of 12, lost much of his family. Making a life in India forces him to come to terms with many hardships and socially deviant works (not sufficiently explained in the film). He falls in love with a girl who asks him to have a dignified job, which takes him to join the Indian Army. Through the Army, he grooves into running. The film shows his hardships, losses and his fight against his own internal demons that make a compelling case for how deep seated internal trauma can come in the way of achieving your goal even if you may be great at your skill. 

Rocky aur Rani is a yet another film in Bollywood that offers its viewers new perspectives to (combat) patriarchy. More recently, Bollywood has become aware of its new audience that is young, woke, working, exposed and empowered as compared to its earlier generation. The film is an attempt to put the contesting ideologies of these two generations together on the one hand, but also ideological values of conservatism and liberalism in dialogue with each other. There are many types of characters in this film. All privileged. The lead characters belong to a conservative patriarchal and a liberal intellectual household respectively. Seemingly crafted from, and for a north Indian perspective, the film largely depends on polarized instances to build its point. Yet, there are moments due to the particular characters that allow the viewer to reflect on the smugness behind the liberal intellectual and the helplessness of the conservative individual. More importantly, the film brings crucial confrontations in both these worlds that seem more filmic than real. In real life, according to me, patriarchy and cultural elitism plays out even more indirectly than dramatised in the film. 

The performances of Jaya Bachhan and Shabana Azmi were mediocre, and I do not understand why they were required in the film. 

The film also gave me a chance to consider the very real clash for modern love between physical attraction and its immediacy versus intellectual longing and its long term need. One point that the film asserts time and again is how, sometimes, one can meet someone for just a little while but take a lifetime for it to recognize it as love; and on the other hand, you may spend a lifetime with someone and still not find love in it. Between this however, what I came to think about is lingering the role of rationality in the moment of decision-making for life. Feeling love (in the moment) and falling for it (for life) are concurrent for only a few fortunate ones. All others, to be sure, only experience love in passing.

Bureaucracy and Institutions

People think that bureaucracy is only about the resolution (or constitution) of power in hierarchy. Bureaucracy, essentially is an institutional by-product. In the process of institutionalization, systems are set, with checkpoints at various levels. These systems leverage intervention by human intellect and allow a so called consistency of decision-making. In bureaucratic processes, humans become monitors rather than decision-makers, therefore taking away their agency to feel a part of the process. In this situation, the disposal of human beings out does not feel impedimental to an institution, because the essential aspects of intervention are now vested into the non-human bureaucracy - a protocol that must be followed objectively. After all, the human being merely reduced to a place holder to execute the operations of an organization.

But bureaucracy also has one more tact. Firstly, all workers within the bureaucratic system are expected to speak in the language of the protocol. When bureaucratic system produces redundancies or unexpected level of (un)productivity, the system is scrutinized. Here, the weak link is supposed to be identified to be replaced, repaired or removed in order for the smooth delivery of the product. The in-flexibility of a bureaucratic system automatically begins to highlight the different modal operations of individual people running the system. Here, the people who do not align to the defined system begin to feel a double separation - one is from the system itself, and second is from the peers or people who have seemingly managed to forego their agency to the power of the system.

Bureaucratic systems - in a manner of corollary - are not (necessarily) designed through collective identification of strengths. They are often designed by a source of power to maximize efficiency and productivity. Here, the person/group in power automatically gets the final say on who appears to be the weak link. This weak link in the chain of delivery is identified based on his/her deviation or non-alignment, that is believed to cause poor contribution. We must take note here, how the weakness of the individual is now measured in reference to the invented system, and not in terms of his/her own individual original capacity - a capacity that may be able to offer value for any operation essential to the institution in much varied and other critical ways. This individual invariably is a double victim (of external institutional reprimand, and internal self-doubt)

On another line of thought, bureaucratic systems also helps softening the blame on a person by routing it through the frame of the system. Then, the system speaks its own language to communicate to the individual how they may not "fit in" or "non-contributors" to the system. This, in the system's frame is labelled as non-performance, and annotated as a failure for the productive engine of the institution. The bureaucracy keeps record of deviations. It has invented its rubric, and the record, not the intent, is the truth, the weapon of mobilizing decisions. Records! Institutional records! 

Bureaucratic apparatuses compel people to speak in languages that must not take individual names, and to the bettering of this engine - which is yet a flat line, to which others must align. The degree of alignment shall suggest your growth in this system. 

At an earlier time and place, I had gotten very interested in articulating how institutions are predominantly heteronormative. In thinking so, I believe that bureaucratization of an institutional apparatus is not only done to streamline its operations, but it also maintains a certain power, status quo and the longevity project. The queer imagination of institutional foundation would not necessarily be oriented towards maintaining legacy, rather making the present better and worthy of survival. A lot needs to be thought and studied about this claim, but I fundamentally feel that queer futures - or futures imagined through queer bodies do not have teleological trajectories and are necessarily multivalent and pluriversal. Therefore, their struggle is to create broader fields of accommodation rather than sharper projects of what i understand as patriarchy.

I wanted to articulate through this post the relative experience of an individual vis-a-vis a bureaucratic apparatus, the way bureaucracies affect languages and relational experiences, and lastly their translation into the institutional imagination. I also understand that this must be written as a much longer post to elaborate upon each of these aspects, that seem to be rather impressionistic here.

Amphibian Aesthetics - Art in the Age of Precarity

a group exhibition
presented by Ishara Art Foundation
conceptualized and designed by Aazhi Archives
The Ishara House at Kashi Hallegua House, Kochi, Kerala

13 December 2025 to 31 March 2026

Amphibian Aesthetics emerges from the urgencies of precarity in the Anthropocene—climate collapse, displacement, extinction, and hyper-capital—where questions of survival and radicality become inseparable from artistic practice. The exhibition unsettles familiar binaries of East/West, tradition/modernity, embracing entangled, rhizomic ways of thinking that refuse fixed hierarchies. The ‘amphibian’ stands as a figure of adaptability and shared vulnerability, moving between land and water, past and future, human and more-than-human worlds. Building on earlier explorations of Kerala’s oceanic histories—of migration, trade, and climatic shifts—Amphibian Aesthetics presents these entanglements as sites of both crisis and possibility. In foregrounding water’s agency and multispecies coexistence, the exhibition invites multisited and multimodal ways of imagining collective futures. Here, art becomes not merely a mirror to the world but an amphibious gesture—fluid, resilient, and attuned to the fragile ecologies that shape our shared survival.

The exhibition brings together 12 artists and collectives from South Asia, the Middle East and Europe, who play with the emerging precarities of our planet, suggesting multiple modes of being. It explores the aspects of ‘amphibian’ as an artful way of mediating migrations and exile, memory and history, traditions and identities across time and space.

Participating Artists \ Appupen, CAAS Collective (Dr Susmita Mohanty, Rohini Devasher, Sue Fairburn and Barbara Imhof), Dima Srouji, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Midhun Mohan, Rami Farook, Ratheesh T, Kabir Project (Shabnam Virmani, Anisha Baid and Smriti Chanchani), Shanvin Sixtous, Shilpa Gupta, White Balance and Zahir Mirza.

Visit the Exhibition Website

Exhibition Plan

Four Motions in Freedom - Bangalore Hubba 2026

FOUR MOTIONS IN FREEDOM
A video art project for Bangalore Hubba, 16-25 Jan 2026
18 artists / 20 videos

Abeer Khan / Amol Patil / B V Suresh / Babu Eshwar Prasad / Bharati Kapadia / Gigi Scaria / Katyayini Gargi / L N Tallur / Mrudula Kunatharaju / Parul Gupta / Pragati Dalvi Jain / Sheeba Chhachhi / Shreya Menon / Soghra Khurasani / Sukanya Ghosh / Surekha / Swagata Bhattacharyya / Vidya Kamat


Curatorial Note

This project examines various aspects of freedom through experimental video art by Indian contemporary artists. How does the notion of freedom occur in the work of the visual artist? The proposition ‘Four Motions in Freedom’ alludes to the structure of the symphony in western classical orchestra that interprets “freedom” as both a compositional structure and a political condition. The motion clips structurally presented in four sections of this curatorial schema also reference the four pillars of democracy and the four seasons that broadly occur during the cyclic period of a year - both that see a wave of change in our present politics and climate. These four motions — fast and slow, balanced and improvisatory — create the polyphonic field in which democracy breathes. Freedom here is not a single melody but a composition in flux, sustained by dialogue, friction, and repetition. Like any living music, its power lies not in resolution but in the continual act of listening, responding, and renewal.

The four vectors of freedom, explored through four video-sets here are:

 
a. BODY
This set explores works that look at the body as the first site of negotiation of freedom. The artists explore gestures of vulnerability or pleasure within the gendered, ritualised or surveilled body. Largely speaking of the feminine struggles, the section brings voices that claim for presence or autonomy and ultimately agency for the suppressed body.

 
b. TENSION
Oscillating between danger and play, this section highlights the tensions of exercising freedom. The works present contrasting ways of staging and dealing with one’s internal conflict. Freedom here is demonstrated in acts of release and restraint. When restrained, the works offer us new questions in stretching further the geography of the trapped mind.

 
c. ROUTINE
The works in this set present histories and actions that are silenced in the everyday acts of repetition. Some not only reveal the routines in which our lives unendingly circulate, but also offer us alternative ways in which we (may) begin to creatively maneuver them. They settle and unsettle the timespaces we inhabit, ultimately hinting at the quiet subversion of the mundane everyday.

d. IDEOLOGY
In this section, artists pose questions to the actions of ideological regimes that have led us to reflect on the political landscapes that the world is confronted with. The works interrogate different aspects of the violence of data, democratic ideals and distilled ethics and its impact on communities and societies.


VIDEO LIST

SCREEN – I BODY 5 videos Total: 14 mins 19 secs

1. Mrudula Kunatharaju TRY TRY TRY 2.30

2. Mrudula Kunatharaju STILL SMALL VOICE 1.40

3. Soghra Khurasani I WANT TO LIVE 1.01

4. Soghra Khurasani DO THIS, DO THAT 3.18

5. Vidya Kamat WISH I HAD STAYED HOME 5.50

SCREEN – II TENSION 5 videos Total: 20 mins 30 secs

1. Parul Gupta HAIRFALL 5.48

2. Surekha LOC 2.31

3. Pragati Dalvi Jain BREAKING THE IMAGE 6.59

4. Bharati Kapadia PLAYING WITH DANGER 2.12

5. Sukanya Ghosh ISOSCELES FOREST 03.00

SCREEN – III ROUTINE 5 videos Total: 17 mins 46 secs

1. Abeer Khan CHILD LOCK 2.12

2. Sheba Chhachhi MOVING THE CITY 6.58

3. Katyayini Gargi THE REITERATORS 2.05

4. L N Tallur INTERFERENCE 4.00

5. Amol Patil REST 02.31

SCREEN – IV IDEOLOGY 5 videos Total: 21 mins 19 secs

1. Shreya Menon RABBIT HOLE 1.41

2. Gigi Scaria POLITICAL FREEDOM 3.31

3. B. V. Suresh CANES OF WRATH 3.17

4. Swagata Bhattacharyya ROAD SCENE 4.18

5. Babu Eshwar Prasad WALK 8.32

Read full descriptions here

epilogue

As we complete fifty years since the Emergency of 1975, and while the world sways to the extreme political currents across the world, to ask about freedom is more pertinent now than ever. The global reconfigurations around us affect us at various scales of existence - both the self and the world, the body and action. How does the notion of freedom occur in the work of the visual artist? Through what routes does the artist lead us into thinking about our social, political and historical entrappings? Lastly, how could these be mobilised into ways of imagining and actioning for a more agile everyday?

Located in the Central Business district of the city of Bengaluru, the erstwhile Bangalore Central Jail, now the Freedom Park becomes a historical and phenomenological condition for this artistic intersection. The site has held several opposition leaders including poet prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and L K Advani when the state of emergency was proclaimed in India in 1975. More recently, it was the ground for hosting the India Against Corruption campaign supporting Anna Hazare’s indefinite fast for governmental action that led to the enactment of the Lok Pal Bill that extended the people of India, the will to ask questions freely to power. Opened in 2008, a part of this site has also been allotted for public protests and free political expression. As viewers encounter the show in the prison cells of the Freedom Park in Bangalore, ‘Four motions in Freedom’ invites contemplation on the histories and futures of our very artistic and collective freedom.