Introduction
Christians in our country along with other minorities are facing profound crises. It is complex and resists every shade of its reduction in logocentric terms. It is as though with the rise of militant Hindu right, Christians with other minorities seem to be challenged by an emergence of void which is a discomforting presence of an absence that unhomes them in their own country . But this discomforting experience provides several possibilities of being Indian Christians. The experience of deterritorialisation can become productive and bring new spring time of being Indian Christians. To arrive at a new territorialisation, it is imperative that we understand that this únhoming is arising from a gap that is constituted by a retroactive construction of both our Indian-ness and Chrsitian-ness by the right-wing forces. There is an exteriority and interiority of our Indian-ness and Christian-ness. These dimensions become ex-istent/ external through an immanent analysis.
The immanent analysis opens the space of power differential in our society. We can trace several lines of hegemonic formations that cross religious, regional and caste boundaries. Hence, there are several competing semiologies that we can construct each overlapping as well as marking its difference with the other. Just like the colonizers in the sixteenth century judged and ranked human civilizations based the benchmark of procession of alphabetic writing particularly in Latin America and constructed what is known as colonial difference[1] and legitimated their colonial imperialism so also a power differential is generated by the right wing Hindu groups based on the possession of a Hindu religion/ culture. The hegemonic formation that flows from this cleverly crafted gap seems to have successfully built an imaginary that has Hinduism/ Hindu culture as central to the exclusionary nationalism that is championed by them. Hence, it is important to understand how these discourses retroactively create the interests that they claim to represent in their followers. Besides, the immanent analysis that we strive to engage in this study opens us to the (dis)location of being an Indian Christian in the midst of this a totalitarian Nationalism.[2]
Therefore, the immanent analysis deals with the presencing of Christianity in India. This presencing in India is marked by a obscure sense of survival where Christians have to negotiate complex processes of identity and difference. To understand this complex presencing we have to move away from what may be called indologocentric underpinnings of our thinking. Having abandoned static, essentialist and logocentric mode of thought, we attempt to enter into the complex and dynamic becoming of Indian Christians. Next we analyse the becoming of Indian Christian from the libidinal economy and the economy of co-emergence. Finally, we attempt to evolve a growing shareable space through the co-becoming of Indian Christians and the other Indians.
Moving away from logocentric analysis of Christianity in India
The essencialized, positivist and fixated conceptualization of Christianity in India in foreclosed boundaries remains logocentric and exorcises the dynamic presencing/ copresencing of Christianity. Hence, in this context, we try to resist the temptation of representing and describing Christianity and Indian-ness merely in static and objectifying modes of understanding and move into a journey that remains sensitive to the mode of becoming an Indian Christian. This takes us way from what can be called Indologocentrism. It is an attempt to stay in the mode of saying and not in discursive practices that suffer foreclosures. While engaging the Copresencing and becoming of Christianity in India, we remain humble and admit that our effort to remain in the saying rather than in said may often be haunted by the mode of the said which cannot be totally discarded.
Cartography of embedded and embodied position
The processes of becoming Indian Christian are complex and non-linear and cannot be adequately grasped through linear, logocentric logic of the same. The alternate figuration of this complexity can open us to several dimensions that might otherwise remain opaque to the positivist and essentialized modes of thinking. Hence, we have the challenge to glide into thinking through flows and inter-connected emergence. The alternate figuration that we need to undertake is not figurative ways of thinking but materialistic mapping of embedded and embodied position. This new approach can dig into complexity of spatio-temporal processes in terms of dual dimension of power as restrictive (potestas) and affirmative (potentia) and not in static (inertia) mode.[3] Though the complex processes in our society resists representation of these pulls and pushes, an analysis of this with critical attention can open the in-between states and stages of transition, hybridization and nomadization of Indian Christians. It is a challenge to map the living in a dynamic state of being both Indian and Christian at the same time . This further challenges us to abandon the foreclosed boundaries of both the Indian-ness and Christian-ness being tattooed on our bodies. This mapping(s) also attempt to catch how inertia, nostalgia and aporia afflict our Indian-ness and chrisitan-ness. This means the cartographies that we strive to open up reveal how Christians in India are indexed, otherized and unhomed. Thus, it strives to manifest how power-relations and structures that affects the becoming of Indian Christians at the national, regional and local levels. This pictures the Indian Christian as a subject-in-process and unveils the power locations it has to negotiate, interrogate and resist.
Non-linear approach
The dynamism of society cannot be captured in a linear conceptual apparatus. The complexity that we are faced with in our understanding of becoming of Indian Christians challenges us to move towards a non-linear mode of thinking. This approach leads us to cross boundaries of our habituated linear thinking. It takes us to a consideration of leap, emergence, and flow that inform, conform and transform the becoming of Indian Christians. This means that non-linear thinking opens us to the complex dynamism of multiple flows that irrupts or rather disrupts into the leaps that transpose and mutate. This takes us away from a static, fixated and linearized mode of thinking to a radiating, rippling and even reversing modes of non-linear rhizomatic thinking.[4] Thus, the non-linear modes of thinking take us into the leaps of codes, fields or axis. This means non-linear thinking resists being imprisoned into fixed structures of instrumental rationality. Hence, this approach brings us to the pushes, pulls and expulsions that shape the becoming an Indian Christians. That is why non-linear mode of thinking may be good way of getting fully immersed in the becoming(s) of Indian Christians. The immersion in to the becoming(s) of Indian Christians brings us to the consideration of our co-presence and co-emergence in inter-relatedness with the rest of our fellow Indians. It takes us away from the phallic logic that constructs all difference through the hierarchical logic of sameness. This hierarchical logic pathologizes difference(s) and marks it out on a lack /absence of what is essentialized as standard of sameness. Hence, we are enabled to contest the cartographies that map the Indian Christians through markers of absence and legitimate their exclusion and marginalization.
Non-Phallic logic
The Phallic (il)logic constructs its other through foreclosures. It is creates substitutes for the Phallus driven by the desire of the lost object. We are schooled to think of subjectivity through the prism of castration that Freud named under the legendary Oedipus complex. Non-phallic logic contests the imperialism of Oedipus and dismantles the triangulation of the oedipal orbit which represses desire.[5] Oedipalization results into an endless repression of desire and installation of the supremacy of the Phallus. The installation the Phallus introduces lack into the desire. Lack then controls desire and castrates its productivity and leads it to foreclosed resignations through triangulations of the ‘holy family’ of Freud, the Father, Mother and the Son. We can trace the triangulation at work in the becoming of the Indian Christians. Often Indian Christians under the fear of castration (Orphaned) submit to the law of the father and undergo resignation or latency. This Oedipalization of the becoming of Indian Christians results in the loss of self. Hence, against this oedipalizing Phallic logic, we have to consider what Deleuze and Gauttari propose as schizophereization. Schizophereization opens the flow of production and views desire not through the prism of lack but production. Deleuze and Gauttari even move on to suggest that we need to come to a de-anthropomorphization that takes us to a becoming of animals.[6] Some scholars claim that Phallic logic also is able to detach itself from the oedipal moorings and drift fearsomely and aggressively against the jouissance de femme. [7]
Understanding the Becoming of Indian Christians
The becoming of Indian Christians is inter-webbed and is hybrid and liminal. We have to distance our analysis from the power of the logic of the same and open the horizons of the immanent dimensions of being an Indian Christian. The logic of the same does frame the dynamic and diverse becoming of Indian Christians in subject positions that are static, inferiorized and obtained by multiple subtractions. These discourses view the becoming of Indian Christians as deviant and pathological. Hence, we need to overcome this Indologocentric master code which operates as a map of semiotic inscriptions and culturally enforced codes that filter what passes of as Indian and Christian in our society. Hence, becoming Indian Christians would become profoundly visible to our immanent analysis if we understand the zone of becoming Indian Christians as the point for the flow of energies or the surface of intensities.
Becoming an Indian Christian, a Political Project
We have to view the historizing or the becoming of Indian Christian as also spatializing or territorializing. This embodied being and becoming of the Indian and Christian is profoundly political and cannot be only viewed as the other of the same (other Indians). If viewed as the other of the same, we shall become blind to inter-connected flows that bring about co-emergence in diverse ways of being both Indian and Indian Christians. The not yet that has not come to pass in the becoming of Indians and Indian Christians may be non-linear but not disconnected. This means by differently historizing and territorializing , the Indian Christians make a difference to the Indianizing of various other Indians which itself is plural and cannot be conceptualised in an Indologocentric master code. This means the becoming of both the Indians and Indian Christians is a creatively active and a symbiotic co-project. It is therefore, profoundly co-Indianizing. Hence, this co-Indianizing might be viewed as space of plenitude and not of lack. unfortunately, the indologocentric master code views the becoming of Indian Christian through the lens of lack and nails it as not national enough. It views the Christian Indian as the other of the Indian(s) by the introduction of lack. The injection of lack pathologizes the different historizing of Indian Christians. But this otherising of the Christian Indian fails to capture their dynamic and complex co-historizing and co-territorializing and hence, the Indian Christian remains the othered Other. Behind the veil of otherising, the Indian Christian lives and historizes/territorializes as the Other that is othered. Thus, the historizing become ex-centric leading to the transformation of an Indian Christian into an exiled one, (Homo Sacer )[8] in his/her own country.
Becoming an Indian Christian, a site of Co-becoming
The zone of Becoming of an Indian Christian is a dynamic field of interface where several material and symbolic forces intersect. It is a space that enacts the becoming of an Indian Christian, a space of praxis, of being an Indian Christian. It is site where we can locate the desire of an Indian Christians which itself is plural and cannot be tolalised. This means both the Indianizing and Chrsitianizing of the Indian Christian is plural. It is a space of being along side or side by side with other Indians. The Indian Christians in their in-depth becoming remain co-present to and co-journey with other Indians. Hence, there is a symbiotic becoming of Indians and Indian Christians. This means there is mutual becoming where we might locate a joyful affirmation of one’s enjoyment of being in India alongside other Indian(s). But unfortunately this dimension of co-journeying is not understood by indologocentric approaches. The embodied nature of all human becoming occurs in a site of subject formation. It introduces the person into a dynamic process of subjectification where both the repressive (potestas) and the empowering (potentia) aspects are intersecting. The repressive power often pushes the becoming of Indian Christian in an oedipal mode. This oedipal mode of becoming an Indian Christian operates on the institution of lack which is accepted as a marker of Indian-ness. Hence, the absence of this marked Indian-ness becomes a difference that legitimates both Oedipal closure of Indian Christians and their pathologization by imperially motivated significant minority among the Indians. But we can also trace the empowering power that can lead to a free and joyful enjoyment of being an Indian Christian along side of others. This mode of historizing of an Indian Christian might be called as affirmative deconstruction.
Becoming an Indian Christian, a Entangled Dynamism
Becoming an Indian Christian is not merely given. It is intertwined, entangled and a porous process. The becoming of Indian Christians, being an affirmative deconstruction cannot be insulated from the becoming of the rest of Indians. The Indian Christians are made as much as they make other Indians and others in the world. It is through the immersion into the plural ecologies of Indian society that we have the emergence of Indian Christians. Here we may step into the larvae stage of becoming an Indian Christian. This opens the process of becoming, the incubation stage of the being of the Indian Christians which flows from the virtual to the actual. Actuality is always side by side with virtuality. There is never an actual Indian Christian without the cloud of the virtual. The virtual orients, conditions and engenders the becoming of Indian Christians. Within this virtual realm, we can trace a continuous and complex negotiation and navigation with caste, religious beliefs and practices of other Indians, economic and political practices and systems , technological and scientific values, terrorism, violence and fear etc., resulting in an emergence of the subjectivity of a Indian Christian. Hence, we do not have the luxury of thinking the Indian Christian in a unitary mode of Indologocentric frame works. The being of an India Christian is not a closed container. Like every other Indian, an Indian Christian is a subject-in-becoming along side of other subjects. The subjectification of an Indian Christian has to pass through the constant processes of transition, hybridization and normadization that characterize their ways of being-in-the-world.
Libidinal economy of Indian Christians
There is an enjoyment (Jouissance) factor in the becoming process of all the ways of being-human-in-the-world. That is why the understanding of becoming an Indian Christian unfolds an economy of enjoyment. We have earlier banished understanding of enjoyment on the basis that it can be disruptive of the social coherence. This position is based on the view that prohibition is glue of our society and maintains social order. But developments Psychoanalysis today enable us to contest this belief and it has become clear that far from mere prohibition society arises out of enjoyment.[9] Even prohibition becomes a way of enjoyment as subjects derive enjoyment from their sacrifice while others do so from its enforcement as well as their rebellion from it. But this happens through restrained enjoyment and through neither complete renunciation nor complete freedom over enjoyment.
The symbolic order(s) and enjoyment(s)
The several lines of prohibition of enjoyment that are inscribed in the symbolic order(s) that conditions the becoming of Indian Christians introduce the possibility of enjoyment. In fact, the multiple forms of prohibitions are grounded in the phallic logic. They produce barriers relative to which enjoyment can constitute itself. This means without the law of the father that demands renunciation of enjoyment, no enjoyment is possible. It is in giving it up that we retrospectively create the enjoyment we never had. This is why Lacan rewrites Dostoyevsky’s declaration that states that ‘without God everything is permitted’ as ‘without God nothing is permitted’[10] Hence, within its several constraints, from among Indian(s), Indian Christian (s) trace a joy in both their Indianizing and Christianizing becoming as Indian Christian(s). The Indian symbolic order(s) become the law of the father and can produce an oedipal or anti-oedipal responses of becoming Indian Christian(s). Thus, for Instance, the Brahaminic symbolic order produces what has been christened as sankritization or rebellious de-sanskritizations of several hues among the Indians. Besides, there are other symbolic order(s) that influences the Indian Christian(s). This means the becoming of Indian Christians is not free from its share of entanglement into these symbolic order(s). That is why we have to discern a plural becoming(s) of Indian Christians. Otherwise, we remain trapped in what we have already called Indologocentrism. The Indian Christians have to give up a part of themselves, a part that did not exist until it is given up and become a lacking subjects that produces several lines of becoming that strive to recover the loss. The loss and recovery dynamism is produced by a desire which is in its turn is produced by what Lacan calls object petit a. Thus, for instance, we might indentify the object petit a of Indians as the lure of brahminhood(s), the original forbidden fruit of Indian(s). It is this lure of brahminhood(s) (mimetic desire of Brahmin(s) ) that produces us Indian(s) as desiring subjects. We have introduced Brahminhood(s) because it is differently imagined as an object petit a by Indian(s). But, there is not just a singular object petit a. There are other object petit a (a) like the lure of Europe(s), Science and Technology (s),Nation(s), Hindu Rashtra(s) etc.
Desire in the becoming(s) of Indian Christians
Paradox of being a desiring subject is in the very giving up of enjoyment(s). Lacan teaches that object petit a is the cause of the subject.[11] Indeed, following, Deleuze, we may assign it as the cause of the larval subjects by taking a plunge into the non-unitary notion of subject. The larval subjects both arise and are fed by the desire circuits that arise from the symbolic order(s) that produces plurality of object petit a(s). Desire being productive, produces several larval subjects both within each Individual and collective subject(s). That is, we will have to admit that there are plural ways of becoming an Indian Christian both individually and collectively. Within this complex dynamism, we might trace an oedipal response that led the leaderships of Indian Christian(s) to choose in the saffronzing of liturgy the codes of the Brahminical order. We may also trace the oedipalization in the choice of silence of the Christian leadership in India to several intolerant voices/vigilantes for fear of being disowned/ orphaned by the right wing forces/power elite in our society . Besides, the familiar Oedipal responses, we can trace an Anti-Oedipal responses which challenge the reign of the law of the father in plural ways. The dalit Christians contestation of the Brahimincal symbolic order(s) can be taken as illustrations of the Anti-Oedipalizing mode of becoming among the Indian Christians. Moreover, the modes of becoming (s) that seem to lead several Christian(s) serve Caste rather than Christ can be discerned through the enjoyment of death drive. The death drive can illumine why like other Christians, Indian Christians may become unfaithful to Christ whom they claim to follow. Moreover, ‘the fort da’ analysis of Freud can open us to the several ways the Indian Christians seek substitutes/ fetish in their becoming (s).
Enjoyment and symbolic Recognition
All becoming being Co-becoming is essentially marked by re-cognition. Recognition enables us to enjoy in socially mediated ways. Recognition is always conferred by the symbolic order(s). Recognition is a way of enjoying one’s social status. Perhaps, the way money produces recognition might illumine us about this complex process. The value of money does not so much lies in the enjoyment of the things it can buy but in the recognition it can bring. This is why rich people part with money to gain access to the enjoyment of recognition. One can derive recognition in the acts of benevolence as well as in acts leading to de-recognition of the other. This means we can gain access to enjoyment of recognition in the very act of de-recognition and violence that is directed against the other. Thus, in the very discrimination and subjection to ill-treatment of the Dalits, there is enjoyment of the supremacist Brahmins and other upper castes. It is as if in the acts of de-recognition that we recognize ourselves as different and mark our boundary and space. Through, the complex project of recognition/de-recognition of the Other, the self becomes what it is (in a non-unitary sense). Becoming of Indian Christians is marked by marking of boundaries and creation of cartographies. But in this very project of self creation which also entails the enjoyment of symbolic recognition, one realises that recognition primarily depends on the Other. Thus, as Hegel argues, it is the salve that authorises the mastery of the master.[12] It is in this paradox of mutuality that human relations co-emerge and co-flourish/co-disintegrate . We can trace this mutuality in the multiple emergence(s) of Indian Christians and Indians.
The Economy of Mutual emergence and Indian Christians
All becoming of human beings happens in a field of mutuality. We might call it the field of resonance. It is in this field of resonance that the becoming(s) of Indian Christian(s) and other Indian(s) take place. It is a space where lines of transmitabilities co-cross and co-vibrate leading to co-emergence(s) of Indian Christian(s) and the rest of Indian(s). It is a space where sharability and severalty meets and leads the Indian Christians and other Indians into a mutual shareable space which continuously brings about a co-presence that informs the co-becoming of everyone in India. It is this space where we can trace a dynamic and entangled co-weaving of self with it’s other among the Indian Christian(s). It is a space where we can trace sources of the self of Indian Christian(s) as well as that of other Indian(s). It brings co-emergence in differentiation. It grounds their aesthetico-ethical sensibilities which can be contested and re-directed.
Co-poietic differentiation in Co-emergence
The self creation/auto-poiesis is a co-poiesis. It is this space/ border space where the processes of difference occur, leading to the manifestation of difference. It is border linking space where the co-becoming of the Indian Christians occurs. It is a space were co-becoming does not reach the fixity of an object but remains a transject . Hence, the co-poiesis leads the co-emergence of us as co-subject(s) side by side. It is an event in which we inscribe the other in us and us in the other. These traces can never die with our death because they are inscribed in the others who outlive our death. Thus, we carry the traces of the other in us and vice versa. This brings us to a shareable space that we continuously build. Hence, there is no pure Indian Christian completely isolated and other to Indians. There is the other Indian is in the Indian(s). Each of us is flowing in a field of resonance and therefore an encounter with the other awakens us because the traces of the other are already in us. This becomes the basis of our mutuality and inter-being side by side. Though the encounter is side by side it is a transgressive and invasive. It might be Oedipalizing or anti-Oedipalizing in the presence of a difference that co-merges. Besides, It can lead to the cognizing of the self and its other. It is in the co-presence of the other Indians, that the Indian Christians recognize both themselves and their Other(s). This leads us to a shareable space that is transmissible and translatable by our mind that receives the encounter. Thus, the unconscious is not a logocentric space seated in the core of the self but it is a border space between the self and its other. Hence, we can understand how Indian Christians come to a plural cross inscribing of psychic traces of themselves into the other Indian(s) as well as receive the imprints of the other(s). This co-inscribing of the traces of each in the other is part of the ongoing co-poiesis of differentiation that co-flourish into the co-emergence of all Indians.[13]
Co-contesting the Aesthetico-ethical Sensibilities
The traces of the other in the self can lead to a sharing and exchanging of these traces forming a continuous co-poietic web. There is no solid fixity but fluidity that leads to a co-evolution of the self and its other. In the encounter with the self with it’s other, the self and its other comes to a co-sharing and co-wit(h)nessing of each other.[14] This encounter can lead to the co-becoming of each other’s co-contesting where the self is reduced to a partial self of a larger subjectivity. Thus, the co-presence of other Indians, the Indian Christian becomes a partial subject (larval subject in Deleuze), part of a larger subject and each is somehow fragilized . This means the encounter re-attunes the sensitivity of each other. This link with the larger subject brings us to a space of shareability and severalty.[15] The encounter with shareability and severalty can trigger resistance or compassion. Sometimes this response becomes a point of discord or communion, which produces roles that are enacted producing memory traces that are accumulated over period of time, in the horizon of which each partial subject is transformed and spring forth further Co-becoming. This fragile shareability produces aesthetic-ethical sensibilities rooted in compassion which leads to reciprocal responsibility for each other among Indian Christian(s). The reciprocal responsibility is co-responsibility. The ethics of co-responsibility emerges as a trace of the present that challenges anyone placed in this horizon. But this may not always be always compassion. When the self and its other (s) focus on the severalty and accumulate the traces of difference, the other of the self , the partial subject begins to look like an enemy who has no space of sharability. Hence, copoiesis that occurs can produce aggression. This can explain why Indian Chrsitians are often fragilized, alienated and de-nationalized and are pushed into the domain of what Kristeva calls abjects.
Co-Fragilization and the Partial Subjects
The co-emergence of the partial subjects/larval subjects that produce the shareable space transmit/exchange the traces of each other which are rooted in the conductible capacity of our mind. When transmission is made impossible by the pathos of the trauma, we are rendered open to the zone of translatability. Lacan teaches that trauma is an event that we cannot handle with the resources of our imaginary and the symbolic. Trauma is first addressed through the imaginary producing the phantasmatic images that remain far from the real. This triggers a reattunement of the spiralic metamorphic translatability that converts the co-emergence into a ping pong game. But the response of the other(s) of the self that occurs on the other end of the spiral still within the sharable space cannot be easily predicted. It can take mere edited forms of mimesis like the individualist character of worship is acquiring a communitarian and is being re-enacted in the other Indian contexts of worship. This means whether the sharing/ exchange of the traces unite or divide, the self co-emerge(s) with its other as partial/larval subject(s). In the encounter of each other, the self and its other co-create each other and co-fragilize each other. Fragilization is a kind of creation of the partial selves mainly in the contest of its other. This means the Indian Christians and other Indians co-emerge and co-fragilize and become partial/larval selves that are always in the process of cobecoming.[16] Co-fragilization as partial subjects/ larval selves can generate both compassion and re-resistance and aggression. When fragilization is viewed as inferiorization, resistance and aggression may result.
Co-emergence and Translation
Often there is a coping of desire of the other. The self mimes it other (s) as it shares or exchanges its traces with its other(s). This brings us into the realm of transmission and translation. This copying and mimesis is complex and non-linear and becomes translative. The becoming of Indian Christians being fragilizing can produce resistance through translation. Hence, can lead to what may be viewed as transbecoming . Transbecoming being co-becoming is indeed a co-transbecoming.
Translative Co-becoming
Lacan has opened our vistas to the transindividual character of the unconscious. He teaches us that the unconscious is the discourse of the other and is structured like a language. This means the unconscious comes into being through the introduction of the person into language. We can draw broader lines from Lacanian psychoanalysis to understand how a collective unconscious becomes a discourse of the other(s) that affect, afflict and shape the co-becoming (s) of the Indian Christians and rest of the Indians. Hence, Lancanian insight can bring light into the complex translative co-becoming that is pushed and pulled by the demands of the unconscious. Hence, faced with the prospect of fragilization in the event of encounter, both Indian Christians and other Indians are challenged by unconscious complexly, plurally and differently. Here we shall try to apprehend the tensive processes of translative co-becoming(s). The language is a signification system and operates on two axis. The vertical axis is viewed as paradigmatic axis and horizontal is called the syntagmatic axis. Lancan says that the elements in the unconscious like the wishes, desire (desire to copy the other ) images etc, form signifiers and these signifiers form the signifying chain where one signifier has meaning only because it is not the other signifier. Hence, there are no signified. There is nothing that the signifier ultimately refers to. He further says that positive relations of significations do not exist. There are only negative relations (value significations) among signifiers where one signifies what it is only because it is not something else.[17] These negative relations can be discerned in the fragilization and the co-becoming of the partial selves of the Indian Christians and the other Indians. The way the Indian Christians or other Indian view their relations on the horizontal axis (syntagmatic ) axis offers many options to them to generate their co-emergence in difference Hence, the tensive translative processes that we have discerned here are profoundly complex, non-linear and marked by emergence and resists all kinds of predictions and pre-determination.
Trauma and Tensive Translations
Lacan teaches that self is an excentric self. It identifies with its image in the mirror (Imaginary ). That is why that a self comes into being through a movement of ecstasies. Hence, the self can mutate into several larval subjects/ partial subjects in the encounter with the other who becomes the mirror. This mutation into several partial selves is a result of translations like a child within the six to 18 month translates its discomforting fragile and fragmented self as congruent with the image in the mirror. Thus, from a Lacanian point of view trauma triggers tensive translations and push the ex-centric self to mutate/ translate into partial selves/ larval selves through several phantasmatic images that it comes to identify in the mirror of its other (s). Hence, in the encounter that carries the accumulated traces of traumatic memory of its other (s) (which itself may be a phantasmatic image) can trigger further fragilzation which in turns translates into a chain of larval selves / partial selves. Hence, we have several translations that have generated a chain of larval selves/ partial selves among Indian Christians and other Indians. This means, their co-becoming becomes co-translations which may be called Co-transbecomings. When we become aware of this tensive translative processes, that informs and shape our becoming / (un)becoming, we might arrive into a therapeutic zone that will heal the transbecoming / trans(un)becoming of both Indian Christians and other Indians. This therapeutic zone can generate an ethics of compassion that will influence our aesthetico-ethical sensibilities and a sense of co-journeying may lead to an emergence of dialogical co-becoming of both Indian Christians and other Indians.
Therapeutic Translative Co-becoming
The awareness of the co-becoming has the seeds of reversing of the processes that may have become (un)becoming in the face of co-fragilizing of both Indian Christians and other Indians. This (un)becoming is a co-(un)becoming. Hence, a heightened awareness about it can indeed be therapeutic and generate a spring time for an emergence of an ethics of compassion. The ethic of compassion can foster a co-wit(h)nessing among the Indian Christians and the other Indians. A co-wit(h)nessing of each other has the power to open us to the complex and dynamic processes of mutual mutations of the self into its partial selves/larval selves in the horizon of it’s other(s). Hence, a co-wit(h)nessing can bring both Indian Christians and other Indians to a new level of ethics of compassion that overcomes erasures of dynamic co-becoming where disclosures of self or that its other(s) are foreclosed into reductive configurations leading to conflictual becoming among the Indian Christians and other Indians. Hence, awareness can generate an ethics of care and can take us to a leap of consciousness that might enable the self to see its trace in its other(s) and vice versa. Hence, the Indian Christian(s) carries other Indian(s) in them and vice versa. Fragilizing can be positively viewed as the carrying of the other in the self. Therefore, fragilizing may not be viewed as merely a mutating process of partial selves but one that carries the larval self of other (s) in oneself. Thus, the ethics of care draws on the lines of mutuality that would be spring time for co-wit(h)nessing and co-becoming of all Indians in a harmonious common journey of living different ways of being-Indians in India.
Conclusion
Our study has tried to unearth the complex, non-linear and dynamics of co-becoming(s) of both Indian Christians and other Indians. We try to avoid the indologo-centric fixation of both Indian-ness and Christianian-ness and approach the process of co-becoming in multiple modes of both Indianizing and Chrsitianing of Indian Christians in dialogue with the other Indians. The co-becoming(s) of both the Indian Christians being co-transbecoming can move unto the plural paths of becoming and (un)becoming. Hence, through a mutual co-wit(h)essing we hope to rise to an ethic of care that is grounded in the realization of the co-presence of each in the other and each with the other.
[1] See Wlater D Mignolo, Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledges and Border Thinking: Local Histories/ Global Designs (New Jersey: Princeton, 2000), pp 13-18.
[2] See Victor Ferrao, ‘Totalitarian nationalism is taking shape in India’ in UCANEWS http://www.ucanews.com/category/author/victor-ferrao accessed 29/9/2015.
[3] Rosi Baraidotti, Metamorphoses: Towards a Materialist Theory of Becoming (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2002), p. 2.
[4] Ibid, p.8.
[5] Gilles Deleuze and Felix and Gauttari, Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000).
[6] Ibid.
[7] Juliet Flower MacCnnell, Hysteric’s guide to future female subject (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000), pp. 218-219.
[8] George Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life ( Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998).
[9] See Todd McGowan, The End of Dissatisfaction? Jacques Lacan and the emerging Society of Enjoyment(Albany: State University of New York Press, 2004).
[10] Ibid., p. 16
[11] Ibid.
[12] Ibid, p. 26.
[13] The Notions of copoiesis, copresence wit(h)nessing and coemergence are derived from the work of Bracha Ettinger. See http://www.ephemerajournal.org/sites/default/files/5-Xettinger.pdf accessed on 29/9/2016.
[14] http://jordancrandall.com/main/+UNDERFIRE/site/files/q-node-562.html accessed on 29/9/2016.
[15] See http://professorvj.blogspot.in/2013/03/transgressive-shareability.html accessed on 29/9/2016
[16] http://www.oslit.nl/beheer/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Program-Bracha-L.-Ettinger.pdf accessed on 29/9/2016.
[17] See Ian Parker, Psychoanalytic Culture: Psychoanalytic discourse in Western Society (London
: Sage Publications 1997) p. 195.
