8th Gellner seminar with William T.S. Mazzarella

We are delighted to invite you to the 208th Gellner seminar, given by William T.S. Mazzarella, Neukom Family Professor of Anthropology and the Social Sciences at the University of Chicago. It will be jointly organized by the Department of Mobility and Migration of the Institute of Ethnology CAS, the  Czech Association for Social Anthropology, and the Institute of Philosophy CAS.

Abstract
What if one were to take seriously the proposition that advertising isn’t like magic, rather it is magic? And further, what if advertising isn’t just a matter of manipulation, but also, for the magician themselves, a question of entering a volatile relation with ambiguous powers? My talk explores this theme via the story of the rise and fall of Kersy Katrak – charismatic Bombay adman, published poet, and practicing occultist. The talk is at the same time, in a minor key, a meditation on the long tail of ethnographic enchantment. 

About William T. S. Mazzarella
Prof. Mazzarella writes and teaches on the political anthropology of mass publicity, critical theory, affect and aesthetics, psychoanalysis, ritual and theopolitics, and the occult shadow of the modern. His books include Shoveling Smoke: Advertising and Globalization in Contemporary India (Duke, 2003), Censorium: Cinema and the Open Edge of Mass Publicity (Duke, 2013), The Mana of Mass Society (Chicago, 2017), and, with Eric Santner and Aaron Schuster, Sovereignty, Inc: Three Inquiries in Politics and Enjoyment (Chicago, 2020). He is also the co-editor, with Raminder Kaur, of Censorship in South Asia: Cultural Regulation from Sedition to Seduction (Indiana, 2009), and the editor of K D Katrak: Collected Poems (Poetrywala, 2016). His article 'The Anthropology of Populism: Beyond the Liberal Settlement' appears in the 2019 issue of Annual Review of Anthropology.