Sometimes Similar, Sometimes Dangerously Different: Exploring Resonance, Laminations and Subject-Formation in South India

This paper explores the ways in which particular individuals or groups are cast as problematically other at certain times by exploring the relationship between empathy and antipathy - identified as products of 'resonance', or a certain kind of responsiveness to embodied encounters with others and also to concerns, ideas and discourses that originate locally or from elsewhere. Consequent effects on subject-formation and affordances of social possibilities are explored through an intensive focus on one Muslim man. The notion of a 'laminated subjectivity' is presented and elucidated. The paper draws on ethnography conducted in a Tamil town and is set against the backdrop of Hindu-Muslim relations in India. © 2012 Copyright Routledge Journals, Taylor and Francis.