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Rishabh Kumar @kumhar.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Good comparisons here between the Kafala system in West Asia and the US migration regime. Many Indian migrants I know have lived in both regions & often discuss these similarities. This angle also helps de-exoticise Kafala - its not an Asian issue, it exists right here lpeproject.org/blog/america...

lpeproject.org

American Kafala

When seen through the prism of the kafala system, it appears that the Trump administration seeks to consolidate and formalize the most extractive features of the U.S. migration regime.

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Rishabh Kumar @kumhar.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

In 2026, postcolonial theory continues to color Indian debate. This "centrist" Indian magazine op-ed from a pseudonymous Muslim writer engaged w/ Spivak, Said & Gramsci, all to argue that Indian Muslims have no intellectual class (especially compared to Hindus). theprint.in/opinion/shah...

theprint.in

From Shah Bano to Waqf—how Muslim politics has produced just intermediaries, not intellectuals

Indian Muslims have leaders, lawyers and bureaucrats. But they lack a culture of self-criticism.

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Rishabh Kumar @kumhar.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

The reference to Harraways work on engineered mice reminds me of a myth we had at Hopkins that the mice in our dorms were genetically engineered escapees from the laboratories. The implication? Unclear, but it certainly made it feel more special when we saw one!

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Rishabh Kumar @kumhar.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

Wrote about this in more detail, focusing on the "screen of cliches" that structure the contemporary audiences relationship w/ artists like van Gogh, to the Westerns critics blinkered understanding of "corrupt" oriental artists like Osman Hamdi intrusivehistories.com/2026/09/11/o...

intrusivehistories.com

Orientalism at the Museum

I had the chance to visit the exhibition on Orientalism: Between Fact and Fantasy at the Met. I was struck most by the work of Osman Hamdi Bey, perhaps the only well-known Orientalist artist actual…

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Reposted by Rishabh Kumar

nico @nicodelort.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

another Judas painting i really love and that's always been a "i need to keep this composition in mind" type of influence in the back of my head Judas Iscariot, by Edward Okun, 1901

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Rishabh Kumar @kumhar.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Good to see social scientists take critiques of decolonial theory more seriously. Too many seem to think decolonial theory begins and ends with humanities departments when it's ideas are seen widely in legal/social settings, esp. in the Third World www.developmentresearch.eu?p=2660

developmentresearch.eu

Inverted Eurocentrism: The Consumption of Decolonization in the Global North

By Ingrid Harvold Kvangraven At a moment when the United States has recently kidnapped the Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, assassinated the Iranian supreme leader Ali Hosseini Khamenei, is plotti…

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Rishabh Kumar @kumhar.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

Visited the Orientalism exhibit on Osman Hamdi Bey in the Met last week. The New Yorker has a decent review, but makes several silly and ignorant claims near the end, accusing Hamdi of being corrupt, selling his "cultural patrimony" to the west, and not "benefit[ing] those whom it represent[s]"

The exhibition's framing of Hamdi as the conscientious Orientalist feels slyly designed to disarm judgment of his work, and even to neutralize his professional misdeeds.
Hamdi was a powerful arts administrator who helped to approve excavation permits for foreign archeologists working in the Ottoman Empire, and what the exhibition alludes to as a
"complex web of diplomatic exchanges" seems to be, quite simply, graft. Foreign art institutions and government officials, particularly in France, Germany, and the U.S., purchased Hamdi's paintings and gave him awards in exchange for permits, and Hamdi, who wanted to succeed in Europe, seemed to appreciate the flattery. If his version of Orientalism entails paintings for permits, at the expense of cultural patrimony, does it really serve to benefit those whom it represents?

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Rishabh Kumar @kumhar.bsky.social · 21/11/2024

La Mettrie was a doctor and strict materialist who influenced the french enlightenment (L'homme machine is incredible stuff). And then ofc biopolitics, most theories clustered around Marxism, and feminist and queer philosophy have all investigated the biological.

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Rishabh Kumar @kumhar.bsky.social · 21/11/2024

Sharing my new article here: Read if interested in a forgotten literary feud that presages the insular nationalism defining Indian identity today, as well as other, more universalist paths not taken scroll.in/article/1074...

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