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The Vernacular: An Introduction

The vernacular is today the site of resurgent interest. It is a name under which to gather overlooked archives in overlooked languages, a specialized tool of reading, a succinct term of approbation, a notion that incites exasperation, and often enough the object of polemic. Accordingly, the critical provocations by four distinguished scholars gathered in this forum sketches a variety of positions on the vernacular, ranging from the invested (Charu Gupta) to the skeptical (Nirmal Selvamony). In between are an essay that traces the contradictory history of the vernacular in South Asia (Bishnupriya Ghosh) and another that recognizes the appeal of the vernacular but suggests alternatives (Francesca Orsini). Despite their variety, however, all the essays reveal a dyadic understanding of the vernacular – the vernacular as one term where the other member of the pair is the standard, the superordinate, the expansive/cosmopolitan or indeed a combination of all of these. As one member of a dyad the vernacular shares cognate space with the following terms in contemporary critical discourse: the folk, the indigenous, the local, the regional. It is not synonymous with these terms. Indeed, in important regards the vernacular and these terms are rivals in striving to name and elucidate cultural phenomena. There are real stakes in this rivalry (as this forum amply shows) but to pay attention only to rivalry is to miss the ways these terms are also allied. Indeed, one might say their rivalry is itself an outcome of their shared purpose. To come directly to my point: the vernacular and its rival terms is each, I would argue, often (not always and not inevitably) the conduit for a critical yearning for that which lies beyond (below, above, alongside?) the brilliant but also brittle allure of the global. If the global dazzles the critical eye only to, all too often, bring forth vapidity, the vernacular is one point of vantage from which to counter the glare of the global. I might illustrate my point by regarding the vernacular in relationship to the indigenous. As I have written elsewhere, the one term cannot do the critical work of the other (Shankar 2012, 24). Nevertheless, the contemporary resurgence of interest in both terms represents, I would suggest, a shared discontent with the unqualified exorbitation of the global in all its guises and modes, prescriptive as well as descriptive. The same may be said of the folk, the local and the regional in relation to the vernacular.