Ananda Coomaraswamy: Anarchizing Performance, East and West

Abstract

Ananda Coomaraswamy:Anarchizing Performance, East and West Kimberly Croswell (bio) Ananda Coomaraswamy (1866–1947) was a Sri Lankan born, English-raised anarchist, art historian, critic, and activist whose work spanned South and Southeast Asia, England, and America during the first half of the twentieth century (fig. 1).1 He mobilized South Asian performance traditions to inject the Western imagination with anarchist social, political, and cultural values. Coomaraswamy challenged the modern Western notion of "progress" to disrupt the colonialist assumptions of Western superiority; instead, he regarded the relationship between Eastern and Western cultures as potentially complementary. Rejecting capitalist-industrialism, he theorized a decolonizing "post-industrial" revolution that would liberate pre-industrial cultural and economic forces of the East and deindustrialize the West (Antliff, Anarchist Modernism, 128–31). Post-Industrial societies would be founded on the rejection of stated-based social organization in favor of economic and political self-management rooted in arts and crafts traditions (127). To foster the necessary social consciousness to overthrow capitalism and oppression and create a world in which the arts would permeate all aspects of everyday life, Coomaraswamy looked to spiritual and cultural values he encapsulated in the term "Idealistic Individualism" (134). For Coomaraswamy, "Idealistic Individualism" was anarchistic consciousness emergent in the Western philosophies of Nietzsche, Whitman, and Blake, as well as modern art. But, first and foremost, it already existed in Asian cultures because they were rooted in a craftsmanship ethos that unified the arts within the living spiritual traditions from which they developed (134). Fomenting a revolution against industrial capitalism in the West [End Page 467] compelled him to work tirelessly in his role as educator to sensitize Westerners to the Idealistic Individualist "core" of Eastern art traditions. While he contested the forces of industrial-capitalism and colonialism from an anarchist perspective, he simultaneously developed a social-historical narrative in which Eastern Idealistic Individualism resonated with Western parallels.2 Click for larger view View full resolution Fig 1. Ananda Coomaraswamy, ca. 1909. Photographer unknown. Private collection. Coomaraswamy first articulated his anarchist vision in an address to vocational arts students at the Newcastle-under-Lyme School of Art, which was published in the internationally acclaimed Modern Review Journal in June of 1913. In this speech, [End Page 468] Coomaraswamy explicitly states, "It is only by means of art that a permanent revolution can be achieved."3 The foundations of this revolution, according to Coomaraswamy, are located in the calling of the artists and craftspeople, whose "sincere and purposeful" work will ensure the "re-education of the sense-sensitiveness" of individuals living under the conditions of industrialism—conditions under which "our daily environment" has been "sacrificed to the purposes of trade, empire and priesthood" (Coomaraswamy, "The Purposes of Art," 606). Here, Coomaraswamy calls for European cultural revitalization as political activity. Furthermore, the revolutionary purpose of the arts offered cross-cultural transformations: Coomaraswamy believed if Westerners were exposed to South Asian art forms and educated as to their significance, they might realize a critical understanding of European modernity (Coomaraswamy, The Dance of Śiva, 1–3, 113–14). As such, his goal in promoting the arts was to foment a dynamic cultural revolution. Revolutionizing Performance West to East In this endeavor, he had a key ally: Ratan Devi (Alice Richardson). Coomaraswamy first met Richardson in England in 1907 when she was part of an ensemble performing English folk songs and dance.4 By 1911, Richardson and Coomaraswamy were married and traveling together to northern Kashmir where they lived on a houseboat at Shrinagar.5 There, Richardson studied with Ustad Abdul Rahim of Kapurthala. She mastered thirty traditional songs from the region which she would perform in England, adopting the persona Ratan Devi. During performances, Coomaraswamy assumed the role of educator, explaining various aspects of the music to the audiences. In keeping with their "sense-education" campaign, they co-produced Thirty Songs from the Panjab and Kashmir (1913), which included Ratan Devi's notations with commentaries and an introduction by Coomaraswamy. Coomaraswamy explained Ratan Devi's training in Shrinagar: "The songs were first learned by imitation and studied until they could be sung to the Ustad's satisfaction, no easy matter, by reason of the extraordinary elusiveness of Indian...