Accepted Panels

In our understanding and capturing of the lives of urban margins what is significant is the question of how this stigmatized section of the population and their space are seen, ordered, and governed. With the advent of modernity, what was done through governmentality rooted in scientific rationality is done through aesthetics in today’s times. In the context of the urban margins-migrant tribes in the context of this study, what is pertinent to explore is that located in a globalizing metropolis with world class aspirations, the response of the city has been such i.e legitimizing and operationalizing in ways that is exclusionary to those at the margins of the city. Interestingly this aesthetic mode of governance does not get revealed vis a vis those who are governing, but instead, manifests itself through a shared imagination what Jacques Ranciere calls as distribution of the sensible between those who are governed (margins) and those who govern (state). Therefore, significant would be to understand how city is governing in ways that subsequently makes or rather compels the margins to appropriate the same ways to govern themselves and seeing them as their own. In the world class imagination governed by aesthetics, margins are considered encroachers creating obstruction in the imagination of world classness of the city and hence can be disposed of. Yet, what is fascinating is how this virtual imagination of those who are governing becomes the collective imagination of the governed (margins) and they are lured to be part of a space with world class sensibilities. This abstract will attempt to therefore explore how aesthetics is emerging as a terrain for politics in the city spaces today over which the margins are trying to find a claim for their rights and belonging to the city and how is education located in this imagination.