Abstract
After long neglect, the complicated symbolic meanings of popular icons have begun to receive critical attention. Yet, few recent surveys provide great insight into the transnational allure of popular figures. Fewer still approach the larger phenomenon of icons from a comparative perspective. Bishnupriya Ghosh’s Global Icons addresses both of these shortcomings. Specifically, Ghosh traces the cultural biographies of three towering icons: Phoolan Devi, Mother Teresa and Arundhati Roy. Ghosh interprets these public figures—the outlaw, the saint, and the artist-activist—as ‘runes of the popular’, or technologies of relation that grant a window on sociopolitical tensions in and beyond South Asia.
The book poses three central questions: What insight into populist reason can the icon offer? What is the cultural work of the icon in an era of globalisation? What is the social efficacy of shared symbols? To address these broad questions, Ghosh develops an interdisciplinary toolkit that draws on semiotics, media studies, social theory, visual culture studies, literary criticism, and religious studies. With this sophisticated theoretical apparatus Ghosh scans the history of the icon as symbolic object, from the Byzantine doctrine to her three contemporary case studies. Ghosh argues that while global icons share some similarities with celebrities and other public figures they encompass much more. They can galvanise popular sentiment and, at times, catalyse collective action. Thus, icons act like apertures, they ‘open us to another’ by creating points of connectivity with wider communities of interest (177). More precisely, Ghosh suggests that because icons can be transformed into containers for shared aspirations they facilitate alternative publics that transcend local as well as national boundaries. For instance, as an iconic figure Phoolan Devi condensed Dalit political aspirations. As an icon, Arundhati Roy channeled popular critiques of state and corporate power.
In Ghosh’s analysis the icon’s ability to act as an anchor for popular sentiment stems in part from the particular way in which admirers interpret her story. As archetypical figures, or ‘bio-icons’, the real and imagined lives of icons are popularly received as pedagogy. In the realm of popular culture their biographies are imagined to encapsulate universal human longings for compassion, justice, and equality. Phoolan Devi, Mother Teresa, and Arundhati Roy are therefore global icons both in the sense that their popularity crosses national boundaries and that they are associated with transcendent messages. With transcendence comes variance in interpretation, and Ghosh demonstrates that while universalist readings reinforce the icon’s global relevance, the meanings of global icons are inherently unstable.
Ghosh’s lucid analysis of the icon in contemporary South Asia unfolds in three parts. Part One lays the theoretical groundwork. The section brings the work of Roland Barthes, Charles Sanders Peirce, W.J.T. Mitchell, and Kajri Jain, among others, into conversation. Here Ghosh renders a masterful overview of the many approaches to symbolic culture. She also foreshadows subsequent sections by addressing the controversies around symbolic figures and the social fissures these exemplify. In Part Two Ghosh explores the material culture of icons and their multiplicity of interpretations. Among Kolkata’s poor, Mother Teresa became an archetype of compassion. At the same time, Ghosh suggests, boosters keen to rebrand Kolkata’s both cosmopolitan and progressive repurposed Mother Teresa’s image to represent the city’s renaissance. For Arundhati Roy, fame as literary star-cum-activist offered a platform to link South Asian communities resisting environmental degradation with a transnational community of interest. Through Roy, a global communitas voiced solidarity with on-the-ground social movements in India.
Part Three offers a deeper analysis of the collective imagination. Here Ghosh turns to the politics of contestation. Through reflection on battles over the symbolic meaning of popular figures, Ghosh further details the role of global icons as incorporative technologies. For example, Ghosh traces several moments in Phoolan Devi’s life where she acted as a channel for popular sentiment. The 1994 release of Shekhar Kapur’s film Bandit Queen, for instance, cemented Devi as a signifier for Dalit rights—perhaps to a greater degree than did her real-life surrender to authorities. Devi’s political career and assassination were likewise recast as pedagogy.In the popular realm Devi was transformed into a stereotyped protagonist celebrated for overcoming insurmountable social, political, and psychological obstacles. As icon Devi was both flashpoint and inspirational aperture.
Global Icons tackles themes so numerous that some weighty questions inevitably remain unresolved. For instance, while Ghosh skillfully traces the icon’s volatility, its political potential is not always clear. This prompts the question: if in the age of global mass media icons possess the ability to catalyse social action, does their symbolic potential surpass that of past martyrs or political leaders? In short, can global icons become driving forces of world historical transformation? Global Icons may not offer a definitive answer, but Bishnupriya Ghosh’s incisive reflections grant extraordinary insight into the popular runes of our time. Global Icons is therefore an invaluable guide to contemporary public culture and deserves a wide audience.