Aleksandra Restifo completed her PhD at Yale in 2018, studying aesthetics in the Jain tradition. She now holds the Bhagwan Mahavir Professorship in Jain Studies at Florida International University.
Can you tell me a little bit about your work and how you began working on Jainism?
I was introduced to Jainism by Professor Peter Flügel while at SOAS University of London, where I completed my master’s degree. It was a wonderful experience in part because Peter Flügel is an amazing scholar and educator and in part because in his class on Jainism there was Samani Pratibha Pragya, a Jain nun, now a scholar of Jainism, and my future colleague at FIU. So my first exposure to Jainism was from both an academic perspective and an insider perspective. There were many heated debates in the classroom, as Peter and Pratibhaji would perceive and interpret the history of Jain traditions and practices differently, which often produced a creative tension and gave me an enriched introduction to Jainism.
I came to Yale to continue my studies with Professor Phyllis Granoff who recently retired from Yale and is one of the best and most versatile scholars of medieval Indian literature, South Asian religions, and Jainism specifically. My interest in Jain literature and generally South Asian literature in Sanskrit and Prakrit developed in conversations and reading sessions with Phyllis. It was an absolute pleasure to read narratives, drama, and philosophical works with her.
The more I learned about Jainism, the more I realized that there was still so much to do. At the moment, I’m particularly keen on thinking about emotion and aesthetics in medieval literatures of India. Inspired by work on affect and emotion in adjacent academic disciplines, I’ve observed the key role that emotion plays in community formation, ritual, devotion, and metaphysics in Jainism. My work is currently in this area.
And how does that manifest in the book you’re working on?
My book is tentatively titled The Theater of Renunciation: Aesthetics of Emotion in Medieval Jainism. In it I look at how affect and emotion shape and are shaped by processes within the Jain traditions. One of the things I do in the book is look at how affect participates in ritual. In order to better understand that, I consider two genres of literature: canonical prescriptive texts and drama. I suggest that one way for us to recognize the underlying causes of certain actions or behaviors that are encouraged or criticized in Jain didactic texts is to pay attention to dramatic literature, because it is there that the affective underpinnings of action and its fruit are highlighted and brought to the fore.
I also focus on how emotion relates to cognition and conduct in Jain metaphysics and examine how excessive emotion participates in descriptions of different types of mental illness, or madness. Finally, I zoom in on the formation of the Kharatara Gaccha lineage, whose monks used the historically ambiguous attitude to emotion and arts in order to argue for the construction of new temples that would not be defiled by certain emotional expressions and aesthetic forms
that evoked wrong affective states. In short, I employ the lens of emotion to reveal some of the ways in which Jain actors construed emotion concepts and meanings around them.
You’ve studied South Asia in Russia, in India, in the United Kingdom, in the United States, and even in Israel. How have those different places and the institutions that you’ve been at shaped your approach to studying South Asia?
I was introduced to India at six years of age, when I went to a Hindi boarding school in St. Petersburg. It was part of a diplomatic project between the Soviet Union and India. They established five schools in different cities of the Soviet Union where pupils were exposed to Indian culture from the 1st to 11th grades. So, I don’t really remember myself not thinking about India. But of course, I find myself rediscovering India all the time, with every text I read, every trip I make to India, and every book about Indian culture I encounter. In Russia, India was represented to me by Russian-speakers, and because there were a lot of restrictions on travel, they had never been to India themselves (just like Max Müller!). I had a very unusual image of India as a young person, one that is still important to me as it was part of shaping my identity, so to speak, but also one that I have never been satisfied with. I was left with a lot of questions upon finishing school and found it important to go to India and stay there for two years. I completed my first master’s degree in Hindi at Hyderabad Central University.
I’m grateful for my experiences at different places. I owe so much to the professors of Sanskrit literature at St Petersburg State University, particularly Svetlana Neveleva, Tamara Selivanova, Jaroslav Vasilkov, and Sergey Tavastsherna. What David Shulman and Yigal Bronner have created at Hebrew University in Jerusalem is perhaps one of the best programs for studying South Asia in the world, and it was an honor to visit it. The commitment they have, and the genuine love for their work, show in everything they do. My time at the University of Oxford and Prakrit readings sessions with Chris Minkowski, John Lowe, Diwakar Acharya, Jim Benson and other incredible scholars were filled with joy and learning. As for Yale, I’m forever grateful for the rigorous training I received from Phyllis Granoff. The sheer exposure to her brilliance and commitment to excellence is invaluable.
Of course, institutionally, there are issues in the ways we organize and approach South Asian studies in Russia, the UK, and the US. I believe in working towards equity, spending time in India, learning languages, and being clear about your positionality.
How are those experiences playing into what you’re doing now at Florida International University?
I think there have already been a lot of amazing things done at FIU. We’re trying to develop the Institute for Advanced Jain Studies at FIU, which will hopefully be a type of think tank where we will read texts, organize exhibitions and conferences, and bring people together from the community and academic circles across the world. One of the things I want to bring is a focus on Jain aesthetics and art. Aesthetics is, of course, a huge part of South Asian culture, and in Jainism we see its key role in devotional rituals that often include performance, singing, and
music. Not everyone might be interested in reading a text or an academic paper, but I think nearly everyone would enjoy watching a good musical or dramatic performance. Jain monks composed many dramas, and I hope we’ll find an opportunity to stage some of these dramas at FIU and invite people to learn about Jainism from that perspective as well.
What is your advice for incoming students of South Asia, (perhaps like yourself several years ago)?
I would probably emphasize two things, particularly for doctoral students of premodern South Asia: to study languages to gain access to the incredibly rich lore of yet-unstudied and often-unpublished works, and to engage with theoretical works to ask relevant and meaningful questions about this premodern material. If we’re talking about the students of South Asian religion, it’s important to take a course on methods and theory early on, and to read the classics, such as Tomoko Masuzawa ’79 or J.Z. Smith. I would also say that one should follow their heart, because a doctoral program is not a sprint, but a marathon, and the best fuel for it is finding your work meaningful and exciting.
Byline: Daevan Mangalmurti