Talk by Dr. Lakshmi Subramanian

In this talk, Dr. Lakshmi Subramanian, current Scholar-in-Residence at Godrej Archives will reflect on the archiving impulse that has animated recent efforts by business houses to store their material and the challenges these offer to scholars working with them. It arises out of both her personal experience of working with the Godrej Archives as well as of engaging with the larger problem of disciplinary credibility in relation to business history and its invocation of the archive. The talk will not only revisit issues of gate keeping and use but will consider the distinctiveness of an archive of manufacture and what that holds for a historian of objects. It will specifically engage with the potential and challenges of writing about objects and their semantic significance in everyday lives. She will look at three specific Godrej products, each rooted in context, to show how these objects illuminate specific moments in India's history.