Ray Between Two Owls: Satyajit Ray and the Aporias of Enlightenment

Abstract

Satyajit Ray is often seen as a towering “Enlightenment figure” of late-twentieth century Bengal who upholds reason and liberal thought. However, such a reading does not adequately account for the complex attitude to enlightenment that Ray's works exemplify. Like Rabindranath Tagore, Ray too upholds the necessity to be enlightened while simultaneously foregrounding the pitfalls of the Western Enlightenment, which has come to base itself on “instrumental reason” (a la Adorno and Horkheimer). Exploring Ray's ambivalent response to the Western Enlightenment, I seek to underline the ways in which his approach to enlightenment embodies a deep responsiveness towards the shadowy and dark circumferences of the rational domain which, as Mary Midgley suggests, must not be ignored in our enterprise of “Enlightenment.”