ABSTRACT
The first handwritten newspaper, Mizo Chanchin Laisuih (MCL), conveys a desire to inform, form and reform the Lushai consciousness and sensibility. This manuscript newspaper (MCL) may be considered as the earliest text or artefact meant to fabricate a form of cultural commodity in the Lushai world. The cultural commodity in turn was meant to produce a novel act of consumption. Among other things, this chapter describes MCL’s ambition to constitute a public from a declining self-governing community, create a reading/hearing culture distinct from a listening/musical culture, and develop a habit of cognizing graphic displays as signs from an embodied understanding of performative utterances. The newspaper inaugurates a rational discursive space, but it also tries to accommodate and converse with the living, mythical traditions of the Lushai. The rational discursive space calls for an ability to weigh things based on their perceived properties. On the other hand, the living, mythical Lushai traditions seem to invoke a measure outside the rationally calculable universe.
