Review of Politics of Post-Civil Society: Contemporary History of Political Movements in India .... more Review of Politics of Post-Civil Society: Contemporary History of Political Movements in India . By Ajay Gudavarthy. Delhi: Sage Publications, 2013. Pp.262.ISBN: 978-81-321-1041-5 (HB)
This book argues that contemporary world literature is defined by peripheral internationalism. Ov... more This book argues that contemporary world literature is defined by peripheral internationalism. Over the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, a range of aesthetic forms beyond the metropolitan West - fiction, memoir, cinema, theater - came to resist cultural nationalism and promote the struggles of subaltern groups. Peripheral internationalism pitted intellectuals and writers not only against the ex-imperial West, but also against their burgeoning national elites. In a sense, these writers marginalized the West and placed the non-Western peripheries in a new center. Through a grounded yet sweeping survey of Bengali, English, and other texts, the book connects India to the Soviet Union, China, Vietnam, Latin America, and the United States. Chapters focus on Rabindranath Tagore, M. N. Roy, Mrinal Sen, Mahasweta Devi, Arundhati Roy, and Aravind Adiga. Unlike the Anglo-American emphasis on a post-national globalization, Insurgent Imaginations argues for humanism and revolutionary intern...
Back in 2011,' the editors of this collection of essays tell us, 'it came to the notice of variou... more Back in 2011,' the editors of this collection of essays tell us, 'it came to the notice of various observers that the worldwide civil insurgencies that kicked off in Tunisia shared a set of singular features. The "Arab Spring," the Spanish indignados, the Greek aganaktismenoi and the Occupy World Street movement appeared to be leaderless and self-organized insurgencies of common citizens' (p. 2). However, the way this formulation suggests that 2011 is already half a lifetime away indicates that these 'various observers' have a journalist's rather than a historian's sense of timing and context. Indeed, the use of the casual phrase 'kicked off' to describe the outbreak of the Arab Springas though it were a football match or a playground fightshows the influence of Paul Mason, formerly Business Editor for the BBC's Current Affairs show Newsnight (now Economics Editor at Channel Four News). Mason's 2012 book Why It's Kicking Off Everywhere, updated a year later as Why It's Still Kicking Off Everywhere, breathlessly compiles a series of dispatches from the frontlines of what he calls the 'new global revolutions.' Mason is well-informed and smart, but it is not evident why his perspective should be setting the agenda for a volume of essays on political theory. It may be because he puts the Greek and Spanish protests front and centre: Kioupkiolis and Katasambekis are both based in Greece, and their contributors, such as Marina Prentoulis and Lasse Thomassen, want to tell us also about Spain, and, to a much lesser extent, Occupy Wall Street. But hardly any of these writers address the Arab Spring, let alone the precursors to what happened way 'back in 2011.' It is therefore hard not to feel that this is, from the outset, a shallow book, too attached to its place and its moment, too much a creature of its immediate environment. The collection treats theoretical differences in similar fashion, as a kind of spectator sport: its subtitle pits Biopolitics against Hegemony, Multitude 'versus' People. In the essays themselves, this split tends to play out as a head-to-head between Italian theorist Antonio Negri and the late Ernesto Laclau. Too often, something always escapes. There is no teleology or predetermination here: neither Negri's eschatology of the multitude nor Laclau and Mouffe's infinite expansion of radical democracy. But there is plenty to remind us that politics (and surely, political theory) is rather more than a spectator sport. For better or for worse, as biopolitics it is life itself, and always has been.
that ‘the community was far from homogenous. The internal fault lines ran – and still run – along... more that ‘the community was far from homogenous. The internal fault lines ran – and still run – along the lines of gender, class, and caste’ (174). Nevertheless, given the ‘fissures’ (30) Frenz describes, readers with an affinity for anthropological theory might have benefitted from more emic reference points to counterbalance the way ‘community’ seems to be used in this book as a predominantly analytical tool. One possible way to illuminate if, when and how East African Goans talk about ‘community’ would have been to draw more extensively on the interview data collected. In spite of these observations, Margaret Frenz’s monograph is admirable in its attempt to challenge common perceptions of ‘diaspora’ and ‘transnationalism’ and deserves to receive attention from scholars of migration studies across various disciplines.
Review of Politics of Post-Civil Society: Contemporary History of Political Movements in India .... more Review of Politics of Post-Civil Society: Contemporary History of Political Movements in India . By Ajay Gudavarthy. Delhi: Sage Publications, 2013. Pp.262.ISBN: 978-81-321-1041-5 (HB)
This book argues that contemporary world literature is defined by peripheral internationalism. Ov... more This book argues that contemporary world literature is defined by peripheral internationalism. Over the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, a range of aesthetic forms beyond the metropolitan West - fiction, memoir, cinema, theater - came to resist cultural nationalism and promote the struggles of subaltern groups. Peripheral internationalism pitted intellectuals and writers not only against the ex-imperial West, but also against their burgeoning national elites. In a sense, these writers marginalized the West and placed the non-Western peripheries in a new center. Through a grounded yet sweeping survey of Bengali, English, and other texts, the book connects India to the Soviet Union, China, Vietnam, Latin America, and the United States. Chapters focus on Rabindranath Tagore, M. N. Roy, Mrinal Sen, Mahasweta Devi, Arundhati Roy, and Aravind Adiga. Unlike the Anglo-American emphasis on a post-national globalization, Insurgent Imaginations argues for humanism and revolutionary intern...
Back in 2011,' the editors of this collection of essays tell us, 'it came to the notice of variou... more Back in 2011,' the editors of this collection of essays tell us, 'it came to the notice of various observers that the worldwide civil insurgencies that kicked off in Tunisia shared a set of singular features. The "Arab Spring," the Spanish indignados, the Greek aganaktismenoi and the Occupy World Street movement appeared to be leaderless and self-organized insurgencies of common citizens' (p. 2). However, the way this formulation suggests that 2011 is already half a lifetime away indicates that these 'various observers' have a journalist's rather than a historian's sense of timing and context. Indeed, the use of the casual phrase 'kicked off' to describe the outbreak of the Arab Springas though it were a football match or a playground fightshows the influence of Paul Mason, formerly Business Editor for the BBC's Current Affairs show Newsnight (now Economics Editor at Channel Four News). Mason's 2012 book Why It's Kicking Off Everywhere, updated a year later as Why It's Still Kicking Off Everywhere, breathlessly compiles a series of dispatches from the frontlines of what he calls the 'new global revolutions.' Mason is well-informed and smart, but it is not evident why his perspective should be setting the agenda for a volume of essays on political theory. It may be because he puts the Greek and Spanish protests front and centre: Kioupkiolis and Katasambekis are both based in Greece, and their contributors, such as Marina Prentoulis and Lasse Thomassen, want to tell us also about Spain, and, to a much lesser extent, Occupy Wall Street. But hardly any of these writers address the Arab Spring, let alone the precursors to what happened way 'back in 2011.' It is therefore hard not to feel that this is, from the outset, a shallow book, too attached to its place and its moment, too much a creature of its immediate environment. The collection treats theoretical differences in similar fashion, as a kind of spectator sport: its subtitle pits Biopolitics against Hegemony, Multitude 'versus' People. In the essays themselves, this split tends to play out as a head-to-head between Italian theorist Antonio Negri and the late Ernesto Laclau. Too often, something always escapes. There is no teleology or predetermination here: neither Negri's eschatology of the multitude nor Laclau and Mouffe's infinite expansion of radical democracy. But there is plenty to remind us that politics (and surely, political theory) is rather more than a spectator sport. For better or for worse, as biopolitics it is life itself, and always has been.
that ‘the community was far from homogenous. The internal fault lines ran – and still run – along... more that ‘the community was far from homogenous. The internal fault lines ran – and still run – along the lines of gender, class, and caste’ (174). Nevertheless, given the ‘fissures’ (30) Frenz describes, readers with an affinity for anthropological theory might have benefitted from more emic reference points to counterbalance the way ‘community’ seems to be used in this book as a predominantly analytical tool. One possible way to illuminate if, when and how East African Goans talk about ‘community’ would have been to draw more extensively on the interview data collected. In spite of these observations, Margaret Frenz’s monograph is admirable in its attempt to challenge common perceptions of ‘diaspora’ and ‘transnationalism’ and deserves to receive attention from scholars of migration studies across various disciplines.
Uploads
Papers by debarati dutta