Tradition, Dissent and Ideology

Tradition, Dissent and Ideology
Author: Radha Champakalakshmi
Publisher:
Total Pages: 376
Release: 1996
Genre: History
ISBN:

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Organized around the themes of tradition, dissent, and ideology, which are in many ways central to Romila Thapar's concerns, this collection of essays covers a time span from the Vedic age to the Nehruvian era of Indian history and ranges across cultural regions from ancient Mesopotamia to Sri Lanka.

Against Dharma

Against Dharma
Author: Wendy Doniger
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 245
Release: 2018-03-20
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0300235232

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An esteemed scholar of Hinduism presents a groundbreaking interpretation of ancient Indian texts and their historic influence on subversive resistance Ancient Hindu texts speak of the three aims of human life: dharma,artha, and kama. Translated, these might be called religion, politics, and pleasure, and each is held to be an essential requirement of a full life. Balance among the three is a goal not always met, however, and dharma has historically taken precedence over the other two qualities in Hindu life. Here, historian of religions Wendy Doniger offers a spirited and close reading of ancient Indian writings, unpacking a long but unrecognized history of opposition against dharma. Doniger argues that scientific disciplines (shastras) have offered lively and continuous criticism of dharma, or religion, over many centuries. She chronicles the tradition of veiled subversion, uncovers connections to key moments of resistance and voices of dissent throughout Indian history, and offers insights into the Indian theocracy’s subversion of science by religion today.

Voices of Dissent

Voices of Dissent
Author:
Publisher:
Total Pages:
Release:
Genre:
ISBN: 9780857428622

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Disciplinarity and Dissent in Cultural Studies

Disciplinarity and Dissent in Cultural Studies
Author: Cary Nelson
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 470
Release: 2013-10-28
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1135221782

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First published in 1996. As recently as the early 1990s, people wondered what was the future of cultural studies in the United States and what effects its increasing internationalization might have. What type of projects would cultural studies inspire people to undertake? Would established disciplines welcome its presence and adapt their practices accordingly? Disciplinarity and Dissent in Cultural Studies answers such questions. It is now clear that, while striking and innovative work is underway in many different fields, most disciplinary organizations and structures have been very resistant to cultural studies. Meanwhile, cultural studies has been subjected to repeated attacks by conservative journalists and commentators in the public sphere. Cultural studies scholars have responded not only by mounting focused critiques of the politics of knowledge but also by embracing ambitious projects of social, political, and cultural commentary, by transgressing all the official boundaries of knowledge in a broad quest for cultural understanding. This book tracks these debates and maps future strategies for cultural studies in academia and public life. The contributors to Disciplinarity and Dissent in Cultural Studies include established scholars and new voices. In a series of polemic and exploratory essays written especially for this book, they track the struggle with cultural studies in disciplines like anthropology, literature and history; and between cultural studies and very different domains like Native American culture and the culture of science. Contributors include Arjun Appadurai, Michael Denning, Lawrence Grossberg, Cary Nelson, Constance Penley, Andrew Ross, and Lynn Spigel.

Political Violence in Ancient India

Political Violence in Ancient India
Author: Upinder Singh
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 617
Release: 2017-09-25
Genre: History
ISBN: 0674981286

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Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru helped create the myth of a nonviolent ancient India while building a modern independence movement on the principle of nonviolence (ahimsa). But this myth obscures a troubled and complex heritage: a long struggle to reconcile the ethics of nonviolence with the need to use violence to rule. Upinder Singh documents the dynamic tension between violence and nonviolence in ancient Indian political thought and practice over twelve hundred years. Political Violence in Ancient India looks at representations of kingship and political violence in epics, religious texts, political treatises, plays, poems, inscriptions, and art from 600 BCE to 600 CE. As kings controlled their realms, fought battles, and meted out justice, intellectuals debated the boundary between the force required to sustain power and the excess that led to tyranny and oppression. Duty (dharma) and renunciation were important in this discussion, as were punishment, war, forest tribes, and the royal hunt. Singh reveals a range of perspectives that defy rigid religious categorization. Buddhists, Jainas, and even the pacifist Maurya emperor Ashoka recognized that absolute nonviolence was impossible for kings. By 600 CE religious thinkers, political theorists, and poets had justified and aestheticized political violence to a great extent. Nevertheless, questions, doubt, and dissent remained. These debates are as important for understanding political ideas in the ancient world as for thinking about the problem of political violence in our own time.

Worlds of Dissent

Worlds of Dissent
Author: Jonathan Bolton
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 360
Release: 2012-04-13
Genre: History
ISBN: 0674064836

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Worlds of Dissent analyzes the myths of Central European resistance popularized by Western journalists and historians, and replaces them with a picture of the struggle against state repression as the dissidents themselves understood, debated, and lived it. In the late 1970s, when Czech intellectuals, writers, and artists drafted Charter 77 and called on their government to respect human rights, they hesitated to name themselves "dissidents." Their personal and political experiences--diverse, uncertain, nameless--have been obscured by victory narratives that portray them as larger-than-life heroes who defeated Communism in Czechoslovakia. Jonathan Bolton draws on diaries, letters, personal essays, and other first-person texts to analyze Czech dissent less as a political philosophy than as an everyday experience. Bolton considers not only Václav Havel but also a range of men and women writers who have received less attention in the West--including Ludvík Vaculík, whose 1980 diary The Czech Dream Book is a compelling portrait of dissident life. Bolton recovers the stories that dissidents told about themselves, and brings their dilemmas and decisions to life for contemporary readers. Dissidents often debated, and even doubted, their own influence as they confronted incommensurable choices and the messiness of real life. Portraying dissent as a human, imperfect phenomenon, Bolton frees the dissidents from the suffocating confines of moral absolutes. Worlds of Dissent offers a rare opportunity tounderstand the texture of dissent in a closed society.