The Post-condition: Theory, Texts, and Contexts


Book Description

Papers presented at National Seminar "Interrogating the 'Post' Condition: Theory, Texts, and Contexts," held on 20-21 January, 2000, at Punjabi University, Patiala.




Debating the 'Post' Condition in India


Book Description

How was the post-modernist project contested, subverted and assimilated in India? This book offers a personal account and an intellectual history of its reception and response. Tracing independent India’s engagement with Western critical theory, Paranjape outlines both its past and ‘post’. The book explores the discursive trajectories of post-modernism, post-colonialism, post-Marxism, post-nationalism, post-feminism, post-secularism — the relations that mediate them — as well as interprets, in the light of these discussions, core tenets of Indian philosophical thought. Paranjape argues that India’s response to the modernist project is neither submission, willing or reluctant, nor repudiation, intentional or forced; rather India’s ‘modernity’ is ‘unauthorized’, different, subversive, alter-native and alter-modern. The book makes the case for a new integrative hermeneutics, the idea of the indigenous ‘critical vernacular’, and presents a radical shift in the understanding of svaraj (beyond decolonisation and nationalism) to express transformations at both personal and political levels. A key intervention in Indian critical theory, this volume will interest researchers and scholars of literature, philosophy, political theory, culture studies and postcolonial studies.




General Theory Of Employment , Interest And Money


Book Description

John Maynard Keynes is the great British economist of the twentieth century whose hugely influential work The General Theory of Employment, Interest and * is undoubtedly the century's most important book on economics--strongly influencing economic theory and practice, particularly with regard to the role of government in stimulating and regulating a nation's economic life. Keynes's work has undergone significant revaluation in recent years, and "Keynesian" views which have been widely defended for so long are now perceived as at odds with Keynes's own thinking. Recent scholarship and research has demonstrated considerable rivalry and controversy concerning the proper interpretation of Keynes's works, such that recourse to the original text is all the more important. Although considered by a few critics that the sentence structures of the book are quite incomprehensible and almost unbearable to read, the book is an essential reading for all those who desire a basic education in economics. The key to understanding Keynes is the notion that at particular times in the business cycle, an economy can become over-productive (or under-consumptive) and thus, a vicious spiral is begun that results in massive layoffs and cuts in production as businesses attempt to equilibrate aggregate supply and demand. Thus, full employment is only one of many or multiple macro equilibria. If an economy reaches an underemployment equilibrium, something is necessary to boost or stimulate demand to produce full employment. This something could be business investment but because of the logic and individualist nature of investment decisions, it is unlikely to rapidly restore full employment. Keynes logically seizes upon the public budget and government expenditures as the quickest way to restore full employment. Borrowing the * to finance the deficit from private households and businesses is a quick, direct way to restore full employment while at the same time, redirecting or siphoning




Book Use, Book Theory, 1500-1700


Book Description

What might it mean to use books rather than read them? This work examines the relationship between book use and forms of thought and theory in the early modern period. Drawing on legal, medical, religious, scientific and literary texts, and on how-to books on topics ranging from cooking, praying, and memorizing to socializing, surveying, and traveling, Bradin Cormack and Carla Mazzio explore how early books defined the conditions of their own use and in so doing imagined the social and theoretical significance of that use. The volume addresses the material dimensions of the book in terms of the knowledge systems that informed them, looking not only to printed features such as title pages, tables, indexes and illustrations but also to the marginalia and other marks of use that actual readers and users left in and on their books. The authors argue that when books reflect on the uses they anticipate or ask of their readers, they tend to theorize their own forms. Book Use, Book Theory offers a fascinating approach to the history of the book and the history of theory as it emerged from textual practice.




Political Imaginaries in Twentieth-Century India


Book Description

This volume reconsiders India's 20th century though a specific focus on the concepts, conjunctures and currency of its distinct political imaginaries. Spanning the divide between independence and partition, it highlights recent historical debates that have sought to move away from a nation-centred mode of political history to a broader history of politics that considers the complex contexts within which different political imaginaries emerged in 20th century India. Representing the first attempt to grasp the shifting modes and meanings of the 'political' in India, this book explores forms of mass protest, radical women's politics, civil rights, democracy, national wealth and mobilization against the indentured-labor system, amongst other themes. In linking 'the political' to shifts in historical temporality, Political Imaginaries in 20th century India extends beyond the interdisciplinary arena of South Asian studies to cognate late colonial and post-colonial formations in the twentieth century and contribute to the 'political turn' in scholarship.




Reading Media Theory


Book Description

What does the Frankfurt School have to say about the creative industries? Does the spread of Google prove we now live in an information society? How is Madonna an example of postmodernism? How new is new media? Does the power of Facebook mean we're all media makers now? This groundbreaking volume – part reader, part textbook - helps you to engage thoroughly with some of the major voices that have come to define the landscape of theory in media studies, from the public sphere to postmodernism, from mass communication theory to media effects, from production to reception and beyond. But much more than this, by providing assistance and questions directly alongside the readings, it crucially helps you develop the skills necessary to become a critical, informed and analytical reader. Each reading is supported on the facing page by author annotations which provide comments, dissect the arguments, explain key ideas and terminology, make references to other relevant material, and pose questions that emerge from the text. Key features: Opening chapters: ‘What is theory?’ and ‘What is reading?’ bring alive the importance of both as key parts of media scholarship Pre-reading: substantial Introductory sections set each text and its author in context and show the relevance of the reading to contemporary culture Post-reading: Reflection sections summarise each reading’s key points and suggests further areas to explore and think about 4 types of annotations help you engage with the reading – context, content, structure, and writing style .... as well as questions to provoke further thought Split into 4 sections – Reading theory, Key thinkers and schools, Approaches and Media Theory in context New to the second edition: New chapters on New Media, and Audiences as Producers Reading Media Theory will assist you in developing close-reading and analytic skills. It will also increase your ability to outline key theories and debates, assess different case studies critically, link theoretical approaches to a particular historical context, and to structure and present an argument. As such, it will be essential reading for undergraduate and postgraduate students of media studies, cultural studies, communication studies, the sociology of the media, popular culture and other related subjects.




Postcolonial Theory


Book Description

Much controversy has recently come to surround the status and value of postcolonial modes of cultural analysis. Postcolonial theory has been challenged on several fronts: on its interdisciplinary competence, on the politics of its institutional location, and its implicit will to have power over other kinds of postcolonial analysis, many of which have been established for much longer than postcolonial theory itself. The ensuing debate has often become so heated, even personalized, that the issues at stake have been obscured. In what is the most comprehensive and accessible survey of the field to date, Bart Moore-Gilbert systematically examines the objections that have been raised against postcolonial theory, revealing the simplifications and exaggerations on both sides of the argument. He provides a detailed institutional history of the ways in which the relationship between culture and colonialism was traditionally studied in the West, then traces the emergence of alternative forms of postcolonial analysis of such questions. He gives an extremely careful presentation of the complex and elusive work of the three principal representatives of postcolonial theory, Gayatri Spivak, Edward Said and Homi Bhabha, and considers the criticisms they have faced, from an alleged Eurocentrism to an obfuscatory prose style. And he assesses the overlaps and differences between postcolonial theory and other forms of postcolonial criticism. Finally he considers the ways in which postcolonial analysis may be connected with different histories of oppression, and looks at how such a heterogeneous theory can be reconciled with political questions of solidarity and alliance in the continuing struggle for cultural decolonization.




Theory, Text, Context


Book Description

Leading scholars of classical rhetoric address contemporary topics in Greek rhetoric and oratory.




Contemporary Diasporic Literature


Book Description

Transcript of papers presented at a seminar organized by the Dept. of English, Punjabi U., Patiala on February 24-25, 2005.




The Sexual Subject


Book Description

The Sexual Subject brings together writing on sexuality which has appeared in ^Screen> over the past two decades. It reflects the journal's continuing engagement with questions of sexuality and signification in the cinema, an engagement which has had a profound influence on the development of the academic study of film and on alternative film and video practice. The collection opens with Laura Mulvey's classic "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" with its conjunction of semiotics and psychoanalysis, the critical approach which is most closely associated with Screen's rise to international prominence. The reader then goes on to explore the particular questions and debates which that conjuction provoked: arguments around pornography and the represenation of the body: questions of the representation of femininity and masculinity, of the female spectator, and of the social subject. Many of the writings in this Reader have become indispensable texts within the study of film. The purpose of the Reader is not only to make the articles available to a wider readership, and to a new generation, but also to pose new conjunctions, making connections in one volume between debates and inquiries which spanned two crucial decades of film theory. The Sexual Subject is intended not only for all those with a particular interest in film and film theory, but for anyone with a serious commitment to cultural theory, theories of representation, and questions of sexuality and gender.