Critiquing Contemporary Indian Culture

Critiquing Contemporary Indian Culture
Author: Dr. Kuldeep S. Sharma
Publisher: Booksclinic Publishing
Total Pages: 155
Release: 2022-08-23
Genre: Education
ISBN: 935535441X

Girish Karnad, one of the best living Indian playwrights, is a flexible virtuoso. His ascent as an unmistakable dramatist in the 1960s denoted the happening time of Modern Indian Playwriting in Kannada. Throughout the previous four decades, Girish Karnad has been creating plays, frequently utilizing history and folklore to handle contemporary issues. In this book, I have tried to justify my title, “Girish Karnad: A Chronicler” As I am especially keen on the plays of Girish Karnad, I endeavored to gather all the basic translations of his plays to comprehend him insightfully. I have picked major works of him translated into English incorporating his plays in which he almost goes to an elusive land of history and legend. This book presented in six parts. My endeavour is to examine the utilization of legend in the plays of Girish Karnad. Girish Karnad has appropriately seen that our fantasies oversee the awareness of Indians, and even their fundamental demeanours towards regular daily existence are affected by the considerable stories; The Ramayana, The Mahabharatha, The Bhagavata, the Puranas, and story cycles like the Jataka Tales, Panchatantra, Kathasaritsagara, Vikramadityacharita, and others, which are loaded with the legends of our nation. In this way, Karnad found that utilizing fantasies to manage contemporary issues was a certain method to catch the creative energy of the groups of onlookers and attract their thoughtfulness regarding crucial issues of present-day times.

Luxury Indian Fashion

Luxury Indian Fashion
Author: Tereza Kuldova
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 227
Release: 2016-03-24
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1474220932

This unique ethnographic investigation examines the role that fashion plays in the production of the contemporary Indian luxury aesthetic. Tracking luxury Indian fashion from its production in village craft workshops via upmarket design studios to fashion soirées, Kuldova investigates the Indian luxury fashion market's dependence on the production of thousands of artisans all over India, revealing a complex system of hierarchies and exploitation. In recent years, contemporary Indian design has dismissed the influence of the West and has focused on the opulent heritage luxury of the maharajas, Gulf monarchies and the Mughal Empire. Luxury Indian Fashion argues that the desire for a luxury aesthetic has become a significant force in the attempt to define contemporary Indian society. From the cultivation of erotic capital in businesswomen's dress to a discussion of masculinity and muscular neo-royals to staged designer funerals, Luxury Indian Fashion analyzes the production, consumption and aesthetics of luxury and power in India. Luxury Indian Fashion is essential reading for students of fashion history and theory, anthropology and visual culture.

Politics of Culture and the Spirit of Critique

Politics of Culture and the Spirit of Critique
Author: Seyla Benhabib
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 217
Release: 2011
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 023115187X

This book of tightly woven dialogues engages prominent thinkers in a discussion about the role of culture-broadly construed-in contemporary society and politics. Faced with the conceptual inflation of the notion of 'culture, ' which now imposes itself as an indispensable issue in contemporary moral and political debates, these dynamic exchanges seek to rethink culture and critique beyond the schematic models that have often predominated, such as the opposition between "mainstream multiculturalism" and the "clash of civilizations." Prefaced by an introduction relating current cultural debates to the critical theory tradition, this book examines the politics of culture and the spirit of critique from three different vantage points. To begin, Gabriel Rockhill and Alfredo Gomez-Muller provide a stage-setting dialogue, followed by discussions with two major representatives of contemporary critical theory: Seyla Benhabib and Nancy Fraser. Working at the horizons of this tradition, Judith Butler, Immanuel Wallerstein, and Cornel West then provide important critical perspectives on cultural politics. The book's concluding section engages with Michael Sandel and Will Kymlicka, who work out of the Rawlsian tradition yet are uniquely concerned with the issue of culture, broadly understood. The epilogue, an interview with Axel Honneth, returns to the core issue of critical theory in cultural politics. Ranging from recent developments and progressive interventions in critical theory to dialogues that incorporate its insights into larger discussions of social and political philosophy, this book sharpens old critical tools while developing new strategies for rethinking the role of 'culture' in contemporary society.

Malevolent Republic

Malevolent Republic
Author: K. S. Komireddi
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 274
Release: 2024-03-14
Genre: History
ISBN: 1911723286

Hailed as the world's largest democracy and feted by the Trump administration in events like "Howdy Modi" in Houston, India is fast slipping into autocracy under the bigoted rule of Prime Minister Modi and this blistering critique shows how.

Conceptions of Critique in Modern and Contemporary Philosophy

Conceptions of Critique in Modern and Contemporary Philosophy
Author: Karin de Boer
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 281
Release: 2011-11-25
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0230357008

Does philosophical critique have a future? What are its possibilities, limits and presuppositions? This collection by outstanding scholars from various traditions, responds to these questions by examining the forms of philosophical critique that have shaped continental thought from Spinoza and Kant to Marx, Foucault, Derrida and Rancière.

AMBEDKAR'S PHILOSOPHY OF HINDUISM AND CONTEMPORARY CRITIQUES

AMBEDKAR'S PHILOSOPHY OF HINDUISM AND CONTEMPORARY CRITIQUES
Author: Prof.M.M. Ninan
Publisher: Lulu.com
Total Pages: 232
Release: 2018-09-12
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0359083846

What I have done here is to state with necessary explanation the writings of Ambedkar on "The Philosophy of Hinduism" to which I have added the responses of various giants of the period to the problem of caste in India. These include the opinions of Gandhi, Vivekananda, Aurobindo and many others. A particularly relevant rational discussion is by V. Jayram.The Marxian solution of not much different, though they consider only the economic aspect neglecting the Opium - Religion. Is Ambedkar considering only the Opium, neglecting the economics? Is there a religious solution?

Politics of Culture and the Spirit of Critique

Politics of Culture and the Spirit of Critique
Author: Gabriel Rockhill
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 217
Release: 2011-03-08
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0231526369

This book of tightly woven dialogues engages prominent thinkers in a discussion about the role of culture-broadly construed-in contemporary society and politics. Faced with the conceptual inflation of the notion of 'culture,' which now imposes itself as an indispensable issue in contemporary moral and political debates, these dynamic exchanges seek to rethink culture and critique beyond the schematic models that have often predominated, such as the opposition between "mainstream multiculturalism" and the "clash of civilizations." Prefaced by an introduction relating current cultural debates to the critical theory tradition, this book examines the politics of culture and the spirit of critique from three different vantage points. To begin, Gabriel Rockhill and Alfredo Gomez-Muller provide a stage-setting dialogue, followed by discussions with two major representatives of contemporary critical theory: Seyla Benhabib and Nancy Fraser. Working at the horizons of this tradition, Judith Butler, Immanuel Wallerstein, and Cornel West then provide important critical perspectives on cultural politics. The book's concluding section engages with Michael Sandel and Will Kymlicka, who work out of the Rawlsian tradition yet are uniquely concerned with the issue of culture, broadly understood. The epilogue, an interview with Axel Honneth, returns to the core issue of critical theory in cultural politics. Ranging from recent developments and progressive interventions in critical theory to dialogues that incorporate its insights into larger discussions of social and political philosophy, this book sharpens old critical tools while developing new strategies for rethinking the role of 'culture' in contemporary society.

SacredSecular

SacredSecular
Author: Lata Mani
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 176
Release: 2018-10-24
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1136518355

What would it mean to conceive of the sacred as a source of knowledge that is as vital as the secular? What insights does a contemplative approach yield in analysing neoliberal globalisation or Hindu fundamentalism? Is a dew drop sacred, or is it secular? In today’s charged atmosphere many believe that the sacred is best kept firmly apart from the realm of the secular. SacredSecular: Contemplative Cultural Critique offers a contrasting view. It argues that the two are indivisible and can productively interweave in illuminating key contemporary issues. Essays investigate the quotidian (trash, cut flowers), the philosophical (advaita, karma), the economic (work, globalisation) and the political (war, violence). Mani invites us to rethink the prevailing view that secularism is the only progressive response to religious authoritarianism. SacredSecular proposes a conceptual approach in which body, mind, heart, nature, matter and spirit are not merely equals, but equally crucial to crafting an inclusive vision and practice. This book addresses several audiences: scholars of contemporary Indian society and culture, spiritual practitioners striving to integrate their practice with their politics, and all those interested in contemplating the present and what it portends for our collective future.

Revolts in Cultural Critique

Revolts in Cultural Critique
Author: Rosemarie Buikema
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 205
Release: 2020-12-10
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1786614030

Centered around the relationship between art and political transformation. From Charlottë Bronte and Virginia Woolf, to Marlene van Niekerk and William Kentridge, artists and intellectuals have tried to address the question: How to deal with the legacy of exclusion and oppression? Via substantive works of art, this book examines some of the answers that have emerged to this question, to show how art can put into motion something new and how it can transform social and cultural relations in a sustainable way. In this way, art can function as an effective form of cultural critique. In the course of this book, a range of artworks are examined, through a postcolonial and feminist lens, in which revolt—both as a theme and as a medium-specific technique or/as critique —is made visible. Time and time again, revolt takes the form of a slow and thorough working through of the position of the individual in relation to her history and her contemporary geopolitical circumstances. It thus becomes evident that renewal and transformation in art and society are most successful when they proceed according to the method of self-reflexive cultural critique; when they do not present themselves as revolution, radical breaks with the past, but rather as processes of revolt in which knowledge of the past is investigated, complemented, corrected, and bent to a new collective will.

Critique of Exotica

Critique of Exotica
Author: John Hutnyk
Publisher: Pluto Press
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2000
Genre: Music
ISBN: 9780745315492

Challenges academic complicity in the reification of exotica