Behind the Glim — Part 2
Centuries from now, when the monopoly of post-Enlightenment western values, imaginations and institutions will have shied away before what will have become, hopefully, multi-centered global cultures, we will probably remember the Enlightenment project as a serpent that ended up biting its own tail…
Author: Samuel Buchoul
Behind the Glim — Overture
At this stage, we need, perhaps, to insist that not all conceptualisations of historical phases lead to grave reductions. Without them, no historical discourse would be possible…
Is ‘thinking outside the box’ necessarily opening another box? Such is the question that the reader could reflect upon after following Debjani Ganguly in her ambitious study Caste, Colonialism and Counter-Modernity (2005)…
An Ethics of Love – Annex
Why? Why, and how? Why should I talk, today, in this place, about love? Why love, and why the ethics of love? How could I manage to mention, in 15 minutes, more than what we all already know about love? Is love even a philosophical question?…
“Ultimately, Vinayak Damodar Savarkar is the name of a blown-up, grotesque temptation…” (Ashis Nandy). Ashis Nandy’s words on the “father of Hindutva” are severe and unambiguous. Savarkar represents, according to the famous Indian critic, an age-old desire found in emerging countries, to model a fantasized nationalist identity as replica of unquestioned western symbols…
In The Jungle and the Aroma of Meats (1999), French structuralist Francis Zimmerman attempts a discussion of ancient practices and conceptions of health in India, framed on a speculated geographical representation of the concerned populations. He argues that in ancient Hindu medical texts the land and fauna classification was directly related to bodily function, disease classification and therapeutics…