Research Catalog

Details

Description

1. 268 pages; 23 cm

Summary

1. "This exceptional and challenging book is an adventure in ideas. It is a study of politics in its deepest and broadest dimensions which ultimately confronts the politics of knowledge. It constitutes a vibrant protest against the hard-edged, masculine, analytic frame of politics in which concepts are well defined and fundamental truths 'known'. Don Miller emphasises the lack of universal standards and truths and displays a dissatisfaction with the dominant western faith in reason." "Arguing valiantly against any cultural disposition to think only in terms of 'either-or', he seeks to restore the dignity of metaphor both as the heart of all political discourse and as the primary tool of social and political analysis and demystification. Miller believes, as with Nietzsche, that truth is 'a mobile army of metaphors' that have become fixed, anaemic and canonic after long usage and that 'truths are illusions of which one has forgotten that they are illusions'. His aim is to expand the range of interpretations and options and to get away from theories which breed a literality and a certain rigidity in thought." "Attracted especially by the ideas of Jacques Derrida, the author encourages an exploration of the logic of 'both-and' and 'neither-nor', which he also finds present in a major school of Indian thought called advaita or non-dualism. These approaches underpin Don Miller's discussion of social policy, modernity, art and literature and the pragmatist politics of Richard Rorty. It also allows him to question conventional western interpretations and impositions concerning India such as the oppositional ideas of religion and secularism, of the state and civil society. The reader is also treated to a masterly analysis of the relation between language and thought, which the author sees as being both autonomous and mutually dependent.".
2. "This thought-provoking and superbly written book will be of considerable interest to a wide audience including those engaged in a study of social theory, philosophy, politics, social policy, language and culture, psychology, post-modernism, and qualitative methods in the social sciences."--BOOK JACKET.

Subject

1. Political science
2. Metaphor > Political aspects
3. Rationalism > Political aspects
4. Religion and politics > India
5. Religion and politics
6. Politische Wissenschaft
7. Politik
8. Metapher
9. Politieke filosofie
10. Postmodernisme
11. Godsdienst
12. Metaforen
13. India
14. Indien

Contents

1. Foreword / Ashis Handy -- I. Politics as a Location -- 1. The Necessity of Euphemism -- 2. Boundaries and Proper Places -- 3. The Metaphoric Modes -- 4. A Question of Language -- II. The West and Modern Times -- 5. Social Policy and its Rationality -- 6. The Reiteration of Modernity or Do I Repeat Myself -- 7. Omnipotence and its Enemies -- III. India and Occidental Accidence -- 8. Religion, Politics and its Sacred State -- 9. 'I am Thou' -- 10. A Maha-raga or a Lesson in the West -- IV. Here and There -- 11. The Politics of Irresolution.

Owning institution

1. Princeton University Library

Bibliography (note)

1. Includes bibliographical references and index.