State of Democracy: Essays on Life and Politics of Contemporary Times

State of Democracy: Essays on Life and Politics of Contemporary Times
by: Manas Ray (Editor)
Publisher: Primus Books
Publication Date: 20 Dec. 2021
Language: English
Print Length: 694 pages
ISBN-10: 9391144152
ISBN-13: 9789391144159
Book Description
Collections on Indian democracy are plentiful. Yet rarely do they question the impact of the ongoing democratic mobilizations on the mundane, everyday lives of ordinary citizens and the world they see around them. Borrowing insights from new research in cultural studies, contemporary literary theory, visual politics, biopolitics, meteorology, to cite a few, State of Democracy in India covers the ground cast aside by existing narratives and analyses of Indian democracy. Pivoted on the experiences of the people and not necessarily the institutions of governance, this collection examines a vast array of markers of democracy under the rubrics of populism, disaster migration, caste contestations, new developments in feminism, and the act of culture. Towards the end of the volume, a meditation on the meaning of writing in COVID-19 induced precarity reflects on the individual and social experiences of living through the pandemic. The guiding principle of the contributions in this volume is that democracy is not merely a psephological number game of vote sharing and swings but encompasses worldviews, touching every department of life, collective and individual. This innovative collection reconfigures our vision of democracy as a force-field of interests and new imaginations, full of possibilities and yet fraught with deep fissures and contestations of views and practices.

About the Author

About the Author Manas Ray retired as Professor of Cultural Studies at the Centre for Studies In Social Sciences, Cslcutta (CSSSC) In 2018. He works at the Interface of contemporary political theory and cultural studies. He has published on a wide spectrum of areas Including blopolltlcs, continental philosophy and cinema, critical legal theory, Foucault and govemmentality, visual culture, diaspora and Bollywood, disaster migration, and memory and locality in post-partltlon Kolkata. He has held visiting fellowships and teaching positions in leading Institutions of the United Kingdom, Germany, France, The Netherlands, Australia and South Africa. His essay, ‘Growing Up Refugee’ (History Workshop Journal) Is widely regarded as a classic.