Description
Book SynopsisFor more than three decades, Talal Asad has been engaged in a distinctive critical exploration of the conceptual assumptions that govern the West's knowledgesespecially its disciplinary and disciplining knowledgesof the non-Western world. The essays that make up this volume treat diverse aspects of this remarkable body of work. Among them: the relationship between colonial power and academic knowledge; the historical shifts giving shape to the complexly interrelated categories of the secular and the religious, and the significance of these shifts in the emergence of modern Europe; and aspects of human embodiment, including some of the various ways that pain, emotion, embodied aptitude, and the senses connect with and structure cultural practices. While the specific themes and arguments addressed by the individual contributors range widely, the essays cohere in a shared orientation of both critical engagement and productive extension. Note that this is not a festschrift, nor a celebr
Trade Review
"The nine essays in this powerful book offer students and mentors alike a window into a theoretical and practical arena that is all too regularly ignored today by pundits and exploitative "studies" on Islam and religion in general."—American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences
"While centrally about secularization, this volume is much more than that. Asad's work and the essays engaging him here offer nothing short of an anthropology of the modern. Many issues are broached, leaving the reader with a dazzling array of issues to explore. This is interdisciplinary engagement at its best. An invaluable text for scholars and students working across the social sciences."—Victoria Hattam, New School for Social Research
Table of Contents
@fmct:Contents @toc2:1 Introduction: The Anthropological Skepticism of Talal Asad @tocca:David Scott and Charles Hirschkind 000 @toc2:2 Secularization Revisited: A Reply to Talal Asad @tocca:Jose Casanova 000 @toc2:3 What is an "Authorizing Discourse"? @tocca:Steven C. Caton 000 @toc2:4 Fasting for Laden: The Politics of Secularization in Contemporary India @tocca:Partha Chatterjee 000 @toc2:5 Europe: A Minor Tradition @tocca:William E. Connolly 000 @toc2:6 Secularism and the Argument from Nature @tocca:Veena Das 000 @toc2:7 On General and Divine Economy: Talal Asad's Genealogy of the Secular and Emmanuel Levinas's Critique of Capitalism, Colonialism, and Money @tocca:Hent de Vries 000 @toc2:8 The Tragic Sensibility of Talal Asad @tocca:David Scott 000 @toc2:9 The Grammar of Redemption @tocca:George Shulman 000 @toc2:10 Subjects and Agents in the history of Imperialism and Resistance @tocca:Jon E. Wilson 000 @toc2:11 Responses @tocca:Talal Asad 000 @toc4:Appendix: The Trouble of Thinking: An Interview with Talal Asad @tocca:David Scott 000 @toc4:Talal Asad: A Bibliography @tocca:Zainab Saleh 000 @toc4:Notes 000 Contributors 000 Index 000
