Religion and the Specter of the West - Sikhism, India, Postcoloniality, and the Politics of Translation

Erscheinungsjahr 2009
ISBN: 978-0-231-14724-8
Verlag: Columbia University Press

Buch, Englisch, 536 Seiten, Format (B × H): 160 mm x 232 mm, Gewicht: 864 g

Reihe: Insurrections: Critical Studies in Religion, Politics, and Culture

Arguing that intellectual movements, such as deconstruction, postsecular theory, and political theology, have different implications for cultures and societies that live with the debilitating effects of past imperialisms, Arvind Mandair unsettles the politics of knowledge construction in which the category of "religion" continues to be central. Through a case study of Sikhism, he launches an extended critique of religion as a cultural universal. At the same time, he presents a portrait of how certain aspects of Sikh tradition were reinvented as "religion" during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

India's imperial elite subtly recast Sikh tradition as a sui generis religion, which robbed its teachings of their political force. In turn, Sikhs began to define themselves as a "nation" and a "world religion" that was separate from, but parallel to, the rise of the Indian state and global Hinduism. Rather than investigate these processes in isolation from Europe, Mandair shifts the focus closer to the political history of ideas, thereby recovering part of Europe's repressed colonial memory.

Mandair rethinks the intersection of religion and the secular in discourses such as history of religions, postcolonial theory, and recent continental philosophy. Though seemingly unconnected, these discourses are shown to be linked to a philosophy of "generalized translation" that emerged as a key conceptual matrix in the colonial encounter between India and the West. In this riveting study, Mandair demonstrates how this philosophy of translation continues to influence the repetitions of religion and identity politics in the lives of South Asians, and the way the academy, state, and media have analyzed such phenomena.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Mandair, Arvind Pal S.

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Religionswissenschaft Religionswissenschaft Allgemein Vergleichende Religionswissenschaft
• Geisteswissenschaften Religionswissenschaft Sonstige Religionen Östliche Religionen Sikhismus
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Asiatische Geschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

PrefaceAcknowledgmentsIntroductionPart I. "Indian Religions" and Western Thought1. Mono-theo-lingualism: Religion, Language, and Subjectivity in Colonial North India2. Hegel and the Comparative Imaginary of the West Part II. Theology as Cultural Translation3. Sikhism and the Politics of Religion-Making 4. Violence, Mysticism, and the Capture of SubjectivityPart III. Postcolonial Exits5. Ideologies of Sacred Sound6. Decolonizing Postsecular TheoryEpilogueGlossary of Indic TermsNotesIndex

Über Autor(innen)

Arvind-Pal S. Mandair teaches at the University of Michigan. He is a founding coeditor of the journal Sikh Formations: Religion, Culture, and Theory.