[Appeared in Cultural Dynamics July 1998 10: 101-121] Though the book was published nearly two decades ago, Said’s Orientalism continues to be topical. Many have rejected the message of this work; others have attempted…
Read more[Published in Robert Maier (Ed.) Norms in Argumentation: proceedings of the conference on Norms (1989). Dordrecht: Foris, pp. 195–211.] Introduction Perhaps it is best that we begin on a personal note.…
Read more1. Consider, say, a ritual like sandhyaavandanam. Here are two extremes, when it comes to saying what it is: (a) one goes very deeply into what Mudras mean, which of…
Read moreIt is an event because the colonial consciousness that I am talking about comprises of multiplicity of actions executed by indefinitely many Indians over a long period. It is a…
Read more[Appeared in Nispen & Tiemersma (Eds.), The Quest of Man: The Topicality of Philosophical Anthropology, 1991 Assen: von Gorcum, pp. 112-116] Speaking of ‘the greatest mystery of our humanness’, Sinari raises the…
Read moreWhen we speak about ignorance, we can do so in two ways. One is by talking about ‘how the world is’; the other is by talking about ‘how we think…
Read moreIn this post, I want to reflect on what it means to access and think about experience. Perhaps, not so much on what these words mean but what is entailed…
Read moreExperiences are structured differently in different cultures. We believe that it is possible to give a true description of this difference, at some level or the other, as a difference regarding the experience…
Read more[Published in Cultural Dynamics 3 (4): 387–405] Introduction During the last decade or so, a new restlessness has begun to disturb the calm facade of the social scientific academia. As yet, it…
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