Identities: Local and Global

Edited by Kailash C. Baral and Prafulla C. Kar
 

This volume critiques a variety of major theoretical/conceptual definitions of identity-formation and their manifestations in the sphere of social and cultural activity. It addresses the question of how identities are constructed, deployed, erased; how they merge with on another and form clusters; and how they are always in a state of constant formation, deformation and reformation. The multiple perspectives that emerge from such a critical scrutiny involve several of the highly charged debates in our times, including the problematic of the attitude of Muslims in colonial and postcolonial India, the position of Dalits in the fabric of the nation, Orientalist interventions in discourses of hegemony and power, and the struggle of the nation in the conflation of local militancy with global terrorism. This scholarly study explores an enriching understanding of these complex issues of identity-formation and removes some of the misconceptions surrounding the concept.
 
Kailash C. Baral is Director, The English and Foreign Languages University, North-East Campus at Shillong. He is the author of the book Freud’sTheory of arts and Literature (1994) and has edited two books, Humanities and Pedagogy: Teaching of Humanities Today (2002) and Interpretation of Texts: Texts, Meaning and Interpretation (2002). He has also co-edited the book Theory and Praxis: Curriculum, Culture and English Studies (2003) jointly with Prafulla C. Kar and Sura P. Rath, and has published papers on Indian English literature, psychoanalysis, and postcolonial criticism.

Prafulla C. Kar is one of the founder editors of the Journal of Contemporary Thought, Baroda. He was until recently Professor of English at the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda. He was also Deputy Director of the American Studies Research Centre, Hyderabad during 1982-86, and Chair, Department of English at Baroda during 1995-2000. He visited the Universities of Chicago, Texas at Austin and California at Berkeley under a Fulbright postdoctoral fellowship. He was a Fellow at the School of Criticism and Theory at Dartmouth College, USA in 1986. Besides editing several scholarly books, he has published papers on American literature, critical theories and new literatures in English.
Contributors :Fred Dallmayr, Sura P. Rath, Vipin Kumar, Chanchala K Naik, Saji Mathew, Sumana Chatterjee, Harunur Rashid Khan, Bijay Danta, T.Ravichandran, Anand P.Mavalankar, Saranga D.Baral, Jyotirmoy Prodhani, Nandana Dutta, Rakhee K.Moral, MT Ansari, Asma rasheed, Sukalpa Bhattacharjee, Mandakini V.Jha Mary Economou-Bailey, Ranjan Ghosh, R.P.Sharma, Emily K.Bloch, TRSSharma, Madan M.Sarma and Bibhash Choudhury
 
ISBN 81-85753-60-1           2003           300pp           Rs. 450 (hb)