Literature Against Fundamentalism
Price: 495.00 INR
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ISBN:
9780198955825
Publication date:
10/12/2024
Paperback
144 pages
Price: 495.00 INR
We sell our titles through other companies
Disclaimer :You will be redirected to a third party website.The sole responsibility of supplies, condition of the product, availability of stock, date of delivery, mode of payment will be as promised by the said third party only. Prices and specifications may vary from the OUP India site.
ISBN:
9780198955825
Publication date:
10/12/2024
Paperback
144 pages
Tabish Khair
Acclaimed novelist and academic Tabish Khair argues that literature as a distinct mode of thinking can counteract fundamentalism.
Rights: South Asian Rights
Tabish Khair
Description
Acclaimed novelist and academic Tabish Khair argues that literature as a distinct mode of thinking can counteract fundamentalism.
Literature is a mode of thinking, stories being one of the oldest thinking 'devices' known to humankind. The ways in which literature enables us to think are distinctive and necessary, because of the relationships between its material ('language') and its subject matter ('reality'). Although present in oral literature, these relationships are exposed in their full complexity with the rise of literature as a distinct form of writing. Literature Against Fundamentalism argues that literature enables us to engage with reality in language and language in reality, where both are mutually constitutive, constantly changing, and partly elusive.
Tabish Khair defines this mode of engagement as essentially an agnostic one, resistant to simple dogma. Hence, literature can provide an antidote to fundamentalism. Khair argues that reading literature as literature--and not just as material for aesthetic, sociological, political, and other theoretical discourses--is essential for humanity. In the process, he offers a radical re-definition of literature, an illuminating engagement with religion and fundamentalism, a revaluation of the relationship between the sciences and humanities, and, finally, a call to literature as in 'a call to arms'.
Tabish Khair
Table of contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction: What Is in a Word?
1. What Literature Does Not Say
2. Literature, Gaps, and Historicity
3. Literature, Gaps, and Ahistoricity
4. Language, Literature, and the Book
5. Why 'God' and Literature are a Problem for Fundamentalism
Conclusion: A Call to Literature
Bibliography
Index
Tabish Khair
Features
- Presents a new and provocative interpretation of how literature is a distinctive, agnostic mode of thinking about the world
- Engages carefully but without jargon in debates about religion and fundamentalism
- Concludes with a powerful 'call to literature' to address the crisis of the humanities
Tabish Khair
Description
Acclaimed novelist and academic Tabish Khair argues that literature as a distinct mode of thinking can counteract fundamentalism.
Literature is a mode of thinking, stories being one of the oldest thinking 'devices' known to humankind. The ways in which literature enables us to think are distinctive and necessary, because of the relationships between its material ('language') and its subject matter ('reality'). Although present in oral literature, these relationships are exposed in their full complexity with the rise of literature as a distinct form of writing. Literature Against Fundamentalism argues that literature enables us to engage with reality in language and language in reality, where both are mutually constitutive, constantly changing, and partly elusive.
Tabish Khair defines this mode of engagement as essentially an agnostic one, resistant to simple dogma. Hence, literature can provide an antidote to fundamentalism. Khair argues that reading literature as literature--and not just as material for aesthetic, sociological, political, and other theoretical discourses--is essential for humanity. In the process, he offers a radical re-definition of literature, an illuminating engagement with religion and fundamentalism, a revaluation of the relationship between the sciences and humanities, and, finally, a call to literature as in 'a call to arms'.
Table of contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction: What Is in a Word?
1. What Literature Does Not Say
2. Literature, Gaps, and Historicity
3. Literature, Gaps, and Ahistoricity
4. Language, Literature, and the Book
5. Why 'God' and Literature are a Problem for Fundamentalism
Conclusion: A Call to Literature
Bibliography
Index
