Fearless Speech- Michel Foucault

Title: Fearless Speech
Author: Michel Foucault
ISBN 10:1-58435-011-3 ISBN-13:978-1-58435-011-8
Binding: Paper
Date: 2001
Publisher: Semiotext(e) / Foreign Agents
Number of Pages: 183
Price: $12.95

I would like to distinguish between the 'history of ideas' and the 'history of thought.' The history of ideas involves the analysis of a notion from its birth, through its development, and in the setting of other ideas, which constitute its context. The history of thought is the analysis of the way an unproblematic field of experience becomes a problem, raises discussions and debate, incites new reactions, and induces crisis in the previously silent behaviors, practices, and institutions. It is the history of the way people become anxious, for example, about madness, about crime, about themselves, or about truth.

Comprised of six lectures delivered, in English, by Michel Foucault while teaching at Berkeley in the Fall of 1983, Fearless Speech was edited by Joseph Pearson and published in 2001. Reviewed by the author, it is the last book Foucault wrote before his death in 1984 and can be read as his last testament. Here, he positions the philosopher as the only person able to confront power with the truth, a stance that boldly sums up Foucault's project as a philosopher.

A Very nice blog on Foucault

A Grammar of the Multitude - Paolo Virno

Title: A Grammar of the Multitude
Author: Paolo Virno

Translated by Isabella Bertoletti, James Cascaito and Andrea Casson
ISBN -10:1-58435-021-0 ISBN-13:978-1-58435-021-7
Binding: Paper
Date: January 2004
Publisher: Semiotext(e) / Foreign Agents
Number of Pages: 117
Price: $14.95

Description

Globalization is forcing us to rethink some of the categories—such as "the people"—that traditionally have been associated with the now eroding state. Italian political thinker Paolo Virno argues that the category of "multitude," elaborated by Spinoza and for the most part left fallow since the seventeenth century, is a far better tool to analyze contemporary issues than the Hobbesian concept of "people," favored by classical political philosophy. Hobbes, who detested the notion of multitude, defined it as shunning political unity, resisting authority, and never entering into lasting agreements. "When they rebel against the state," Hobbes wrote, "the citizens are the multitude against the people." But the multitude isn't just a negative notion, it is a rich concept that allows us to examine anew plural experiences and forms of nonrepresentative democracy. Drawing from philosophy of language, political economics, and ethics, Virno shows that being foreign, "not-feeling-at-home-anywhere," is a condition that forces the multitude to place its trust in the intellect. In conclusion, Virno suggests that the metamorphosis of the social systems in the West during the last twenty years is leading to a paradoxical "Communism of the Capital."

Multitude and Working class

The Republic of Multitude- Interview with Paolo Virno

Public Sphere, labour, multitude: Strategies of resistance in Empire with Tony Negri

Paolo Virno and Judith Revel revisit the Foucault/Chomsky debate

Archeology of Violence by Pierre Clastres

Title: Archeology of Violence
Author: Pierre Clastres
ISBN: ISBN-10:0-936756-95-0 ISBN-13:978-0-936-75695-0
Binding: Paperback
Date: December 1994
Publisher: MIT Press (Semiotext(e) / Foreign Agents)
Number of Pages: 200
Price: $14.95

Pierre Clastres broke up with his mentor Claude Levi-Strauss to collaborate with Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guttari on their Anti-Oedipus. He is the rare breed of political anthropologist—a Nietzschean—and his work presents us with a generalogy of power in a native state. For him, tribal societies are not Rousseauist in essence; to the contrary, they practice systematic violence in order to prevent the rise in their midst of this "cold monster": the state. Only by waging war with other tribes can they maintain the dispersion and autonomy of each group. In the same way, tribal chiefs are not all-powerful; to the contrary, they are rendered weak in order to remain dependent on the community. In a series of groundbreaking essays, Clastres turns around the analysis of power among South American Indians and rehabilitates violence as an affirmative act meant to protect the integrity of their societies. These "savages" are shrewd political minds who resist in advance any attempt at "globalization."

The porcelain workshop : For a New Grammar of Politics

Title: The porcelain workshop : For a New Grammar of Politics
Author: Antonio Negri, Translated by Noura Wedell
ISBN-10:1-58435-056-3 ISBN-13:978-1-58435-056-9
Binding: Paper
Date: June 2008
Publisher: MIT Press (Semiotext(e) / Foreign Agents)
Number of Pages: 173
Price: $17.95

Description

In 2004 and 2005, Antonio Negri held ten workshops at the Collège International de Philosophie in Paris to formulate a new political grammar of the postmodern. Biopolitics, biopowers, control, the multitude, people, war, borders, dependency and interdependency, state, nation, the common, difference, resistance, subjective rights, revolution, freedom, democracy: these are just a few of the themes Negri addressed in these experimental laboratories.Postmodernity, Negri suggests, can be described as a "porcelain workshop": a delicate and fragile construction that could be destroyed through one clumsy act. Looking across twentieth century history, Negri warns that our inability to anticipate future developments has already placed coming generations in serious jeopardy. Describing the years 1917-1968 as the "short century," Negri suggests that by the end of it, all of the familiar markers of modernity (including that of socialism) had lost their relevance.Confronted with an intolerable reality, indignation and the revolutionary will to transform the world have both taken new forms and must be understood anew, free of modernist assumptions. In the impassioned debates recounted in this book, Antonio Negri attempts to describe the formation of an alternative political horizon and looks for a way to define the practices and modes of expression that democracy could take.

About the Author

Antonio Negri is a philosopher and essay writer. A political and social activist in the 1960s and 1970s in Italy, he taught political sciences for many years and has written numerous books on political philosophy including Marx beyond Marx (1979), The Savage Anomaly (1983), Insurgencies (1997); and in collaboration with Michael Hardt, Empire (2000) and Multitude (2004).

Introduction to Kant's Anthropology - Foucault

Title: Introduction to Kant's Anthropology
Author: Michel Foucault

Edited by Roberto Nigro

Translated by Roberto Nigro and Kate Briggs

ISBN-10:1-58435-054-7 ISBN-13:978-1-58435-054-5
Binding: Paper
Date: August 2008
Publisher: MIT Press
Number of Pages: 157
Price: $14.95

Description

This introduction and commentary to Kant's least discussed work, Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, is the dissertation that Michel Foucault presented in 1961 as his doctoral thesis. It has remained unpublished, in any language, until now. In his exegesis and critical interpretation of Kant's Anthropology, Foucault raises the question of the relation between psychology and anthropology, and how they are affected by time. Through a Kantian "critique of the anthropological slumber," Foucault warns against the dangers of treating psychology as a new metaphysics, explores the possibilities of studying man empirically, and reflects on the nature of time, art and technique, self-perception, and language. Extending Kant's suggestion that any empirical knowledge of man is inextricably tied up with language, Foucault asserts that man is a world citizen insofar as he speaks. For both Kant and Foucault, anthropology concerns not the human animal or self-consciousness but, rather, involves the questioning of the limits of human knowledge and concrete existence.This long-unknown text is a valuable contribution not only to a scholarly appreciation of Kant's work but as the first outline of what would later become Foucault's own frame of reference within the history of philosophy. It is thus a definitive statement of Foucault's relation to Kant as well as Foucault's relation to the critical tradition of philosophy. By going to the heart of the debate on structuralist anthropology and the status of the human sciences in relation to finitude, Foucault also creates something of a prologue to his foundational The Order of Things.

Introduction to Kant's Anthropology from a pragmatic point of view

Good Sex Illustrated - Tony Duvert

Title: Good Sex Illustrated
Author: Tony Duvert
ISBN-10: 1-58435-043-1 ISBN-13:978-1-58435-043-9
Binding: Paperback
Date: 2007
Publisher: MIT Press (Semiotext(e) / Foreign Agents)
Number of Pages: 213
Price: $14.95

Desciption
Why is pleasure "doubled" when it's "shared"? ... Do you really have to cut pleasure in two so that it'll exist? I mean, if it's doubled when there are two of you, then it must be tripled when there are three, quadrupled when there are four, centupled when there are a hundred, right? Is it O.K. for a hundred to share? And if I get used to trying it all alone, why is it that I'll never love anyone again? Is it that good alone and that awful with others?
—from Good Sex Illustrated

First published in France in 1973, Good Sex Illustrated gleefully deciphers the subtext of a popular sex education manual for children produced during that period. In so doing, Duvert mounts a scabrous and scathing critique of how deftly the "sex-positive" ethos was harnessed to promote the ideal of the nuclear family. Like Michel Houllebecq, Duvert is highly attuned to all the hypocrisies of late twentieth century western "sexual liberation" mass movements. As Bruce Benderson notes in his introduction, Good Sex Illustrated shows that, "in our sexual order, orgasm follows the patterns of any other kind of capital ... 'good sex' is a voracious profit machine." But unlike Houllebecq, Duvert writes from a passionate belief in the integrity of unpoliced sex and of pleasure. Even more controversially now than when the book was first published, Duvert asserts the child's right to his or her own playful, unproductive sexuality. Bruce Benderson's translation will belatedly introduce English-speaking audiences to the most infamous gay French writer since Jean Gênet.

About the Author

Tony Duvert is a French writer born in 1945. Polemicist and champion of the rights of children to their own bodies and their own sexuality, he has published two controversial books of essays on these themes (Le bon sexe illustré and L'Enfant au masculin), which also shape his novels. His Prix Médicis-winning novel Paysage de fantaisie was published in America in 1976 as Strange Landscape. In 1978, he published two works of prose poetry and short texts, District and Les Petits Métiers. Semiotext(e) will be publishing Bruce Benderson's translation of Tony Duvert's novel Journal d'un innocent.

Tony Duvert (1945-2008) was found dead in his home on Wednesday, August 20, 2008. An investigation suggests he died from natural reasons.

TonyDuvert Tribute

Trying to Grow

Title: Trying to Grow
Author: Firdaus Kanga
ISBN: 9780143100782
Binding: Paper Back
Date: November 2008
Publisher: Penguin
Number of Pages: 280 pp
Price: 250 Rs

Description

Brit Kotwal breaks his legs eleven times before he is five years old. His teeth crumble and chip if he tries to bite into anything. It was his sister Dolly’s idea to call him Brit, short for brittle, because of his bones. Besides, Parsees don’t really like long first-names, and it pleased his mother Sera because it sounded so English.It was fun sometimes, being different. None of the other children drank powdered pearls in their milk, or had almond oil rubbed into their legs until it gleamed like Bangalore silk. And Brit knew he could always get his own way with Dolly—even if it took a little blackmail. But when you reach eighteen and are still the size of an eight year old, it is not much fun, and Brit has to begin to try and grow in his own way…Trying to Grow is a many-splendoured work built around the experiences of a physically handicapped boy turning into manhood, a deeply moving story told with a remarkable blend of directness, humour and irreverence.

Broken bones and a broken heart : An Article by Firdaus Kanga

Arguments for a Better World: Essays in Honor of Amartya Sen, Vol I & II

Title: Arguments for a Better World: Essays in Honor of Amartya Sen
Volume I: Ethics, Welfare, and Measurement and Volume II: Development, Society, and Institutions

Author: Edited by Kaushik Basu and Ravi Kanbur

ISBN13: 9780199239993, ISBN10: 0199239991

Binding: Hard Back

Date: 2008

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Number of Pages: 1312

Price: 3500/-

Product Description:

Amartya Sen has made deep and lasting contributions to the academic disciplines of economics, philosophy, and the social sciences more broadly. He has engaged in policy dialogue and public debate, advancing the cause of a human development focused policy agenda, and a tolerant and democratic polity. This argumentative Indian has made the case for the poorest of the poor, and for plurality in cultural perspective. It is not surprising that he has won the highest awards, ranging from the Nobel Prize in Economics to the Bharat Ratna, India's highest civilian honor. This public recognition has gone hand in hand with the affection and admiration that Amartya's friends and students hold for him.

This volume of essays, written in honor of his 75th birthday by his students and peers, covers the range of contributions that Sen has made to knowledge. They are written by some of the world's leading economists, philosophers and social scientists, and address topics such as ethics, welfare economics, poverty, gender, human development, society and politics.

Contributors include: Bina Agarwal, Isher Ahluwalia, Montek S Ahluwalia, Ingela Alger, Sabina Alkire, Paul Anand, Sudhir Anand, Kwame Anthony Appiah, Muhammad Asali, Department of Economics, A. B. Atkinson, Amiya Kumar Bagchi, Pranab Bardhan, Lourdes Beneria, Francois Bourguignon, Sugata Bose, Walter Bossert, John Broome, Satya R. Chakravarty, Lincoln C. Chen, Martha Alter Chen, Kanchan Chopra, Rajat Deb, Simon Dietz, Bhaskar Dutta, James E. Foster, Sakiko Fukuda-Parr, Wulf Gaertner, Indranil K. Ghosh, Jonathan Glover, Peter Hammond, Christopher Handy, Christopher Harris, Cameron Hepburn, Jane Humphries, Rizwanul Islam, Satish K. Jain, Ayesha Jalal, Mary Kaldor, Sunil Khilnani, Stephan Klasen, Jocelyn Kynch, Isaac Levi, Oliver Linton, Enrica Chiappero Martinetti, Kirsty McNay, Martha C. Nussbaum, Siddiqur R. Osmani, Elinor Ostrom, Prasanta K. Pattanaik, Edmund S. Phelps, Mozaffar Qizilbash, Gustav Ranis, Martin Ravallion, Sanjay G. Reddy, Kevin Roberts, Ingrid Robeyns, Maurice Salles, Emma Samman, Cristina Santos, Thomas. M. Scanlon, Arjun Sengupta, Tae Kun Seo, Anthony Shorrocks, Ronald Smith, Rehman Sobhan, Robert M. Solow, Nicholas Stern, Frances Stewart, Joseph E. Stiglitz, S. Subramanian, Kotaro Suzumura, Alain Trannoy, Ashutosh Varshney, Sujata Visaria, Guanghua Wan, Jorgen W. Weibull, John A. Weymark, and Yongsheng Xu. Product Details

Creating Masculinity in Los Angeles's Little Manila

Title: Creating Masculinity in Los Angeles's Little Manila: Working-Class Filipinos and Popular Culture, 1920s-1950s

Author: Linda Espana-Maram

ISBN: ISBN: 978-0-231-11593-3

Binding: Paperback

Date: 2006

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Number of Pages: 252

Price: $26.50

Gabriel Garcia Marquez: A Life

Title: Gabriel Garcia Marquez: A Life
Author: Gerald Martin
ISBN 10: 0747594767 ISBN-13: 978-0747594765
Binding: Hard Back
Date: October 2008
Publisher: Bloomsburry
Number of Pages: 688
Price: 1395
Reviews
Hilary Spurling , Telegraph
Tom Gaisford, Independent Books
Singular storyteller's triumphs and travails

Flood - J M G Le Clezio

Title: Fever
Author: J M G Le Clezio
ISBN: 9780141191409
Binding: Paperback
Date: 2008
Publisher: PenguinUK
Number of Pages: 300
Price: 325/-

Fever - J M G LeClezio

Title: Fever
Author: J M G LeClezio

Translator : Daphne Woodward

ISBN:9780141191423
Binding: Paperback
Date: 2008
Publisher: Penguin UK
Number of Pages: 224
Price: 325/-

Terra Amata - J M G Le Clezio

Title: Terra Amata
Author: J M G Le Clezio

Translator : Barbara Bray
ISBN: 9780141191416
Binding: Paperback
Date: 2008
Publisher: Penguin
Number of Pages: 224

Price: 325/-

History of sexuality: Volume 1 for 195 Rupees

Title:The History of Sexuality: Volume 1: Popular Penguins

Author:  Michel Foucault

ISBN13: 9780141037646
Binding: Paperback
Date:  1 September 2008
Publisher: Penguin Australia
Number of Pages:  180

Price:  195/-

Michel Foucault's The Will to Knowledge is the first part of his influential trilogy of books on 
the history of sexuality. He argues that the recent explosion of discussion about sex in the West means that, far from being liberated, we are in the process of making a science of sexuality that is devoted to the analysis of desire rather than the increase of pleasure. This is a brilliant polemic from a groundbreaking radical intellectual.

The Insurrection of Little Selves

Title: The Insurrection of Little Selves: The Crisis of Secular Nationalism in India
Author: Aditya Nigam
ISBN: 9780195676068
Binding: Hardback
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Number of Pages: 351
Price: Rs. 650

About the Book
The book explores the crisis that secular-nationalism went through with the emergence of what is loosely called identity politics . With the rise of new political assertions on the one hand and sectarian tendencies on the other, the fundamentally Hindu assumptions of Nehruvian secular-nationalism were revealed. Its search for a homogeneous national culture has led it to produce the dominant culture as the norm and marginalize the minority. It also looks at the opportunism of minority cultures and suggests this might be the result of nationalism, especially post-colonial. The book suggests that only by looking beyond the nation form in post-national directions can a modern political community be conceived of.

Author

Aditya Nigam, Fellow, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, New Delhi.

Photo-Biography of Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar

Title: Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar
Contributors: Prakash Vishwasrao, Vijay Surwade, Vasant Abaji Dahake, Nitin Rindhe, Jayprakash Sawant, Ramesh Tukaram Shinde, Gayatri Pagdi, Shubha Chitre - Piplapure, Vijay Mohite
ISBN: 81-88284-99-8
Binding: Hardbound
Date: October 2007
Publisher: Lokvangmay Griha
Number of Pages: 288
Price: 2000/-

About The Book

The epochal life, mission and thoughts of Dr.Bhimrao Ramji alias Babasaheb Ambedkar left indelible imprints on the twentieth century India. His life was devoted to raising the down-trodden to human dignity, and to earn for them the right to live as human beings. He led people into movements and agitations, founded organisations and launched newspapers in a bid to wrest from the hostile, unbending and conservative upper classes, political, social, religious and financial rights for the Deprived Classes. His was a multifaceted personality. From an aggressive leader to the chief architect of the Constitution of Independent India, he functioned effortlessly at various levels. He was a journalist, scholar, researcher, commentator on theology, eminent economist, political diplomat, leader of the masses and a social reformer. His writings are rich and extensive. The bibliography provided in this volume is ample proof to his erudition. This photo-biography gives an insight into Dr.Ambedkar's life and his mission through photographs, documents, front pages of newspapers and covers of books, from Vijay Surwade's valuable unique collection. Behind this rich and comprehensive collection are years of obsessive search and hard work. The photographs are historically important because of their period and context. The chronology enumerates important events prior to and after Dr. Ambedkar's birth. 'Pravartan' by Vasant Abaji Dahake, in the first part of the book, introduces the reader to the ideology of Dr. Ambedkar. This is followed by 'Jatak' and 'Charit-kal.' In addition, there is a section devoted to the introduction of some of Dr. Ambedkar's close associates. It is believed that this endeavour will appeal to the reader and will prove useful to the student of the Ambedkarian movement. <http://bookonambedkar.com/about.htm>

Seduced by the Familiar

Title: Seduced by the Familiar : Narration and Meaning in Indian Popular Cinema
Author: M.K. Raghavendra
ISBN:9780195696547
Binding: Hardback
Date: August 2008
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Number of Pages: 362
Price: Rs 695/-


Description
Seduced by the Familiar looks at contemporary social history from the perspective of popular Indian cinema. M.K. Raghavendra interprets a wide range of films––including Sant Tukaram (1936), Baazi (1951), Sangam (1964), Sholay (1975), Hum Aapke Hain Koun…! (1994), and the recent Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna (2006)––in the context of events like colonial rule, Independence, the Indo–Chinese War, the political conduct of Indira Gandhi, and the economic liberalization initiated in the 1990s.



Locating his approach within the body of scholarship on the subject, Raghavendra creates the basis for a new reading of Indian popular cinema based on its narrative strategies. He examines Indian popular cinema’s ‘grammar’––its definition of space, time, and causality, as well as its ‘voice’, reliance on melodrama, ‘aggregate’ nature, and moral preoccupations. A large number of films are analysed chronologically in this context to provide a consistent (and often surprising) interpretation of film motifs.



A significant advance for film studies, Seduced by the Familiar makes a vital contribution to the reading of Indian popular culture. Lucid and persuasive, this book consciously avoids the jargon associated with the study of cinema today and is accessible not only to students and teachers of film and cultural studies, but also to lay readers.





About the Author


M.K. Raghavendra Freelance film critic and scholar living in Bangalore. He writes for a number of international and Indian film journals, and is one of the founder editors of Deep Focus. He has taught cinema in India and abroad and has also been on several film festival juries. Raghavendra was awarded the ‘Best Film Critic Award for 1996–Swarna Kamal’ by the President of India.





More reviews
Seduced by the Familiar: An incisive look at mainstream Hindi cinema
A lifelong affair, Kaveree Bamzai

WACK!: Art and the Feminist Revolution

Title: WACK!: Art and the Feminist Revolution
Author: Cornelia H. Butler (Editor), Lisa Gabrielle Mark (Editor)
ISBN 10: 0914357999ISBN-13: 978-0914357995
Binding: Vinyl Bound
Date: (March 2, 2007)
Publisher: The MIT Press
Number of Pages: 512 pages
Price: $ 59.95

Product Description
There had never been art like the art produced by women artists in the 1970s—and there has never been a book with the ambition and scope of this one about that groundbreaking era. WACK! documents and illustrates the impact of the feminist revolution on art made between 1965 and 1980, featuring pioneering and influential works by artists who came of age during that period—Chantal Akerman, Lynda Benglis, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Valie Export, Mary Heilmann, Sanja Ivekovič, Ana Mendieta, Annette Messager, and others—as well as important works made in those years by artists whose whose careers were already well established, including Louise Bourgeois, Judy Chicago, Sheila Levrant de Bretteville, Lucy Lippard, Alice Neel, and Yoko Ono.

The art surveyed in WACK! includes work by more than 120 artists, in all media—from painting and sculpture to photography, film, installation, and video—arranged not by chronology but by theme: Abstraction, "Autophotography," Body as Medium, Family Stories, Gender Performance, Knowledge as Power, Making Art History, and others. WACK!, which accompanies the first international museum exhibition to showcase feminist art from this revolutionary era, contains more than 400 color images. Highlights include the figurative paintings of Joan Semmel; the performance and film collaborations of Sally Potter and Rose English; the untitled film stills of Cindy Sherman; and the large-scale, craft-based sculptures of Magdalena Abakanowicz.
Written entries on each artist offer key biographical and descriptive information and accompanying essays by leading critics, art historians, and scholars offer new perspectives on feminist art practice. The topics—including the relationship between American and European feminism, feminism and New York abstraction, and mapping a global feminism—provide a broad social context for the artworks themselves. WACK! is both a definitive visual record and a long-awaited history of one of the most important artistic movements of the twentieth century.
for more info http://www.moca.org/wack/

In Praise of the Whip: A Cultural History of Arousal

Title: In Praise of the Whip: A Cultural History of Arousal (Hardcover)
Author: Niklaus Largier , Graham Harman (Translator)
ISBN-10: 189095165X, ISBN-13: 978-1890951658
Binding: Hardcover
Date: 1 edition (April 1, 2007)
Publisher: Zone Books
Number of Pages: Zone Books
Price: $37.00

Product Description

In Praise of the Whip: A Cultural History of Arousal is a new history of voluntary flagellation in Europe, from its invention in medieval religious devotion to its use in the modern pornographic imagination. Working with a wide range of religious, literary, and medical texts and images, Niklaus Largier explores the emotional and sensual, religious and erotic excitement of the whip, a crucial instrument of stimulation in devotional and sexual practices. From early modern pornography to the Marquis de Sade and the fantasies of Swinburne and Joyce, the erotic and devotional imagination drew on the whip.

Largier explores how the Reformation and Counter-Reformation problematized the medieval culture of arousal. The stimulating qualities of medieval visual displays, especially flagellant practices, processions, and spectacles, were subjected to a criticism that sought to control the imagination. In modern bourgeois life the practice, effects, and imagery of flagellation became a central site of investigation into concerns and anxieties about exercising emotional self-control and censoring fantasy. Modern references to flagellant practice in the works of Swinburne, Proust, and Joyce testified not only to a "decadent" fascination with "medieval" cultures or "perverse sexuality," but also to a fascination that nineteenth-century censorship, informed by psychopathological discourses, had obliterated. Such evocations of flagellation, Largier explains, were attempts to recover a culture of stimulation and imagination—both erotic and devotional—that transcended the modern boundaries of sexuality.

About the Author

Niklaus Largier is Professor of German Literature and Director of the Religious Studies program at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of Zeit, Zeitlichkeit, Ewigkeit and Diogenes der Kyniker. He is also the editor of the selected writings of Meister Eckhart.

Muslims and Media Images News versus Views

Title: Muslims and Media Images News versus Views
Author: Ather Farouqui
ISBN: 9780195694956
Binding: Hardback
Date: August 2008
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Number of Pages: 354
Price: 695/-
The massive reach and influence of media commentary on incidents like 9/11, the 2005 terrorist attack on the London underground, the 2006 Mumbai train bombings, and the US invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, makes discussions on popular representations of Muslim peoples and cultures universally topical and relevant. The situation is particularly complex in India, where Muslims form an intrinsic part of democratic civil society, yet continue to carry the baggage of history, especially Partition.
How do the media view Indian Muslims in an age of global Islamic extremism? How far is jihadi pan-Islamism a part of the popular Indian Muslim consciousness? How are Indian Muslims dealing with media distortions of a delicate, nuanced issue? This volume raises these pertinent questions and seeks answers to them.
The contributors—well-known media commentators, scholars, and activists—focus on the politics of Muslim identity, the portrayal of the community in the media, and its relationship with civil society. They analyse the contours of mass politics—especially prevalent in northern India—based on the stereotyping of Muslims. The essays also discuss the challenges and concerns of a people wrecked by powerful internal churning and debates on identity. In fact, the increasing radicalization in the community in the face of heightened global mistrust and isolation is attributed to some of these tensions. (http://www.oup.co.in/)

Dalit Movement in IndiaLocal Practices, Global Connections

Title: Dalit Movement in IndiaLocal Practices, Global Connections
Author: Eva-Maria Hardtmann
ISBN 13: 9780195697841, ISBN10: 0195697847
Binding: hardbackDate: November 2008
Publisher: Oxford University Press Number of Pages: 304 pages
Price: 675/-

Chaste Wives and Prostitute Sisters

Title: Chaste Wives and Prostitute SistersPatriarchy and Prostitution among the Bedias of India
Author: Anuja Agrawal
ISBN: 978-0-415-43077-7
Binding: Hardback
Date: 01/04/2007
Publisher: Routledge India
Number of Pages:
Price: 650/-

About the Book

This book is an anthropological study of the unusual coincidence of prostitution and patriarchy among an extremely marginalized group in north India, the Bedias, who are also a de-notified community.

It is the first detailed account of the implications of a systematic practice of familial prostitution on the kinship structures and marriage practices of a community. This starkly manifests among the Bedias in the clear separation between sisters and daughters who engage in prostitution and wives and daughters-in-law who do not. The Bedias exemplify a situation in which prostitution of young unmarried women is the mainstay of the familial economy of an entire social group. Tracing the recent origins of the practice in the community, the author goes on to explore the manner in which this familial economy manifests itself in the lives of individual women and the kind of family groupings it produces. She then examines the repercussion this economy has on the lives of Bedia men, how the problem of their marriage is resolved, and how the Bedia wives become repositories of female purity which otherwise stands jeopardized by Bedia sisters engaged in prostitution. (From http://www.routledge.com/)

The Last Jews of Kerala

Title: The Last Jews of Kerala

Author: Edna Fernandes

ISBN13: 9780670081479

Binding: PaperbackPublishing

Date: October 2008

Publisher: Penguin , Vikin g

Number of Pages: 216 pp

Price: Rs 499.00

Separated by a narrow stretch of swamp-like waters, and distinguished by the colour of their skin, the Black Jews and the White Jews have been locked in a rancorous feud for centuries. Only now, when their combined number has diminished to less than 50 and they are on the threshold of extinction, have the two remaining Jewish communities in south India begun to realise that their destiny, and their undoing, is the same. Living in Cochin alongside this last generation, Edna Fernandes tells their story from the illustrious arrival of their ancestors from the court of King Solomon, through their long heyday of wealth, tolerance and privilege to their present twilit existence, as synagogues crumble into disuse and weddings disappear, leaving only funerals.

Same-Sex Love in India: A Literary History Edited by Saleem Kidwai, Ruth Vanita

Title: Same-Sex Love in India: A Literary History
Author: Saleem Kidwai, Ruth Vanita
ISBN13: 9780143102069
Binding: Paper back
Date: October 2008
Publisher: Penguin Books India
Number of Pages:
Price: Rs 450.00

About the book

Same-Sex Love in India offers an eloquent range of writings spanning more than two thousand years of Indian literature. Drawn from Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist and contemporary fictional sources these writings convincingly demonstrate that same-sex love has flourished, evolved and been embraced in various forms since ancient times. From the Mahabharata to modern writers and artists such as Ismat Chughtai and Bhupen Khakhar, the eclectic and expressive selections in this anthology include excerpts from devotional books, legal and erotic treatises, story cycles, medieval histories and biographies to modern novels, short stories, letters, memoirs, plays and poems. This pioneering book is invaluable for gender studies, for Indian history, and for all readers interested in the fascinating development of homoerotic traditions and writings.

More on the book

Same-Sex Love: In Conversation with Dr Ruth Vanita

Interview with Saleem Kidwai

Interview with Ruth Vanita

The Essential Einstein: His Greatest Works-Stephen Hawking

RRP: £12.99
Special Indian Price: 395.00
Publisher: PENGUIN GROUP
Format: Paperback
ISBN-13: 9780141034621
Publishing Date: September-2008
Pages: 480

The world of physics and the way the world was viewed no longer remained the same after Einstein. Though an integral part of scientific thought at present, his theory of relativity with a curved space and a slow moving time, was fabulous a hundred years back when it was first presented. Relativity has also been judged to be the most important scientific development in explaining the cosmos. In this book, Stephen Hawking has put together the highlights of Einstein's ideas of relativity and related concepts. The book is a collection of Einstein's works on the Theory of Relativity. Yet Einstein was known not only for his landmark ideas in physics. Here too are his reflections on politics and religion, and his musings on the ultimate significance of his scientific findings.

The White Tiger - Aravind Adiga

The White Tiger - Aravind Adiga
ISBN: 9788172237455
Cover Price: Rs. 395.00
Format: Hardback
Extent: 328 pages

Review

The White Tiger is a compelling first novel about the new India that is growing roots all around us, in unexpected and often ominous ways.
'Compelling, angry, and darkly humorous, The White Tiger is an unexpected journey into a new India. Aravind Adiga is a talent to watch.' Mohsin Hamid, Booker-shortlisted author of The Reluctant Fundamentalist
'In the grand illusions of a "rising" India, Aravind Adiga has found a subject Gogol might have envied. With remorselessly and delightfully mordant wit The White Tiger anatomises the fantastic cravings of the rich; it evokes, too, with startling accuracy and tenderness, the no less desperate struggles of the deprived.' Pankaj Mishra

Onitsha - J.M.G Le Clezio- Nobel Price winner's fiction

Onitsha

JMG Le Clezio

Publisher : Rupa & co.

ISBN 81-291-0939-5

Price : 295/-

Onitsha tells the story of Fintan, a youth who travels to Africa in 1948 with his Italian mother to join the English father he has never met. Fintan is initially enchanted by the exotic world he discovers in Onitsha, a bustling city prominently situated on the eastern bank of the Niger River. But gradually he comes to recognize the intolerance and brutality of the colonial system. His youthful point of view provides the novel with a notably direct, horrified perspective on racism and colonialism. In the words of translator Alison Anderson, Onitsha is remarkable for its “almost mythological evocation of local history and beliefs.” It is full of atmosphere—sights, sounds, smells —and at times the author’s sentences seem to flow with the dreamy languor of the river itself. But J. M. G. Le Clézio “never lets us forget the harsh realities of life nor the subsequent tragedy of war.” A startling account—and indictment—of colonialism, Onitsha is also a work of clear, forthright prose that ably portrays both colonial Nigeria and a young boy’s growing outrage.

The Gyanendra Pandey Omnibus

The Gyanendra Pandey Omnibus

Author(s) : Gyanendra Pandey
9780195697032, Hardback August 2008

Rs. 995

Gyanendra Pandey’s writings have profoundly influenced our understanding of anti-colonial nationalism, communal strife, and history-writing. This omnibus brings together three landmark books by him that describe an arc from a critique of nationalism to a critique of history.
By uncovering the layered character of Indian nationalism and underlining the contests between classes, communities and aspirations that went into its making, The Ascendancy of the Congress in Uttar Pradesh helps to transform the received understanding of the Indian national movement.
The Construction of Communalism in Colonial North India, described as a classic of modern Indian history and sociology, re-envisions the relationship between communalism and nationalism, and argues that what is called communalism in the subcontinent gained a great deal of its force from its likeness to nationalism.
In Remembering Partition, Gyanendra Pandey turns to a more direct investigation of the matter of collective violence, and the history and memory of such violence in the making of communities and nations, in the Indian subcontinent and elsewhere.
Unified by an attention to two questions,‘Whose nation is this?’ and ‘Whose history?’ this collection raises a fundamental question about what counts as the historical – a question that is adjacent to feminist and other critiques of the declared boundaries of the political.
In his introduction, written especially for this omnibus, Gyanendra Pandey highlights the need for ongoing engagement with the ‘unpalatable’ and the ‘fragmentary’, moments that interrupt the received narratives of mainstream nationalism and standard history.

Chocolate, and Other Writings on Male-Male Desire

Chocolate, and Other Writings on Male-Male Desire

by Ruth Vanita

 Hardcover - 103 Pages (Year: 2006) 

Oxford University Press ~ ISBN: 0195674863

Our Price : Rs  375/-

The Penguin History of Latin America

The Penguin History of Latin America Edwin Williamson - Author

Price : 900/-rs

Book: Paperback 5.07 x 7.79in 640 pages ISBN 9780140125597 07 Sep 1993 Penguin 18 - AND UP

Edwin Williamson traces 500 years of history from the time of Columbus and the Spanish Conquest to the present day. By the 1750s the Spaniards and the Portuguese governed vast territories in the New World. It was not until the eighteenth century that reforms and political upheavals undermined the stability of the Iberian empires in America and led to bitter conflicts between liberals and conservatives in the independent nations that succeeded them. The author shows how this turbulent modernization continued into the twentieth century, as well as giving an overview of the last hundrerd years, looks in detail at developments within Argentina, Mexico, Brazil, Chile and Cuba.

Pramoedya Ananta Toer (1925-2006)

Indonesian novelist, short-story writer, essayist, and critic. The Japanese occupation (1942-1944) and Indonesia's struggle for independence has provided the basic material for Pramoedya's writing. His best-known work is the Buru Quartet (1980-88), banned by the Suharto regime. The story is set at the turn of the 19th century and depicts the emergence of anticolonial Indonesian nationalism. Pramoedya's books have been translated into at least 28 languages.

It's Not an All Night Fair Pramoedya Ananta Toer - Author C. W. Watson - Translator C. W. Watson - Introduction by C. W. Watson - Notes by

Book: Paperback 8.26 x 5.23in 112 pages ISBN 9780143037026 26 Sep 2006 Penguin 18 - AND UP

Price: Rs 380/-

Now available for the first time in English, a classic from “a novelist who should get in line for the Nobel Prize” (Los Angeles Times)
Pramoedya Ananta Toer is Indonesia’s most celebrated writer, with over thirty works of fiction translated into over thirty languages, and the recipient of many major international awards, including the grand prize in the Fukuoka Asian Culture Prize competition, Japan’s highest literary honor. Narrated in the first person in Pramoedya’s signature style, It’s Not an All Night Fair tells the deeply affecting story of a son returning home to central Java to confront the fact of his father’s death. Struggling to understand his reticent father, the son embarks on a personal quest to find value and meaning not only in his father’s life but also in his own.

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All That Is Gone Pramoedya Ananta Toer - Author

Book: Paperback 5.23 x 7.87in 272 pages ISBN 9780143034469 25 Jan 2005 Penguin 18 - AND UP

Price: Rs 480/-

The first collection of short fiction available in English from "Indonesia's Albert Camus" (San Francisco Chronicle
Pramoedya Ananta Toer’s transcendent novels have become part of the world literary canon, but it is his short fiction that originally made him famous. The first full-size collection of his short stories to appear in English, All That Is Gone draws from the author’s own experiences in Indonesia to depict characters trying to make sense of a war-torn culture haunted by colonialism, among them an eight-year-old girl soon to be married off by her parents for money and an idealistic young soldier who witnesses the savage beating of a man accused of being a spy. Though violence and brutality pervade these tales, there is present throughout a profound sense of compassion—an extraordinary combination of despair and hope that gives All That Is Gone rare power and beauty.

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The Mute's Soliloquy A MemoirPramoedya Ananta Toer - Author

Book: Paperback 5.11 x 7.95in 400 pages ISBN 9780140289046 01 Apr 2000 Penguin 18 - AND UP

Price : 500/-

In 1965, Pramoedya Ananta Toer was detained by Indonesian authorities and eventually exiled to the penal island of Buru. Without a formal accusation or trial, the onetime national hero was imprisoned on Buru for eleven years. He survived under brutal conditions, somehow managing to produce his masterwork, the four novels of the Buru Quartet, as well as the remarkable journal entries, essays, and letters that comprise this moving memoir. Reminiscent of the work of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Mute's Soliloquy is a harrowing portrait of a penal colony and a heartbreaking remembrance of life before it. With a resonance far beyond its particular time and place, it is Pramoedya's crowning achievement—a passionate tribute to the freedom of the mind and a celebration of the human spirit.

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The Fugitive Pramoedya Ananta Toer - Author

Book: Paperback 5.15 x 7.71in 176 pages ISBN 9780140296525 01 Dec 2000 Penguin 18 - AND UP

Rs: 480/-

Written while Pramoedya Ananta Toer was imprisoned by the Dutch for his role in the Indonesian revolution after World War II, The Fugitive was his first major novel and the first to be published in the United States. Set during the final days of World War II, The Fugitive tells the harrowing story of a young platoon leader who has led a failed nationalist revolt against Japanese forces occupying Indonesia. Betrayed by a co-conspirator and forced to disguise himself as a beggar, he sets out to find his fiancee, while eluding the military forces who will kill him if they capture him. Combining acute political and social criticism with a gripping, deeply moving narrative, this timeless story of a soldier's return home will haunt the memories of all who read it.

Khairlanji A Strange and Bitter Crop - Anand Teltumbde

KhairlanjiA Strange and Bitter Crop
Anand Teltumbde
Demy Octavo. Paperback. 210 pages. Rs 190.

ISBN 9788189059156

On 29 September 2006, in Khairlanji, Maharashtra, Surekha Bhotmange and her daughter Priyanka Bhotmange were stripped, paraded naked, raped repeatedly and killed. Surekha’s sons Roshan and Sudhir were lynched. The entire village was involved. The four bodies were dumped into a canal. The Bhotmanges were dalit. The Bhotmanges have been forgotten. After all, two dalits are murdered every day in India. ANAND TELTUMBDE reconstructs one of post-independence India’s worst caste atrocities and tells us how and why Khairlanjis are always around us. (excerpt from http://www.navayana.org/)

Frida's Bed - Slavenka Drakulic

Frida's Bed Slavenka Drakulic - Author Christina Pribichevich-Zoric - Translator

Book: Paperback 8.26 x 5.23in 176 pages ISBN 9780143114154 26 Aug 2008 Penguin 18 - AND UP

Price : Rs 400/-

A beautifully imagined story of the last days of Frida Kahlo’s life
A few days before Frida Kahlo’s death in 1954, she wrote in her diary, “I hope the exit is joyful—and I hope never to return.” Diagnosed with polio at the age of six and plagued by illness and injury throughout her life, Kahlo’s chronic pain was a recurrent theme in her extraordinary art. In Frida’s Bed, Slavenka Drakulic´ explores the inner life of one of the world’s most influential female artists, skillfully weaving Frida’s memories into descriptions of her paintings, producing a meditation on the nature of chronic pain and creativity. With an intriguing subject whose unusual life continues to fascinate, this poignant imagining of Kahlo’s thoughts during her final hours by another daringly original and uncompromising creative talent will attract readers of literary fiction and art lovers alike.

A history of reading - Alberto Manguel

The History of Reading Alberto Manguel - Author

Book: Paperback 6.14 x 9.01in 384 pages ISBN 9780140166545 01 Oct 1997 Penguin 18 - AND UP

At one magical instant in your early childhood, the page of a book—that string of confused, alien ciphers—shivered into meaning. Words spoke to you, gave up their secrets; at that moment, whole universes opened. You became, irrevocably, a reader. Noted essayist Alberto Manguel moves from this essential moment to explore the 6000-year-old conversation between words and that magician without whom the book would be a lifeless object: the reader. Manguel lingers over reading as seduction, as rebellion, as obsession, and goes on to trace the never-before-told story of the reader's progress from clay tablet to scroll, codex to CD-ROM.

Spain, Take This Chalice from Me and Other Poems Cesar Vallejo

Spain, Take This Chalice from Me and Other Poems Cesar Vallejo - Author Margaret Sayers Peden - Translator Ilan Stavans - Introduction by

Book: Paperback 5.07 x 7.79in 352 pages ISBN 9780143105305 25 Mar 2008 Penguin Classic Adult

Price: Rs 775/-

A major new bilingual edition of the Peruvian poet’s work
Cesar Vallejo is one of the best-known Latin American poets of the twentieth century. Challenging, intense, and difficult to translate, Vallejo’s work has often been overshadowed by his fervent endorsement of communism. Noted scholar Ilan Stavans tackles the avant-garde poet’s politics head-on in an enlightening new introduction that places Vallejo in his proper literary context, while Margaret Sayers Peden’s new translation does full justice to Vallejo’s complex literary style. Including Spanish and English versions of more than eighty poems that span the arc of his career, this volume is certain to become the leading collection of Vallejo’s work for years to come.

Zubin Mehta - The Score of My Life

Zubin Mehta - The Score of My Life
Zubin Mehta
A simple, yet engrossing narrative of his life, influences and his years as one of the most famous conductors
Hardback 5.5” x 8.5” 232 pp
ISBN 9788174366870Rs.395.00

About this book
Zubin Mehta left the sheltered environs of his parental home in Bombay in 1954, as an eighteen year old, and moved to Vienna into the very unique culture of the Music Academy where he studied under illustrious teachers like Hans Swarowsky. Just seven years later he conducted the Berlin and Vienna Philharmonic Orchestras and became the director of the Montrèal Symphony Orchestra at the age of twenty-five. Further assignments included Los Angeles, New York, Florence, Tel Aviv, and eventually, Munich where he was working as general music director of the Bavarian State Opera from 1998 to 2006.Zubin Mehta is one of the most celebrated conductors in the world. He has worked with all the top-class international orchestras and with excellent instrumentalists and opera stars of the past many decades. Musicians like Daniel Barenboim, Claudio Abbado, Itzhak Perlman and Pinchas Zukerman count among his intimate friends. Despite his tremendous success, this popular Indian with a zest for life still remains a restless spirit – a wanderer between the worlds, who is as famous for his commitment to Israel as for his musical openness to everything from open-air concerts to operas. His exciting life makes for a gripping autobiography.


About the author
Zubin Mehta was born in 1936 in Bombay. At the age of eighteen he abandoned the study of medicine to dedicate himself entirely to music. Today he is one of the most prominent musicians worldwide. Zubin Mehta was the general music director of the National Theatre in Munich for eight years. In addition he is the chief conductor of the Maggio Musicale in Florence and music director of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra.

Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy (Penguin Classics) (Paperback)

Grundrisse Foundations of the Critique of Political EconomyKarl Marx - Author Martin Nicolaus - Translator Martin Nicolaus - Introduction by

Book: Paperback 5.07 x 7.79in 912 pages ISBN 9780140445756 07 Nov 1993 Penguin Classic 18 - AND UP

Price : Rs.1000

Written between The Communist Manifesto (1848) and the first volume of Capital (1867), Grundrisse--essential to the understanding of Marx's ideas--provides the only outline of his full political-economic theories.

Women's Studies in India : A Reader

Title: Women's Studies In India: A Reader
Author: Mary John
ISBN: 0143063774
ISBN-13: 9780143063773
Binding: Paperback
Publishing Date: august 2008
Publisher: Penguin Books India
Number of Pages: 680
List Price : Price: RS. 599.00, US$ 13.61
Our Price : Rs . 500 (anywhere in Kerala, free of postal charge)

Women's Studies in India : A Reader
Women’s studies first emerged in India during the 1970s as a forceful critique of those processes that had made women invisible after independence—invisible not only to society and the state, but also to higher education and its disciplines. Since that beginning, so much has happened in this already vast field that it would be hard to find a major issue or subject that has not been addressed by scholars and activists. This comprehensive reader sets out to provide a map of the development of women’s studies and the ever expanding terrain that it has been investigating. The introduction explores the growth of the field from the upheavals of the 1970s to the transformed conjunctures of the 1990s. In the process, the often elusive relationships between women’s studies, the women’s movement and the structures of higher education are highlighted. Over eighty edited essays have been brought together in this single volume under distinct thematic clusters—from the new beginnings of the 1970s to politics, history, development, violence, the law, education, health, family and household, caste and tribe, religion and communalism, sexualities, and literature and the media. This reader is for both newcomers to women’s studies and for those who have long been part of it.

To order this book email to bookportcochin@gmail.com

Or Dial 9746339846

You Are Here - Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan

	Title:	You Are Here
	Author:	Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan
	Published by :	Penguin Books India
	Published :	August 2008
	Cover Price :	Rs 199.00
	ISBN13 :	9780143064343
	Edition :	Paperback
	Extent :	272 pp
	Classification :	Fiction

'The trouble with my life is that it's like a bra strap when you put your bra on wrong . . .'

At twenty-five, life's innumerable entanglements are getting to Arshi.

Her blonde American step-mom's trying too hard (she's taken to welcoming guests with a traditional aarti). The gorgeous guy who has Arshi all flushed and dreamy doesn't seem to be trying at all (he's the Ice Prince who thaws at his own convenience). Her best friend Deeksha's going to be married in a few months (Arshi's still in the process of finding the correct labels for the men in her life). And, her otherwise unruffled, cocktail-concocting flatmate Topsy's getting testier by the day because her conservative family will never approve of the darling guy she's in love with. What's more, there's a cheating ex-boyfriend, a weepy neighbour and a heinous boss who need to be told where to get off.

Her head spinning wildly with the sheer gravity of her life's quandaries, Arshi realizes what she needs most now (besides a barrelful of alcohol and some serious postcoital cuddling) are just a few epiphanies of the right kind . . .

Saucy, wise and audaciously candid, You Are Here introduces a bold and irresistible new voice.

To order this book email to bookportcochin@gmail.com