Description
Through a case study of Sikhism, Mandair launches an extended critique of religion as a cultural universal. He shows how certain aspects of Sikh tradition were reinvented as "religion" during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Mandair rethinks the intersection of religion and the secular, which he shows to be linked to a philosophy of "generalized translation" that continues to influence the repetitions of religion and identity politics in the lives of South Asians. Through a case study of Sikhism, Arvind-Pal S. Mandair launches an extended critique of religion as a cultural universal, showing how certain aspects of Sikh tradition were reinvented as "religion" during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. His work rethinks the intersection of religion and the secular in discourses such as history of religions, postcolonial theory, and recent continental philosophy. Mandair links these discourses to a philosophy of "generalized translation" that emerged as a key conceptual matrix in the colonial encounter between India and the West. He also 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.
About the Author
Arvind-Pal S. Mandair is associate professor of Asian languages and cultures and S.C.S.B. Endowed Professor of Sikh Studies at the University of Michigan. He is a founding coeditor of the journal Sikh Formations: Religion, Culture, Theory.
Reviews
Overall, Mandair's broad temporal, spatial, and intellectual perspectives make this a very interesting volume. By exploring Sikhism from the perspectives of deconstructionist, postcolonial, and postsecular theory, he fills in an important gap in Sikh philosophy and charts out provocative new directions. -- Nikky-Guninder Kaur Singh History of Religions Arguably the most theoretically incisive work in Sikh studies since the field's inception. -- Balbinder Singh Bhogal Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies Mandair has... provided us with a sketch of a postsecular theory that promises to vigorously decolonize the mind. -- Harjot Oberoi, University of British Columbia The Journal of Asian Studies By pursuing a postcolonial perspective that aims to undo inherited imperialist configurations, Mandair paves new ground and pushes the boundaries of a currently widespread postcolonial critique of power, especially when it comes to the question of religion and secularism in the public sphere. -- Michael Nijhawan, York University Translation Studies [A]n ambitious book that is an important contribution to the critical discourse about religion in the context of post-colonialism. -- Gavin Flood, University of Oxford Method and Theory in the Study of Religion
Book Information
ISBN 9780231147255
Author Arvind-Pal S. Mandair
Format Paperback
Page Count 536
Imprint Columbia University Press
Publisher Columbia University Press