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Between Identity and
Location: The Cultural Politics of Theory
Situated at the intersections of postcoloniality and poststructuralism, the essay in this book raise these questions as ongoing answers in the dialectic between intimacy and distance, solidarity and critique, between the language or being and the being of language. Simran: A Novel
Earning the Laundry
Stripes
Meanwhile, there is a misadventure, an avaricious policeman and the threat of possible jail sentence to cope with. Noor Bhalla is left with only one card to play — it could deliver her, or do her in. Earning the Laundry Stripes chronicles Noor’s journey of discovery of self, as, afloat in a sea of men, she figures the regulation life jacket does not fit and she must devise her own ways to survive; of a dichotomous society, at once in transition yet mired in the past, where a rich urban woman can buy sex while a village woman will get her nose sliced for daring to converse with a strange man; and of a people, divided by their multiple faiths, yet united by commerce.
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What
is thinking and what is theory? What is theoretical thinking and how
does such a thought find its balance between specialist erudition and
commonsensical intention? How is the relationship of theory to itself
mediated by its practical commitment to instrumental Reason? What is the
connection between theory and the proliferating discourses of "postality"
Is academic-institutional theory capable of recognising the reality of a
world structured in dominance: between the West and the Rest, between
the so called first and third worlds? How do the politics of location
and subject positionality complicate and problematize the valence
between representation and the object of representation? How do
intellectual and pedagogical paradigms function in a global world that
is simultaneously expanding and shrinking; between homes and locations,
nationalisms and diasporas, ways of being and modes of knowing?
John,
a lecturer in philosophy at Delhi University, returns to his flat one
evening to find a letter waiting for him. A subsequent meeting with the
author of the letter leaves a question mark over the supposed death of
John’s fiancee, some years earlier. He temporarily suspends his work
with the hijra community in Delhi to accompany Diamond, a
researcher in aesthetics, to Shimla, where he had formrly studied. At
Shimla they find themselves in the midst of a right-wing conspiracy.
After four weeks, when John returns to Delhi he is nowhere near a
solution to the problem. If anything, events in the past seem even more
inexplicable. This is a story of a deeply felt personal quest for beauty
and love, against the backdrop of modern India with all its strange
contradictions and tensions.
Marked
by the zeitgeist of changing India, the largest consumer products
company in the country, HLL, decides to recruit, for the first time
women Area Sales Managers. Enter Noor Bhalla, Engineer / MBA. In the
grind of a saleswoman’s life, she unearths a madcap world where the
retail beat hides a world of instantadoption (every shopkeeper is intent
on claiming her as sister or daughter), goats as bus companions, a
Schwarzenegger-idolising distributor who shows indignation by erupting
into one-armed push-ups, and gratis matrimonial advice from colleagues
and clients. Noor, as a woman and a Sikh, finds she is very much in the
minority as she is welcomed to the Sectarian & Macho world of Sales.