This book studies the role of serious philosophizing in everyday life and looks at how authoritarianism negates philosophical and public reason. It sheds light on how philosophy can go beyond its life as a discipline limited to an esoteric group of academia to manifest itself via radical discursive practices in public life which enable us to understand and resolve contemporary socio-political challenges. It studies philosophy as a discipline which deals with one's orientations based on experience, the logic of reasoning, critical thinking, and most of all radical and progressive beliefs. The book argues that the contemporary rise of capitalism in modern society, resonating Émile Durkheim’s cautions on "anomie", has favoured individualism, differentiation, marginalization, and exploitation, balanced on an eroding collective consciousness and a steady disintegration of humanity and reason. Taking this into consideration, it discusses how philosophy, both mainstream and marginal, can revive democracy in society which then is able to confront global authoritarianism led by the figure of the imbecile. Finally, it also provides a range of new perspectives on the questions of civic freedom, hegemony of language, social justice, identity, invisible paradigms, gender justice, democracy, multiculturalism, and decolonization. This book is an invigorating compilation of essays from diverse disciplines, engaging the need to create a humanistic public philosophy to transcend the state of imbecility. It will be of great interest to students, scholars and researchers of philosophy, contemporary politics, history, and sociology, as well as general readers.

This book is a collection of essays by prominent thinkers on the historist and humanist transcendence of the caste system such that an authentic democracy can bloom in India. It locates caste as not only a social problem, but a moral evil and schizophrenia affecting India civilization. Besides reflecting on Jotiba Phule, Karl Marx, and B.R. Ambedkar, this book also traverses through Nietzschean genealogy, communalism in colonial India, the need for radical education to fulfil the democratic revolution, the literature of Triveni Sangh, questions of social exclusion and inequality, the story of Eklavya in the Mahabharata and the asking of pertinent questions to the Indian left. This book is co-published with Aakar Books. Print edition not for sale in South Asia (India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Bhutan)

The book The Magical Lantern is a collection of essays on Marxist philosophy. It is based on the philosophical reflection on Marx's idea of phantasmagoria as the 'magical lantern' that creates eerie images, an idea that is central to Marx's theory of modern capitalist societies. It talks of the importance of Marx's philosophy and its application in concrete politics, especially in creating socialist humanist philosophy of human emancipation where global societies can be emancipated from the phantasmagorias that haunt them, thus able to transcend global capitalism which is in terminal and permanent crisis. It then critiques the rise of authoritarian regimes emerging all over the world and seeks to explain the rise of global totalitarianism. But it claims that the answer to authoritarianism is not liberalism since liberalism is part of the late imperialism in permanent crisis as well as it involves what Slavoj Zizek calls the Denkverbot ('the prohibition against thinking') and thus involves the return of the eerie phantasmagoria that does not allow critical thinking. However, the critique of liberalism does not relapse into orthodox Marxism, since this book argues that in the genre of orthodox Marxism the ghosts of Stalin and Mao with their own authoritarianism haunt philosophies of human emancipation. While Stalin is portrayed as a brutal counter-revolutionary who destroyed Marxism by evoking Marxism itself, Mao is presented as the alchemist of the revolution and a peculiar form of Stalinism in rebellion against Stalinism itself! The chapters in this book were originally published in Critique: Journal of Socialist Theory.

Essays on Marxism and Asia begins with the largely forgotten prophet of ancient Iran Zarathushtra, remembered and immortalised by Friedrich Nietzsche’s Also Sprach Zarathustra. In contrast to the infamous clash of civilisation thesis, this book argues for a humanist theory of civilisations and studies the Parsis or Persians who left Iran to settle in India and make it their home. It claims that Parsis, despite being a migrant community, took strength from their Persian heritage and civilisation and rose to become the architects of industrial modernity in India. This book locates this humanist theory in the larger genre of the Asiatic mode of production with caste as its sub- text. It then takes a phenomenological reading of caste in India and says that India is afflicted by a very strange illness called ‘silent blindness’ where humanity is silenced and blinded in front of the caste apparatus. It then analyzes how capitalism and modernity fashioned caste in the image of capitalism and how the Indian right- wing imagined its fascistic politics of race and racial superiority based on the image of caste hierarchy. The problem in India has been that the liberals could not take caste seriously so as to confront it and then annihilate this violent apartheid structure. This, the book argues, has led to the rise of fascism in India. The book concludes with positing two different strands of secularism, namely liberal or bourgeois secularism which merely separates religion and the state (but mixes these when required) and revolutionary secularism which humanises religion and politics first in order to find the human and class content in both. The chapters in this book were originally published in Critique: Journal of Socialist Theory.

Essays on Marxism and Asia begins with the largely forgotten prophet of ancient Iran Zarathushtra, remembered and immortalised by Friedrich Nietzsche's Also Sprach Zarathustra. In contrast to the infamous clash of civilisation thesis, this book argues for a humanist theory of civilisations and studies the Parsis or Persians who left Iran to settle in India and make it their home. It claims that Parsis, despite being a migrant community, took strength from their Persian heritage and civilisation and rose to become the architects of industrial modernity in India. This book locates this humanist theory in the larger genre of the Asiatic mode of production with caste as its sub- text. It then takes a phenomenological reading of caste in India and says that India is afflicted by a very strange illness called 'silent blindness' where humanity is silenced and blinded in front of the caste apparatus. It then analyzes how capitalism and modernity fashioned caste in the image of capitalism and how the Indian right- wing imagined its fascistic politics of race and racial superiority based on the image of caste hierarchy. The problem in India has been that the liberals could not take caste seriously so as to confront it and then annihilate this violent apartheid structure. This, the book argues, has led to the rise of fascism in India. The book concludes with positing two different strands of secularism, namely liberal or bourgeois secularism which merely separates religion and the state (but mixes these when required) and revolutionary secularism which humanises religion and politics first in order to find the human and class content in both. The chapters in this book were originally published in Critique: Journal of Socialist Theory.

This book proposes a New Enlightenment - a new way of looking at the non-Western world. Breaking new ground, the essays chart a course beyond Eurocentric discourses (which completely ignore the contributions of Asia, Africa and Latin-America) and forms of nativism (which are usually ethnocentric discourses). The volume: Focuses on the historical aspects of knowledge-production and its colonization; Examines the genre of multilinear histories that displaces hegemonic Eurocentric discourses; Enlarges the scope of multilinear historicism whereby Asia, Europe, Africa and the Americas are drawn in a new humanistic knowledge system; Studies how colonization is resisted in both the non-Western and Western world. Lucid and engaging, this book will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of social theory, education, politics and public policy.

This book studies the role of serious philosophizing in everyday life and looks at how authoritarianism negates philosophical and public reason. It sheds light on how philosophy can go beyond its life as a discipline limited to an esoteric group of academia to manifest itself via radical discursive practices in public life which enable us to understand and resolve contemporary socio-political challenges. It studies philosophy as a discipline which deals with one's orientations based on experience, the logic of reasoning, critical thinking, and most of all radical and progressive beliefs. The book argues that the contemporary rise of capitalism in modern society, resonating Emile Durkheim's cautions on "anomie", has favoured individualism, differentiation, marginalization, and exploitation, balanced on an eroding collective consciousness and a steady disintegration of humanity and reason. Taking this into consideration, it discusses how philosophy, both mainstream and marginal, can revive democracy in society which then is able to confront global authoritarianism led by the figure of the imbecile. Finally, it also provides a range of new perspectives on the questions of civic freedom, hegemony of language, social justice, identity, invisible paradigms, gender justice, democracy, multiculturalism, and decolonization. This book is an invigorating compilation of essays from diverse disciplines, engaging the need to create a humanistic public philosophy to transcend the state of imbecility. It will be of great interest to students, scholars and researchers of philosophy, contemporary politics, history, and sociology, as well as general readers.

The Prison House of Alienation is an exploration of the humanist theme of alienation that Marx theorized in his Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. It relates this theme of alienation with the themes of haunting in the Manifesto of the Communist Party and accumulation of capital that he outlined in his magnum opus Capital. The volume claims that humanity plagued by ghosts is dwelling in a prison house from which there seems no escape. Yet humanity seeks to escape from this prison house. The essays are a consequent journey in dramaturgy where science and art truly meet to create emancipatory politics that goes well beyond the entire discourse of twentieth-century socialism. The volume begins with Hamlet's lament in Shakespeare's tragedy, who, struck by alienation, is haunted by the ghost of his dead father. It then discusses how instead of creating a radical theory for creating a socialist alternative, 'haunting' gave way to interpretation as an estranged hermeneutical act that displaces revolutionary theory and praxis. This displacement of revolutionary praxis in turn gave way to violence. This volume therefore also analyzes violence from Clausewitz to Mao, revealing that a rigorous line must be drawn between Stalinism and Maoism on one side, and authentic Marxism on the other side. It concludes by questioning the very idea of ideology, suggesting that ideology is not merely a false consciousness, but a terrible psychotic act that would devour the entire emancipatory project of Marxism itself. Placing the human condition at the centre for alternative twenty-first-century politics, The Prison House of Alienation reveals that there can be no science without art and no politics without humanity. It will be of great interest to scholars of philosophy and politics. The essays were originally published in various issues of Critique: Journal of Socialist Theory.

This book proposes a New Enlightenment - a new way of looking at the non-Western world. Breaking new ground, the essays chart a course beyond Eurocentric discourses (which completely ignore the contributions of Asia, Africa and Latin-America) and forms of nativism (which are usually ethnocentric discourses). The volume: Focuses on the historical aspects of knowledge-production and its colonization; Examines the genre of multilinear histories that displaces hegemonic Eurocentric discourses; Enlarges the scope of multilinear historicism whereby Asia, Europe, Africa and the Americas are drawn in a new humanistic knowledge system; Studies how colonization is resisted in both the non-Western and Western world. Lucid and engaging, this book will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of social theory, education, politics and public policy.

The Prison House of Alienation is an exploration of the humanist theme of alienation that Marx theorized in his Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. It relates this theme of alienation with the themes of haunting in the Manifesto of the Communist Party and accumulation of capital that he outlined in his magnum opus Capital. The volume claims that humanity plagued by ghosts is dwelling in a prison house from which there seems no escape. Yet humanity seeks to escape from this prison house. The essays are a consequent journey in dramaturgy where science and art truly meet to create emancipatory politics that goes well beyond the entire discourse of twentieth-century socialism. The volume begins with Hamlet's lament in Shakespeare's tragedy, who, struck by alienation, is haunted by the ghost of his dead father. It then discusses how instead of creating a radical theory for creating a socialist alternative, 'haunting' gave way to interpretation as an estranged hermeneutical act that displaces revolutionary theory and praxis. This displacement of revolutionary praxis in turn gave way to violence. This volume therefore also analyzes violence from Clausewitz to Mao, revealing that a rigorous line must be drawn between Stalinism and Maoism on one side, and authentic Marxism on the other side. It concludes by questioning the very idea of ideology, suggesting that ideology is not merely a false consciousness, but a terrible psychotic act that would devour the entire emancipatory project of Marxism itself. Placing the human condition at the centre for alternative twenty-first-century politics, The Prison House of Alienation reveals that there can be no science without art and no politics without humanity. It will be of great interest to scholars of philosophy and politics. The essays were originally published in various issues of Critique: Journal of Socialist Theory.