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The Great Goddess, in her various puranic and tantric forms, is
often figured as sitting on a corpse which is identified as
Shiva-as-shava (God Shiva, the consort of the Devi and an iconic
representation of the Absolute without attributes, the Nirguna
Brahman). Hence, most of the existing critical works and
ethnographic studies on Shaktism and the tantras have focused on
the theological and symbolic paraphernalia of the corpses which
operate as the asanas (seats) of the Devi in her various
iconographies. This book explores the figurations of the Goddess as
corpse in several Hindu puranic and Shakta-tantric texts, popular
practices, folk belief systems, legends and various other cultural
phenomena based on this motif. It deals with a more intricate and
fundamental issue than existing works on the subject: how and why
is the Devi - herself - figured as a corpse in the Shakta texts,
belief systems and folk practices associated with the tantras? The
issues which have been raised in this book include: how does death
become a complement to life within this religious epistemology? How
does one learn to live with death, thereby lending new definitions
and new epistemic and existential dimensions to life and death? And
what is the relation between death and gender within this kind of
figuration of the Goddess as death and dead body? Analysing
multiple mythic narratives, hymns and scriptural texts where the
Devi herself is said to take the form of the Shava (the corpse) as
well as the Shakti who animates dead matter, this book focuses not
only on the concept of the theological equivalence of the Shava
(Shiva as corpse) and the Shakti (Energy) in tantras but also on
the status of the Divine Mother as the Great Bridge between the
apparently irreconcilable opposites, the mediatrix between Spirit
and Matter, death and life, existence-in-stasis and
existence-in-kinesis. This book makes an important contribution to
the fields of Hindu Studies, Goddess Spirituality, South Asian
Religions, Women and Religion, India, Studies in Shaktism and
Tantra, Cross-cultural Religious Studies, Gender Studies,
Postcolonial Spirituality and Ecofeminism.
The Great Goddess, in her various puranic and tantric forms, is
often figured as sitting on a corpse which is identified as
Shiva-as-shava (God Shiva, the consort of the Devi and an iconic
representation of the Absolute without attributes, the Nirguna
Brahman). Hence, most of the existing critical works and
ethnographic studies on Shaktism and the tantras have focused on
the theological and symbolic paraphernalia of the corpses which
operate as the asanas (seats) of the Devi in her various
iconographies. This book explores the figurations of the Goddess as
corpse in several Hindu puranic and Shakta-tantric texts, popular
practices, folk belief systems, legends and various other cultural
phenomena based on this motif. It deals with a more intricate and
fundamental issue than existing works on the subject: how and why
is the Devi - herself - figured as a corpse in the Shakta texts,
belief systems and folk practices associated with the tantras? The
issues which have been raised in this book include: how does death
become a complement to life within this religious epistemology? How
does one learn to live with death, thereby lending new definitions
and new epistemic and existential dimensions to life and death? And
what is the relation between death and gender within this kind of
figuration of the Goddess as death and dead body? Analysing
multiple mythic narratives, hymns and scriptural texts where the
Devi herself is said to take the form of the Shava (the corpse) as
well as the Shakti who animates dead matter, this book focuses not
only on the concept of the theological equivalence of the Shava
(Shiva as corpse) and the Shakti (Energy) in tantras but also on
the status of the Divine Mother as the Great Bridge between the
apparently irreconcilable opposites, the mediatrix between Spirit
and Matter, death and life, existence-in-stasis and
existence-in-kinesis. This book makes an important contribution to
the fields of Hindu Studies, Goddess Spirituality, South Asian
Religions, Women and Religion, India, Studies in Shaktism and
Tantra, Cross-cultural Religious Studies, Gender Studies,
Postcolonial Spirituality and Ecofeminism.
Contemporary debates on "mansplaining" foreground the authority
enjoyed by male speech, and highlight the way it projects listening
as the responsibility of the dominated, and speech as the privilege
of the dominant. What mansplaining denies systematically is the
right of women to speak and be heard as much as men. This book
excavates numerous instances of the authority of female speech from
Indian goddess traditions and relates them to the contemporary
gender debates, especially to the issues of mansplaining and
womansplaining. These traditions present a paradigm of female
speech that compels its male audience to reframe the configurations
of "masculinity." This tradition of authoritative female speech
forms a continuum, even though there are many points of disjuncture
as well as conjuncture between the Vedic, Upanishadic, puranic, and
tantric figurations of the Goddess as an authoritative speaker. The
book underlines the Goddess's role as the spiritual mentor of her
devotee, exemplified in the Devi Gitas, and re-situates the female
gurus in Hinduism within the traditions that find in Devi's speech
ultimate spiritual authority. Moreover, it explores whether the
figure of Devi as Womansplainer can encourage a more dialogic
structure of gender relations in today's world where female voices
are still often undervalued.
Contemporary debates on "mansplaining" foreground the authority
enjoyed by male speech, and highlight the way it projects listening
as the responsibility of the dominated, and speech as the privilege
of the dominant. What mansplaining denies systematically is the
right of women to speak and be heard as much as men. This book
excavates numerous instances of the authority of female speech from
Indian goddess traditions and relates them to the contemporary
gender debates, especially to the issues of mansplaining and
womansplaining. These traditions present a paradigm of female
speech that compels its male audience to reframe the configurations
of "masculinity." This tradition of authoritative female speech
forms a continuum, even though there are many points of disjuncture
as well as conjuncture between the Vedic, Upanishadic, puranic, and
tantric figurations of the Goddess as an authoritative speaker. The
book underlines the Goddess's role as the spiritual mentor of her
devotee, exemplified in the Devi Gitas, and re-situates the female
gurus in Hinduism within the traditions that find in Devi's speech
ultimate spiritual authority. Moreover, it explores whether the
figure of Devi as Womansplainer can encourage a more dialogic
structure of gender relations in today's world where female voices
are still often undervalued.
This book seeks to explore the complex modes of interface between
religion, atheism, and the Goddess in multicultural contexts. While
atheism has often been seen as an interrogation of and a battle
against God, the gender dimension of this discourse has not been
sufficiently negotiated. Is the fight against God also a fight
against the Goddess? Or is there something common between the
ideological thrust of the battle against God the “Father” in
atheism and the interrogation of the Divine Father in thealogy? Can
the Goddess be seen as an entity radically different from the
imperious transcendental that the atheists find embodied in God the
Father? Or, can the Goddess be seen as “transcendental” as well
as immanent, and hence subjected to the same atheist denial of
transcendence to which God is subjected in non-theistic or
anti-theistic arguments? With this volume, Anway Mukhopadhyay
embarks on a difficult project of epistemologically, ideologically
and even politically renegotiating and reorienting some of the
fundamental issues involved in the discussions of and debates over
atheism.
This book deals with the intricate issue of approaching
atheism-methodologically as well as conceptually-from the
perspective of cultural pluralism. What does 'atheism' mean in
different cultural contexts? Can this term be applied appropriately
to different religious discourses which conceptualize
God/gods/Goddess/goddesses (and also godlessness) in hugely
divergent ways? Is my 'God' the same as yours? If not, then how can
your atheism be the same as mine? In other words, this volume
raises the question: Is it not high time that we proposed a
comparative study of atheism(s) alongside that of religions, rather
than believing that atheism is centered in the 'Western'
experience? Apart from answering these questions, the book
highlights the much-needed focus on the philosophical negotiations
between atheism, theism and agnosticism. The fine chapters
collected here present pluralist negotiations with the notion of
atheism and its ethical, theological, literary and scientific
corollaries. Previously published in Sophia Volume 60, issue 3,
September 2021 Chapters "Religious Conversion and Loss of Faith:
Cases of Personal Paradigm Shift?" and "On Being an Infidel" are
available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
International License via link.springer.com.
Seminar paper from the year 2012 in the subject Literature - Modern
Literature, grade: hundred per cent (10 out of 10), Jadavpur
University, course: "utopian literature," optional course, MA
English, Second Year, Fourth Semester, conducted by Rimi B.
Chatterjee, language: English, comment: My teacher's comment: 'What
a beautiful, perceptive and moving piece. i strongly recommend that
you publish it.', abstract: Time has been conceptualized in various
ways by the scientists, litterateurs and philosophers. But here,
drawing on a 'utopian' narrative by a Russian author, Mukhopadhyay
envisages an empathetic temporality that can create a mysterious
compatibility between human time and natural time by ushering in a
new temporal mode, a time of empathetically propelled togetherness.
At the same time, the work also seeks to explore the ways in which
we can modify our anthropocentric systems of thought by realigning
ourselves with our planet that also opens us up towards new vistas
of imagination.Beginning to invoke an empathetic temporality that
changes autumn into spring, we can move towards an unimaginably
wonderful future where Time is not conquered but befriended by
human beings, and human beings can rediscover the loving Nature
that may lie hidden beneath the 'ravages of time'.
What happens if Eros intrudes into the master-slave dialectic?
Aiming to partially de-Hegelianize the master-slave dialectic and
showing its sinister perpetuation in the democratic socius- not as
a phase of a progressive dialectic, but as a frozen paradigm of
social (especially inter-male) interactions- this book poises Eros
at the threshold of ratiocination and imagination, arguing against
the exclusion of Eros from the domain of political economy and
imaginatively envisaging an erotic collectivity. Such a
collectivity would, the author argues, establish palpable erotic
reciprocity between its members, thereby doing away with the
unequal recognition that is the kernel of the master-slave
dialectic. Setting its critique of theoretical closures in praxis,
this book looks forward to an erotic future that can't be captured
in any philosophical systems. Intellectually stimulating and
occasionally deliberately provocative, this work would proffer its
readers a pure intellectual bliss- that of mulling over things de
novo from an "erotic" perspective. This book is the vehicle for the
readers' as well as the author's journey towards Aphrodite.
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