The Crises of Civilization
Exploring Global and Planetary Histories
Price: 995.00 INR
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ISBN:
9780199486731
Publication date:
01/10/2018
Hardback
321 pages
Price: 995.00 INR
We sell our titles through other companies
Disclaimer :You will be redirected to a third party website.The sole responsibility of supplies, condition of the product, availability of stock, date of delivery, mode of payment will be as promised by the said third party only. Prices and specifications may vary from the OUP India site.
ISBN:
9780199486731
Publication date:
01/10/2018
Hardback
321 pages
Dipesh Chakrabarty
Varied ideas of civilization and humanism have shaped notions of a global humanity in the lingering twilight of the European empires. Detailing these ideas, in the section titled ‘Global Worlds’, Chakrabarty outlines the conflicts and connections that arise from global encounters in our postcolonial age. The second section, ‘The Planetary Human’, on the other hand, explores the significance of planetary climate change for humanistic and postcolonial thought. Chakrabarty argues that such change demands not only critiques of capitalism and inequality, but also new thinking about the human species as a whole—our patterns of justice, writing of history, and relationship with nature in the age of the Anthropocene.
Rights: World Rights
Dipesh Chakrabarty
Description
The world created by the legacies of empire and colonialism now confronts some deep crises of civility, precipitated by globalization and climate change. In this volume, Dipesh Chakrabarty examines these distinct—but interrelated—issues side by side.
Varied ideas of civilization and humanism have shaped notions of a global humanity in the lingering twilight of the European empires. Detailing these ideas, in the section titled ‘Global Worlds’, Chakrabarty outlines the conflicts and connections that arise from global encounters in our postcolonial age. The second section, ‘The Planetary Human’, on the other hand, explores the significance of planetary climate change for humanistic and postcolonial thought. Chakrabarty argues that such change demands not only critiques of capitalism and inequality, but also new thinking about the human species as a whole—our patterns of justice, writing of history, and relationship with nature in the age of the Anthropocene.
The global is human-centric in construction; the planetary involves many other actors and thus includes the thorny question of how we go beyond the anthropocentric to discuss and conceptualize the agency of the non-human.
About the Author
Dipesh Chakrabarty is Lawrence A. Kimpton Distinguished Service Professor in History and South Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago, USA.
Dipesh Chakrabarty
Table of contents
Table of contents
Preface
Introduction: Communing with Magpies
I GLOBAL WORLDS
1 Belatedness as Possibility: The Subaltern Subject and the Problem of Repetition in World History
2 Can Political Economy Be Postcolonial? A Note
3 An Anti-colonial History of Postcolonial Thought: A Tribute to Greg Dening
4 From Civilization to Globalization: The ‘West’ as a Shifting Signifier in Indian Modernity
5 Friendships in the Shadow of Empire: Tagore’s Reception in Chicago, c.1913–32
6 Romantic Archives: Literature and the Politics of Identity in Bengal
7 Reading Fanon: What Use Is Utopian Thought?
I I THE PLANETARY HUMAN
8 The Climate of History: Four Theses
9 On Some Rifts in Contemporary Thinking on Climate Change
10 Postcolonial Studies and the Challenge of Climate Change
11 Interview: Dipesh Chakrabarty with Actuel Marx
12 Interview: Dipesh Chakrabarty with Katrin Klingan
Select Bibliography of Published Works
Index
About the Author
Dipesh Chakrabarty
Dipesh Chakrabarty
Review
Reviews
‘The Crises of Civilization is a marvelous feast. It is, first, a wide-ranging collection of fascinating essays, including a beautiful autobiographical meditation that illuminates Chakrabarty’s thought through witty and moving narration of his Marxist youth, his discovery of history, and his encounter with both natural beauty and natural disaster in Australia. Later, I particularly loved the essay on Tagore’s visit to Chicago, which opens up a reflection on the possibility of cross-cultural friendship. But the book is not simply a collection of individual gems: it has a challenging overall architecture, moving from reflections on postcolonial historiography in the first part to exciting new material on climate change in the second. Here Chakrabarty reflects on what can become of the practice of history, a practice long understood in terms of human subjectivity, when we recognize that the human being is also a geophysical force. Historians now, he argues, must take on the “difficult, if not impossible, task of making available to human experience a cascade of events that unfold on a non-human scale”. Challenging, moving, wise, and witty, this work by one of our leading historians is a major event.’
—Martha C. Nussbaum, Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics, The University of Chicago, USA
‘This is arguably the first serious effort to push the subaltern school of history, of which the author is a distinguished member, beyond its familiar world of global theoretical and empirical concerns, to open a conversation with planetary history, which in turn is concerned with human and planetary survival. The result is a marvellous exchange that transcends the self-imposed limits of Indian historiography. The Crises of Civilization is not merely a new, revised manifesto of the subaltern historians; it is a call for the emancipation of the discipline of history in India.’
—Ashis Nandy, Senior Honorary Fellow, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, New Delhi, India
Description
The world created by the legacies of empire and colonialism now confronts some deep crises of civility, precipitated by globalization and climate change. In this volume, Dipesh Chakrabarty examines these distinct—but interrelated—issues side by side.
Varied ideas of civilization and humanism have shaped notions of a global humanity in the lingering twilight of the European empires. Detailing these ideas, in the section titled ‘Global Worlds’, Chakrabarty outlines the conflicts and connections that arise from global encounters in our postcolonial age. The second section, ‘The Planetary Human’, on the other hand, explores the significance of planetary climate change for humanistic and postcolonial thought. Chakrabarty argues that such change demands not only critiques of capitalism and inequality, but also new thinking about the human species as a whole—our patterns of justice, writing of history, and relationship with nature in the age of the Anthropocene.
The global is human-centric in construction; the planetary involves many other actors and thus includes the thorny question of how we go beyond the anthropocentric to discuss and conceptualize the agency of the non-human.
About the Author
Dipesh Chakrabarty is Lawrence A. Kimpton Distinguished Service Professor in History and South Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago, USA.
Reviews
Reviews
‘The Crises of Civilization is a marvelous feast. It is, first, a wide-ranging collection of fascinating essays, including a beautiful autobiographical meditation that illuminates Chakrabarty’s thought through witty and moving narration of his Marxist youth, his discovery of history, and his encounter with both natural beauty and natural disaster in Australia. Later, I particularly loved the essay on Tagore’s visit to Chicago, which opens up a reflection on the possibility of cross-cultural friendship. But the book is not simply a collection of individual gems: it has a challenging overall architecture, moving from reflections on postcolonial historiography in the first part to exciting new material on climate change in the second. Here Chakrabarty reflects on what can become of the practice of history, a practice long understood in terms of human subjectivity, when we recognize that the human being is also a geophysical force. Historians now, he argues, must take on the “difficult, if not impossible, task of making available to human experience a cascade of events that unfold on a non-human scale”. Challenging, moving, wise, and witty, this work by one of our leading historians is a major event.’
—Martha C. Nussbaum, Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics, The University of Chicago, USA
‘This is arguably the first serious effort to push the subaltern school of history, of which the author is a distinguished member, beyond its familiar world of global theoretical and empirical concerns, to open a conversation with planetary history, which in turn is concerned with human and planetary survival. The result is a marvellous exchange that transcends the self-imposed limits of Indian historiography. The Crises of Civilization is not merely a new, revised manifesto of the subaltern historians; it is a call for the emancipation of the discipline of history in India.’
—Ashis Nandy, Senior Honorary Fellow, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, New Delhi, India
Table of contents
Table of contents
Preface
Introduction: Communing with Magpies
I GLOBAL WORLDS
1 Belatedness as Possibility: The Subaltern Subject and the Problem of Repetition in World History
2 Can Political Economy Be Postcolonial? A Note
3 An Anti-colonial History of Postcolonial Thought: A Tribute to Greg Dening
4 From Civilization to Globalization: The ‘West’ as a Shifting Signifier in Indian Modernity
5 Friendships in the Shadow of Empire: Tagore’s Reception in Chicago, c.1913–32
6 Romantic Archives: Literature and the Politics of Identity in Bengal
7 Reading Fanon: What Use Is Utopian Thought?
I I THE PLANETARY HUMAN
8 The Climate of History: Four Theses
9 On Some Rifts in Contemporary Thinking on Climate Change
10 Postcolonial Studies and the Challenge of Climate Change
11 Interview: Dipesh Chakrabarty with Actuel Marx
12 Interview: Dipesh Chakrabarty with Katrin Klingan
Select Bibliography of Published Works
Index
About the Author
