Editor(s): Divya Dwivedi, Sanil V
Bloomsbury Academic
A mutlidisciplinary volume of essays on the public sphere from outside the west edited by Divya Dwivedi and Sanil V. and published last month by Bloomsbury Academic UK, the book was launched by Siddharth Varadarajan (Editor of The Wire, former editor of The Hindu) on 2nd Nov. 2015 at the India International Centre Annexe, followed by a panel discussion. The panel comprised Dr. Farhana Ibrahim (Deptt. of Humanities & Social Sciences, IIT Delhi), Dr. Anup Kumar Dhar (Head, Deptt. of Human Studies, Ambedkar University), Prof. Sambudha Sen (Head, Deptt. of English, Shiv Nadar University) and Prof. Udaya Kumar (Centre for English Studies, JNU).
The Public Sphere from Outside the West brings together established and emerging new voices from philosophy, literature, anthropology, history, migration studies and information technology to address the present reality of the public sphere. In the age where everyone is in the public and everything is visible, this volume creates a delay in which the internet of things, mass surveillance and social media are asked “What is/not the Public?” The essays bring to attention the formation of geo-politically and historically distinct public spheres from South Africa, India, America and Europe. Such formations are found not only in the postcolonial histories of print, photography, cinema and caricature but also those underway in the digital era, such as the Arab Spring, Occupy movements and Anonymous. Through critical engagement with philosophers such as Kant, Heidegger, Benjamin, Habermas and Arendt , the determining concepts of the Public Sphere-privacy, secrecy, reason, the people-are shown to be undergoing epistemological and practical ruptures. (For more details visit http://www.bloomsbury.com/us/the-public-sphere-from-outside-the-west-978...)
Contributors: Bernard Stiegler, Tina M. Chanter, Howard Caygill, A. K. Raghuramaraju, Premesh Lalu, Tridip Suhrud, John Russon, Divya Dwivedi, Subarno Chattarji, Anish Mohamed, Shaj Mohan, Shannon Hoff, G. Arunima, Susmita Dasgupta, Udaya Kumar, Milind Wakanakar, Christel Devadawson, Patricia Hayes.
A stunning collection, altogether timely, embracing literature, philosophy, the social sciences, Asia, Europe, and Africa, digital globality from thoroughly pluralized perspectives.
– Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, University Professor in the Humanities, Columbia University, USA
