Author: Sanjay K. Gautam
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022634844X
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 297
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Book Description
Gautam has here laid out the first serious reading of Michel Foucault in relation to key Sanskrit texts, and--what may be a surprise to many--he has written the first book-length work in English on the nature and origin of the Kamasutra. Gautam also takes up the Natyasastra (the Kamasutra's twin), locating in the first the themes of sexual-erotic pleasure, and locating in the second the classical Indian view of theater, music, dance, and aesthetic pleasure. The book shows how closely intertwined the history of erotics in ancient Indian culture is with the history of theater-aesthetics. Foucault provides a framework for opening up the intellectual horizon of Indian thought; it is his distinction between ars erotics (erotic arts) and scientia sexualis (science of sexuality) that fuels Gautam's exploration of the courtesan as symbol of both erotic and aesthetic pleasure, particularly in her role as a wife to her patron, which entails the morphing of erotics into a form of theater. The scope broadens ambitiously, to an inquiry on the nature of knowledge formation, erotics, theater, and gender relations in premodern Indian society and culture--as they converged on the historical figures of the courtesan and her male counterpart, the dandy. Gautam's twining of aims and subjects--Foucault's western philosophy of pleasure and India's classic text on eros (anchored in art and aesthetics)--transforms both the modern and the ancient texts with new understandings, and as new forms of investigating erotics and subjectivity itself.
Author: Sanjay K. Gautam
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022634858X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 297
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Book Description
The Kamasutra is best known in the West for its scandalous celebration of unbridled sensuality. Yet, there is much, much more to it; embedded in the text is a vision of the city founded on art and aesthetic pleasure. In Foucault and the "Kamasutra", Sanjay K. Gautam lays out the nature and origin of this iconic Indian text and engages in the first serious reading of its relationship with Foucault. Gautam shows how closely intertwined the history of erotics in Indian culture is with the history of theater-aesthetics grounded in the discourse of love, and Foucault provides the framework for opening up an intellectual horizon of Indian thought. To do this, Gautam looks to the history of three inglorious characters in classical India: the courtesan and her two closest male companions—her patron, the dandy consort; and her teacher and advisor, the dandy guru. Foucault’s distinction between erotic arts and the science of sexuality drives Gautam’s exploration of the courtesan as a symbol of both sexual-erotic and aesthetic pleasure. In the end, by entwining together Foucault’s works on the history of sexuality in the West and the classical Indian texts on eros, Gautam transforms our understanding of both, even as he opens up new ways of investigating erotics, aesthetics, gender relations, and subjectivity.
Author: Emiliano Bevilacqua
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1040252311
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 339
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Book Description
Love and Sexuality in Social Theory considers the role that love and sexuality play in private and public life. Drawing on both classical and contemporary social theory, this book presents both theoretical and empirical studies of love and sexuality as social factors, from the earliest reconstructions of modern emotional life to the most recent analyses of liquid love. With attention to the consequences that passions and desires have both on morals and behaviour, it departs from the analysis of society in terms of the division of labour and utilitarian mechanisms to consider how a society based on performances values human energy and emotional behaviour in a contradictory way. This book, therefore, presents and discusses classic authors, from Georg Simmel and Pitirim Sorokin to Marianne Weber and Simone De Beauvoir, through the work of Erving Goffman and ending with contemporary authors such as Michel Foucault, Anthony Giddens, Zygmunt Bauman, Ulrich Beck, and Eva Illouz. By presenting love as the social foundation of altruism, an essential element in modern conceptions of subjectivity, and a force shaping intimacy and contemporary social life, this book will appeal to scholars of sociology, particularly those interested in social theory and the sociology of emotions.
Author: Lauri Siisiäinen
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351719491
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 332
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Book Description
Political resistance is flourishing. In this context, there is a growing interest to reread Michel Foucault’s work, especially from the late period, from the perspective of resistance, social movements and affirmative biopolitics. Yet what has been missing so far is a book-length, comprehensive study focusing on this topic. This volume undertakes this task, providing an original typology of the resources of resistance discovered in Foucault’s late thinking: resistance as discursive protection of autonomy bodily and affective resistance the strategies, arts and practices of affirmative biopolitics or ‘politics of life’ The book shows how these different types of tools, arts and practices can be used in resistant politics, in struggles against various regimes and institutions of power and government, so that they mutually supplement and reinforce one another. The author embarks on advancing Foucault’s insights on resistance from where he stopped. Furthermore, the volume proposes a novel assessment of the Foucauldian political toolkit in the 21st century context, addressing its pertinence for struggles against neoliberalism and post-Fordist capitalism. Foucault, Biopolitics and Resistance will be an important resource for students and scholars interested in Foucault, resistance and 21st century politics within many fields, including political science, international relations, contemporary and continental philosophy as well as sociology. The work elaborates fresh methodological insights, fruitful for further empirical research on social and political movements.
Author: Wendy Doniger
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 030021619X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 245
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Book Description
Cover -- Half Title -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- Preface -- Acknowledgments -- Note on the Translations and Transliterations -- Timeline: Relevant Events and Historical Developments -- ONE. The Three Human Aims -- TWO. The Influence of the Arthashastra on the Kamasutra -- THREE. Dharma and Adharma in the Arthashastra -- FOUR. Adharma and Dharma in the Kamasutra -- FIVE. Glossing Adharma with Dharma -- SIX. Skepticism and Materialism in Ancient India -- SEVEN. Epilogue: Dhairma and the Subversion of Science -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- P -- Q -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- Y
Author: Richard Shusterman
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107004764
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 437
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Book Description
Drawing on theories of lovemaking from ancient Asian and Western cultures, this book provides a new aesthetics of erotic love.
Author: Michel Foucault
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0394751221
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 305
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Book Description
In this sequel to The History of Sexuality, Volume I: An Introduction, the brilliantly original French thinker who died in 1984 gives an analysis of how the ancient Greeks perceived sexuality. Throughout The Use of Pleasure Foucault analyzes an irresistible array of ancient Greek texts on eroticism as he tries to answer basic questions: How in the West did sexual experience become a moral issue? And why were other appetites of the body, such as hunger, and collective concerns, such as civic duty, not subjected to the numberless rules and regulations and judgments that have defined, if not confined, sexual behavior?
Author: Dan Beer
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351198017
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 175
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Book Description
"This is a study of the French philosopher and historian Michel Foucault's 1976 work ""La Volonte de Savoir"". Dan Beer aims to uncover a network of ideas and linguistic patterns beneath the surface of the text. Through close textual analysis he addresses the issue of language and its effects on the world we inhabit. The book covers a range of references from the forgotten narratives of 19th-century European psychiatry, examining the scope of confessional literature, to the heated debates that surround Foucault's language and ideas."
Author: Edward C. Dimock
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226152318
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 122
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Book Description
Arising out of a devotional and enthusiastic religious movement that swept across most of northern and eastern India in the period from the fourteenth through the seventeenth centuries, the powerful and moving lyrics collected and elegantly translated here depict the love of Radha for the god Krishna—a love whose intensity and range of emotions trace the course of all true love between man and woman and between man and God. Intermingling physical and metaphysical imagery, the spiritual yearning for the divine is articulated in the passionate language of intense sensual desire for an irresistible but ultimately unpossessable lover, thus touching a resonant chord in our humanity.
Author: Maitreyi Devi
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226143637
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 278
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Book Description
An Indian writer gives her version of the romance which Mircea Eliade, the Romanian writer, described in his novel, Bengal Nights. "Why did you not tell the truth, Mircea?" she asks, not at all pleased that he portrayed her as an Oriental vamp.
