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ID:
163819
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Summary/Abstract |
This paper provides an interpretation of the Bengali Intellectuals Oral History Project as a new archive for studying the intellectual history of South Asia. It explains that an important outcome of the nexus between oral history and intellectual history is the construction of an ‘unintended autobiography’ of each subject interviewed in the project. By considering the centrality of autobiography, the paper offers insights into rethinking the methodological approaches to writing the intellectual history of South Asia. Finally, it provides a reading of Partha Chatterjee’s seminal writings, along with his oral history, as a way to consider the convergence of autobiography with political thought.
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2 |
ID:
095060
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Publication |
2010.
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Summary/Abstract |
Prominent postcolonial thinker Partha Chatterjee's concept of political society is an important one in understanding the vast domain of politics in the 'Third World' which falls outside hegemonic Western notions of the state and civil society. This domain, which is often marked by the stamp of illegality, nevertheless contributes to the immense democratic churning that characterises much of the 'Third World'. However, this paper argues that the series of binaries set up by Chatterjee, like modernity/democracy, civil society/political society and the privileging of the latter half of the binary is ultimately counterproductive to the goal of democratisation. Based on empirical research on the People's Plan Campaign in Kerala, one of the most extensive democratic decentralisation programmes in the world, it will argue that the extension of popular sovereignty requires that we go beyond political society. The failures and prospects of the Plan and the struggles around it demonstrate clearly the breakdown of the binary.
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