tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1674709389503889160.post8955794029033298721..comments2024-03-25T14:25:25.102+00:00Comments on Poetry as Socio-proctology: Ranajit Guha & the praxis of stupiditywindwheelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18099651877551933295noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1674709389503889160.post-77728433271428157582013-06-30T11:46:08.741+01:002013-06-30T11:46:08.741+01:00Just read the whole interview. Priceless!
He ends ...Just read the whole interview. Priceless!<br />He ends thus-<br />'I have formally signed a contract to donate, after my death, all my private papers and books to the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna. These contain materials, including letters exchanged between me and other Subaltern Studies scholars, which are absolutely essential for the writing of a history of the Subaltern Studies Collective, a school which, I think, has made the most original contribution to historiography on India in recent years. If scholars from Heidelberg University come and work on these in future, that would be very good.'<br />Guha assumes that even the famous German sense of humor won't prevent scholars from Heidelberg from killing themselves laughing at his fatuous correspondence. I am not so sanguine. Yes they will die laughing but not before they carry out an Anschluss & invade Poland the way they did the last time they were exposed to a School of Historiography as hilariously fuckwitted as Subaltern Studies.windwheelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18099651877551933295noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1674709389503889160.post-14364577936425991712013-06-30T11:29:11.353+01:002013-06-30T11:29:11.353+01:00Thanks.
I googled a section from your quote and f...Thanks. <br />I googled a section from your quote and found this link to the full interview - http://www.sai.uni-heidelberg.de/history/download/ranajit_guha_interview_2.2.11.pdf<br />I must say I'm warming to Guha. It is a fundamental tenet of old fashioned Hindutva that the ancient Aryans had flying cars and televisions and so on. No doubt the Bengali peasant did have aeroplanes and submarines but Eurocentric observers mistook them for a pile of cowdung.windwheelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18099651877551933295noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1674709389503889160.post-16568411561039503412013-06-30T11:23:28.937+01:002013-06-30T11:23:28.937+01:00RG: More important than the question whether I bel...RG: More important than the question whether I believe in the existence of God or not, is the question whether I believe in the concept of God. I do believe in the concept, and I think that this belief is essential because it prompts man to go beyond himself and search for justice and perfection, to seek and to create what he does not find in this world.<br />It is to study this quest that I have also engaged with Indian philosophy, with thinkers like Bhartrihari, Abhinavagupta and Shankaracharya. Indian philosophy has always dwelt on this theme. Modern Indians, however, to their detriment, have neglected this extremely rich heritage of Indian philosophy.<br />In my recent works, writing in Bengali, and using Indian philosophy, I want to remind people of the<br />need to go back to these concepts. Specifically, the theme of self-other relations has become very<br />important, and explicitly articulated, in these works. The going beyond one’s self, the ability to take on new selves, to reach the Other, to transcend: these are issues which, I think, are particularly visible in the realm of literature, whether in Tagore or in later Bengali poets. Literature offers insights, and modern Indian writers have been able to achieve new directions, which have neither been so articulated by the discipline of history nor by historians. By going into Indian literature and philosophy, these insights can be recovered, and also be made ready for use by new generations of scholars with eyes less jaded than those of their predecessors. The German idealist philosophy of Kant and Hegel also articulate these concerns which were earlier expressed in Indian philosophy. Talking about these things might require the usage of a certain conceptual language which may appear difficult to some. But I have always written to express myself, to satisfy myself, and not with an immediate audience in mind for whom I must dilute things.'<br />So there you have it. Guha wasn't really interested in the peasant under the Raj, rebellious or otherwise. For him, the peasant represented MAN who looks at a bird and invents the aeroplane, or looks at a fish and invents the submarine or looks at the Sun and invents the hydrogen bomb or looks at the black hole and invents Calcutta University.<br />Indeed, even what MAN can't look at becomes that thing he realizes he lacks and which he promptly invents. So, the Indian peasant under the Raj- who doubtless had already invented aeroplanes and submarines because they could see birds and fishes- noticing that what they didn't have was a Marxist State promptly engaged in the proper type of Revolutionary praxis and brought it about. Historiography, however, because it is Eurocentric, totally failed to notice or shamelessly hid these true facts and so the Peasant rebellions were pitilessly crushed by philistines who didn't understand that MAN needs the planes and submarines and Marxist Utopias which Indian peasants, under the Raj, were ceaselessly inventing.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1674709389503889160.post-56319910200815442132013-06-30T11:12:24.553+01:002013-06-30T11:12:24.553+01:00What makes you think Guha is a Marxist? He is a Ta...What makes you think Guha is a Marxist? He is a Tagore on steroids<br />Read this interview<br />Ranajit Guha: 'I think I am somewhat unique in having faith in the theme of uttaran or transcendence. It would be wrong to view, as some scholars have done, the Hegelian transcendence or movement of the Geist as something which operates narrowly and in a deterministic manner through immanent human history. Rather, the stages Hegel describes in the movement of the Geist should be seen as ideal types, exemplars, not narrowly in the form of actual human societies. In a related manner, Heidegger’s phenomenological approach has also left a deep impression on me. I consider both Being and Becoming to be important. Kant and Nietzsche have also deeply influenced me. Through Heidegger I have also approached Thomas Aquinas. Among the Greeks, I consider Aristotle to be more important than Plato in showing this appreciation of the phenomenological totality. <br />For me, intellectual history, the history of ideas, is very important. My first work was on the intellectual origins of the Permanent Settlement in Bengal, something to which I have returned in a recent Bengali book. My Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency in Colonial India also worked on these ideas from archival sources. I emphasize philosophy, but a philosophy which is worked out through the primary sources by the historian such as through the archival records which help us trace peasant mentality. What animates my earlier as well as later works is concern for the philosophical implications of the search for perfection. Man is imperfect, but he searches always for perfection.'<br />Sometimes he does this by trying to conquer and destroy and take away things from nature and from<br />others. Sometimes, he tries to achieve perfection by creating new things. So when he sees that birds can fly, and fish can live under water, but he himself cannot do these things, he feels inspired to create planes and submarines. This search for perfection also animates man’s desire for justice. For me, this has been a prime object of study, to study the norms of transcendental justice embedded in human beings, which manifests in peasant insurgency, in popular religion, and so on. The notion of justice present in popular religion has always moved me immensely. This theme of perfection again animates the quest for upliftment, uttaran, for going beyond one’s self'<br /> Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com