Dilip Parameshwar Gaonkar – författare

The resurgence of interest in rhetoric among political theorists is one of the most remarkable developments in the field over the past few decades. Assembling a multidisciplinary group of prominent scholars, The Oxford Handbook of Rhetoric and Political Theory is the most ambitious effort to date to display the range and vitality of work that constitutes the "rhetorical turn" in political theory. Including thirty-six chapters across five sections, the Handbook explores issues that reside at the heart of many of the most pivotal debates and discussions in political theory today: questions about the role of affect and emotion in political life, the work of persuasion in political discourse, the relationship between logic and style in political argument, the character and scope of public deliberation, the performative and constitutive dimensions of language, the play of contingency in political life, and the rhetorical structure of political texts. The volume's authors assess the changing status of rhetoric in political theory and philosophy, exploring disputes that arose in ancient Athens and have continued to the present day, as well as urgent issues that have only recently emerged. Moreover, the Handbook investigates different understandings of rhetoric that have animated recent scholarship and examines key issues and approaches that have fueled the burgeoning interest in rhetoric and political thought.The Oxford Handbook of Rhetoric and Political Theory demonstrates that an adequate understanding of political affairs cannot be attained without taking account the impact of rhetoric on political thought and conduct.

The discipline of American studies was established in the early days of World War II and drew on the myth of American exceptionalism. But now that the so-called American Century has come to an end, what would a truly globalized version of American studies look like? Brian T. Edwards and Dilip Parameshwar Gaonkar offer a new standard for the field's transnational aspiration with "Globalizing American Studies". The essays here offer a comparative, multilingual, or multi-sited approach to ideas and representations of America. The contributors explore unexpected perspectives on the international circulation of American culture: the traffic of American movies within the British Empire, the reception of the film "Gone with the Wind" in the Arab world, the parallels between Japanese and American styles of nativism, and new incarnations of American studies itself in the Middle East, to name a few.Bringing together established scholars already associated with the global turn in American studies with contributors who specialize in African studies, East Asian studies, Latin American studies, media studies, anthropology, and other areas, "Globalizing American Studies" is a timely response to an important disciplinary shift in academia.

Three leading thinkers analyze the erosion of democracy’s social foundations and call for a movement to reduce inequality, strengthen inclusive solidarity, empower citizens, and reclaim pursuit of the public good.Democracy is in trouble. Populism is a common scapegoat but not the root cause. More basic are social and economic transformations eroding the foundations of democracy, ruling elites trying to lock in their own privilege, and cultural perversions like making individualistic freedom the enemy of democracy’s other crucial ideals of equality and solidarity. In Degenerations of Democracy three of our most prominent intellectuals investigate democracy gone awry, locate our points of fracture, and suggest paths to democratic renewal.In Charles Taylor’s phrase, democracy is a process, not an end state. Taylor documents creeping disempowerment of citizens, failures of inclusion, and widespread efforts to suppress democratic participation, and he calls for renewing community. Craig Calhoun explores the impact of disruption, inequality, and transformation in democracy’s social foundations. He reminds us that democracies depend on republican constitutions as well as popular will, and that solidarity and voice must be achieved at large scales as well as locally.Taylor and Calhoun together examine how ideals like meritocracy and authenticity have become problems for equality and solidarity, the need for stronger articulation of the idea of public good, and the challenges of thinking big without always thinking centralization.Dilip Parameshwar Gaonkar points out that even well-designed institutions will not integrate everyone, and inequality and precarity make matters worse. He calls for democracies to be prepared for violence and disorder at their margins—and to treat them with justice, not oppression.The authors call for bold action building on projects like Black Lives Matter and the Green New Deal. Policy is not enough to save democracy; it will take movements.

To think in terms of “alternative modernities” is to admit that modernity is inescapable and to desist from speculations about modernity’s end. Modernity today is global and multiple and no longer has a Western “governing center” to accompany it. The essays in this collection, therefore, approach the dilemmas of modernity from transnational and transcultural perspectives.The idea of “alternative modernities” holds that modernity always unfolds within specific cultures or civilizations and that different starting points of the transition to modernity lead to different outcomes. Without abandoning the Western discourse on the subject, the contributors to this volume write from the standpoint that modernity is in truth a richly mulitiplicitous concept. Believing that the language and lessons of Western modernity must be submitted to comparative study of its global receptions, they focus on such sites as China, Russia, India, Trinidad, and Mexico. Other essays treat more theoretical aspects of modernity, such as its self-understanding and the potential reconcilability of cosmopolitanism and diversity.Contributors. Homi Bhabha, William Cunningham Bissell, Dipesh Chakrabarty, Dilip Parameshwar Gaonkar, Michael Hanchard, Beatriz Jaguaribe, Leo Ou-fan Lee, Claudio Lomnitz, Thomas McCarthy, Tejaswini Niranjana, Elizabeth A. Povinelli, Shahzia Sikander, Charles Taylor, Andrew Wachtel