Theory in Praxis: Discourses on Literature and Culture

This book is a critical application of theory to recent literary, social, and cultural phenomena. It deals with a range of ideas, acts, and practices that define who we are, what we think, and how we live our lives. The chapters are incisive explorations on illness, viruses, and modernity; wars, protests, and terrorism; babies, bodies, and technologies; nations, borders, and citizenship; films, comics, and the postcolonial; myths, market, and the national imaginary; and other topical subjects. The analysis focuses on some of the most searching cultural questions that have been hotly contested on the grounds of race, gender, class, caste, and national identity. These have been examined through the lens of critical theory. The essays enrol the ideas of a number of key thinkers – Foucault, Derrida, Butler, Haraway, Zizek, Appadurai and Dipesh Chakrabarty. The book is written in a lucid style and promises to be an interesting read for those in the academia as well as for general readers.