Bøker av Ranabir Samaddar

The crisis of liberal democracy in the neoliberal world marked by massive labour flows, migrations, and informal conditions of work has led to the emergence of new forms of claim-making and a new sense of rights even as governments try to garner popular support and legitimacy through strategies termed as populist gestures. Today, populism is integral to the daily discourse of politics and discussions of democracy, governance, and people. Imprints of the Populist Time investigates populism as a historical phenomenon, examining its dynamic nature and role as a set of specific political practices. Lending a postcolonial perspective to the global study of populism, Ranabir Samaddar examines the trajectory that West Bengal politics took following the end of Left Front rule in 2011. Through a fragmented narrative structure that builds on commentaries on contemporary events ,which highlight the recent history of populism in West Bengal, the volume explores how populism works around the crisis of representation in democracy by centring the subaltern and constructing a people ; the problematic figure of the citizen ; popular engagements with the Constitution; the city as a crucial site of contemporary populism; the role of gender in populist governance; and the counter-intuitive economic logic of the populists. The volume studies various modes of populism elections, the language of populist politics, and the rampant illegalism in populist conduct, and asks key questions: Has there ever been any democracy without populism, or any nationalism without its populist articulation? Can we think of the popular and the people without the populist? Is populism a form of subaltern resistance to neoliberal depredations? Scholars and students of Indian politics, political historians, journalists, policy makers, and informed readers will find this volume riveting.

The Materiality of Politics uses a series of historical illustrations to reveal the physicality and underlying materiality of political processes. Volume 2, subtitled Subject Positions in Politics focuses on the political subject emerging from post-colonial politics. The 1940s are closely examined in order to trace the genesis of the modern Indian political subject, his/her dreams of liberty and recognition of freedoms qualifications. Contentious politics illuminates the dual tendency of the political subject to demand justice in court, and engage in rebellious street politics, clamouring for justice and equality. As the author demonstrates, the subjects desire for the autonomy of politics manifests itself in various ways.

This book seeks to explicitly engage Marxist and post-colonial theory to place Marxism in the context of the post-colonial age. This work will read Marx in the contemporary post-colonial condition and elaborate the current dynamics of post-colonial capitalism.

Discusses the creation and impact of borders and the pervasive tension between the new nations. It shows how catrographic, communal and political lines are not only driving countries, but that they are being replicated within, creating new visible and invisible internal frontiers.

This important and topical volume is composed around the debt and migration crisis in Europe in 2015 (known as the Greece crisis), and written almost concurrently as the two crises developed in quick succession.

The Materiality of Politics uses a series of historical illustrations to reveal the physicality and underlying materiality of political processes. The political subject of the study is the collective political actor poised against governmental rules for stabilizing order. Samaddars tour de force propels readers through an account of blood, violence, bodies, controls, laws and conflicts. Politics is examined not as an abstraction, but as a real field of dynamic factors rooted in everyday life. Volume 1, subtitled The Technologies of Rule discusses the techniques of modern rule which form the basis of the post-colonial Indian state. Beginning with the rule of law, the volume analyses the nature and manifestations of constitutional rule, the relation between law and terror and the construction of extraordinary sovereign power. The author also investigates the methods of care, protection, segregation and stabilization by which rule proceeds. In the processes, the material core of the cultural and the aesthetic is exposed.