Description:
Populism and Its Limits is a response to the evaluative and celebratory approaches to populism in social sciences and
humanities. It seeks to study the phenomenon of populism, thoroughly consider its limits and, if possible, proposes ways
out to other kinds of commitment in life, living and politics. It aims to formulate responses that take on the spurious and non-dialectical dissociation between thought and action, intellect and emotion, the people and the elite.
Brief description: Prasanta Chakravarty is Associate Professor of English at the University of Delhi and the editor of the web journal Humanities Underground. His most recent work is The Creature: In Power and Pain (2022). His other works include Like Parchment in the Fire: Literature and Radicalism in the English Civil War (2006), a monograph on Early Modern radical heretic culture; The Opulence of Existence: Essays on Aesthetics and Politics (2016), a collection of essays on literary forms and our political predicament; and Time, Doubt and Wonder in the Humanities: Between the Tick and the Tock (2019). He has edited three critical anthologies: Shrapnel Minima, Writings from Humanities Underground (2014), Populism and Its Limits: After Articulation (2020) and Assured Self, Restive Self: Encounters with Crisis (2023). He has also co-edited Machiavelli Then and Now (2021) together with Sukanta Chaudhuri. He has published four volumes of poetry.
Review Quotes:
"Perhaps the most effective way to counter populism, and its assault on popular sovereignty is to produce scholarship that determinedly reverses its sleights of hand-its reduction of complex social fields to the brute opposition of 'the people' versus 'the elite' or empathy versus objectification; or that puts back the histories of the present that populism systemically erases. But this sparkling collection-one of the most imaginative engagements with the topic to date-does more: it undertakes the painstaking task of rethinking the political itself, of envisioning forms of inclusive participation that can foster relationality, open contestation and even transformation." --Jean Comaroff, Alfred North Whitehead Professor of African and African American Studies and of Anthropology, Oppenheimer Fellow in African Studies, Harvard University
"As 'populism' has turned into a debased token in our everyday political discourse, so has theorizing about it often descended into platitude or polemic. This probing, multi-faceted and sophisticated collection succeeds in revitalizing the question of populism as a problem for thought and practice. Impressively ranging across political philosophy, cultural theory and psychoanalysis, Populism and Its Limits excavates hitherto neglected facets of the antagonistic and affective politics of the people while critically displacing a debate that has often been limited by its exclusive reference to the Western hemisphere." --Alberto Toscano, Co-Director, Centre for Philosophy and Critical Thought and Reader in Critical Theory, Goldsmiths, University of London "This volume fills a gap in the literature on populism by bringing in the Indian perspective-without confining the analysis to India-centric case studies. On the contrary, this is a comprehensive study of this -ism from a theoretical, comparative and empirical point of view. A very timely and systematic must-read that shows that populism and authoritarianism have clear affinities!" --Christophe Jaffrelot, Professor, King's India Institute and CNRS Senior Research Fellow, SciencesPo, Centre de Recherches Internationales (CERI) "In recent years, there has been a great deal of superficial discussion of populism but not so much deep thinking. Happily, this book offers serious and original intellectual engagement. Its questions are of the utmost importance for both politics and political theory. Its focus is on India but not as a special case. It integrates what is happening in and to the world's largest democracy into a more global discussion of this 'populist moment'." --Craig Calhoun, Former Director and Centennial Professor of Sociology, London School of Economics; University Professor of Social Sciences, Arizona State University; Senior Advisor, Berggruen Institute; Professorial Chair, College d'Etudes Moniales, Paris