1st Edition

Literature, Cultural Politics and Counter-Readings Hamlet as the Prince of Deconstruction

By Anindya Sekhar Purakayastha Copyright 2021

    This book is an attempt at deconstructive counter-reading or at what Jonathan Dollimore called “creative vandalism” (2018) of existing cultural or literary texts. Deconstruction is a much maligned or a much misunderstood word and for many, it usually bears a pejorative ring. While most would flaunt their familiarity with some of its philosophic jargons, for the majority, it is an area to be dismissed as intellectual obscurity or abstruse ‘high theory’. In fact there is a serious dearth of Derrida scholarship because of our collective aversion to Derrida that emanates from our lack of familiarity or engagement with deconstruction theory or with the philosophy of deconstruction. Norm-deviant reading strategies of deconstruction offer fresh insights and rebellious interpretative possibilities.

    This book is co-published with Aakar Books, New Delhi. Taylor & Francis does not sell or distribute the print versions of this book in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

    Introduction: Texts, Counter-Texts and Subversive Reading Strategies 1. Hamlet, the Prince of Deconstruction: Ghostwriting the Spectrality of Justice and Karma 2. Deconstruction, the Jew of Philosophy: Paul Celan’s Poetology and the Dispersal of Logos 3. Postcolonial Biopower: Politics of the Nation-ed and Dismemberment of the Other 4. Hangman’s Metaphysics and Penology-to-come: Provincializing Derrida’s Death Penalty Seminar 5. Deconstruction as ‘Hospitality to the Other’: A Derrida—Ambedkar Dialogue 6. Being With and Inter-Beings of Flat-Ontology: Poetry After the Anthropocene 7. Geology of Morals or Auto-Deconstruction: What Comes After the Anthropocene? 8. Art as Dissensual Sensorium: Subaltern Aesthetics and the Logic of Global Corporate Capital 9. Flawed Postcolonial Historiography?: Subaltern Theory After the Chibber-Chatterjee Debate 10. Critical Amnesia and the Colonizing Semiotic Capital: Can Popular Culture Speak?

    Biography

    Anindya Sekhar Purakayastha is Professor in the Department of English, Kazi Nazrul University, India. He was a Fulbright Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence Fellow  at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.