About the Book

Towards a Rethinking Cultural Studies is a sustained and original attempt to rethink the foundations of contemporary literary and cultural studies from the perspective of Bharatiya’s own intellectual traditions.

During the last four decades, Western critical theories such as New Historicism, Cultural Materialism, Queer Theory, LGBT Theory, Disability Studies, Ecocriticism, Trauma Studies, Blue Humanities, and related approaches have come to dominate the humanities across the world. While these theories have enriched literary criticism by foregrounding questions of history, power, identity, representation, gender, ecology, and social justice, they have also tended to privilege historical contingency, political ideology, and social construction at the expense of philosophy, aesthetics, ethics, and spirituality.

Contents:

Foreword

Preface

Cultural Studies: Origins, Travel, and Misalignment

From Marx to Cultural Marxism: The Ideological Afterlives

The Western Epistemic Template: Foucault, Derrida, and Posthuman Theory

The Birmingham School: Subcultures, Resistance, and Their Limits in India

Imported Categories: Nayar, Loomba, Mukherjee

The Epistemic Vacuum in Indian Universities

Eurocentric Frameworks

The Collapse of Long-Form Indic Scholarship

Rethinking Foucault: Dharma, Atman, and Power

Deconstructing Derrida: Difference vs. Sabda-Brahma

Marx in the Mirror of Moksa and Samskara

Homi Bhabha and the Problem of Ambivalence

Pedagogy of Imported Theory

Bharatiya Epistemology: Sabda, Pramana, Rasa, Samskara

Sri Aurobindo: Cultural Evolution and the Unity of Indian Civilization

Romila Thapar-Denial of  Civilizational Unity

The Battle for Civilizational Thought

Intellectual Kshatriyas

Institutional Revivals: IHAR, SSUN, BSM, Bharatiya Bhasha

Re-envisioning Cultural Studies through Bharatiya Categories of Knowledge

Cultural Decolonization and the Reclaiming of Intellectual Sovereignty

Re-Envisioning Indian Cultural Studies: New Epistemic Pathways and the Future of Civilizational Thought

Sacred Geography and the Cultural Imagination of Bharat: A Civilizational Framework for Cultural Studies

Bhakti as Cultural Theory: A Civilizational Alternative to Postmodern Fragmentation

Cultural Studies and the Question of Civilizational Continuity: Reclaiming the Bharatiya Mind

Toward an Indic Theory of Knowledge: Replacing Postcolonial Skepticism with Civilizational Epistemics

Reclaiming Cultural Selfhood: Sri Aurobindo, Swami Vivekananda, and the Future of Indic Cultural Studies

Language as Civilizational Consciousness: Beyond the Aryan-Dravidian Divide and the Limits of Postcolonial Semiotics

Reimagining the Indian University: Pedagogy, Knowledge, and the Civilizational Future

Beyond Macaulay: Decolonizing Cultural Studies Through a Civilizational Lens

Toward a Bharatiya Cultural Studies: A Civilizational Manifesto

Re-Envisioning Indian Cultural Studies: New Epistemic Pathways and the Future of Civilizational Thought

Sacred Geography and the Cultural Imagination of Bharat: A Civilizational Framework for Cultural Studies

Bhakti as Cultural Theory: A Civilizational Alternative to Postmodern Fragmentation

Cultural Studies and the Question of Civilizational Continuity: Reclaiming the Bharatiya Mind

Reclaiming Cultural Selfhood: Sri Aurobindo, Vivekananda, and the Future of Indic Cultural Studies

Voices of Civilizational Recovery

Civilizational Consciousness, Memory, and the Reclamation of Narratives

Conclusion

Epilogue

Works Cited

Glossary

Index