HISTCON DOES IT AGAIN!
The Integral Nature of Things analyzes a revealing paradox: prevailing ways of thinking obscure the interrelations between things even as interdependence and indivisibility continually assert themselves. Mani traces the consequences in a number of sites – language, labour, technology, post-structuralist theory, political rhetoric, sex, advertising, urban planning, neoliberal globalization – interweaving observation, poetry and analysis.
Lata Mani is the author of Contentious Traditions: The Debate on Sati in Colonial India, 1998; SacredSecular: Contemplative Cultural Critique, 2009; Interleaves: Ruminations on Illness and Spiritual Life, 2011. She also collaborated with Ruth Frankenberg in compiling The Tantra Chronicles, 2007.
These are deeply felt, lucidly written, vignettes on a tremendous range of ideas — of nature, religion, consciousness, work, sex, integrity, duty, suffering, the market, corruption, the fate of the Left. There is acute observation and probing analysis, poetry and prose, each voiced in turn. It is hard to say what this genre is and that is an essential part of its charm. When critical, it is resolutely but effortlessly gentle; when constructive it is without the strain or artifice of systematic theory. The Integral Nature of Things brings much instruction and a uniquely quiet form of pleasure.
— Akeel Bilgrami, Johnsonian Professor of Philosophy, Columbia University
