Words and Worlds : A lexicon for dark times

329 Pages·2021·3.791 MB·English

by  Veena Das and Didier Fassin

WORDS
AND
WORLDS
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WORDS
AND
A LEXICON
WORLDS
FOR
DARK TIMES
EDITED BY VEENA DAS AND DIDIER FASSIN
duke university press · D urham and London · 2 021
© 2021 Duke University Press
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of Amer i ca on acid- free paper ∞
Cover designed by Aimee C. Harrison
Text designed by Matthew Tauch
Typeset in Whitman by Westchester Publishing Services
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Names: Das, Veena, editor. | Fassin, Didier, editor.
Title: Words and worlds : a lexicon for dark times / edited by Veena
Das and Didier Fassin.
Description: Durham : Duke University Press, 2021. | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: lccn 2020041472 (print)
lccn 2020041473 (ebook)
isbn 9781478013259 (hardcover)
isbn 9781478014164 (paperback)
isbn 9781478021476 (ebook)
Subjects: lcsh: Language and languages— Political aspects. |
Words, New— Political aspects. | Sociolinguistics. | Language and
culture.
Classification: lcc p119.3.w57 2021 (print) | lcc p119.3 (ebook) |
ddc 306.44— dc23
lc rec ord available at https:// lccn . loc . gov / 2020041472
lc ebook rec ord available at https:// lccn . loc . gov / 2020041473
Cover art: Joan Miró, Bleu II, 1961. Oil on canvas, 270 × 355 cm.
© Successió Miró / Artists Rights Society (Ars), New York /
AdAGp, Paris 2021.
CONTENTS
vii Acknowl edgments
1 INTRODUCTION: FROM WORDS TO WORLDS
didier fAssin And veenA dAs
19 1. KNOWLEDGE · veenA dAs
39 2. DEMOCRACY · jAn- werner m�ller
61 3. AUTHORITY · bAnu bArGu
83 4. BELONGING · peter Geschiere
103 5. TOLERATION · udAy s. mehtA
123 6. POWER · Alex de wAAl
143 7. WAR · julietA lemAitre
166 8. REVOLUTION · behrooz GhAmAri- tAbrizi
185 9. CORRUPTION · cAroline humphrey
205 10. OPENNESS · todd sAnders And elizAbeth f. sAnders
225 11. RESILIENCE · jonAthAn puGh
243 12. IN EQUALITY · rAvi kAnbur
261 13. CRISIS · didier fAssin
277 References
299 Contributors
303 Index
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ACKNOWL EDGMENTS
The essays that compose the pre sent volume were prepared for and dis-
cussed at a workshop held with the contribution of the Nomis Founda-
tion at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princet on. We are thankful to
its School of Social Science as well as to the Anthropology Department at
Johns Hopkins University for their administrative support. We especially
express our gratitude to Donne Petito for her efficacious assistance, to
Laura McCune for her gracious organi zation of the event, and to Munirah
Bishop for her scrupulous copyediting of the manuscript. We are grate-
ful to the two anonymous reviewers solicited by Duke University Press for
their astute comments and to Ken Wissoker for his critical support.
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INTRODUCTION
FROM WORDS TO WORLDS
DIDIER FASSIN AND VEENA DAS
The idea of this intellectual enterprise came out of a conversation in the
gloomy context of the spring of 2017. As we were evoking our perplexity and
dismay with re spect to the ongoing po liti cal crisis in the United States, we
realized that we had both commented on it in earlier public interventions
using the figure of the return of the “grotesque” in politics (Das 2017; Fassin
2017). Like many others, we had been deeply troubled by the election of the
new president, against the background of the rise of populist, national-
ist, and xenophobic parties in Eu rope and beyond, but we were in addition
disappointed with most of the hastily elaborated and often contradictory
analyses made of it, whether in terms of discontent with globalization,
racist backlash, cultural war, identity politics, economic protectionism,
nationalism, or fascism. Our parallel discussions of the grotesque, based
on both Michel Foucault’s ([1999] 2003: 11) reading of it as “the fact that, by
virtue of their status, a discourse or an individual can have effects of power
that their intrinsic qualities should disqualify them from having,” and on
Alfred Jarry’s ([1894] 2003) disruptive character Ubu, tried to unsettle our
habitual understanding of politics in a time when the ridicul ous and the
odious were si mul ta neously legitimized as forms of governing through
the person of the sovereign, to whom they paradoxically gave more power.
But rather than formulating a definitive interpretation, which we did not
have anyway, we used this troubling figure as a pretext to question the con-
temporary moment in a dif fer ent way and destabilize the categories that
we use to contemplate the world. As our conversation went on over several
weeks, we thought that there might be some merit in extending and deep-
ening our reflection so as to avoid the dual prob lem of Eurocentrism, since
the debate tended to be exclusively focused on the West, and presentism,