Partha Chatterjee’s Postcolonial Democratic Theory: Insights and Limitations | Prof. Scott Roulier скачать в хорошем качестве

Partha Chatterjee’s Postcolonial Democratic Theory: Insights and Limitations | Prof. Scott Roulier

Bio of the Speaker: Scott Roulier received his Ph.D. in Politics from the University of Virginia and currently occupies the David Trimble Chair of Political Philosophy at Lyon College. He teaches courses primarily in political theory and constitutional law. Secondary teaching interests include urban politics and environmental politics. In 2005, he was named the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching/CASE Arkansas Professor of the Year. Scott is also the author of two books: Kantian Virtue at the Intersection of Politics and Nature (University of Rochester Press, 2004) and Shaping American Democracy: Landscapes and Urban Design (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018). He has been the recipient of both a German Academic Exchange Service Fellowship (DAAD) and a Fulbright Fellowship and has been a scholar in residence at Tübingen University (Germany) and Massey University (New Zealand). For the last eight years, he has been co-investigator of a longitudinal study of mental and civic health in several slum communities in the Mexico City basin. Abstract of the talk: This lecture will provide a critical interpretation of Partha Chatterjee’s postcolonial democratic theory, especially his civil society/political society model. It will be argued that there is some validity to Chatterjee’s claim that, after independence, the Indian state adopted many of the values and governing strategies of the British Raj, that it, and bourgeois society more generally, is committed to a “pedagogical” project of modernization. These insights undergird a legitimate hermeneutics of suspicion that can attune citizens to new forms of colonial governmentality. Nevertheless, it will also be suggested that many of the philosophical categories and concepts one encounters in Chatterjee’s theory are unnecessarily restrictive, sapping and undercutting the political community’s capacity to tackle its most pressing social problems.