Once Upon a Time in the Present

It would not be considered radical to propose that the world is an interdependent singular whole of which everything is an integral, albeit complexly related, part. Yet the ways of thinking and being we have come to privilege tend to disaggregate self and phenomena from the multiple dimensions with which they are inextricably bound. This talk explores some dimensions of this problem by means of a meditation on language, labour and poststructuralist theory.

Biography

Lata Mani is the author of SacredSecular: Contemplative Cultural Critique, Routledge, 2008; The Tantra Chronicles (compiled with Ruth Frankenberg) 2007, Interleaves: Ruminations on Illness and Spiritual Life, 2001 (second edition forthcoming from Yoda Press) and Contentious Traditions: The Debate on Sati in Colonial India, University of California Press, 1998; Oxford University Press, India, 1999. She has published articles in Modern Indian History, Cultural Studies, Feminist and Post-Colonial Theory. She is also the author of three childrens books.

Co-sponsored by:

UCLA "Cultures in Transnational Perspective" Mellon Postdoctoral Program in the Humanities

UCLA Center for the Study of Women