Sentiment, Politics, Censorship: The State of Hurt

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Rina Ramdev, Sandhya D. Nambiar, Debaditya Bhattacharya
SAGE Publications, Jul 31, 2015 - Political Science - 324 pages

A refreshing read in terms of its take on the issue of hate speech, hurt, and politics of it.

The currency of "hurt" as a claim to, and pretext for, political correctionism—and often taking recourse to the logic of the antipopular as anti-State—has erected a machinery of censorship governed by the economies and excesses of a "marketplace of outrage." This volume seeks to map this ready vocabulary of a potential victimhood and its consequent excuse for repressive regimes of State vigilantism.

It investigates the ways in which such "hurt" is expressed and abetted by the State or its actors, staged by popular media and often subsumed as public opinion. It builds the necessary structure of argument around the idea of "hurt" with reference to recent political events, the history of sentimental mobilizations and various kinds of censorship attempts in India.

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About the author (2015)

Rina Ramdev is Associate Professor, Department of English, Sri Venkateswara College, University of Delhi and the Secretary of Indian Association of Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies (IACLALS). She has worked on the politics of post-coloniality, the writings of Arundhati Roy and the relationship between literature and social movements. She is also interested and involved in exploring the intersections of academic practice and political resistance within institutional spaces.

Sandhya Devesan Nambiar is Assistant Professor, Department of English, Jesus and Mary College, University of Delhi. She has studied English Literature and Philosophy at Lady Shri Ram College, University of Delhi and Jawaharlal Nehru University. Her doctoral thesis was an exploration of conceptual structures in Continental Philosophy and of Deleuzean modes of philosophical thought in particular. She currently resides in New Delhi.

Debaditya Bhattacharya is Assistant Professor, Department of English, Bhagini Nivedita College, University of Calcutta. His doctoral work engaged with the relationship between literature and death. The other areas of his research interest include continental philosophy, Renaissance studies, popular culture and the philosophy of technology.

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