Books by Ranabir Samaddar

The Materiality of Politics uses a series of historical illustrations to reveal the physicality and underlying materiality of political processes. Volume 2, subtitled Subject Positions in Politics focuses on the political subject emerging from post-colonial politics. The 1940s are closely examined in order to trace the genesis of the modern Indian political subject, his/her dreams of liberty and recognition of freedoms qualifications. Contentious politics illuminates the dual tendency of the political subject to demand justice in court, and engage in rebellious street politics, clamouring for justice and equality. As the author demonstrates, the subjects desire for the autonomy of politics manifests itself in various ways.

Neo-liberal Strategies of Governing India and its companion volume Ideas and Frameworks of Governing India tell the story of governance in independent India and address the critical question: how is a post-colonial democracy governed? Further, they attempt to understand why the process of governing a post-colonial democracy, particularly in the neo-liberal age, should be studied as the central question within the history of post-colonial democracy. The volumes offer hitherto unexplored analyses of governance ¿ political and ideological aspects along with technological characteristics ¿ in a historical framework.

This book seeks to explicitly engage Marxist and post-colonial theory to place Marxism in the context of the post-colonial age. This work will read Marx in the contemporary post-colonial condition and elaborate the current dynamics of post-colonial capitalism.

This important and topical volume is composed around the debt and migration crisis in Europe in 2015 (known as the Greece crisis), and written almost concurrently as the two crises developed in quick succession.

Discusses the creation and impact of borders and the pervasive tension between the new nations. It shows how catrographic, communal and political lines are not only driving countries, but that they are being replicated within, creating new visible and invisible internal frontiers.

The Materiality of Politics uses a series of historical illustrations to reveal the physicality and underlying materiality of political processes. The political subject of the study is the collective political actor poised against governmental rules for stabilizing order. Samaddars tour de force propels readers through an account of blood, violence, bodies, controls, laws and conflicts. Politics is examined not as an abstraction, but as a real field of dynamic factors rooted in everyday life. Volume 1, subtitled The Technologies of Rule discusses the techniques of modern rule which form the basis of the post-colonial Indian state. Beginning with the rule of law, the volume analyses the nature and manifestations of constitutional rule, the relation between law and terror and the construction of extraordinary sovereign power. The author also investigates the methods of care, protection, segregation and stabilization by which rule proceeds. In the processes, the material core of the cultural and the aesthetic is exposed.