In Defence of the Ordinary: Everyday Awakenings

Description

'A splendid work of art, In Defence of the Ordinary returns drama, pleasure and awakening to everyday life ... in the tradition of cultural critics like Ashis Nandy and Umberto Eco... The book is one of a kind.' -Prathama Banerjee is a noted historian of the global south and Professor at Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), New Delhi. '[A] flaneur of our everyday spheres of life, [the author] excavates the multiple layers of social, political and artistic thinking and experimentation ... with an unparalleled lightness of prose worthy of a Balthasar Gracian and Georg Lichtenberg.' -Ramin Jahanbegloo is a philosopher and Vice Dean and Director at Mahatma Gandhi Centre for Peace Studies, O.P. Jindal Global University, India. '[The] book builds an engaging web of thoughts about things which are ordinary but in their very ordinariness hide deep social truths... Dev Nath Pathak brings a lightness to his critical eye while reminding us of how much of the ordinary has been forgotten in academic pursuits.' -Sundar Sarukkai is a renowned philosopher and thinker in contemporary India. In Defence of the Ordinary is laced with light humour, soaked in serious sarcasm and powered with poetic polemics. Informed by sources such as psychoanalysis, philosophy, yoga, anthropology, popular cinema, folk songs and everything that is part of an ordinary living, it is a sociologist's sincere ruminations on the layered ordinariness. The book invites us to rethink the ways of seeing, understanding, enacting, emoting and relating with provocative ideas like why we don't value ordinariness and how our pursuit of extraordinary is misleading us into mishaps. The key objective of the human existence is that of the book too, namely, awakening the dormant potentials of emancipation every day rather than waiting for an occasional charisma induced by a holy book or a secular gimmick or an orchestrated leadership.

Dev Nath Pathak teaches Sociology at South Asian University and is a founding faculty member of the university's Department of Sociology. His current research interests include popular culture (music, cinema and performance) and South Asian studies.

This book neither ascends nor descends into the ordinary. Instead, it accesses and exceeds the everyday. Dev Nath Pathak scrabbles and scrambles the personal as the public, the routine as the transgressive, the affective as the constant, the image as the immanent, the vernacular as the cosmopolitan, the word as the world and vice-versa. A haunting work intimating spectral challenges-across the ruins we inhabit. -- Saurabh Dube Taking clues from personal experiences, folklore, classical epics, literature and cinema and of course academic discourses, the author of these essays delves into a range of emotions with the objective to awaken the dormant potential of emancipation every day rather than waiting for an occasional charisma induced by a holy book or a secular gimmick. The book encompasses everyday situations and "ordinary" (hence universal) experiences of life, including the ultimate and inevitable one-death, and tries to take the reader along on this journey of reflection. The result is a delightfully composed prose with interesting insights. -- Purushottam Agrawal What is a book? It is assumed to have certain universally shared features such as structured thoughts, formalised expression while respecting the rules of consistency and coherence. By their very nature, these features undermine the authenticity of ordinary human experiences and do injustice to their fluidity and richness. How then should a book be defined and written? This fascinating book provides one answer and exemplifies it through practice. It is full of insights and will repay close study. -- Bhikhu Parekh In Defence of the Ordinary is a book that will appeal to a wide range of readers. It covers a wide range of subjects, all of which touch upon author's life and experiences as a teacher, scholar, husband, father and son(-in-law). He brings his experience as a sociologist and his work on folklore to the text in a way that is lively and interesting. -- Roma Chatterji A splendid work of art, In Defence of Ordinary returns drama, pleasure and awakening to everyday life. It takes us on an ambitious but quiet journey, through poetry, politics, philosophy, religion, livelihoods and everyday encounters between selves, others, gods and things, in the tradition of cultural critics like Ashis Nandy and Umberto Eco. It risks academic protocols and disciplinary boundaries, and with great courage cuts through the division between thought and life that plagues modern academia. The book is one of a kind. -- Prathama Banerjee In this fascinating collection of essays, Dev Nath Pathak explores a wide range of questions related to ordinariness. A flaneur of our everyday spheres of life, he excavates the multiple layers of social, political and artistic thinking and experimentation of the Indian society with an unparalleled lightness of prose worthy of a Baltasar Gracian and Georg Lichtenberg. -- Ramin Jahanbegloo This book is a reflective and joyous celebration of the ordinary. Drawing on diverse examples of everyday life, from dealing with babies to more weighty issues around love, the book builds an engaging web of thoughts about things which are ordinary but in their very ordinariness hide deep social truths. Using examples from commonly enjoyed music, stories and films, Pathak brings a lightness to his critical eye while reminding us how much of the ordinary has been forgotten in academic pursuits. -- Sundar Sarukkai From cosmic continuities to the unanticipated and incessant interruption of everyday life, the "ordinary" is both a shifting terrain of inquisitiveness, inclination and an anchor in the volatility of human relations with the earth. Dev Nath Pathak speaks to us from the middle of these things, unafraid of muddying the waters with reflections that intertwine his inordinate knowledge of Indian philosophy, cinema and storytelling with improvised ruminations on everything-fatherly play, compassionate lust, youthful disagreements, friendship, journeying and fandom. Throughout, there is the pursuit of the sensuousness of teaching, of what it means to convey and impart in an implicit critique of how corporate education has become, how easy it is to defy authority and how sharing and equanimity can be demonstrated in multiple encounters not needing a classroom. There is a resounding surfeit of liveliness in all of these "parables", a sense of really being alive as something accessible to everyone no matter how difficult their situation or how commodified and performance-oriented living has become. -- AbdouMaliq Simone