Interrogating The Tradition

Constitutes a thoughtful survey of contemporary hermeneutics in its historical context.

Interrogating the Tradition interprets figures in the history of Western thought from a broad, "continental" perspective. Divided into three major sections—hermeneutical thought, Heidegger and the Greeks, and the question of nature in German Idealism—the question of origins is central throughout and takes various shapes, all within the context of the history of Western philosophy. Addressed are the form inquiries take into manners by which we receive our philosophical tradition, the originary force of Plato and Aristotle in the formation of philosophical interpretations of time and human life, and inceptional concepts of nature in the nineteenth century. The philosophers treated here are primarily ancient Greek and nineteenth-century German, but also included are careful discussions of Heidegger and Gadamer. Coming from both sides of the Atlantic and representing various approaches to the issues, the contributors showcase their work on one of the major cutting edges of philosophy. Contributors to this book include Robert Bernasconi, Walter Brogan, Tina Chanter, Françoise Dastur, John Ellis, Günter Figal, Rodolphe Gasché, Jean Grondin, David Farrell Krell, Michael Naas, James Risser, John Russon, John Sallis, Charles E. Scott, Ben Vedder, and Jason M. Wirth.

Discussing common understanding of the concepts of multiculturalism, diversity, and inclusion, this volume critically examines the interpretation and praxis of diversity and inclusion in relation to marginalized populations—from women, sexual minorities, minority newcomers, and aboriginal communities. The contributors collected here present well-grounded epistemological, theoretical, and methodological bases from which to account (at least in part) for the processes and dynamics shaping the relationship between diversity and inclusion, on the one hand, and policy and practice on the other. Arising from research derived in part from community work with minorities in North America, particularly Canada, this volume examines common barriers to full minority integration, with important implications for inclusion efforts around the globe.

This study attempts to multiculturalise the Gothic by reading a wide selection of Postcolonial Asian and Asian American narratives in light of familiar Gothic tropes such as the uncanny, the double, spectres, and the sublime. Discussing some of the more important concepts in postcolonialism such as subjectivity, belonging, hybridity and nationalism, the author argues that the trajectory of the postcolonial and diasporic experience is fraught with profound moments of trauma, loss and transgression which the aesthetics of the Gothic can illuminate. Throughout the study, a careful balance is maintained between deploying Gothic criticism and emphasising the narrative's cultural, historical and ideological specificity to ensure that a textual form of colonial imposition does not occur. Writings by well-known authors such as Rushdie, Roy, Ondaatje and Mukherjee, and lesser known ones such as Lan Samantha Chang, K.S, Maniam and Beth Yahp are analysed.

Good addition to handbooks programme, no direct competitiors HIST section of ISA is growing each year Faced with an uncertain future, an increasing number of scholars have looked to the past for guidance, patterns and ideas. This tendency has been clear, despite theoretical and methodological difference, this book will fill a lacuna.

Gendering the Hadith Tradition presents for the first time a partial translation and study of Imam Badr al-Din al-Zarkashi's work, al-Ijaba li-Iradi ma Istadraktahu Aisha Ala al-Sahabah-The Corrective: Aisha's Rectification of the Companions. It critically analyses from the perspective of hadith criticism a number of sections presenting Aisha's refutations and corrections of key Companions including, Umar b. al-Khattab, Abdullah b. Abbas, Zayd b. Thabit, and Abu Hurayra, applying classical hadith methodology to the scrutiny of narrators by way of impugnment and validation (al-jarh wa al-tadil) in an effort to re-construct and re-present Aisha as a central authority in Islamic knowledge production. This work constitutes a major rethinking of the Muslim hadith and jurisprudential traditions by evaluating how Aisha responded to hadiths that were circulating and being ascribed, often incorrectly, as authoritative statements of the Prophet Muhammad. From her critique of overwhelmingly male Companions of the Prophet, the study elicits a methodology for hadith criticism which is sure to challenge classical approaches. Sofia Rehman unearths the scholarly acumen of this great female Companion and mother of the believers, in her discussion of several legal positions which Aisha held in contradistinction to many of the male authorities among the Companions. This interdisciplinary study serves as a model for how the voice of Aisha may be given renewed life and significance in the way it re-centres her traditions and thinking. A crucial aspect is its contributing to expanding the horizons of multiple Islamic disciplines. A major contribution to the study of hadith lies in the development of an emergent methodology of Aisha in the scrutiny of the actual statements (matn) of traditions, not just the chains of transmission (isnad). The contributions of this study to the development of the Muslim legal tradition (fiqh) also lies in a framework that emerges from this research based on the pattern of how Aisha approaches juridical matters. The implications for this are many, especially regarding women and their spiritual and daily life and practice.

Arete and the Odyssey's Poetics of Interrogation explores how the enigmatic Phaeacian queen, Arete, is at the heart of an epic-scale "poetics of interrogation" used throughout the Odyssey to negotiate Odysseus' kleos, or epic renown. Arete's interrogation of Odysseus has been especially problematic in scholarship, but diachronic and synchronic analysis of similar interrogations across Indo-European, Orphic, and Greek epigrammatic corpora show that the "stranger's interrogation" is a formula that demands performance and negotiation of status. Within the Odyssey, this interrogation is part of an intraformular network used to generate kleos, and the queen's question initiates the longest and most complex negotiation of Odysseus' status in epic and memory. Arete's role as interrogator not only explains her strange authority and resonance with both Penelope and comparative afterlife figures, but it also establishes a gendered, agonistic tension between she and her husband, Alkinoos, that influences the structure, genre, and narratology of performances across the Phaeacian episode. This book reinterprets the Odyssey's central episode and challenges several assumptions about Nausikaa and Alkinoos' famed hospitality, even demonstrating how the Apologue is organized as a response to competing inquiries into Odysseus' fundamental status in tradition. The Odyssey ultimately navigates away from Odysseus' public reputation and roots his status in private memories, and Arete's carefully arranged interventions signal the larger process by which the Odyssey immortalizes Odysseus in poetry as a nostos hero. The queen and her question invite new applications of oral poetics that shed light on the structure, composition, and reperformance of the Odyssey.

This book interrogates the patterns and discursive structures that have generated the seeming urgency of Muslims' integration. Focusing on Germany, it problematizes the grounds on which politics of integration are justified and reasoned upon, and thereby investigates divergent operations of power vis-à-vis Muslims and Islam in a formally liberal-secular society. The integration paradigm in Germany has been predicated on an imperial knowledge regime, in which Islam figures as the external friend or enemy of an imagined Christian secular. This book analyzes three kinds of integration practices as symptomatic sites for the multifaceted dimensions of power in this paradigm: the scientific measurement of Muslims' degrees of integration which are correlated with their degrees of religiosity; the politics of recognition promoted by state-organized dialogue with Muslims; and the threat of sanction, found in the regulations of citizenship and explicitly in citizenship tests. Centrally, the book argues that the paradigm of integration navigates between universalist claims and particularistic-racial and religious-re-enactments of a secular nation-state framework at moments in which this very framework is crumbling.