'Philosophical Meta-Reflections on Literary Studies: Why Do Things with Texts, and What to Do with Them?' takes up key meta-questions in the humanities, with focus on contemporary literary studies, philosophically examines the nature of knowledge therein as well as the implications of certain popular critical approaches, and addresses the effervescent question of 'relevance'. In contrast to usual works on literary theory, or on philosophy of literature for that matter, this book presents an integrated meta-reasoning on the foundational questions of literary (...) studies from an interdisciplinary perspective - in a manner of intertextual informality. It endeavours to articulate a rationale for the humanities in general and literary studies in particular. It philosophically examines the implications of, and assumptions behind, three popular tendencies in contemporary literary criticism - textual deconstruction, ideological criticism and constructivism. It also introduces the reader to possibilities of non-reductive reasoning with regard to the relation between the aesthetic and the political. With his multidisciplinary background, doctoral degree on an encyclopedic author who extended the frontiers of fiction with his highly experimental writings (James Joyce) and past engagements with vital issues in the humanities/literature, Jibu George is in a position to deal with foundational questions therein. The book endeavours to fill the gap between theory and practice; its metacritical reflections redefine the way critics interpret texts, teachers teach them, students study them and researchers grapple with their research problems. It also proposes an array of new concepts for the understanding of literature which have a significance beyond traditional disciplinary boundaries. (shrink)

This volume offers a novel philosophical thesis on the ontology of religion, and proposes a new conceptual repertoire to deal with supernatural religion. Jibu Mathew George offers an interdisciplinary perspective on the source and dynamics of religious ideation upon which belief and faith are based, at the fundamental levels of human reasoning. Using Max Weber's concept of "Disenchantment of the World" as a point of departure, this book endeavors to provide a pioneering philosophical and psychological understanding of the nature of (...) enchantment, disenchantment, and possible re-enchantments as they pertain to the occidental cultural history in Weberian retrospect. (shrink)