Reading Dialectically: The Political Play of Form, Contingency, and Subjectivity in Rabindranath Tagore and C.L.R. James.

Abstract

This dissertation undertakes a political reading of the writers Rabindranath Tagore and C.L.R. James, both of whom were public intellectuals who wrote in a variety of genres. James was a self-identified dialectical Marxist while Tagore did not evince any overt interest in dialectics or in political philosophy. However, both were part of a tradition of liberationist humanism which, although sometimes deemed antiquated from the point of view of the antifoundationalist discourse dominant after the poststructuralist moment, continue to be a critical intellectual resource. The dissertation aims to show that a rich and productive reading, not only of James but also of Tagore, is possible by reading them within the context of a dialectical framework. It argues for “dialectical moments” rather than a single overarching dialectic, as well as for dialectical movement without a determinate end-point, as preferred reading strategies. The particular post-Marxist reading of Tagore and James, informed by these strategies, that emerges from this dissertation, is proffered as indicative of a promising general approach that could provide a possibly new alternative paradigm of reading for postcolonial studies.

The dissertation engages with James and Tagore both in the context of the work of political thinkers of an earlier era such as Georg Lukacs, Ernst Bloch, and Franz Fanon, as well as contemporary political thinkers such as Antonio Negri, Alain Badiou and Slavoj Zizek, along the connecting thread of their approaches to dialectics. Using the interplay of necessity and contingency as a paradigmatic dialectical trope that acts as an organizing principle for this dissertation, questions of time, subjectivity and form are approached. The dissertation is oriented, in particular, to the genre of the play and dramatic form, and puts special emphasis on selections from the dramatic output of Tagore and James, which have so far received less critical attention compared to their other works. The dissertation concludes with a reflection on how the kind of reading undertaken in it is connected to open political questions that hover over the present-day world.