Querying the Medieval Texts and the History of Practices in South Asia

"Drawing on thinkers as diverse as V.N. Volosinov, R.G. Collingwood, and E. Laclau, this volume challenges the predominant idea of a text as "monological" both in its "authorist" and "contextualist" versions. The authors instead seek to understand texts as "dialogical" moments in the relations that agents have with themselves and with other agents. From this perspective, each author is able to pry open a particular text and reveal the articulative relation that each has had with the world in which it was situated. The result is a revised look at the relationship between history, national identity, and religion in medieval South Asia."--Jacket.