Short description:

Hindus, Jews, and the Politics of Comparison argues that comparative studies of Hindu and Jewish traditions can generate alternative epistemologies, critically interrogating the Eurocentric and Protestant-based paradigms in the academy that have perpetuated the ideals of Enlightenment discourse and colonial and neocolonial projects.

Long description:

In Hindus, Jews, and the Politics of Comparison: Embodied Communities and Models of Religious Tradition, Barbara A. Holdrege emphasizes the role of comparative study as a method of critical interrogation that challenges hegemonic taxonomies and categories in the academy to reconstitute our scholarly discourse and allow for a multiplicity of epistemologies. Holdrege reflects on the politics, problems, and dynamics of comparison and explores how certain analytical categories in the study of religion?such as the body, scripture, sacrifice, purity, and food?can be fruitfully reimagined through a comparative analysis of their Hindu and Jewish instantiations. The author argues that this re-visioning of analytical categories through sustained comparative historical studies of a range of Hindu and Jewish traditions provides the basis for generating alternative imaginaries to the dominant paradigms in the academy that have perpetuated the ideals of Enlightenment discourse and colonial and neocolonial projects. Such studies serve as an important corrective to the scholarly practices in the social sciences, humanities, and religious studies through which these categories and models have been privileged over others.

Table of Contents:

Preface

Introduction

1: The Politics of Comparison: Beyond the Tyranny of Taxonomies

South Asia and the Middle East: Beyond European Hegemony

Hinduisms and Judaisms: Beyond Protestant Christian Hegemony

2: What Have Hindus to Do with Jews? Hindu-Jewish Encounters in the Academy and Beyond

Historical Encounters: South Asian and Middle Eastern Cultures, Indic and Judaic Worlds

Collaborative Scholarly Encounters: Comparative Studies of Hindu and Jewish Traditions

Interreligious Encounters: Hindu-Jewish Dialogue

3: Veda and Torah: Textual Communities and the Word Beyond Text

From Text to Symbol

I. Veda

II. Torah

III. Veda and Torah

Reimagining Scripture

4: Models of Religious Tradition: Embodied Communities and Missionizing Traditions

Embodying Ethnocultural Identities

Missionizing Traditions and Universalizing Projects

5: The Gastrosemantics of Hindu and Jewish Foodways: Food Taxonomies, Dietary Regimes, and Socioreligious Hierarchies

Embodied Communities and Foodways

Food Taxonomies and Animal Classifications

Dietary Regulations and Social Classifications

Food Preparation and Food Transactions

Afterword

From the Locative/Utopian Dichotomy to the Dialectic of Local Histories/Global Designs

Embodied Communities and Missionizing Traditions

Note on Translations and Transliteration

Notes

Bibliography

About the Author