Making Sense of the University

Debaditya Bhattacharya is Assistant Professor Department of English, Faculty of Humanities and Languages at Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi. His areas of interest include contemporary literary and cultural theory, histories of Indian higher education, classical philosophy, renaissance studies, film studies, philosophy of technology, ethics and politics.

• Note to the Reader: A Prefatory Appendix; Introduction: Thinking the University as a Just Institution; 1. The Touch of Community: University, Plague and Death; 2. The Sound of Secularity: Caste-ing Myth in the University; 3. The Gaze of Solidarity: Whose Place in the Sun is the University?; 4. A Taste of Freedom: Science, Speech and the 'State' of the University; Conclusion: The University, Acronymized!; Bibliography; Index.

'Making Sense of the University is a daring and indispensable adventure in critical thought and historical inquiry. With enormous theoretical power and acute historical analysis, Debaditya Bhattacharya guides us through the history of contradictions that define the university and holds public universities in India accountable for decisive failures of justice and vision. With remarkable acuity, Bhattacharya gives us a way to think about institutional histories and radical democratic theory. This book compels us to understand the university as the institutional support for the desire for what has been unknown, insisting on an affirmative vision that calls for an end to repression and incursion. This book is unprecedented, brilliant, and indispensable.' Judith Butler, author of Gender Trouble