Associate Professor in the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures
About
Arvind-Pal S. Mandair holds doctoral degrees in the fields of chemistry and philosophy/religion. He currently teaches at the University of Michigan where he is an associate professor in Sikh studies. Though grounded in South Asian studies, his research crosses a wide range of academic disciplines including comparative and continental philosophy, postcolonial theory and the theoretical study of religion and political theory.
His book publications include Religion and the Specter of the West: Sikhism, India, Postcoloniality and the Politics of Translation (Columbia University Press, 2009); Sikhism: A Guide For the Perplexed (Bloomsbury 2013); Secularism and Religion-Making (with Markus Dressler, Oxford 2011); Teachings of the Sikh Gurus (with Christopher Shackle, Routledge 2005). He has also published numerous articles in journals and book chapters. Arvind Mandair is founding editor of the Routledge journal Sikh Formations: Religion, Culture and Theory and the book series Routledge Critical Sikh Studies. He also serves on the editorial board of journals such as Culture and Religion, and Religions of South Asia.
Current Work:
Arvind-Pal's current research returns to earlier interests in global philosophies and cross-cultural philosophy from a broadly Sikh perspective.
First, a monograph which looks at the philosophical encounter between Sikh and Western concepts. This entails complicating conventional methodologies such as comparativism and translation, instead focusing on ‘encounter’ as an event (rather than phenomenon) with a view to develop new and creative ways in which non-Western concepts can be ‘hosted’ in Anglo-Europhone languages. This particular research has implications for the way we think about ‘diaspora’ and theories of integration and interaction between host/foreign cultures, majoritarian/minoritarian cultures.
Second, a short monograph that examines the relationship between Violence and Religion, specifically in the context of Sikhism. This study tries to relocate the theory of violence beyond its liberal formulation in opposition to religion, and shows how violence, differently imagined, provides a way of breaking the prohibitions placed on how Western and non-Western concepts, societies and individuals can interact and associate in ways not sanctioned by the State-form.
Thirdly, he is developing a series of monographs which take me back into cross-cultural philosophy of religion to develop a diasporic ‘Sikh Philosophy’.
Research Area Keyword(s):
European and Asian philosophy, religion, critical theory, Sikh studies, postcolonial theory
