Freedom to Know - (Thinking World Philosophies) by Monika Kirloskar-Steinbach (Hardcover)

About the Book

Asks how a (world) community can be created to allow structural minorities equitable access to hermeneutical and material resources.

Book Synopsis

In this book, Monika Kirloskar-Steinbach studies how Bhimrao Ambedkar (1891-1956), W.E.B. Du Bois (1868-1963), Mohammed Iqbal (1877-1938), Pandita Ramabai (1858-1922) and Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) diagnose the epistemic oppression they perceive and experience, their analysis of the coloniality of being as its cause, and their proposals to counter it. Kirloskar-Steinbach explores how these voices seek to co-create a space in which they can experience what it means to be free from the conceptual domination of academic frameworks, relish that freedom with their collaborators and, in the equal participation that that space affords, develop open-ended concepts that help them to resist the coloniality of being.

Review Quotes

Professor Kirloskar-Steinbach's Freedom to Know is a welcome addition to the literature on Indian philosophy in the pre-independence period and on the relationships between Indian philosophers and their colleagues outside of India during that period. Drawing creatively on contemporary feminist epistemology, Kirloskar-Steinbach explores with great clarity the diverse ways in which B.R. Ambedkar. W.E.B. DuBois, Muhammed Iqbal, Pandita Ramabai Sarasvati, and Rabindranath Tagore critique colonial, Indian, and American hierarchies of caste, race, religious communities, gender, and nationality, and the ways in which this group of philosophers developed a liberative cosmopolitan vision in the context of colonialism and racism. The treatment of each philosopher is lucid, and the fabric Prof. Kirloskar-Steinbach weaves is shimmering and illuminating. A must-read for anyone
interested in the history of 20th century philosophy or in Indian intellectual history.

--Jay L. Garfield, Smith College and the Harvard Divinity School