Reading the question of nationalism with Deleuzian ‘concept’

Abstract

The paper attempts to read together two otherwise unrelated questions – Deleuze’s views on philosophy and the question of nationalism in India – to explore what both can offer to each other without reducing the specificity of each. The paper, however, attempts to do this also keeping in mind two immediately topical concerns: the rising popularity of Deleuze studies in India and the political debates concerning nationalism. With such an attempt at reading one concept in an-other’s context, the paper thus attempts to raise broader questions concerning the conceptualisation of nationalism, philosophy and politics. Aiming to explore such concerns from the question of ‘other’, the approach can be summed in the following entangled sequences: conceptualising nationalism in relation to minoritarian perspectives, politics in relation to philosophy and western ideas in relation to non-western contexts. The paper, however, engages in such an approach as a cautionary experimentation of reading entanglements, divergences and contingencies without searching for some corrective or messianic possibilities.