The melancholy of publicness: on The Calling of History: Sir Jadunath Sarkar and His Empire of Truth, Chicago and London, University of Chicago Press, 2015, 304 pp., $30 (paperback), ISBN: 13: 978-0-226-10045-6. Issue 1 (2nd January 2017)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Skaria, Ajay
• Is Part Of: South Asian history and culture. Volume 8:Issue 1(2017)
• Page Start: 92
• Page End: 98
• Publication Date: 2017-01-02
• Subjects: Dipesh Chakrabarty -- public sphere -- publicness -- Jadunath Sarkar -- history; South Asia -- Periodicals; South Asia; Periodicals; 954.005
• DOI: 10.1080/19472498.2016.1263440
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1947-2498

Abstract

ABSTRACT: Dipesh Chakrabarty's new book, The Calling of History, traces the career of Jadunath Sarkar, arguably the most prominent historian of the twentieth century. In doing so, it provides a fascinating account of how history became a researchable topic in India. This review teases out the exploration in Calling of the relation between what Chakrabarty calls the cloistered and public lives of history. The cloistered life of history, the life internal to the discipline, sees itself as representing the public sphere – the sphere of those rational practices which are constitutive of modern citizenship. Relatedly, the 'public life of history' is about those forms of publicness that are excluded from the public sphere. The review points out that what makes this relation especially interesting is that both are lives of publicness; it explores how, in Calling's account, Sarkar's valorization of the cloistered life of history shaped his writing and his politics.