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Hindus, Jews, and the Politics of Comparison

Embodied Communities and Models of Religious Tradition
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In Hindus, Jews, and the Politics of Comparison: Embodied Communities and Models of Religious Tradition, Barbara A. Holdrege emphasizes the role of comparative study as a method of critical interrogation that challenges hegemonic taxonomies and categories in the academy to reconstitute our scholarly discourse and allow for a multiplicity of epistemologies. Holdrege reflects on the politics, problems, and dynamics of comparison and explores how certain analytical categories in the study of religion--such as the body, scripture, sacrifice, purity, and food--can be fruitfully reimagined through a comparative analysis of their Hindu and Jewish instantiations. The author argues that this re-visioning of analytical categories through sustained comparative historical studies of a range of Hindu and Jewish traditions provides the basis for generating alternative imaginaries to the dominant paradigms in the academy that have perpetuated the ideals of Enlightenment discourse and colonial and neocolonial projects. Such studies serve as an important corrective to the scholarly practices in the social sciences, humanities, and religious studies through which these categories and models have been privileged over others.
Barbara A. Holdrege is professor of religious studies and chair of the South Asian Studies Committee at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
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