Encountering Kali: In the Margins, at the center in the West - Hardcover

Rachel Fell Mcdermott

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 8120820096 ISBN 13: 9788120820098

Publisher: Motilal Banarsidass, 2004

Synopsis

Encountering kali explores one of the most remarkable divinities the world has seen the hindu goddess kali is simultaneously understood as a blood thirsty warrior, a deity of ritual possession, a tantric sexual partner and an all loving compassionate mother popular and scholarly interest in her has been on the rise in the west in recent years responding to this phenomenon mcdermott and kripals volume focuses on the complexities involved in interpreting kali in both her indigenous south asian settings and her more recent western incarnation through the shifting lenses of scriptural history temple architecture political reflection and the goddesss recent guises on the internet the contributors pose questions that illuminate our understanding of kali while addressing the problems and promises inherent in every act of cross cultural interpretation

About this title

From the Inside Flap:

"The editors have assembled a South Asian/History of Religions dream team, and the result is a book that captures the sexy, gory power of the dark goddess who is the most exciting of all Hindu deities-and perhaps the most controversial and notorious of all deities. Academically profound and theoretically subtle, these essays are also vivid and juicy."—Wendy Doniger, author of The Bedtrick: Tales of Sex and Masquerade

"If any subject ever called for a book of many parts, it is Kali. These original and provocative essays, well chosen and thoughtfully organized, point to all sides of the Goddess's character. The result is a sharp and challenging book-the essential starting point for a new century of encountering Kali."—John Stratton Hawley, Ann Whitney Olin Professor of Religion, Columbia University and co-editor of Devi: Goddesses of India

About the Author:

Rachel Fell McDermott is Assistant Professor of Asian and Middle Eastern Cultures at Barnard College and author of Mother of My Heart, Daughter of My Dreams: Kali and Uma in the Devotional Poetry of Bengal (2001) and Singing to the Goddess: Poems to Kali and Uma from Bengal (2001). Jeffrey J. Kripal is the Lynette S. Autry Associate Professor in the Humanities at Rice University and author most recently of Roads of Excess, Palaces of Wisdom: Eroticism and Reflexivity in the Study of Mysticism (2001).

About this edition

• Publisher: Motilal Banarsidass
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 8120820096
• ISBN 13: 9788120820098
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 338