Edited Rachel Fell Mcdermott Jeffrey (1 results)

Hardcover. Condition: New. Contents: Introducing Kali Studies/Jeffrey J. Kripal and Rachel Fell McDermott. I. Kali in the texts and contexts of South Asia: 1. Kali/David R. Kinsley. 2. Kali the terrific and her tests: the Sakta devotionalism of the Mahabhagavata Purana/Patricia Dold. 3. The domestication of a Goddess: Carana-tirtha Kalighat, the Mahapitha of Kali/Sanjukta Gupta. 4. Dominating Kali: Hindu family values and Tantric power/Usha Menon and Richard A. Shweder. 5. Kali in a context of terror: the tasks of a Goddess in Sri Lanka's Civil War/Patricia Lawrence. 6. Kali Mayi: Myth and reality in a Banaras Ghetto/Roxanne Kamayani Gupta. II. Kali in western settings, western discourses: 7. Wrestling with Kali: South Asian and British constructions of the dark Goddess/Cynthia Ann Humes. 8. "India's darkest heart:" Kali in the colonial imagination/Hugh B. Urban. 9. Why the Tantrika is a hero: Kali in the psychoanalytic tradition/Jeffrey J. Kripal. 10. Doing the mother's Caribbean work: on Shakti and society in contemporary Trinidad/Keith E. McNeal. 11. Margins at the center: tracing Kali through time, space, and culture/Sarah Caldwell. 12. Kali's new frontiers: a Hindu Goddess on the internet/Rachel Fell McDermott. Appendix: documentary film and video resources for teaching on Kali and Fierce Goddesses/Sarah Caldwell. Select bibliography. Index. "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 Kripal's volume focuses on the complexities involved in interpreting Kali in both her indigenous South Asian settings and her more recent western incarnations. Through the shifting lenses of scriptural history, temple architecture, political violence, feminist and psychoanalytic criticism, autobiographical reflection, and the Goddess's 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." (jacket).