Abstract:In this essay I try to suggest a non-teleological way of reading the history of anthropology, by placing Veena Das’s Textures of the ordinary (2020) in relation to her previous books, beginning with Structure and cognition: aspects of Hindu caste and ritual (1977). Rather than a teleological movement from structuralism to “post-structuralism” or “self-reflexive” work, I point to the continuation and transfiguration of the concepts of structure and event across Das’s different books, as a way of also imagining … Show more
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