‘The Materiality of Politics’ uses a series of historical illustrations to reveal the physicality and underlying ‘materiality’ of political processes. The political subject of the study is the collective political actor poised against governmental rules for stabilizing order. Samaddar’s tour de force propels readers through an account of blood, violence, bodies, controls, laws and conflicts. Politics is examined not as an abstraction, but as a ‘real’ field of dynamic factors rooted in everyday life.

Volume 1, subtitled ‘The Technologies of Rule’ discusses the techniques of modern rule which form the basis of the post-colonial Indian state. Beginning with the rule of law, the volume analyses the nature and manifestations of constitutional rule, the relation between law and terror and the construction of ‘extraordinary’ sovereign power. The author also investigates the methods of care, protection, segregation and stabilization by which rule proceeds. In the processes, the material core of the ‘cultural’ and the ‘aesthetic’ is exposed.

Ranabir Samaddar is the Director of the Calcutta Research Group and was earlier the Founder-Director of the Peace Studies Programme at the South Asia Forum for Human Rights, Kathmandu.

Anthem South Asian Studies

Preface and Acknowledgements; Introduction: The Materiality of Politics; Colonial Constitutionalism; Law, Terror and the Colonial State; Governing Territory with the Right Size; Care, Protection and Power; Stable Rule and Unstable Population; Index of Names; Subject Index