This is an anthology of and for the minimal and the perilous, an eclectic compendium of essays, fiction, poetry and discussions for the serious lay reader, reaching deep into and far out of the humanities. It celebrates at once the spirit of shared reverie and committed engagement, of cooperative communion and overwrought tussling with contemporary contentions that trouble our world, as seen through the spreading universe of the humanities. This anthology brings together select pieces from the cult internet magazine Humanities Underground that is crowded with such diverse issues as aesthetics and artistic craft, ethics and criticism, movements and institutions, ideologies and reflections. Working at the cusp of the artistic and the political, the anthology argues that since our concerns for artwork and philosophy must be mediated through material conditions of possibilitythe broad political, social and economic conditions that birth themour writing and our reading must be attentive to the intricacies of these relationships rather than be idealistic or prematurely righteous and proscriptive.
Contributors include such names as Jairus Banaji, Supriya Chaudhuri, Geeta Patel, Moinak Biswas, Brinda Bose, Amlan Dasgupta, Arunava Sinha, Sunit Singh, Pothik Ghosh, Santanu Das and Varuni Bhatia.