Monday, October 1, 2012

Banal back-covers on books about South Asia

The volume represents the sustained intellectual engagement of the authors and editors with the fascinating world of South Asia, a region whose visual and religious lives are constantly enriched by the social, political and economic process in a reciprocal interaction.

Now, try to substitute "South Asia" with any other region of the world. And, please, let me know if you find a single region (apart perhaps from Antartis) to which the statement above could not apply.

Why does one print on the back cover of a book something so patently non-informative (and not even appealing, in my opinion)?

On titles in books about South Asia, see this post.

5 comments:

Ruy D'Aleixo said...

Good point! It reminds me of the same emptiness of meaning used in political campaigns: "stand for change" "yes, we can" etc. or, in my country "we want freedom for Catalonia". (What does it mean?) It is supposedly appealing precisely because it can be interpreted as one wishes.

elisa freschi said...

yes, but at the same time it pushes away less superficial people…and although this may lead to a political success, I wonder how many superficial people read scholarly works on South Asia.

elisa freschi said...

…which by the way leads me back to the importance of philosophy in several fields (including the book industry;-))

Anonymous said...

I think a computer probably wrote it when no one was looking.

elisa freschi said...

The sentence is actually found in the foreword, but there it strikes one less, because the context makes it more specific and because there is something else being said. On the back-cover, it sounds like the slogans Aleix mentioned, i.e., a way to have everyone like it.

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