Overview

In this ground-breaking account of the political economy and cultural meaning of blood in contemporary India, Jacob Copeman and Dwaipayan Banerjee examine how the giving and receiving of blood has shaped social and political life. Hematologies traces how the substance congeals political ideologies, biomedical rationalities, and activist practices. Using examples from anti-colonial appeals to blood sacrifice as a political philosophy to contemporary portraits of political leaders drawn with blood, from the use of the substance by Bhopali children as a material of activism to biomedical anxieties and aporias about the excess and lack of donation, Hematologies broaches how political life in India has been shaped through the use of blood and through contestations about blood. As such, the authors offer new entryways into thinking about politics and economy through a ""bloodscape of difference"": different sovereignties; different proportionalities; and different temporalities. These entryways allow the authors to explore the relation between blood's utopic flows and political clottings as it moves through time and space, conjuring new kinds of social collectivities while reanimating older forms, and always in a reflexive relation to norms that guide its proper flow.

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9781501745096

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Reviews

Remember Lewis Henry Morgan's Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity of the Human Family, from 1871? Copeman and Banerjee's Hematologies fully unwinds any lingering anthropological sensibility that would have sanguinity staying put within the strictures of any naturalized unit like the human family. This revelatory book brings us a thoroughly political hematology, not only tracking economies of sacrifice, extraction, and spillage, but also thinking through blood as a medium for writing, for protest, and for the telling of historical time. -- Stefan Helmreich, MIT In its sweep over widely different terrains in the political landscape of India, this book is unparalleled in its ability to show how the political absorbs the techno-scientific over various scales and overlapping temporalities in contemporary India. The authors take breath-taking risks with the plethora of objects and contexts they dwell on but manage to land on the ground each time as they never allow the concreteness of their objects to disappear from view. A splendid achievement. -- Veena Das, Johns Hopkins University Jacob Copeman and Dwaipayan Banerjee have written a deeply insightful book on the potent symbolism and political significance of blood. -- Joseph Alter, University of Pittsburgh, author of <I>Gandhi's Body</I> Hematologies is an astute, learned, and ground-breaking account of the political economy and cultural meaning of blood in contemporary India, the product of a powerful, cogent collaboration between two prominent and exciting thinkers. -- Rachel Berger, Concordia University, author of <I>Ayurveda Made Modern</I>

Jacob Copeman and Dwaipayan Banerjee have written a deeply insightful book on the potent symbolism and political significance of blood. -- Joseph Alter, University of Pittsburgh, author of <I>Gandhi's Body</I> Hematologies is an astute, learned, and ground-breaking account of the political economy and cultural meaning of blood in contemporary India, the product of a powerful, cogent collaboration between two prominent and exciting thinkers. -- Rachel Berger, Concordia University, author of <I>Ayurveda Made Modern</I> This revelatory book brings us a thoroughly political hematology, not only tracking economies of sacrifice, extraction, and spillage, but also thinking through blood as a medium for writing, for protest, and for the telling of historical time -- Stefan Helmreich, MIT This book is an extraordinary exploration of the multitudes of meanings and uses of blood in northern India. Its breadth and range make the questions it raises of wide interest, from blood as a donation, as a means to political protest, as a sign of modernity or patriotism -- Emily Martin, New York University This book is unparalleled in its ability to show how the political absorbs the techno-scientific over various scales and temporalities in contemporary India. The authors take breath-taking risks with the plethora of objects and contexts they dwell on but manage to land on the ground each time. A splendid achievement. -- Veena Das, Johns Hopkins University

"""This book is unparalleled in its ability to show how the political absorbs the techno-scientific over various scales and temporalities in contemporary India. The authors take breath-taking risks with the plethora of objects and contexts they dwell on but manage to land on the ground each time. A splendid achievement."" -- Veena Das, Johns Hopkins University ""This book is an extraordinary exploration of the multitudes of meanings and uses of blood in northern India. Its breadth and range make the questions it raises of wide interest, from blood as a donation, as a means to political protest, as a sign of modernity or patriotism"" -- Emily Martin, New York University ""This revelatory book brings us a thoroughly political hematology, not only tracking economies of sacrifice, extraction, and spillage, but also thinking through blood as a medium for writing, for protest, and for the telling of historical time"" -- Stefan Helmreich, MIT ""Hematologies is an astute, learned, and ground-breaking account of the political economy and cultural meaning of blood in contemporary India, the product of a powerful, cogent collaboration between two prominent and exciting thinkers."" -- Rachel Berger, Concordia University, author of <I>Ayurveda Made Modern</I> ""Jacob Copeman and Dwaipayan Banerjee have written a deeply insightful book on the potent symbolism and political significance of blood."" -- Joseph Alter, University of Pittsburgh, author of <I>Gandhi's Body</I>"

Author Information

Jacob Copeman is Senior Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of Edinburgh. He is author of Veins of Devotion. Dwaipayan Banerjee is Assistant Professor in the program on Science, Technology, and Society at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Follow him on X @dwai_banerjee.

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