The Integral Nature of Things : Critical Reflections on the Present

This book analyses a revealing paradox: prevailing ways of thinking obscure the interrelations between things even as interdependence and indivisibility continually assert themselves. Mani traces the consequences in a number of sites — language, labour, technology, post-structuralist theory, political rhetoric, sex, advertising, neoliberal globalisation — interweaving observation, poetry and analysis.

The world is an interdependent whole of which everything is an integral, complexly related, part. Yet current ways of thinking, and being, persistently separate social phenomena and the individual self from the multiple dimensions with which they are interconnected. The Integral Nature of Things examines this revealing paradox and its consequences in a variety of sites: everyday language, labour, advertising, technology, post-structuralist theory, political rhetoric, urban planning, sex, neoliberal globalisation. Mani demonstrates how even though the interrelations between things are obscured by the ruling paradigm, the facts of relationality and indivisibility continually assert themselves. The book interweaves prose with poetry and sociocultural analysis with observational accounts to offer an alternative framework for addressing aspects of the cognitive, cultural, political, and ethical crisis we face today.