Join us on Wednesday 23 April 2.30-4.30pm for the next English Research Seminar, presented in-person by guest speaker \u00c9adaoin Agnew (Kingston University). The talk will be livestreamed in Lady Hale 100 and on Teams. Please contact Prof Scott Thurston (s.thurston@salford.ac.uk) for the link to join online.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Practice and Politics of <\/strong>Raja Yoga<\/strong><\/em> (1896)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Swami Vivekananda\u2019s Raja Yoga <\/em>(1896) is a text that marks a watershed moment in yoga history and is usually credited with starting the yoga renaissance in the late nineteenth century. In this text, Vivekananda translated and popularised the ancient Indian Yoga Sutras<\/em> by the sage Patanjali as part of anti-colonial intercultural exchanges between east and west in the fin de si\u00e8cle<\/em>. The book\u2019s transnational discourse drew from contemporary new physics and neo-Vedantic philosophy as well as Indian nationalism, pre-Freudian psychology, Western occultism, and modern ideas about physical health, and it issued a radical alternative to the binary oppositions on which imperialist and materialist ideologies rely. Vivekananda elucidates Patanjali\u2019s yogic philosophy but, significantly, he also outlines a practical methodology for achieving \u2018universal unity\u2019. He sets out a praxis that focuses on the importance of subjective experience and transforms the individual in powerful and positive ways by gradually breaking down the boundaries between mind and body, matter and energy, subject and object. It was an idealistic goal that appealed to various groups of unconventional heterodox thinkers at the fin de si\u00e8cle<\/em>, and it arguably contributed to the spiritual and political revolution that spread in subcultural forms, across Europe and America from the second half of the nineteenth century onward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Dr. \u00c9adaoin Agnew<\/strong> has practiced yoga for over 25 years, and she vowed never to write about it or research it. Yet, in 2024, she published a journal article on Vivekananda\u2019s Raja Yoga, and this now remains an ongoing side project. Her other academic work focuses on women\u2019s anglophone writing in 19th century India. Her first monograph was Imperial Women Writers in Victorian India<\/em>\u00a0(Palgrave, 2017) and she is now working on her second book which looks at the transnational encounters between Indian and British women. She is also the PI of the Victorian Diversities Research Network.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Join us on Wednesday 23 April 2.30-4.30pm for the next English Research Seminar, presented in-person by guest speaker \u00c9adaoin Agnew (Kingston University). The talk will be livestreamed in Lady Hale 100 and on Teams. Please contact Prof Scott Thurston (s.thurston@salford.ac.uk) for the link to join online.\u00a0 The Practice and Politics of Raja Yoga (1896) Swami […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":242,"featured_media":3122,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[8,37],"class_list":["post-3118","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-and-events","tag-english-at-salford","tag-english-research-seminar"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n