One basic paradox about Foucauldian perspective is that apparently it seems to be
intellectually very thought-provoking, but a minute analysis and application of
Foucault’s methods reveals certain amount of obscurity, and sometimes one feels
that the ideas overlap. But this methodically challenging aspect draws more critics and
scholars toward Foucault, and it is perhaps self-explanatory that the more we try to brush
aside or get away from Foucault, the more he ceases to get away from us. Foucault
himself once said that the more people discuss something, the more that thing becomes
discursively real. We must not forget that Foucault is perhaps the first critic endeavoring
to theorize everything from a humanitarian perspective. In other words, he is trying through
his writings to give a theoretical mold to sociology, history, archaeology, science, and
perhaps every other thing that comes our way, and analyze them from the discipline of
humanities. There is no gainsaying the fact that the northeastern part of India (Paul and
Rai 2014, 161)1 is currently perceived to be insurgency-ridden, clash-trodden, and torn apart by bloody violence. But we tend to forget that this strategically important area of
Southeast Asia, as Ray (2006) opines, “has a long tradition of secularism and conflict
resolution.” The interest in the northeastern part of India has recently gone up tremendously.
Scholars across the world are taking more and more interest in this area which is richly fertile
in terms of its ethnic mosaic, cultural diversity, and topographical variations. Even journals like
Asian Ethnology2 are publishing special issues exclusively focusing on this region.
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