Divya Dwivedi

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Divya Dwivedi
Divya Dwivedi.jpg
Divya Dwivedi speaking at the India International Centre, New Delhi
Alma materLady Shri Ram College, Delhi, St. Stephen's College, Delhi
EraContemporary philosophy
SchoolContinental philosophy
Deconstruction
Post-metaphysics[1]
InstitutionsIndian Institute of Technology, Delhi
Main interests
Ontology
Philosophy of literature
Philosophy of politics
Narratology
Anastasis
Notable ideas
Anastasis[2]
Influences

Divya Dwivedi is a philosopher[3] and author based in India.[2][1] She is an associate professor at the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi.[4] Her work focuses on ontology, metaphysics, literature, and philosophy of politics.[5]

Early life and education[]

Dwivedi is originally from Allahabad. Her mother is Sunitha Dwivedi and her father, Rakesh Dwivedi, practices as a senior lawyer for the Supreme Court of India.[6]

She received her Bachelor of Arts degree from Lady Shri Ram College, Delhi and her Master's degree from St. Stephen's College.[7] She pursued her M.Phil from University of Delhi and received her doctorate from Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi.[7]

Career[]

Dwivedi is currently an associate professor at Department of Humanities & Social Sciences, IIT Delhi.[7][8] She had earlier taught at St. Stephen's College and at Dept. of English, Delhi University.[7] She was a visiting scholar at Centre for Fictionality Studies, Aarhus University in 2013 and 2014.[7]

Dwivedi's political writings have been critical of caste oppression,[9] religious discrimination, Hindu nationalism.[10][11]

She is a member of the Theory Committee of the International Comparative Literature Association along with Robert J. C. Young, Stefan Willer and others.[12]

She is the editor and co-founder of the international multilingual journal Philosophy World Democracy with , Achille Mbembe, Jean-Luc Nancy, Shaj Mohan, and Mireille Delmas-Marty.[3]

American journal for critical theory, Episteme, published a special issue on Dwivedi's philosophical contributions in 2021.[5]

Philosophical work[]

Dwivedi's philosophical standpoint departs from the school of deconstruction and it was described as deconstructive materialism.[13][14] She publishes in the areas of ontology, narratology,[15][16] metaphysics, linguistics, and deconstruction. According to Jean-Luc Nancy and Bernard Stiegler her work gives a new orientation to philosophy outside of metaphysics and nihilism.

School of thought[]

Dwivedi said that philosophy is a disruptive practice following from the Socratic model.[17] Following from it there is "a necessary relation between philosophy and politics". She is opposed to treating philosophical traditions as adjectives of philosophical practice.[18]

Barbara Cassin said that Dwivedi's theoretical stand reveals the actual political stakes in postcolonial theory. Cassin said "She is a philosopher" whose refusal to make "the post-colonial the first and the last word undoubtedly allows us to clarify with greater precision what is happening to women, philosophers and intellectuals in India today".[19]

Dwivedi is opposed to postcolonial theory[20] and subaltern studies. In an interview with Mediapart Dwivedi said that postcolonial theory and Hindu nationalism are two versions of the same theory, and that they are both upper caste political projects.[21] Dwivedi noted that in the field of feminism postcolonial theory remains an upper caste theoretical standpoint which has been preventing lower caste feminists from opening their own currents in the context of the Me too movement.[22] Dwivedi wrote in her editorial introduction to the UNESCO journal La Revue des Femmes-Philosophes that postcolonial theory is continuous with Hindu nationalism.[23]

Together, postcolonialism and subaltern theory have established the paradigm of research in humanities and social sciences—in India and abroad—over the past four decades. "Eurocentrism", "historicisation", and "postcolonialism" are also the operative terms through which the Hindu nationalist discourse conserves the caste order.

Gandhi and Philosophy: On Theological Anti-politics[]

In 2018, Dwivedi co-authored Gandhi and Philosophy: On Theological Anti-politics with the philosopher Shaj Mohan. The book examines different aspects of Gandhi's thought from a new philosophical system based on the concept of anastasis.[24][25] Jean-Luc Nancy wrote the foreword to Gandhi and Philosophy and said that it gives a new orientation to philosophy which is neither metaphysics nor hypophysics.[26]

The book proposes that in addition to the metaphysical tendency in philosophy there is a 'hypophysical tendency'; hypophysics is defined as "a conception of nature as value". As per hypophysics the distance from nature that human beings and natural objects come to have through the effects of technology lessens their value, or brings them closer to evil.[27] Gandhi's concept of passive force or nonviolence is an implication of his hypophysical commitment to nature.[28] Dwivedi made a separation between metaphysics and hypophysics in her Royal Institute of Philosophy lecture, "While both seek to diagnose the 'west', each opens on to distinct futures: metaphysics to an "other thinking" than philosophy, hypophysics to the other of thinking itself".[29]

Gandhi and Philosophy identifies racism with caste practices and controversially ascribes a form of racism to Gandhi.[13] When The Indian Express reported on the developing uproar resulting from allegations of Gandhi's racism, Dwivedi said in response that Gandhi was a specific type of racist [4]

It misleads us into thinking that Gandhi is a garden variety racist who wanted to preserve traditional discriminations and segregation mainly because of the prestige of the past or to conserve existing social mores. In fact, Gandhi invented a new basis for racism, which is based on moral superiority.

Dwivedi wrote that M. K. Gandhi shares the responsibility for inventing Hindu religion and Hindi language.[30] Writing about the book in The Washington Post, Krithika Varagur charged that Gandhi's political project created the conditions for the rise of Hindu nationalism in present-day India by making religion an integral part of anti-colonialism. Dwivedi was quoted in the Post as saying, "Gandhi played a huge role in solidifying the Hindu majority identity in India today".[31]

Gandhi and Philosophy argues that M. K. Gandhi's insensitivity towards the suffering of the Jewish people under the Nazi state follows from his theory of truth. Gandhi suggested to the Jewish people "to expose oneself to annihilation in order that one is conjoined to absolute truth. In their own annihilation the Jewish people were to have the non-experience of Absolute Truth – 'a joyful sleep'."[26]

Reception[]

According to Jean-Luc Nancy Gandhi and Philosophy leads to a new orientation outside of the theological, metaphysical and nihilistic tendencies in philosophy. Bernard Stiegler said that this work "give us to reconsider the history of nihilism in the eschatological contemporaneity and shows its ultimate limits" and offers a new path.[32] Gandhi and Philosophy calls this new beginning the anastasis of philosophy. Robert Bernasconi said that the inventiveness and the constructivism behind the concept of ana-stasis, or the overcoming of stasis, has a relation to the project of re-beginning of philosophy by Heidegger.[33][34]

The Book Review said that the philosophical project of Gandhi and Philosophy is to create new evaluative categories, "the authors, in engaging with Gandhi's thought, create their categories, at once descriptive and evaluative" while pointing to the difficulty given by the rigour of a "A seminal if difficult read for those with an appetite for philosophy".[35]

Dwivedi's work was criticised from the point of view methodological and stylistic difficulty. Robert Bernasconi noted that Gandhi and Philosophy is "not a book that you will understand at first reading".[33] The difficulty due to the constructivist style was noted by other authors as well.[35][36][37] Gandhi and Philosophy was criticised from the point of view of the recent mounting criticisms of Gandhi in India and internationally. It was said that Gandhi and Philosophy might be exalting Gandhi while being very critical of him at the same time. The ambiguous approach to Gandhi was described in one of the commentaries in The Indian Express as "Mohan and Dwivedi have done a masterful job of avoiding the binary fork — hagiography or vituperation — as much of Gandhi and hagiography comes from a need to spiritualise Gandhi".[13]

Economic and Political Weekly pointed to Dwivedi's participation in the paradigm of "western philosophy", especially when Gandhi's goal was to create an alternative to Eurocentrism. EPW said that her work may be of interest only to continental philosophy as she does not participate in Indic discourses.[38] The Indian Express commented on the negative implications of Gandhi and Philosophy and said that through this book "Gandhi can be seen as a nihilist — someone who even decries sex for reproduction and would like human society to wither away".[4]

Bibliography[]

Books[]

Edited[]

  • The Public Sphere: From Outside the West, Bloomsbury Academic, 2015.
  • Narratology and Ideology: Negotiating Context, Form, and Theory in Postcolonial Narratives, Ohio State University Press, 2018.

Articles[]

Interviews[]

See also[]

References[]

  1. ^ Jump up to: a b "Divya Dwivedi – Bloomsbury". Bloomsbury Publishing.
  2. ^ Jump up to: a b "The Resurrection of Philosophy". The Wire.
  3. ^ Jump up to: a b "#ELLEVoices: Divya Dwivedi On How She Is #ImaginingTheWorldToBe". Elle India. Retrieved 2021-01-14.
  4. ^ Jump up to: a b c Joshi, Aakash (2019-08-18). "A new book examines what we talk about when we talk about the Father of the Nation :Reading the Mahatma, Interview". The Indian Express.
  5. ^ Jump up to: a b "Philosophy for Another Time; Towards a Collective Political Imagination". positions politics. Retrieved 2021-03-11.
  6. ^ Chandran, Cynthia (February 11, 2019). "New book rubbishes BJP aim to assimilate Gandhi". Deccan Chronicle. Retrieved December 22, 2019.
  7. ^ Jump up to: a b c d e "Divya Dwivedi | Humanities & Social Sciences". hss.iitd.ac.in.
  8. ^ "The proletariat are all those who are denied the collective faculty of imagination; Divya Dwivedi tells ILNA". ILNA. Retrieved 2020-05-17.
  9. ^ Reghu, co-authored by Divya Dwivedi,Shaj Mohan,J. "How upper castes invented a Hindu majority". The Caravan. Retrieved 2021-03-15.
  10. ^ Nancy, Jean-Luc. "La religieuse manipulation du pouvoir". Libération (in French). Retrieved 2021-03-15.
  11. ^ "En Inde, le mensuel " The Caravan " est harcelé par la police". Le Monde.fr (in French). 2021-02-02. Retrieved 2021-03-15.
  12. ^ "Members ICLA Theory". www.iclatheory.org. 2015-07-06.
  13. ^ Jump up to: a b c Ayyar, Raj. "Bending the binary". The Indian Express.
  14. ^ "The Deconstructive Materialism of Dwivedi and Mohan: A New Philosophy of Freedom". positions politics. Retrieved 2021-03-11.
  15. ^ Vuletic, Snezana (October 26, 2018). "From Colonial Disruption to Diasporic Entanglemens: Doctoral Dissertation presented at Stockholm University" (PDF). Stockholm University.
  16. ^ Dwivedi, Divya; Nielsen, Henrik Skov. "The Paradox of Testimony and First-Person Plural Narration in Jensen's We, the Drowned (Free Access)" (PDF). core.ac.uk.
  17. ^ Mehta, Ashish (2019-04-05). "In search of Gandhi's answer to the question: 'What a human life should be', Interview". Governance Now.
  18. ^ "Une nuit de philosophie (1/4) : Philosopher en Inde". France Culture.
  19. ^ "Issue N° 4-5 | United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization". www.unesco.org.
  20. ^ Dalziel, Alex. "Why is Southeast Asia lacking in postcolonial perspectives?". The Jakarta Post.
  21. ^ Confavreux, Joseph. "Hindu nationalism and why 'being a philosopher in India can get you killed'". mediapart.fr.
  22. ^ "Amid changing nature of sex as an activity, debates over Raya Sarkar's list represent post-colonial binaries". Firstpost.
  23. ^ "N° 4-5 / December 2017 Intellectuals, Philosophers, Women in India: Endangered Species". www.unesco.org.
  24. ^ "Philosophy for Another Time; Towards a Collective Political Imagination". positions politics. Retrieved 2021-03-12.
  25. ^ "Gandhi and Philosophy". Bloomsbury Academic.
  26. ^ Jump up to: a b "Book Excerpt: What different theories of philosophy tell us about Gandhi's experiments with truth". Scroll.in.
  27. ^ "Gandhi's Experiments with Hypophysics". Frontline.
  28. ^ Singh, Siddharth. "A philosophical appraisal of Gandhi's outlook and ideas". Open Magazine.
  29. ^ "Gandhi's Hypophysics (Dwivedi)". Royal Institute of Philosophy: Public Lectures.
  30. ^ Dwivedi, Divya; Mohan, Shaj. "Courage to Begin". The Indian Express.
  31. ^ Varagur, Krithika. "India's 2 biggest political parties vie for Gandhi's legacy". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on 2019-10-02.
  32. ^ Stiegler, Bernard (2018-11-14). Qu'appelle-t-on Panser ?: 1. L'immense régression. Les Liens qui Libèrent. ISBN 979-1-02-090559-8 – via Google Books.
  33. ^ Jump up to: a b "Welcoming Divya Dwivedi and Shaj Mohan's Gandhi and Philosophy". positions politics. Retrieved 2021-03-12.
  34. ^ Robert Bernasconi speaking at the launch of 'Gandhi & Philosophy', retrieved 2019-11-03
  35. ^ Jump up to: a b Tankha, V. "Philosophizing Gandhi". The Book Review.
  36. ^ "Gandhi as Chrysalis for a New Philosophy". The Wire.
  37. ^ Suhrud, Tridip (2019-08-17). "'Gandhi and Philosophy – On Theological Anti-Politics' review: Leap of faith". The Hindu.
  38. ^ Raghuramaraju, A. "Gandhi in the Company of Western Philosophers". Economic and Political Weekly. 50, 50, 50, 50, 50, 54 (23, 23, 23, 23, 23, 31): 7, 7, 7, 7, 7–8, 8, 8, 8, 8.

Further reading[]

Secondary Literature[]

External links[]

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