Divya Dwivedi

Background 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.[5]

She received her Bachelor of Arts degree from Lady Shri Ram College, Delhi and her Master's degree from St. Stephen's College.[6] She pursued her M.Phil from University of Delhi and went on to receive her doctorate from Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi.[6]

When she was a student in 2006, Dwivedi co-organised a conference on "the state of philosophy in India" in Delhi School of Economics. She was "exiled to silence" as a result of questioning the way philosophy was practiced in India.[2] She is the editor and co-founder of the international multilingual journal Philosophy World Democracy with Zeynep Direk, Achille Mbembe, Jean-Luc Nancy, Shaj Mohan, and Mireille Delmas-Marty.[7]

Philosophical work

Dwivedi is currently an associate professor at Department of Humanities & Social Sciences, IIT Delhi.[6][8] She had earlier taught at St. Stephen's College from 2003 to 2004 and at Dept. of English, Delhi University from January 2011 to April 2012.[6] She was also a visiting scholar at Centre for Fictionality Studies, Aarhus University in 2013 and 2014.[6]

She is a member of the Theory Committee of the International Comparative Literature Association along with Robert J. C. Young, Stefan Willer and others.[9]

School of thought

Dwivedi said that philosophy is a disruptive practice following from the Socratic model, "philosophy would be the disruption of every given 'way of life' to be understood as unexamined life".[10] Following from it there is "a necessary relation between philosophy and politics". In an interview conducted by Adèle Van Reeth for France Culture at the UNESCO headquarters Dwivedi stated that one must not recognize tradition as an adjective of philosophical practice.[11] Her work has a relation to the school of deconstruction.[12]

Divya Dwivedi is opposed to postcolonial theory[13] 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.[14] 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.[15] Dwivedi wrote in her editorial introduction to the UNESCO journal La Revue des Femmes-Philosophes that postcolonial theory is continuous with Hindu nationalism.[16]

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 philosopher Shaj Mohan. The book examines different aspects of Mahatma Gandhi's thought from within a unique framework and discuss his impact on 20th-century philosophy.[17] Jean-Luc Nancy wrote the foreword.[18]

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". 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.[19] Gandhi's concept of passive force or nonviolence is an implication of his hypophysical commitment to nature.[20] 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".[21]

Gandhi and Philosophy identifies racism with caste practices and controversially ascribes a form of racism to Gandhi. One reviewer wrote, "In the book, Mohan and Dwivedi argue that Gandhi not only upheld caste, but also viewed it as India's unique contribution to the world!".[12] 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. She said that the ongoing debates on the topic of Gandhi's racism are misleading which are conducted superficially by selectively quoting Gandhi for convenience,[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.

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".[22]

She said that Gandhi's abuses of his power were often interpreted as truthfulness. According to Gandhi and Philosophy Gandhi's ideal state and the absolute security state are virtually indistinguishable. Since Gandhi was not committed to liberal left politics his political programs have the risk of getting appropriated by the far right .[23][24]

That is, the attempts in India which still continue to hold Gandhi as the fakir of peace between the ethnic groupings are still playing, often unwittingly, a game to bring about "Hindu Raj" interpreted as secularism.

Mohan and Dwivedi wrote that M. K. Gandhi shares the responsibility for inventing Hindu religion and Hindi language. They said that Gandhi contributed to creating a political culture based on religion and for giving a Hindu character for India as a new country.[25] 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'."[18]

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.[26] 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.[27]

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".[28]

Dwivedi's work was criticised from the point of view methodological and stylistic difficulty. Robert Bernasconi noted that Dwivedi's Gandhi and Philosophy is a difficult book and it is "not a book that you will understand at first reading".[27] The difficulty due to the constructivist style was noted by other authors as well.[28][29] Tridip Suhrud pointed to the "opacity" of style in The Hindu and explained it as the effect of "reflections on language".[30] 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".[12] 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.[31] In The Indian Express Aakash Joshi 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". Joshi stressed that this point of view is opposed to "secularism of a particular kind, freedom from colonial concepts, caste without violence".[4]

Miscellaneous

The philosopher 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".[32] Dwivedi has edited anthologies addressing political and philosophical issues. The volume titled The Public Sphere: From Outside the West[33] treated the radical transformation of the public sphere and cultural landscapes through new technologies and political forms such as populism. In the field of narratology or narrative theory Dwivedi explores the questions of the ontology of literature through several directions including the functions of distinct narrative voices.[34][35] The book Narratology and Ideology: Negotiating Context, Form, and Theory in Postcolonial Narratives published by Ohio State University Press,[36] which was edited by Dwivedi, with Henrik Skov Nielsen and Richard Walsh, is an intervention in the debate on form and context. The book examines the ambition of the central concepts of both fields, namely "post-colonial" and "narrative", to serve as global categories of cultural analysis.[37][38]

See also

References
  1. "Divya Dwivedi – Bloomsbury". Bloomsbury Publishing.
  2. "The Resurrection of Philosophy". The Wire.
  3. "#ELLEVoices: Divya Dwivedi On How She Is #ImaginingTheWorldToBe". Elle India. Retrieved 2021-01-14.
  4. 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. Chandran, Cynthia (February 11, 2019). "New book rubbishes BJP aim to assimilate Gandhi". Deccan Chronicle. Retrieved December 22, 2019.
  6. "Divya Dwivedi | Humanities & Social Sciences". hss.iitd.ac.in.
  7. "#ELLEVoices: Divya Dwivedi On How She Is #ImaginingTheWorldToBe". Elle India. Retrieved 2021-01-14.
  8. "The proletariat are all those who are denied the collective faculty of imagination; Divya Dwivedi tells ILNA". ILNA. Retrieved 2020-05-17.
  9. "Members ICLA Theory". www.iclatheory.org. 2015-07-06.
  10. Mehta, Ashish (2019-04-05). "In search of Gandhi's answer to the question: 'What a human life should be', Interview". Governance Now.
  11. "Une nuit de philosophie (1/4) : Philosopher en Inde". France Culture.
  12. Ayyar, Raj. "Bending the binary". The Indian Express.
  13. Dalziel, Alex. "Why is Southeast Asia lacking in postcolonial perspectives?". The Jakarta Post.
  14. Confavreux, Joseph. "Hindu nationalism and why 'being a philosopher in India can get you killed'". mediapart.fr.
  15. "Amid changing nature of sex as an activity, debates over Raya Sarkar's list represent post-colonial binaries". Firstpost.
  16. "N° 4-5 / December 2017 Intellectuals, Philosophers, Women in India: Endangered Species". www.unesco.org.
  17. "Gandhi and Philosophy". Bloomsbury Academic.
  18. "Book Excerpt: What different theories of philosophy tell us about Gandhi's experiments with truth". Scroll.in.
  19. "Gandhi's Experiments with Hypophysics". Frontline.
  20. Singh, Siddharth. "A philosophical appraisal of Gandhi's outlook and ideas". Open Magazine.
  21. "Gandhi's Hypophysics (Dwivedi)". Royal Institute of Philosophy: Public Lectures.
  22. Varagur, Krithika. "India's 2 biggest political parties vie for Gandhi's legacy". The Washington Post.
  23. "New book rubbishes BJP aim to assimilate Gandhi". Deccan Chronicle.
  24. "How Gandhi's writings justify a security state using notions of "cleanliness"". The Caravan.
  25. Dwivedi, Divya; Mohan, Shaj. "Courage to Begin". The Indian Express.
  26. 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.
  27. Robert Bernasconi speaking at the launch of 'Gandhi & Philosophy', retrieved 2019-11-03
  28. Tankha, V. "Philosophizing Gandhi". The Book Review.
  29. "Gandhi as Chrysalis for a New Philosophy". The Wire.
  30. Suhrud, Tridip (2019-08-17). "'Gandhi and Philosophy – On Theological Anti-Politics' review: Leap of faith". The Hindu.
  31. Raghuramaraju, A. "Gandhi in the Company of Western Philosophers". Economic and Political Weekly, Economic and Political Weekly, Economic and Political Weekly, Economic and Political Weekly, 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.
  32. "Issue N° 4-5 | United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization". www.unesco.org.
  33. "The Public Sphere From Outside the West". Bloomsbury Publishing.
  34. Dwivedi, Divya; Nielsen, Henrik Skov (2013). "The Paradox of Testimony and First-Person Plural Narration in Jensen's We, the Drowned". CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture. 15 (7). doi:10.7771/1481-4374.2388.
  35. 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.
  36. "Narratology and Ideology: Negotiating Context, Form, and Theory in Postcolonial Narratives". ohiostatepress.org.
  37. Dwivedi, Divya; Nielsen, Henrik; Walsh, Richard (May 13, 2018). Narratology and Ideology: Negotiating Context, Form, and Theory in Postcolonial Narratives. Ohio State University Press. ISBN 978-0-8142-5475-2 – via Google Books.
  38. Vuletic, Snezana (October 26, 2018). "From Colonial Disruption to Diasporic Entanglemens: Doctoral Dissertation presented at Stockholm University" (PDF). Stockholm University.

Further reading
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