Dear all,
You are cordially invited to a presentation in the HSS seminar series at
the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences.
Shruti Kapila (University of Cambridge) will talk on "Ambedkar’s
Agonism: Caste as Sovereign Violence and Pakistan as Peace". The talk
will be held in LH534 at 3:30 PM.
.
Abstract
In focusing primarily on B.R. Ambedkar, this talk will reconstruct and
interpret the work of hostility and antagonism that was central to his
political thought and writings. As a thinker, Ambedkar remained singular
in taking account of the full and potential measure of violence
predominantly in caste relations but beyond in the comparative contexts
of revolutions and formations of nation-states in the modern world. I
reconstruct and interpret Ambedkar here as a foundational thinker of
sovereignty, republicanism and agonism as opposed to justice or even
liberalism. In so doing, I analyse in the same analytic rubric, his
writings on caste and Pakistan and the salience of separation to his
political thought. Violence, power and antagonism are elaborated here as
these were redirected to agonistic ends for the assumption of
republicanism. The consideration of Pakistan as a political idea, it
argues needs to be understood in relation to the historic source of
sovereignty as Ambedkar uncovered it in the figure of the Brahmin as a
dispersed monarchy. Singular in his apprehension of radical futurity of
the idea of Pakistan, this talk intervenes in and contributes to global
political thought and modern Indian history and the formation of Pakistan
Bio
Dr Shruti Kapila researches and teaches modern Indian history and global
political thought at the Faculty of History and is Fellow and Director
of Studies at Corpus Christi College at the University of Cambridge. She
was educated at Punjab University where she was university topper, JNU
and SOAS and prior to Cambridge, she has held academic appointments at
Oxford University and Tufts University. Widely published she is author
and editor of An Intellectual History for India (CUP, 2010) and co
-editor Political Thought in Action: Bhagavad Gita and Modern India
(CUP, 2013). Her publications cover the range of themes and concepts
from psychoanalysis, race, science and violence have appeared in top
journals including Past and Present, Modern Intellectual History, Public
Culture and also serves on the editorial board of the Journal of History
of Ideas. Her book Violent Fraternity: Global Political Thought in the
Indian Age will be published by Princeton University Press early next
year (2020). She also does commentary for national and international media.