Divya Dwivedi

Divya Dwivedi
File:Divya-dwivedi.jpg Divya Dwivedi
Alma mater	St. Stephen's College, Delhi
Era	Contemporary philosophy
Region	philosophy
School	Continental philosophy Deconstruction (Post-Metaphysics)
Institutions	Indian Institute of Technology Delhi
Main interests	Ontology, philosophy of literature, philosophy of politics, narratology, Anastasis, alternative traditions
Notable ideas	Hypophysics, Anastasis, Functional isolation, transitivity, polynomia, Comprehending law

Divya Dwivedi is a philosopher based in the subcontinent . She teaches at the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi. Her writings and lectures deal with the resurrection of philosophy, and the specificity of literature and politics. As a narratologist she researches the specificities of narrative systems. A constant concern in her writings has been the state of politics in India .

Biography

Divya Dwivedi completed her Bachelors degree from Lady Shri Ram College Delhi and her Masters from St. Stephen's College Delhi where she taught for a brief period. She has a doctoral degree from the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi on ontology of the literary . She is a member of the International Comparative Literature Association with Robert J. C. Young, Stefan Willer and others.

Works

Dwivedi defines philosophy as a disruptive practice following from the model of Socrates, "philosophy would be the disruption of every given ‘way of life’ to be understood as unexamined life". She maintains that there is "a necessary relation between philosophy and politics". She has co-authored the book Gandhi and Philosophy: On Theological Anti-politics published by Bloomsbury Academic with the philosopher Shaj Mohan. Jean-Luc Nancy wrote the foreword to Gandhi and Philosophy. Nancy described the originality of its contributions in terms of the relation revealed by her between truth and suffering, and for opening a new path for philosophy beyond humanism, metaphysics, and hypophysics .

Gandhi and Philosophy: On Theological Anti-politics

Gandhi and Philosophy is a philosophical study of M. K. Gandhi's writings which leads to a path beyond the theological and nihilistic directions in philosophy. Bernard Stiegler has commented that this work shows the limits of nihilism in our eschatological contemporaneity and a new path. Dwivedi and Mohan call this path the anastasis of philosophy. This book brings attention to the parallel tendency to metaphysics in philosophy which is hypophysics. Hypophysics is defined as "a conception of nature as value". The distance from nature that human beings and things come to have through the work of technology lessens their value, or brings them closer to evil. The path beyond metaphysics and hypophysics is created through the invention of a new conceptual order which allows philosophy to step outside the regime of sign, signifier, and text. The inventiveness and the constructivism of this work has been noted by Robert Bernasconi as "re-inventing language". In The Book Review, Tankha too confirms the creative philosophical project of the book saying that "the authors, in engaging with Gandhi’s thought, create their categories, at once descriptive and evaluative" while pointing to the difficulty entailed by the rigour of a "A seminal if difficult read for those with an appetite for philosophy". The book's conceptual inventions have been noted to have come from mathematics and biology.

"The authors invent new formal concepts out of the sciences and mathematics. They engage closely and argumentatively with important thinkers including the biologist Jacques Monod, philosopher Foucault, mathematician Hermann Weyl, anthropologist Pierre Clastres and the burlesque artist Dita Von Teese."

The constructionist tendency of this book places it between the dominant philosophical traditions and styles such as continental philosophy and analytical philosophy. In an interview conducted by Adèle Van Reeth for France Culture at the UNESCO head quarters Dwivedi stated that one must not recognize tradition as an adjective of philosophical practice. The conclusion of Gandhi and Philosophy emphasizes the construction of a new dimension in philosophy.

"Anastasis is the obscure beginning which would gather the occidental and the oriental in order to make of them a chrysalis and set off the imagos born with their own spans and skies; these skies and the imagos set against them will refuse to trade in orientations; and these skies will be invisible to the departed souls of Hegel who sought mercury in the darkest nights."

Other Works

Divya Dwivedi, in Gandhi and Philosophy and in other places, has taken a consistent stand against postcolonial theory and subaltern studies. In an interview given to Mediapart she said that postcolonial theory and Hindu nationalism are two versions of the same theory, and that they are both upper caste political projects. Dwivedi noted that in the field of feminism postcolonial theory remains an upper caste theory which has been preventing lower caste feminists from opening their own currents in the context of the Me too movement. Dwivedi wrote in the introduction to a special issue of the journal La Revue des Femmes-Philosophers edited by her that postcolonial theory is continuous with Hindu nationalism.

"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."

Dwivedi has edited anthologies addressing political issues. The volume titled The Public Sphere: From Outside the West tackled the radical transformation of the public sphere and cultural landscapes through new technologies and political forms such as populism. Dwivedi's contributions to narratology or narrative theory explore the possibilities of the ontology of literature. She has been approaching the questions of the ontology of literature through several directions including the functions of distinct narrative voices. The book Narratology and Ideology: Negotiating Context, Form, and Theory in Postcolonial Narratives, which was edited by Dwivedi, with Henrik Skov Nielsen and Richard Walsh, is an intervention in the debate on form and context. Her contributions in this work continue her project of critiquing postcolonial theory. It examines the ambition of the central concepts of both fields, namely “post-colonial” and “narrative”, to serve as global categories of cultural analysis.

External links

• Bloomsbury - Divya Dwivedi - Divya Dwivedi Author page at Bloomsbury Publishing
• Divya Dwivedi | Humanities & Social Sciences Faculty page at IIT Delhi.
• Divya Dwivedi and Shaj Mohan : Exclusive News Stories by Divya Dwivedi and Shaj Mohan on Current Affairs, Events at The Wire Essays online at The Wire.
• Hindu nationalism and why 'being a philosopher in India can get you killed' Interview at Mediapart.
• Une nuit de philosophie (1/4) : Philosopher en Inde Interview with Les Chemins de la philosophie available as Podcast.
• Robert Bernasconi speaking at the launch of 'Gandhi & Philosophy' Lecture given by Robert Bernasconi on Gandhi and Philosophy: On Theological Anti-politics.
• World Philosophy Day - Presentation of the 2018 Issue of the Women Philosophers' Journal La Revue des Femmes-Philosophes of UNESCO issue edited by Divya Dwivedi available for download.
• Postcolonial Perspectives from South Asia Lecture on postcolonial theory and philosophy at the Goethe-Institut Indonesia.
• Divya Dwivedi Publications with Economic and Political Weekly.