BITS Faculty Publications
Permanent URI for this communityhttp://localhost:4000/handle/123456789/1867
Browse
13 results
Search Results
Item Impersonal subjectivity and aesthetic self in abhinavagupta and nietzsche(Vishvanatha Kaviraja Institute of Comparative Literature and Aesthetics, 2025) Yadav, AnupamThis paper engages Abhinavagupta and Nietzsche in terms of their views on the classical Sanskrit nāṭya and classical Greek tragedy. Although disparate in their aesthetics and philosophical frameworks, the two thinkers converge in characterising the aesthetic experience of nāṭya and tragedy as a universalised consciousness. For Abhinavagupta, it is an aesthetic pleasure in a repose (viśrānti) in one’s own consciousness, which is bliss, while for Nietzsche, it is a metaphysical solace in oneness with one living reality. Analysing the aesthetic theories of the two thinkers vis-a-vis their metaphysical positions, we have conceptualised the idea of the aesthetic self as the experiencer of the transformative experiences of the two dramatic arts in the impersonal modes of subjectivity.Item Significance of feminist advocacy practices for sdg 4(2025-02) Yadav, AnupamThe cherished goals of SDG 4 of ensuring inclusive and equitable quality education and promotion of life-long learning opportunities point to enfranchising the epistemically marginalized. Advocacy of representing, arguing or recommending a disadvantaged epistemic position is to envisage change in social and epistemic contexts. The normative ethos within which we internalize, affirm and challenge knowledge is an instituted social imaginary of coercive nature. Thus, taking into account the situatedness of the knower and critically engaging with imaginative possibilities is to shift the focus from the dominant instituted narratives to democratically negotiating knowledge-claims. The Beti Bachavo Beti Padhavo (BBBP) and Understanding of Lifelong Learning for All in Society (ULLAS) projects of India reaffirm this factor. The feminist advocacy of the subjugated knowledges also emphasises ecological thinking of co-habitation in bringing about social transformation. The sustainable goals of inclusive and equitable education and promotion of life-long learning need to be analysed from a critical understanding of the power-nexused undercurrents of knowledge and learning processes and reinforcing the newer methods and possibilities of change. The paper argues that adopting feminist advocacy practices as educational methodologies are concomitant to SDG 4.Key words, Advocacy, Critiquing social imaginary, Ecological thinking, SDG 4, BBBP, ULLASItem Ambedkar’s Critique of Sacred Testimonies and Liberatory Practices(Transcript-verlag, 2024) Yadav, AnupamBabasaheb Dr. Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar (1891–1956), a contemporary Indianthinker and the chief architect of the Constitution of India, has significantly im-pacted the socio-religious landscape of India. His vision of social change derivesfromthesubversionofthe“grandnarrative”rootedintheHindureligiousscriptureswhich govern the religious-cultural predicament of Indian society. Ambedkar’smethod can be regarded as critical,hermeneutic,inter-textual and historical in na-ture.Itisthroughthesemethodologicalstances,hevehementlyquestionstheroleofVedic testimony for committing violence of social injustice,particularly,in shapingthe destiny of the Untouchables1and women. In intertwining social injustice andknowledge-question, Ambedkar can be aligned with the contemporary Westerndiscourseonepistemicinjusticethathasevolvedinterestincriticallyevaluatingthetestimonial aspect of knowledge. As a valid epistemic practice, testimony, in theordinary sense, is recognition of the cognitive labour and epistemic contributionof people in terms of their beliefs and justifications.Articulation of testimony,par-ticularly, in creating and fostering social identity which is exclusionary in nature,nonetheless, is the site of epistemic, ethical and social injustices. Besides the ideaof personal testimony, there is another conception of testimony, where certaintexts are granted insurmountable authorityItem Epistemic injustice and violence(Transcript-verlag, 2024) Yadav, AnupamThe practice of philosophy has led to both emancipation and exclusion in society. Questions around how philosophy should be practiced, who should engage in it, and with which issues philosophy should deal are subject to debate and controversy. This volume is dedicated to the special role of epistemic injustice and violence in philosophy. By shedding light on the inherent unjust structures of academic philosophy, the contributors to this volume help to better understand this powerful tool that impacts the academic landscape as well as individual and collective ways of being. From graphic novel to philosophical essay, they design a concept of transformative philosophy and offer various entry points to the conversation.Item Identity, Agency and Historical Consciousness(International Journal of Multidisciplinary Educational Research, 2012-09) Yadav, AnupamThe idea of human agency shifts the locus of the self from the ‘what’ to the ‘who’ question, i.e. from the Cartesian rationalism or Platonic soul-substance to the domain of action and responsibility. The identity question is about an agent – a moral agent who, as Ricoeur says, is an ‘acting and suffering being’. However, the quest for ‘who am I?’ does not individuate the self in the sense of representing the personal identity-profile that complements the dialogical-communicative self, though it is true that there is an existential constitution of individuality that depends upon but is not reducible to some larger meaning-giving structure of social reality. Burdened with the loads of “who” questions concerning accountability and social responsibility, the quest for identity expanses onto the horizon of historical consciousness. It unties its bondage from the logic of ‘I can’ and ‘I do’, from the centre-stage of the present (which is assertive of one’s identity), and merges with the larger domain of historical consciousness that yields identity in the articulation of the three-fold present.Item The Corporate Cognitive-Existential Delinking:An Ethical Appraisal(International Journal of Management, 2017-01) Yadav, AnupamThe paper argues that the corporate rationality is essentially delinking of the cognitive-existential integrality and hence ethically threatening. The examination is inspired by Gadamer's critique of the Kantian rule-bound, axiomatic morality from the perspectives of the classical Roman idea of sensuscommunis (inherent in which is the idea of good or social solidarity) and the Aristotelian ethics. Gadamer's critique is insightful in analyzing the nature of agency in the corporate domain and its moral implications. Against the backdrop of this moral discourse, the paper concedes that the detached, theoretical corporate functioning is abortive of the sense of good defying compensation even in the idea of corporate social responsibility in which we generally capture the essence of corporate ethics and its existential concerns.Item Epistemology Revisited: A Feminist Critique(Bridgewater State University, 2018) Yadav, AnupamThe Platonic legacy of Western epistemology has been severely attacked for its dominant exclusivist and coercive rationality in the discourses of anti-foundationalism and anti-representationalism, which have also given rise to several alternative epistemologies. The feminist discourse challenges the exclusivist and appropriationist logic of Western epistemology, or science, for being highly gender-biased and oppressive. Weininger’s remark that ‘No woman is really interested in science, she may deceive herself and many good men, but bad psychologists, by thinking so’ is one of such silencing masculine diktats that have deeper roots in the sexist, racist and classist biases. The feminists’ revolts against the power/knowledge dynamics and subsequent epistemological directions emerge from a reflexive undertaking into the nature and production of knowledge. The paper examines the objectivity debates within the feminist science circles in this regard and explores the space between the oppressive dichotomies of nature/culture, core/peripheral, absolute/historical to articulate an alternative epistemology in the feminists’ larger political program of social justice.Item Solidarity, Knowledge and Social Hope(Athens Journal of Philosophy, 2022-06) Yadav, AnupamThe paper investigates the ideas of solidarity and social hope textured in critiquing western epistemology and politics of knowledge production. Richard Rorty’s anti-foundationalist, anti-representationalist critique argues for the de-hierarchization of knowledge-claims. The cultural-conversational turn to knowledge and social hope in the creation of democratic community finds its rationale in the conception of human solidarity, in the most praiseworthy human abilities of trust and cooperation. The idea of social hope, a critical engagement of the knower with knowledge production in the feminist discourse, however, is another anti-essentialist stance that illuminates the various axes of domination, which the pragmatization of knowledge and methods does not account for. It is in this context, that the paper examines the politics of solidarity vis-à-vis knowledge construction in Donna Haraway, Chandra Talpade Mohanty and Marnia Lazreg and argues that solidarity as dissent provides the knower a chance to articulate hope in the transformative goals of knowledge and educationItem Human Agency and the Quest for Selfhood(Tulika Books, 2023-01) Yadav, Anupam‘To have self-knowledge is to know thyself’ – this philosophical dictum of ultimate knowledge has prevailed in the discourses of the Upanishads and classical Greek philosophy. It is more explicitly analysed in contemporary philosophical, moral psychology that traces the epistemic and normative content of knowledge claim along with the normative attitude of the knower – the person. The performative character of the person unfolds the involved normative content in the very articulation of action. Many contemporary philosophers, such as Akeel Bilgrami, Crispin Wright, Christine Korsgaard and Mrinal Miri, have explicitly discussed the relevance of self-knowledge vis-a-vis the discourse of normativity. This volume addresses the notion of self-knowledge as relevant in the formation of moral identity, and also focuses on the broad themes enunciated by Akeel Bilgrami in his seminal book, Self-Knowledge and ResentmentItem Critical Perspectives on the National Policy on Education 2016(Sage, 2017-08) Nair, Harikrishnan Gopinadhan; Bhattacharya, Somdatta; Shukla, Tanu; Yadav, AnupamThis article brings together critical perspectives on a broad range of issues that emerge from a reading of the National Policy on Education 2016. The issues vary from accountability to transdisciplinarity and from the marginalization of transgender people to value education. Such a complex task of critiquing this policy document cannot be accomplished by an individual alone. This task must be borne by a team of scholars with training in diverse fields. Working in a team however generates divergences as well as convergences. Yet no attempt has been made to iron out the creases emanating from differences in opinions, nor persist with the search for an underlying singularity, nor enforce a consensus. Such is the uncertain nature of the task of reforming higher education.