•  19
    The Evasive Racism of Caste—and the Homological Power of the “Aryan” Doctrine
    Critical Philosophy of Race 11 (1): 209-245. 2023.
    In the fight against racism, philosophy has to interrogate caste in its own histories and current decolonial consensus. Caste has been evading its interrogation as the oldest race theory and racist practice, which continue to oppress the lower-caste peoples who constitute the majority population of the Indian subcontinent. Caste and race are species of the hypophysics of man, which consecrates scaled intrinsic value in human nature through the notion of “being born as” by “being born to.” They a…Read more
  •  14
  •  19
    The Hypophysics of Philosophical Nationalism
    Eco-Ethica 10 43-60. 2022.
    Is there a philosophical nationalism? Reading Fichte’s Addresses to the German Nation and its use by the Nazis, Derrida concluded that all nationalisms are philosophical and onto-theological as they are posited beyond race, biology, and nature. However, Fichte’s text reveals a specific form of racism that insists on biology and nature. Fichte’s racism is a species of “hypophysics,” a consecration of nature as value. His theory of language is simultaneously biological and spiritual, these two asp…Read more
  •  19
    Homologies in Freud and Derrida
    Eco-Ethica 9 187-207. 2020.
    Freud’s late works established the schema of a more or less inexorable civilizational course built around one drive—the death drive—despite his emphatic insistence on a dual structure of two drives. This schema became influential for Critical Theory and in a more subterranean way, also for decolonial thought, and has been widely invoked during the pandemic. It indicates the extent to which drive, destruction, and mastery have consolidated into a, which not only fails to be dislodged by but even …Read more
  •  14
    Virality of Evil: Philosophy in the Time of a Pandemic (edited book)
    Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. 2021.
    The authors of this insightful and urgent collection both use the metaphor of evil as a virus or contagion and conceptualize the COVID-19 virus as a manifestation of evil to reconsider the purpose of philosophy in and for a pandemic.
  •  459
    Critical Nation
    with Shaj Mohan
    Economic and Political Weekly 42 (48): 96-103. 2007.
    Gandhi’s notion of passive-resistance is critical in two ways and defines swaraj and swadeshi, leading to his assertion that India alone is the land of redemption for the world afflicted with modern civilization, “the sheet-anchor of our hope”. “Sound at the foundation”, “India remains as it was before”, while the world speeds on, “usurp[ing] the function of Godhead” and indulg[ing] in novel experiments”. This paper aims at elaborating Gandhi’s definition of nature in terms of the scalar, speed,…Read more