The Curious Career of Shunya: Politics and Metaphysics of Caste Thinking in India
Thinking across time often stumbles upon the disciplinary division between the metaphysical and the sociological. How does a historian trained in the modern discipline of history engage ideas from the past which deal with metahuman, cosmic and/or spiritual forces – without discounting them as mere ideology, i.e. false and sublimated consciousness, or indeed exporting them to the anthropologists’ country of culture and religion? In this paper I engage with this question by thinking through discontinuous histories of Shunya, a metaphysical concept often translated as the Void, as it came to play out in traditions of caste thinking and caste radicalism in India. I also ask whether and how traces from the precolonial past may animate critical thinking in our contemporary.

To join the mailing list to receive more information and Zoom links for the series, please email zobia.haq@mansfield.ox.ac.uk.
Date: 8 February 2021, 16:00
Venue: Online with Zoom
Speaker: Prathama Banerjee (Centre for the Study of Developing Societies)
Organising department: Faculty of History
Organiser: Zobia Haq (University of Oxford)
Organiser contact email address: zobia.haq@mansfield.ox.ac.uk
Part of: South Asian Intellectual History Seminar
Booking required?: Required
Booking email: zobia.haq@mansfield.ox.ac.uk
Audience: Public
Editor: Zobia Haq