Conference paper

Appeared in: The Proceedings of the Twenty-First World Congress of Philosophy, Band 2, Social and Political Philosophy

Editor list: McBride, W

Publication year: 2006

Pages: 257-262

ISBN: 978-975-7748-34-2

DOI Link: https://doi.org/10.5840/wcp2120062123

Conference: 21st World Congress of Philosophy

Abstract: 

Anti-essentialism, antiuniversalism, anti-foundationalism, fragmentation of subjectivity, pluralization of truths are feared to entail the danger of forfeiture of possibilities for critical counter discourses. But the deconstruction of categories is not inevitably the death of politics; rather, the postmodernist intervention of canonical power /knowledge alliances facilitates the recovery of "other" strategies of resistance concerning world problems from "nonconventional" sources that have hitherto been invalidated by mainstream discourses. Thus the crisis triggered by postmodern critique could hold immense opportunities for new configurations of politics to emerge through micro-politics of permanent resistance and diversification of discourses of subversion. Political activism today stands in a complicated parasitical relationship of debt and defiance vis-ä-vis the postmodernist discourse, which, despite many shortcomings, does offer possibilities of thinking the "Other". To this end, I seek to go back into the history of philosophy and reclaim tools of resistance from "different" cultural contexts to revitalize and re-imagine our oppositional practices in the present. This paper attempts to experiment with the concept of non-violence [Ahimsa) as conceptualized within the Indian philosophical tradition.

Harvard Citation style: Dhawan, N. (2006) On the (Im)possibility of Non-Violent Resistance in Violent Times. The Politics of Ahimsa, in McBride, W. (ed.) The Proceedings of the Twenty-First World Congress of Philosophy, Band 2, Social and Political Philosophy. Istandbul. pp. 257-262. https://doi.org/10.5840/wcp2120062123

APA Citation style: Dhawan, N. (2006). On the (Im)possibility of Non-Violent Resistance in Violent Times. The Politics of Ahimsa. In McBride, W. (Ed.), The Proceedings of the Twenty-First World Congress of Philosophy, Band 2, Social and Political Philosophy. (pp. 257-262). https://doi.org/10.5840/wcp2120062123