We are facing a killerati in coronavirus. We also have another cultural virus that has been afflicting us for centuries. It is the virus of caste. It has mutated over time and today it has become what we call Hindutva. Both these viruses are lethal and have killer instincts. We may regard them as two sides of the same...
Being Real at the Time of Coronavirus – I
Our cough has always been dangerous. Today it has become hazardous. We may still not cough humanity to death. We can certainly give it a death blow. This is why masks are used to censor this danger in our public places. Don’t trespass has become a norm. It forbids our cough or spits in public. Wearing a mask is...
Being Susegad at a Time of Coronavirus – III
At a time of great uncertainty , we Goans will do well by unearthing the critical power of our susegad attitude. It being a performative anticipatory predisposition is reflexive but not mindless. It has the mind of its own and is associated with what I called zero thinking. It is a transcendental form of living that immerses into the...
Being Susegad at a Time of Coronavirus – II
Zero is not just an empty space holder. It is also a multiplier of space and value. The power of zero is mathematically fully explored. One can also find its philosophical explorations. Zero opens an unbound space. It truly presents a blank slate. It is a matrix of power that can lead to fresh germination of ideas and visions....
Being Susegad at a Time of Coronavirus – I
The susegad attitude is unique to Goans. It is reflexive for us. We cannot fully theorize it. It is like a floating signifier. This is so because it makes our identity. Claude Lewi-Strauss , French anthropologist teaches that ‘identity is a sort of virtual home to which it is essential that we refer to explain certain things.’ Maybe we...
Religion at a time of Coronavirus
Coronavirus has proved to be counter-public in all its senses. All publics have been forced to go private. One of the most visible among them is religion. The roots of the process of political and moral contestations of the role of religion can be traced in European Enlightenment. Coronavirus has simply offered no time for any such contestation of...
Coronavirus and the Second Coming of (Hu)Man
Coronavirus has bridged the gap between life and death. The distant death has become a near actuality. We are challenged to live with an imminent death. The undoing of life has entered our life and disrupted our ways of being human. It is time to think about human life in its integrity in the wake of the global pandemic....
Enjoyment and the Corona Moment of Humanity
There is a joy of breaking the law. This law-breaking happens behind the eyes of the law. It happens in a hiding way. One enjoys breaking the law behind the back of God so to say. Humans like a kind of rupture of God’s gaze when they enjoy it. Psychoanalysis teaches that the possibility of enjoyment depends on breaking...
Critical Lessons from the Corona Moment of Humanity
Existentialists taught us that we are all thrown into the world. It means that we are not at home in the world but have to adapt and make ourselves at home. Martin Heidegger says that our thrown-ness does not close our fate but opens possibilities of being in the world. Religious language mellows or tones down these rather harsh...
Learning, Unlearning and Relearning
Coronavirus has put us all into catastrophic and heart-rending conditions. People are dying gasping for breath. But we saw a blatant unpreparedness of the Government and appalling insensitivity of the ruling benches that seem to direct all energies into winning elections forgetting the sufferings and deaths of the people. If this attitude to win elections and even to build...
