Following the death of his guru, Socrates, it is said that Plato asked a powerful question: ‘how are we to live?’ This question became central to all his writings after the cruel death of his master. The trauma of the death of Socrates had pushed Plato out of the city walls and he gathered his disciples under the grove...
Hindutva and The Play of Signs
Hindutva has become a war-machine. It is directed against the secular fabric of our country. Most of its adherents like to stay under its semantic glow. It means several things to several people. it is a counter-sign or an empty signifier that changes its meaning depending on the context. To its adherents, it is milk and honey. To its...
Opening Possibilities of Being Indians
Sigmund Freud had taught us that unconscious is terra incognita. But Jacques Lacan taught us that it is structured like a language. Both Freud and Lacan held that it is possible for us to interpret its messages. Now that the unconscious that is structured like a language as Lacan would want us to think is structured not by everyday...
(Un)democratising Democracy
The eruption of the binary of national/anti-national into the public sphere of our country appears to be a way of (un)democratising our democracy. We as a nation are passing through narcissistic crises that trigger most of us to view everything that afflicts us through the prism of nationalism which itself is not national enough. We seem to have steadily...
