Divya Dwivedi

Dwivedi said that philosophy is a disruptive practice following from the Socratic model, "philosophy would be the disruption of every given 'way of life' to be understood as unexamined life".[10] Following from it there is "a necessary relation between philosophy and politics". In an interview conducted by Adèle Van Reeth for France Culture at the UNESCO headquarters Dwivedi stated that one must not recognize tradition as an adjective of philosophical practice.[11] Her work has a relation to the school of deconstruction.[12]

Divya Dwivedi is opposed to postcolonial theory[13] and subaltern studies. In an interview with Mediapart Dwivedi said that postcolonial theory and Hindu nationalism are two versions of the same theory, and that they are both upper caste political projects.[14] Dwivedi noted that in the field of feminism postcolonial theory remains an upper caste theoretical standpoint which has been preventing lower caste feminists from opening their own currents in the context of the Me too movement.[15] Dwivedi wrote in her editorial introduction to the UNESCO journal La Revue des Femmes-Philosophes that postcolonial theory is continuous with Hindu nationalism.[16]

Together, postcolonialism and subaltern theory have established the paradigm of research in humanities and social sciences—in India and abroad—over the past four decades. "Eurocentrism", "historicisation", and "postcolonialism" are also the operative terms through which the Hindu nationalist discourse conserves the caste order.

In 2018, Dwivedi co-authored Gandhi and Philosophy: On Theological Anti-politics with philosopher Shaj Mohan. The book examines different aspects of Mahatma Gandhi's thought from within a unique framework and discuss his impact on 20th-century philosophy.[17] Jean-Luc Nancy wrote the foreword.[18]

The book proposes that in addition to the metaphysical tendency in philosophy there is a 'hypophysical tendency'; hypophysics is defined as "a conception of nature as value". The distance from nature that human beings and natural objects come to have through the effects of technology lessens their value, or brings them closer to evil.[19] Gandhi's concept of passive force or nonviolence is an implication of his hypophysical commitment to nature.[20] Dwivedi made a separation between metaphysics and hypophysics in her Royal Institute of Philosophy lecture, "While both seek to diagnose the 'west', each opens on to distinct futures: metaphysics to an "other thinking" than philosophy, hypophysics to the other of thinking itself".[21]

Gandhi and Philosophy identifies racism with caste practices and controversially ascribes a form of racism to Gandhi. One reviewer wrote, "In the book, Mohan and Dwivedi argue that Gandhi not only upheld caste, but also viewed it as India's unique contribution to the world!".[12] When The Indian Express reported on the developing uproar resulting from allegations of Gandhi's racism, Dwivedi said in response that Gandhi was a specific type of racist. She said that the ongoing debates on the topic of Gandhi's racism are misleading which are conducted superficially by selectively quoting Gandhi for convenience,[4]

It misleads us into thinking that Gandhi is a garden variety racist who wanted to preserve traditional discriminations and segregation mainly because of the prestige of the past or to conserve existing social mores. In fact, Gandhi invented a new basis for racism, which is based on moral superiority.

Writing about the book in The Washington Post, Krithika Varagur charged that Gandhi's political project created the conditions for the rise of Hindu nationalism in present-day India by making religion an integral part of anti-colonialism. Dwivedi was quoted in the Post as saying, "Gandhi played a huge role in solidifying the Hindu majority identity in India today".[22]

She said that Gandhi's abuses of his power were often interpreted as truthfulness. According to Gandhi and Philosophy Gandhi's ideal state and the absolute security state are virtually indistinguishable. Since Gandhi was not committed to liberal left politics his political programs have the risk of getting appropriated by the far right .[23][24]

That is, the attempts in India which still continue to hold Gandhi as the fakir of peace between the ethnic groupings are still playing, often unwittingly, a game to bring about "Hindu Raj" interpreted as secularism.

Mohan and Dwivedi wrote that M. K. Gandhi shares the responsibility for inventing Hindu religion and Hindi language. They said that Gandhi contributed to creating a political culture based on religion and for giving a Hindu character for India as a new country.[25] Gandhi and Philosophy argues that M. K. Gandhi's insensitivity towards the suffering of the Jewish people under the Nazi state follows from his theory of truth. Gandhi suggested to the Jewish people "to expose oneself to annihilation in order that one is conjoined to absolute truth. In their own annihilation the Jewish people were to have the non-experience of Absolute Truth – 'a joyful sleep'."[18]

According to Jean-Luc Nancy Gandhi and Philosophy leads to a new orientation outside of the theological, metaphysical and nihilistic tendencies in philosophy. Bernard Stiegler said that this work "give us to reconsider the history of nihilism in the eschatological contemporaneity and shows its ultimate limits" and offers a new path.[26] Gandhi and Philosophy calls this new beginning the anastasis of philosophy. Robert Bernasconi said that the inventiveness and the constructivism behind the concept of ana-stasis, or the overcoming of stasis, has a relation to the project of re-beginning of philosophy by Heidegger.[27]

The Book Review said that the philosophical project of Gandhi and Philosophy is to create new evaluative categories, "the authors, in engaging with Gandhi's thought, create their categories, at once descriptive and evaluative" while pointing to the difficulty given by the rigour of a "A seminal if difficult read for those with an appetite for philosophy".[28]

Dwivedi's work was criticised from the point of view methodological and stylistic difficulty. Robert Bernasconi noted that Dwivedi's Gandhi and Philosophy is a difficult book and it is "not a book that you will understand at first reading".[27] The difficulty due to the constructivist style was noted by other authors as well.[28][29] Tridip Suhrud pointed to the "opacity" of style in The Hindu and explained it as the effect of "reflections on language".[30] Gandhi and Philosophy was criticised from the point of view of the recent mounting criticisms of Gandhi in India and internationally. It was said that Gandhi and Philosophy might be exalting Gandhi while being very critical of him at the same time. The ambiguous approach to Gandhi was described in one of the commentaries in The Indian Express as "Mohan and Dwivedi have done a masterful job of avoiding the binary fork — hagiography or vituperation — as much of Gandhi and hagiography comes from a need to spiritualise Gandhi".[12] Economic and Political Weekly pointed to Dwivedi's participation in the paradigm of "western philosophy", especially when Gandhi's goal was to create an alternative to Eurocentrism. EPW said that her work may be of interest only to continental philosophy as she does not participate in Indic discourses.[31] In The Indian Express Aakash Joshi commented on the negative implications of Gandhi and Philosophy and said that through this book "Gandhi can be seen as a nihilist — someone who even decries sex for reproduction and would like human society to wither away". Joshi stressed that this point of view is opposed to "secularism of a particular kind, freedom from colonial concepts, caste without violence".[4]

The philosopher Barbara Cassin said that Dwivedi's theoretical stand reveals the actual political stakes in postcolonial theory. Cassin said "She is a philosopher" whose refusal to make "the post-colonial the first and the last word undoubtedly allows us to clarify with greater precision what is happening to women, philosophers and intellectuals in India today".[32] Dwivedi has edited anthologies addressing political and philosophical issues. The volume titled The Public Sphere: From Outside the West[33] treated the radical transformation of the public sphere and cultural landscapes through new technologies and political forms such as populism. In the field of narratology or narrative theory Dwivedi explores the questions of the ontology of literature through several directions including the functions of distinct narrative voices.[34][35] The book Narratology and Ideology: Negotiating Context, Form, and Theory in Postcolonial Narratives published by Ohio State University Press,[36] which was edited by Dwivedi, with Henrik Skov Nielsen and Richard Walsh, is an intervention in the debate on form and context. The book examines the ambition of the central concepts of both fields, namely "post-colonial" and "narrative", to serve as global categories of cultural analysis.[37][38]