“Architectures of Inequality: Social, Aesthetic, and Philosophical Perspectives”
International Conference
18, 19, 20 February 2025
Seminar Hall & Senate Hall, IIT Delhi
Organized by Divya Dwivedi, Dickens Leonard M., & Yashpal Jogdand
REGISTRATION CLOSED
This international conference aims to explore social inequalities in terms of structures and systems rather than individual biases alone. It is animated by the insight that races, and descent-based identifications are neither biological (or even merely cultural constructs), nor are racisms merely “interpersonal prejudice or discrimination” (Page and Thomas 1994). Rather, as intimated in the continental philosophical tradition by Jean-Paul Sartre and Frantz Fanon, racisms are systemic. Similarly in the US in early 1970s, sociologists began to expose “institutional racism” (Stokey Carmichael and Charles V. Hamilton (1967) which was further analysed by the English philosophers Michael Dummet and Ann Dummet in terms of the function of “keeping despised groups at the bottom of the heap and then blaming them.” How in the past and in the present do ‘‘the inequality regimes’’ function, defined as they are as “interrelated practices, processes, action and meanings that result in and maintain class, gender and race inequalities’’ (Joan Acker 2006)? What are their likely forms of perpetuation in the future?
The duplex of material conditions on the one hand and performativity on the other calls for analyses of social, political, as well as aesthetic aspects of institutions of social reproduction, of knowledge production and policy (state, civil society, universities and the larger public spheres) as well as of aesthetic production and circulation (Hall 1997, Velayutham & Devdas 2020, Longkumer 2023) not to mention the methods of destruction and erasure (Stone & Bajjaly 2008, Walasek 2015). This conference will focus on the various architectures of inequality, both in the different zones of complex contemporary societies, and also in their histories where their changing morphologies can be detected and traced. Such research will also benefit from philosophical and theoretical attention to the kinds of caste-blindness (Jogdand 2023, 2024), denials, and other “epistemologies of ignorance” (Charles W. Mills 1997), which are not located solely in the formal political contexts or even in the everydayness of “ordinary racialized regimes” (Kikon 2021) but also in academic formations.
Programme
DAY 1 - TUESDAY, 18 February
All Sessions in SEMINAR HALL
(Ground floor, Main Building)
REGISTRATIONS: 9h30-10h
10h -11h15
Welcome & Introduction:
Yashpal Jogdand, IIT Delhi
KEYNOTE LECTURE: MEENA DHANDA
(Professor of Philosophy and Cultural Politics,University of Wolverhampton & Visiting Professor, LSE)
“Encountering Social Injustice”
Farhana Ibrahim, Head Dept. of Huss, IIT Delhi (Chair)
TEA/COFFEE (Main Foyer, ground floor, Main Building)
SESSION 1: 11h30 to 13h
LANGUAGES, LITERATURES, INEQUALITIES
Sahiinii Veikho, IIT Delhi (Chair)
Roluahpuia, IIT Roorkee: “'Citizenship's shadow': race and the abjection of the 'tribal other' in India”
Nove C, IIT Delhi: “Legitimization of Social Exclusivity: Interpreting Temsula Ao’s Essays on the Ao-Naga Tribal Customary Law”
Manjeet Boruah, JNU Delhi: “Language and literary culture of an imperial frontier: Revisiting an intellectual history of Assam, 1930s-40s”
LUNCH BREAK 13h-14h (Main Foyer, ground floor, Main Building)
SESSION 2: 14h-15h30
PSYCHOLOGY OF INEQUALITY
Purnima Singh, IIT Delhi (Chair)
Suryodaya Sharma, Krea University: ““It’s all in the mindset”: Dilemmas of Inequality in the Savarna ‘Caste Talks’”
Angel Sophan, Christ University: ““You Don’t Have Your Periods, Do You?”: Caste and Gender in psychological field research.”
Yashpal Jogdand, IIT Delhi: “Emotions of Inequality: Humiliation Rhetoric in the speeches of Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar”
TEA/COFFEE
SESSION 3: 15h45 - 17h15
AESTHETICS
Zeynep Direk, Koç University (Chair)
Raj Kumar, Delhi University: “Ethics of Dalit Aesthetics”
Aarushi Punia, Independent Scholar: “Literary Misrepresentations of Dalit Women in Upper Caste Writings”
Sowjanya Tamalapakula, Woxsen University: “Performance as Labour: Gender, Religion and Sexuality”
17h15
KEYNOTE LECTURE: ROBERT BERNASCONI
( Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Philosophy and African American Studies, Penn State University)
“Possible Futures of Critical Philosophy of Race”
Divya Dwivedi, IIT Delhi (Chair)
***
DAY 2 - WEDNESDAY, 19 February
All Sessions in SEMINAR HALL
(Ground floor, Main Building)
REGISTRATIONS: 9h30-10h
10h-11h15
KEYNOTE LECTURE: GAJENDRAN AYYATHURAI
(Anthropologist & Historian, University of Göttingen)
“Pax brahminica: Understanding the metamorphosis of the brahminical frame and the resistance against it in and beyond South Asia"
Dickens Leonard, IIT Delhi (Chair)
TEA/COFFEE
SESSION 6: 11h30–13h
METHODOLOGIES & EPISTEMOLOGIES OF INEQUALITY
Reetika Khera, IIT Delhi (Chair)
Gopika Gurudas, IIT Delhi: “Who's Afraid of Comparisons?”
Safwan Amir, Ahmedabad University: “Ordinary Muslims, Extraordinary Negotiations: Rethinking the ‘caste and Islam’ Debate
Divya Dwivedi, IIT Delhi: “Marginalysis of Caste and Race: Comparison, Analogy, Homology”
LUNCH BREAK 13h-14h
14h–15h30
ROUNDTABLE: CASTE AND PSYCHOLOGY (J-CASTE special issue):
Meena Dhanda, Wolverhampton & LSE (Chair) * Purnima Singh, IIT Delhi * Roomana Siddiqui, Aligarh Muslim University * Arvind Mishra, JNU * Angel Sophan, Christ University * Divya Dwivedi, IIT Delhi * Iram Fatima, IIT Delhi * Suryodaya Sharma, Krea University * Vinod Mishra, IIDS * Yashpal Jogdand, IIT Delhi
TEA/COFFEE
15h45 – 17h15
KEYNOTE LECTURE: ETIENNE BALIBAR
(Columbia University & Kingston University)
“The Genealogical Schema and The Future of Racisms”
Divya Dwivedi, IIT Delhi (Chair)
17h15
KEYNOTE LECTURE: NANCY TUANA
(DuPont/Class of 1949 Professor of Philosophy and Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Penn State University)
“Entanglements of Oppression: Social Pollution/Environmental Pollution”
Dickens Leonard, IIT Delhi (Chair)
***
DAY 3 - THURSDAY, 20 February
All Sessions in SENATE HALL
(Second floor, Main Building)
SESSION 10: 10h-11h15
INTERSECTIONALITY
Ravinder Kaur, IIT Delhi (Chair)
Smita Patil, IGNOU: “Return to Claims and Disciplinary Boundaries: On the Present of Caste and Gender Formulations”
Shainal Verma, IIT Delhi: “Laughing Out Loud: Dalit Women's Laughter and the Disruption of Casteist Structures”
Zeynep Direk, Koç University: “Phenomenology and intersectionality”
TEA/COFFEE
SESSION 11: 11h30–13h
SOCIO-ECONOMIC INEQUALITIES
Jayan Jose Thomas, IIT Delhi (Chair)
Venna Abhilash, PhD. JNU: “Manu Smriti and ‘Racial Genius’: Racialization, Caste Endogamy, and Anti-Caste Politics in Princely Hyderabad, 1922-1936”
Ishan Anand, IIT Delhi & Saket Moon, EPW: “Origins of “Indian Economics” and the Missing Voices of and from the Margins”
Amit Thorat, JNU Delhi: “The Case for Dalit Reparations”
CLOSING REMARKS & VOTE OF THANKS
Divya Dwivedi, IIT Delhi
***
Graphics by Rahee Punyashloka
