Theorizing Rape and Potential Rapists

I have often felt that the urge to theorize does more disservice to the disciplines apart from the waste of time and resources that happens anyway. The discontent is about the sort of scholarship prevails that has no link to practice. Then that begets the question if one should even care for such scholarship. It … Continue reading Theorizing Rape and Potential Rapists →

Return to Freud (via Lacan)

The "unconscious" isn't a bathtub bubble emerging from a good theoretical lather in which the intellectual has been wallowing. I have been wrong about it. And being contemptuous of psychoanalysis as a discipline was too uninformed (didn't people say psychoanalysis is dead?). In fact, a realization waylaid me this morning that the idea of unconscious … Continue reading Return to Freud (via Lacan) →

Foucault Redux

On Technologies of the Self Foucault is back! Here at the university, where people just don’t get tired of including a paper or two in every course, from the wide range of topics he has written or lectured on. And it turns out that he is also back in academia going by citation figures of … Continue reading Foucault Redux →

Alernative Dispute Resolution & Legal System Reform in India

This is the summer of dreaming dangerously (yes, Zizek too is in the summer reading list). I have been trying to pack in three different projects in this summer plus a travel in the subcontinent. Here goes a brief on the first internship at the Bangalore Mediation Center in Bangalore on mediation as a method … Continue reading Alernative Dispute Resolution & Legal System Reform in India →

Construction Workers and Amendments to BOCW Act

A few months back, I was studying the Building and Other Construction Workers Act, 1996 which is the first formal and exclusive piece of legislation which provides for social welfare of the construction workers in India. Questions explored were - what explains such poor work, health and social conditions in which the construction workers live? … Continue reading Construction Workers and Amendments to BOCW Act →

Sociology of Law & Labour Welfare

I have been studying the building and construction workers in Bangalore as a part of an academic research for over six months now. The study emerges from a simple observation that many of us might have made commuting around in this city - that what explains such poor work, health and social conditions in which … Continue reading Sociology of Law & Labour Welfare →

State-Judiciary pact in the neoliberal times – MFC Discussion [3]

A sharp, clear speaking labour lawyer presents this case of Andhra Pradesh Mining Development Corporation (APMDC) which violated occupational health and safety laws in a quartz mine opened in 1964 in a remote location in Mehboobnagar district. Case Status: Ongoing, Writ Petition in Andhra Pradesh High Court Facts: A quartz mine of APMDC operated from 1964 to … Continue reading State-Judiciary pact in the neoliberal times – MFC Discussion [3] →

India, Partha Chatterjee’s Political Society & Foucault

A fellow traveller writes in after his recent trip to Himalayas and then deep down south India to this holy town Rameshwaram. He says, "Something binds us! Something beyond the gravels of Government! Something beyond the North-South Blocks at New Delhi! We were immersed upon this question during flashes of free mind. But we were … Continue reading India, Partha Chatterjee’s Political Society & Foucault →

Law, our social world and obeying the law

This morning, an interesting question was posed, which I learn is also a point of start in first year of law degree programs in India. It is- What is law in our social world? A related question that I was grappling with earlier was if we have an obligation to always obey the law. Both … Continue reading Law, our social world and obeying the law →

Scientific Knowledge explored through Theory of Evolution

The following is a paper I wrote on the nature of scientific knowledge examined through Theory of Evolution. This was a paper developed as a part of a course in evolution that I signed up for this year. On nature of scientific knowledge Theory of evolution from its formative stages to the current is a … Continue reading Scientific Knowledge explored through Theory of Evolution →