"Utopia, or the Spirit of Revolution in Aurobindo Ghose’s Political Philosophy"
537 Heller Hall (ICGC)
Abstract: Aurobindo Ghose’s radical political project offers an opportunity to examine the utopian dimensions of revolutionary politics in early-twentieth-century India. Aurobindo (along with Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Bipin Chandra Pal, and Lala Lajpat Rai) represented the “Extremist” faction of the Indian National Congress, whose split from the “Moderate” wing in 1907 was based on their demand for India’s total independence (Purna Swaraj) rather than “home rule” under British authority. Despite their signal role in the struggle for independence, scant attention has been paid to their futural and utopian orientation—what Aurobindo’s brother, Barin (aka Barindra), charged as one of the principals in the notorious Alipore Bomb Conspiracy trial (1908-1909), stated in the confession extracted from him: “We were always thinking of a far-off revolution and wished to be ready for it.” My goal in this talk is to perturb the association of the concept of revolution with tainted terms such as “terror” and “violence” in order to scrutinize the conceptual and political stakes of revolutionary resistance.
Discussant: Ajay Skaria, Department of History
About the Speaker
Keya Ganguly is Professor in the Department of Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature at the University of Minnesota. She is the author of States of Exception: Everyday Life and Postcolonial Identity (2001) and Cinema, Emergence, and the Films of Satyajit Ray (2010). Her essays have appeared in edited collections and in journals such as Cultural Studies, History of the Present, New Formations, Race and Class, and South Atlantic Quarterly. Her teaching interests are in the critical theory of the Frankfurt School, Marxism, film and visual studies, postcolonial critique, and the sociology of culture. The book she is currently working to finish is titled Political Metaphysics: Aurobindo Ghose and Revolutionary Thought in India (under contract with Columbia University Press).