This paper establishes a theoretical linkage between Antonio Gramsci and Frantz Fanon. Gramsci’s critical-historicist method and its relationship to humanism, his integral understanding of Marxism, and emphasis on the moment of political practice resonate with Fanon’s articulation of the subjective and political-economic aspects of the colonial question, his activistic materialism, and his dialectically humanist universalism forged through anti-colonial struggle. Establishing this linkage presupposes engaging distinct currents of postcolonial Gramscianism in relation to each other and to the philological turn in Gramsci (...) scholarship. In turn, a Gramsci–Fanon convergence helps elucidate the specificities of (post-)colonial contexts without elevating these into a civilisational-ontological difference. Emphasising their geographical sensitivity as a meeting point, pushing Gramsci towards Fanon helps us treat the global South and imperial heartlands relationally, in historico-geographical and specifically political terms. A Fanonian Gramsci (or Gramscian Fanon) thus allows us to tackle Eurocentrism without closing doors to a counter- or postcolonial Marxism. (shrink)

This paper aims to revisit Wittgenstein’s notion of ‘higher’ from the understanding of Sankara’s conception of Jnana. According to Wittgenstein, values cannot be captured within the network of facts about living things or dead matters in the world; they are not the case in the world and are not relational, they are higher. That is why, we cannot call values natural in any sense of the expression. This compels Wittgenstein to appeal to the transcendental origin of the values. In this (...) way, the world is bereft of the values and subsequently the knowledge about the values can be attained when the self is to be seen not in the world, rather be experienced with the world. The knowledge that Wittgenstein speaks about is not the ordinary knowledge of the world which logic and science provide, but is the knowledge of the divine state where one can grasp the oneness of the life and world. Such knowledge of moral interaction between the self and world seems to be closer to Sankara’s conception of Jnana which gives the knowledge of the identity of Jiva and Brahman. According to Sankara, it is a paramarthika experience of the atman which can attain the knowledge of absolute value or Brahman while remaining engaged in the worldly pursuits. The knowledge of absolute value for him, is a form of realization or anubhava of the self or atman which is distinct from knowledge of an intellectual or logical kind. Keywords: Wittgenstein, Sankara, world, self, higher, Brahman. (shrink)

Agrarian environments have to be comprehended as being part of a biophysical and social environment that includes the urban and the nonurban, the arable and the nonarable, and other areas that are integrally linked to the world of agriculture and environment and their allied socioeconomic relations. This article examines the responses of rice biotechnologists located in selected Indian public agricultural institutes under the aegis of the State Agricultural University and the Indian Council of Agricultural Research on questions such as “How (...) is GM (genetically modified) technology perceived by rice biotechnologists and under what limiting conditions is it being pursued in rice biotechnology research? Is there a consensus among rice biotechnologists over the application of GM technology? What are the complexities of the GM policy? and What are the implications of intellectual property rights on GM-based research and how scientists are responding to such institutional norms?”. (shrink)

This paper attempts to delve into Wittgenstein’s unique notion of solipsism and its centrality in his proposal of transcendental ethics. Ethics for him is an enquiry into what is most valuable in one’s life; a very personal experience of values woven around the individual subject. We analyse the true nature of ethical in Wittgenstein’s writings and argue that it can only be understood through a close examination of the relation he proposes between self and the world. Our argument is rooted (...) around his unique notion of solipsism without a solipsistic self. This distinctive ontological relationship between self and the world explicates moral significance into the world and how morality is defined as deeply felt personal responses to life. (shrink)