Anveshi Hegel Reading Group 2016-ongoing
The Hyderabad Hegel Reading Group began as a chance meeting on 2nd September 2016 when a Hegel scholar from the US, Bob Wallace (currently the moderator of the International Hegel Yahoo group), cancelled his tour to India and his lecture at Anveshi Hyderabad. A group of us met to discuss his lecture and finding it to be interesting, we decided to continue reading other Hegelian thinkers. We met usually about once or twice a month, engaging in some depth with Slavoj Zizek, Catherine Malabou, Robert Stern and Stephen Crites. This took about two years and by the middle of 2018, we felt that we had looked at secondary literature enough and wanted to work with a primary text by GWF Hegel. We selected the iconic Phenomenology of Spirit (AV Miller translation) and took up the complete reading of the text as a challenge.
Since the middle of 2018 we have been doing a line by line reading of the Phenomenology, working through four, three or sometimes even one paragraph in a session of nearly two hours about once or twice a month. The method is for someone to read out lines of the paragraphs under study, which is then followed by an exegisis and a discussion of what is understood in relation to Hegel’s environment and our own. Our interpretations draw on other translations, readings, commentaries and interpretations by thinkers as varied as Jean Hippolyte, Quentin Lauer, HS Harris, Stephen Houlgate, Michael Inwood and Terry Pinkard. The slow and patient engagement with this difficult text has brought rich rewards in the broader dimensions of our thinking in ways we had not imagined possible (thinking patiently, writing rigorously, being open to difficult political positions, etc.). The readings continue with enthusiasm and commitment.
As the paragraphs are read, one of us writes a commentary on them, and posts them on the eGroup called Anveshi Phenomenology of Spirit reading group. Novitiate Hegel scholars are welcome to them here, and we hope you find it useful.
Gender and Migration study group 2016- ongoing
Gender and migration study group was formed to provide a conceptual framework for the study on ‘City and sexuality: a study of youth in Hyderabad’ that Anveshi took up in 2016. The focus was on how ‘city has been imagined’ and how ‘gender figured in this imagination’. The group read and discussed “The practice of everyday life” by Mitchel De Certeau; “The Production of Space” by Henry Lefebvre; “Right to City” by David Harvey; “The right to the gendered city: Different formations of belonging in everyday life” by Tovi Fenster;, “Gender, class, and urban space: Public and private space in contemporary urban landscapes” by Liz Bondi, “Capital culture: Gender at work in the city” by Linda McDowell, “Spatial Divisions of Labour: Social Structures and the Geography of Production” by Doreen Massey and “Cities and Sexualities” by Phil Hubbard; “1-800-Worlds: The Making of the Indian Call Centre Economy” by Mathangi Krishnamoorthy, “Liberalization’s Children: Gender, Youth, and Consumer Citizenship in Globalising India” by Ritty Lukose, “The Beautiful and the Damned” by Siddharth Deb, “Dreamers: How Young Indians Are Changing Their World” by Snigdha Poonam and “Valued Daughters: First Generation Career Women” by Alice W Clark.
Rohini Raman and Madhurima Mazumder coordinated this study group.
Study Group on Secularism 2007
In preparation for the seminar on Histories, Cultures and Politics: Islam and Muslims in South India, a study group met to prepare for the seminar. The focus was on theoretical frameworks to think about the question of Islam and Muslims in relation with concepts such as secularism, religion and minority. Some of this work was specific in its focus on India, but a large part of it was more general. It picked studies that have broken fresh ground in the thinking about these questions, and also some that are of an older, more familiar cast, in order to get some handle on the intellectual tools available to us, and of the field of discussion in general. Over a period of six months, we read these essays: Talal Asad’s ‘Multiculturalism and British Identity in the Wake of the Rushdie Affair.’ ‘Muslims as a Religious Minority in Europe.’ and ‘Religion, Nation-State, Secularism’, Aamir Mufti’s ‘Secularism and Minority: Elements of a Critique.’ and Mufti. ‘The Aura of Authenticity’, Imtiaz Ahmad’s ‘Introduction’ to Lived Islam in India: Adaptations, Accomodations and Conflict and Diane d’Souza from the same collection on devotional practices among Shia women, Michel Foucault’s ‘What is Critique?’ Saba Mahmood’s ‘The Subject of Freedom.’ in Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject, Charles Taylor’s ‘Religious Mobilizations’ and Saba Mahmood’s ‘Secularism, Hermeneutics and Empire’, Francis Robinson’s ‘Introduction’ to Islam and Muslim History in South Asia, and Richard Eaton’s ‘Islamic History as World History’ and ‘The Articulation of Islamic Space in the Medieval Deccan’. Shefali Jha and M.A.Moid coordinated the Study group.
Mental Health Reading Group 2002-2003
The formation of the study group on mental health was facilitated by Jayasree Kalathil joining Anveshi in May 2002 as a Research Fellow. The study met between May 2002 and January 2003 and discussed critical works on mental health from Indian and Westerna contexts to understand the various issues involved in mental health. As a part of the readings, the group discussed An Unquiet Mind, the autobiography of Kay Redfield Jamison, Sudhir Kakkar’s works, The Inner World, Intimate Relations and Shamans, Mystics and Doctors, Jayasree Kalathil’s study on ‘representations of women in psychoactive drug advertisements’, heard practising psychiatrist Purnima Nagaraja’s talk on women and depression, and Shanta Kamath, the psychiatrist at SCARF, watched Sharapanjara, a Kannada film about post-partum depression, screened Girl Interrupted and Iris in collaboration with CIEFL Film Club. It then went on to organize a workshop on Family and Mental Health. Jayasree Kalathil coordinated this study group.
Anveshi Law Committee 1995-1996 & 2002-2003
Between 1995 to 1996, the (then) Anveshi Law Committee held multiple discussions to understand personal laws and their implications, discuss the call for UCC, the women’s movement’s experience with the law, etc. It presented its views at the IAWS conference at Jaipur in 1995. And sent out a call to other women’s groups in the country, along with Majlis Bombay, to not formulate uniform laws for all and rather make changes in the personal laws of each community. This stance was later adopted by many women’s groups.
Between 2002-2003, the reconstituted Law Group met to discuss issues around citizenship and secularism. They discussed over a year, Wendy Brown’s essays “Rights and Losses” and “Wounded Attachments.”, Giorgio Agamben on Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life by Giorgio Agamben, Etienne Balibar’s essays “‘Rights of Man’ and ‘Rights of the Citizen’: The Modern Dialectic of Equality and Freedom” and “What is the Politics of the Rights of Man?”, Upendra Baxi’s “The Second Gujarat Catastrophe”, “On the Jewish Question” by Karl Marx and Uma Maheshwari Bhurubanda’s work on “Modes of being Secular”.
Rekha Pappu coordinated these two groups.