Gender and Sexuality Studies

Abstract

I am  presently working on a sequel to Indian Ethics Classical and Contemporary Challenges (vol I), with a special focus on women, justice bioethics and ecology Issues – each of which have ramifications for thinking on gender and gender-related related issues. It calls for a deeper analysis of technical and highly theoretical ethical issues that appear not to be conclusive, as changes in contexts embracing a wider range of issues and perspectives, are always possible. Yet the horizon of the possible (or pace Spivak, the impossibility of ethics for the subaltern position) provides a foothold for the beginnings of a new dialogue around ethical practices, by negotiating encounters or exchanges that do not seriously entertain the borrowed voice of the native informant. Still, there is little else to go by and , one asks rightly: who speaks for women? More particularly, who speaks for feminism, feminist ethics, Indian women, the unborn, the surrogate, the non-conscious dying – in other words, the subaltern? I will bring vignettes from Indian thinking and on-the-ground challenges that both may engage and yet disturb current Western models of gender studies. 

Biography

Purushottama Bilimoria is a recent Fulbright-Nehru Distinguished Fellow and Visiting Faculty at Ashoka University in Delhi. A former Fellow of the College of the All Souls of the Faithfully Departed (Oxford), he is now a permanent senior fellow at the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies at the University of Oxford. As well he is Principal Fellow in the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies (SHAPS), and the Australia India Institute, at the University of Melbourne. He is CEO and co-editor-in-chief of Sophia, International Journal in Philosophy and Traditions, based at SHAPS, and also the founder-co-editor of Sophia Studies in Cross-Cultural Philosophy of Traditions and Culture (both published by Springer). He has been teaching lately at the University of California, Berkeley, and Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, and teaches a course on Jainism for CSULB. Purushottama is named as ‘Lead Scientist of the Russian Federation Megagrant Project in Philosophy & Culture at RUDN University of Moscow. Purushottama has a strong interest in comparative philosophy, and in particular the historical and intellectual intersection between Eastern and Western philosophies and philosophy of religion.