BEGIN:VCALENDAR
VERSION:2.0
PRODID:-//Talks.cam//talks.cam.ac.uk//
X-WR-CALNAME:Talks.cam
BEGIN:VEVENT
SUMMARY:Gandhi’s Realism: Means and Ends in Politics: Symposium &amp\; L
 ecture - Dr Karuna Mantena (Yale)
DTSTART:20140516T090000Z
DTEND:20140516T170000Z
UID:TALK52094@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:CRASSH
DESCRIPTION:A lecture and symposium by Balzan Skinner Fellow 2013-14 Karun
 a Mantena.\n\nConfirmed Symposium speakers:\nProfessor Mrinalini Sinha (Un
 iversity of Michigan)\nProfessor David Hardiman (University of Warwick)\nP
 rofessor John Dunn (University of Cambridge)\nProfessor David Runciman (Un
 iversity of Cambridge)\n\nDETAILS AND REGISTRATION HERE: http://www.crassh
 .cam.ac.uk/events/25060\n\nGandhian nonviolence is often misconstrued as a
  static moral injunction against violence or simply a condemnation of viol
 ent resistance.  Gandhi himself is portrayed as a saintly idealist\, pacif
 ist\, or purveyor of conviction politics – a moral critic of politics\, 
 speaking from standpoint of conscience and truth.  I aim to show why this 
 view of Gandhi and Gandhian politics is misleading.  Against the saint-as-
 politician\, or the moral man of conscience\, I pursue Gandhi’s politica
 l thinking from the vantage point of Gandhi the political actor and innova
 tor who vividly understood that politics is closely bound to the possibili
 ty of violence.  This was the core of Gandhi’s realism – a view of pol
 itics as shaped by endemic tendencies towards conflict\, domination\, and 
 violence coupled with an account of how nonviolent political action can co
 nstrain and mitigate these same tendencies to effect progressive change. \
 n\nWhen ends are pursued without sufficient attention to the practical mea
 ns necessary to enact them\, for Gandhi\, it gives free reign to the negat
 ive entailments of politics: to forms of incitation and indignation\, rese
 ntment and hostility that dehumanize political opponents\; and to psycholo
 gical temptations towards violence and attendant forms of moral erosion.  
 This lecture explores Gandhi’s understanding of the negative passions an
 d egoistic dispositions that both enable and are enabled by the dynamics o
 f political contestation.   I consider Gandhi’s account of the moral psy
 chology of violence alongside the analyses of Max Weber and Reinhold Niebu
 hr – thinkers particularly significant for the development of realism in
  the twentieth century.   I aim to show how Gandhi’s political thought b
 ridged developments in both Indian and Western intellectual traditions and
  political repertoires to produce a novel synthesis and provocation.
LOCATION:CRASSH\, Alison Richard Building\, West Road (Room SG1/SG2)
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR