Tanay Gandhi - Misbehaving Mountains: The Politics of a Future in Flux

Season 8 continues with a recording from our 2021 annual conference, The Future as a Present Concern. This episode features a presentation from Tanay Gandhi Abstract: The future is often cast in terms of images of progress or ruin, but can we imagine a future that escapes such dichotomies? What does such a radically reimagined future look like? Crucially, how can we as subjects institute a shared world building on such an imagination? I develop an answer in two parts by arguing for an ontology of the future as precarious calling for cultivated modes of response that are distinctly democratic. I analyse connections between discourses that amplify the possibilities for thinking a precarious future. First, artistic practices among Bhil indigenous communities in India that reveal relations to a world of complexity. Second, a tradition of western philosophy moving through Nietzsche and Deleuze that highlights elements of uncertainty and play 16 in the world. Third, discourses that upend the “ontological priority of the human” in terms of an account of dispersed agency. Building on complementarities between these perspectives, I argue for an ontology of the future as inescapably precarious; uncertain, susceptible to uncanny twists and turns. A future that is Zarathustra’s dance floor; composed of multiple actants in relations of collusion and conflict that escape human ordering or control; a future that we must embrace precisely as precarious. In the second part, I argue that such a relation calls for cultivating a democratic sensibility. Following post-foundational perspectives, I identify democracy as an openness to heterogenous possibilities of instituting society; democracy as a recognition of ontological pluralism. This is not simply in terms of an openness to difference, but, I argue, also receptivity to subterranean modes of activity and agential forces. Activating political possibilities on the basis of an ontologically precarious future, therefore, calls for a democratic cultivation; modes of political enactment that express a sensitivity to the multiple sites of agency in a complex world. Biography: Tanay Gandhi is a graduate in political theory, having recently completed a Master’s degree (MA) in Ideology and Discourse Analysis from the University of Essex in 2020. He is currently an independent researcher based out of Mumbai, India. His core research interests include radical democratic theory, philosophical aesthetics, and theories of populism, in particular the works of Laclau, Connolly, Deleuze, Adorno, Menke and Rancière. Previously, Tanay was a human rights lawyer in India, working on issues of forest land tenure rights, self-governance and traditional knowledge systems and cultural practices. Further Information: This recording is taken from our Annual UK Conference 2021, co-organised with University of Galway and The Irish Philosophical Society. This conference was held online consisting of live webninars with keynote presents and pre-recorded presentations from panel speakers. Biographical information of speakers is taken from the programme of that event and therefore may not be up-to-date. The British Society for Phenomenology is a not-for-profit organisation set up with the intention of promoting research and awareness in the field of Phenomenology and other cognate arms of philosophical thought. Currently, the society accomplishes these aims through its journal, events, and podcast. About our events: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/events/ About the BSP: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/about/