CREDENTIALS
- Ph.D. in Philosophy, Rice University, Houston, USA, 2011
- B.E. in Electronic and Communication Engineering, Bangalore, India, 2001
- About 20 years of experience teaching philosophy and the humanities in universities, private colleges and community colleges (Teaching Professor of Philosophy at Seattle University from 2011-present)
- Several years of experience mentoring/ advising college students
- Author of several publications, including two books (linked here and here) and several journal articles.
PHILOSOPHICAL BIOGRAPHY
I grew up in Bangalore, India in the 80’s and 90’s at a time of rapid cultural, institutional and economic changes. My early experience was shaped by two sets of phenomena which seemed to be in mutual conflict: on the one hand, a strong emphasis on Indian ways of knowing, linguistic traditions, and a system of family and communal values that molded identity; on the other hand, the ubiquitous consumption of Western media and cultural representation, calling all of us to focus on individual desires fit to our unique tastes, and education in western science and technology, which was held as key to individual and socio-economic prosperity by many fellow Indians.
Sure enough, like many of my peers coming from similar backgrounds, I, too, went on get my college degree in engineering. However, several fundamental questions continued to gnaw at me. For example: Could western “modernity” and its values be reconciled with Indian “traditional” values with its own historical trajectory? How can these two facets seamlessly co-exist in the life of a person? What is truly meant by “efficiency” and “progress” when one speaks about technology and scientific innovation? Progress for whom and at what cost? For me, these were not simply intellectual questions, but rather, deeply existential ones – indicative as they were with a certain bewilderment of meaning and purpose.
Baffled by these quandaries, but also guided by them, I turned to the study of philosophy. A primary quest that has sustained by journey through philosophy is to scrutinize the origins of modern western thought, and to gain a critical understanding of its lure for peoples from radically different cultural backgrounds. One key insight that I keep returning to is that the human being is not a simple self-contained given; the category of the individual as an independent, non-relational entity, and an unquestionable fact, is a problematic construction of modern ideology. And it has been responsible for great suffering, confusion, pathologies and violence at the personal, communal and global levels. I think it is restorative to think of the human individual as a relational web of complexity, an unfinished “product” still under construction, a multiplicity of forces and influences that are historical, cultural, environmental, natural, economical, technological, political and material. Accordingly, my approach is interdisciplinary and multidimensional, and I draw from a wide array of thinkers and approaches, past and present, from around the globe that shed critical light at our modern condition. Some key frameworks and approaches that has influenced me include historicism, intersectional and cultural studies, new materialism, science and technology studies and existentialism.
Acharya Praxis 