Blogs

For the most part of last year, we quite literally went out of print for a bit. With no clarity in the early part of the lockdown as to when normalcy would descend, the publication of the print issue was on the line—and exclusively online—till September 2020. Little did I know, the title of my previous—and only—blog in 2019, would hold much more relevance today to justify a Part 2.

When Charles Handy’s The Future of Work was published in 1984, it created quite a sensation. Handy has been described as “prophetic” by his admirers, and his books on the nature of employment, the need for different forms of work following the disintegration of full-time employment and the possibilities that opened up for individuals as a result, have been much read and discussed. In fact, even decades later, The Future of Work and his other books remain sources of study. 

I took a class titled “Heterosexualities: Past, Present and Future” in the last quarter of my undergraduate degree in gender and sexuality studies. In my college, it was rare to be offered a class that made a hegemonic formation—heteronormativity in this case—its centre of analysis. The recurring feelings I had throughout my undergraduate programme were those of discomfort and guilt, particularly owing to how my coursework treated inequalities and injustices of various kinds as distant and atomised “objects” of study.

Mahatma Gandhi in his communication with the masses made effective use of both symbols and symbolic language. He used symbols in order to mobilise the masses against both colonial and local configurations of power. In the colonial configuration, he used symbols such as salt, charkha, and khadi in order to mobilise the masses against the British imperialists. He picked up a fistful of salt only to drive home the point that the British were working against the interests of the people of India.