Science, Myth, and Biopower: Rethinking Biopolitics in Contemporary India
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2025-08-20
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en
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In India, unlike the West, science and religion are not contrasted but syncretised into a mythoscientific discourse. This thesis investigates how Hindu nationalists fuse biology and myth to construct hierarchies of purity and pollution. It argues that Foucauldian biopolitics encounters deficiencies in analysing the sacralised and postcolonial regime of biopower in India as Foucault assumes a Eurocentric and secular genealogy of science and modernity, overlooking their colonial dimensions. Employing conceptual and discourse analysis, the research traces the imbrications of science, religion, and colonialism from British rule to contemporary India. Drawing on postcolonial technoscience and feminist Science and Technology Studies (STS), it develops a culturally situated theorisation of postcolonial biopolitics relevant to both Indian political discourse and broader biopolitical thought.
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Faculteit der Filosofie, Theologie en Religiewetenschappen