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Dr Gowhar Fazili holds a PhD in Sociology from the Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi. He has around 23 years of experience in a range of academic, semi-academic and non-academic social institutions, which includes his association with Ashoka University, NALSAR University and Ambedkar University Delhi (AUD) as Assistant Professor. His ethnographies of political subjectivity in Kashmir examine the intermeshing of the intimate and the politics around local agitations, familial grief, narratives of local policemen and fictional writing in the Kashmiri language. His writing has appeared in various journals – academic and popular and edited volumes focussed on civil wars and the anthropology of political violence.
He has taught Political Science and Sociology at undergrad and postgrad levels and his areas of academic interest include masculinity, political subjectivity, anthropology of emotions, literature as an archive of political emotion, humiliation, social movements, fascism and totalitarianism. Currently, his focus is on the idea of implicated subject and collective/political responsibility towards the other and its implications for the Pandit-Muslim relationship in Kashmir. He will be based out of Sri City.
Dr Gowhar’s research interests include political violence, subjectivity, psychosocial dynamics of power, trauma, subjection, humiliation and marginality. Through his work, he explores the relationship between masculinity, gender and politics and between familial grief and the political in violent conflict.
His writing involves critical use of the qualitative method and in particular ethnography and he explores the use of literature (fiction and poetry) as an archive of political emotion, particularly in contexts that lack a well-developed archive to undertake social history. His abiding concerns remain political ethics and social justice.
Fazili, Gowhar. 2023. Rethinking Conflict at the Margins: Dalits and Borderland Hindus in Jammu and Kashmir. by Mohita Bhatia, Contributions to Indian Sociology 57, 1–2 : 147–182.
Political Subjectivity in Kashmir: An Ethnographic Exploration. Routledge India, Taylor & Francis Group. Series: Ethnographic Innovations, South Asian Perspectives, (2023) [Forthcoming]
For Now It is Night. Translation of short stories by Hari Krishan Kaul published simultaneously by Harper Collins India and Archipelago Books NY, (2023)
Ethnography, Solidarity and Outrage in Kashmir: Reflections on Saiba Varma’s ‘Occupied Clinic’ in The Wire, (2022 )
https://thewire.in/books/
“Liberal Silence on Kashmir and the Malleability of Ethics in India” in Routledge Handbook of Critical Kashmir Studies edited by Deepti Misri, Haley Duschinski et al, (2022)
“Academic Freedom in India: A Status Report, 2020” The India Forum: A Journal Magazine on Contemporary Issues (written jointly with Nandini Sundar), (2020) https://www.theindiaforum.in/
“Collapse of the Regime of Victimhood” Seminar; Victimhood: A Symposium on its Politics in Our Times. (February-March) pp. 18-22, (2020)
“Police Subjectivity in Occupied Kashmir: Reflections on an Account of a Police Officer.” In Resisting Occupation in Kashmir, edited by Haley Duschinski, Mona Bhan, Ather Zia, and Cynthia Mahmood. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, (2018)
“Familial Grief, Resistance and the Political Imaginary in Kashmir” Indian Anthropologists Vol. 46, No. 2 (July-December) pp. 53-74, (2016)
“Local Agitations in a Globalized Context: Case Study of Bomai and Shopian, Kashmir.” Nandini Sundar & Aparna Sundar (Ed.) Civil Wars in South Asia: State, Sovereignty, Development. California: Sage Publications. pp. 212-239, (2014)
“Grieving as a Medium” Ira Pande (Ed.) A Tangled Web. New Delhi: Harper Collins. pp 184-198, (2011)
“Kashmiri Marginalities: Construction, Nature and Response” Sanjay Kak (Ed.) Until My Freedom Has Come: The New Intifada in Kashmir. New Delhi: Penguin Books, (2010)
Apart from his long-standing engagement with pedagogical interventions in formal and informal settings, Dr Gowhar has more than eight years of teaching experience in Sociology and Political Science. He has taught Sociology and Anthropology at Ashoka University, Sonipat, NALSAR University, Hyderabad and Ambedkar University Delhi (AUD) at undergraduate and postgraduate levels. Earlier, he taught Political Science at Government College for Women (GWC), MA Road, Srinagar, Kashmir.
