WORKSHOP PRESENTATION- Dr. P. Madhu

Dissents are rare events. Events surge forth surprisingly while it is not expected. Yet, it was brewing to surge without anyone noticing. Event is the moment in which insignificant and unobserved erupt and transfigure the state of affair.

Dissenting moments are evanescent and hence fast vanishing. They are the truth moments as a subject overcomes an untruth hitherto appeared as if it were truth. They are the moment of truth and the moments of subject as agent simultaneously. The truth of dissenting moments is the untruth dissented. In other words, truth is a break with the untruth- while it is the untruth is taken-for-granted misrecognitions that form the ordinary encyclopedia of knowledges.

Moments of truth are not moments of revelations, rather they are moments of active dissents, confrontations against the untruth taken for granted. However, such a confrontation does not happen until the evental eruptions opens up one to such a dissent, i.e., till one experiences crack with the state of the situation, the existing edifice of science/spirituality/morality - and works upon the ‘fidelity to the crack’.

The truth of the moment of Albert Einstein was the dissent with the then existing notions of time, space and energy. Truth of the moment is the dissent and not what is later consented. Truth is the commencement of a break from the ordinary and the encyclopaedia of knowledges linked to a situation.

Each of the dissents are commencements and not recommencements. Every dissent is a beginning. With consent, the dissent is co-opted and made into well named element in the set of the affairs. Dissents as truth moments that make holes in what is constituted as knowledge contrary to ‘unfolding’ into truth.

Moments of truth and fidelity to the truth cut off one or another untruth- and gradually the network of the untruth- passed on to the future. Truth thus stops time being made by series of untruths. Truth is an interruption on untruth being passed on and on. In other words, a truth is always the undoing of time. Truth is the unwinding of the untruth. Truth is always novel, as it is anti-knowledge. The Novelty begins with dissents.

Untruths are quite there in the set of things recognized as the set of things. Truth on the other hand is not recognizably present in the set of things, rather it is present as the void of the set, the null-set. The void is truth uncounted, unrecognized, unnamed yet to be recognized at the irruption of event by the beings capable of emerging into subjects.

Truth moments are moments in which one or another thick layer of misrecognition (untruth) is melted out due to the heat of the event erupted. These truth moments are moments of dissents in science, history and spirituality….

The history of science, history or spirituality are indeed the series of ruptures or dissents with the situation, however, the rupture is hardly historicized as they are treated as if they were a continuity constituting a historical whole. Series of such ruptures and dissents later presented as if they were continuities in scientific consents. Mutations are thus presented as if they were evolutions.

The spiritual dissents thus experienced at the moments of recognizing the untruth of taken for granted spirituality thus had its eruptions in unknown dissenting spiritualists who could dissent with till then existing untruths of consolidations in the social and historical fields of spiritualities. May be in such rare spiritual moments the dissenting spiritualities centered around the icon of Kali might have emerged.

It could be such a breakaway moments let Chattambi Swamigal and Sri Narayana Guru to recognize the untruth of brahminical social order and its justifying spiritual institutions of consent. Such spiritual dissents of truth moments are quite similar to the dissent experienced with the misrecognitions on space and time by Albert Einstein. The dissent with finity by Georg cantor, dissent with linear regularity in fractal geometry, the collapse of certainty in Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, etc., are indeed dissenting moments of awe similar to the spiritual dissents.

It could be such moments of dissents, the truth moments, could have let Buddha to recognize the fundamental ego-nullity. Also, it could be such an evental eruption let Mahavir to recognize infinite multiplicity and unnamability of everything.

Possibly, at such a truth moment of dissent, what was considered to be the unholiest of all, the human ash could have emerged holiest having place right in the forehead in the Saiva tradition. Among Aghoris the human ash is applied all over their body. Not just applying human ash all over the body, even the eating of rotten human flesh by Aghories could have started as a fidelity such a truth moment. These practices and rituals, which might have been started as the fidelity to the truth moment: the counting of the uncounted, the naming of the unnamed.

However, the fidelity in due course instead of sustaining the spirit of the radical truth moments, could have emerged as instruments of consent, the instruments of untruth- subjectivating subjects depriving their capability to emerge as subjects in fidelity to the crack in the ontology. The fidelity to the truth-moment, where by the unnamable is named, has its danger of unquestioned consent accompanying. The dissent of E=mc2 soon has become consent. Similarly, spiritual truth moments too later become consents losing their rigour, however still they are inbuilt with truth potential to dissent by the merit of their pure multiplicity. Break is always immanent to any situation because a situation is not what it is counted to be.

While dissent marks the truth moment, consent in all its forms are misrecognitions and hence settling of untruth. Dissents are always inbuilt as everything as all that exist are indeed pure multiples, infinitely different from how they are framed and counted. The uncounted and unnamed are unnoticed and thus they have greater potential to erupt uncontained. What is understood as spirituality thus is a multiple, infinitely different from how it is counted and framed and hence the notion is immensely potential to be dissented.

However, dissenting moments are rare. Consent is not rare at all. Always we are found to be sleepwalking into consents after consents. In this sleepwalking there is no truth moments; there is no subject. Every moment of dissent brings forth a till then unnamable thus facilitate them to be nameable, thus consent as the untruth is inbuilt in every dissent too.