Dr. Karthick Ram Manoharan

Education

• BA in Sociology, Loyola College
• Post-Graduate Diploma, Asian College of Journalism
• MA in History, Jawaharlal Nehru University
• PhD in Government, University of Essex

Profile

Dr. Karthick Ram Manoharan was previously a Marie Sklodowska Curie Actions Individual Fellow at the University of Wolverhampton where he worked on the European Union funded research project titled “Freedom from Caste: The Political Thought of Periyar E.V. Ramasamy in a Global Context”. During the course of his work at the University of Wolverhampton, he gained the qualification of Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (SFHEA). Prior to this, he was Assistant Professor of Political Science at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta (CSSSC) and Senior Lecturer at the School of Development, Azim Premji University.

He has taught courses on political theory/philosophy/thought, taking a global perspective. Hitherto, his research has engaged with questions of identity, with a focus on race, national self-determination, religion, caste, and gender. His two published monographs involved novel, contemporary readings of the humanist anti-colonial thinker Frantz Fanon and the rationalist anti-caste thinker Periyar E.V. Ramasamy.

Research Interests

• Political atheism and political theology
• Politics of identity
• Political violence
• Anarchism, Marxism, and Post-Marxism
• Film studies and cultural theory

Publications

Monographs

• 2022 Periyar: A Study in Political Atheism. Hyderabad: Orient BlackSwan.
• 2019 Frantz Fanon: Identity and Resistance. Hyderabad: Orient BlackSwan.

Journal Articles

• 2021 “Radical freedom: Periyar and Women.” [version 1; peer review: 2 approved, 1 approved with reservations]. Open Research Europe 2021, 1:6. 
• 2020 “In the Path of Ambedkar: Periyar and the Dalit Question.” South Asian History and Culture, 11:2, 136-149. 
• 2020 “Freedom from God: Periyar and Religion.” Religions, 11(1): 10. 
• 2019 “Towards a Žižekian Critique of the Indian Ideology.” International Journal of Žižek Studies, Vol. 13 No. 2, 1-22. 
• 2019 “Counter-media: TamilNet and the Creation of Metanarratives from Below.” Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies, 33:3, 386-400.  
• 2017 “Anti-Casteist Casteism? A Fanonist Critique of Ramasamy’s Discourse on Caste.” Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies, 19:1, 73-90.

Edited Volumes

• 2020 Rethinking Social Justice. Eds. S. Anandhi, Karthick Ram Manoharan, M. Vijayabaskar, A. Kalaiyarasan. Hyderabad: Orient BlackSwan. 

Edited Journals

• 2022 Special issue titled “Freedom from Caste: Anti-caste Thought, Politics and Culture.” CASTE: A Global Journal on Social Exclusion. Eds. Meena Dhanda and Karthick Ram Manoharan. 

Book Chapters

• 2021 “Being Dalit, Being Tamil: The Politics of Kabali and Kaala.” In Tamil Cinema in the 21st Century: Politics, Genre and Technology. Eds. Selvaraj Velayutham and Vijay Devadas. Oxon and New York: Routledge, 52-65.
• 2021 “Understanding the Ideological Nature of Caste Violence in Tamil Nadu: Particularism and Universalism.” In Social Hegemony in Contemporary India. Ed. R. Thirunavukkarasu. New Delhi: Sage, 173-191. 
• 2020 “An Ethic beyond Anti-Colonialism.” In Rethinking Social Justice. Eds. S. Anandhi, Karthick Ram Manoharan, M. Vijayabaskar, and A. Kalaiyarasan. Hyderabad: Orient BlackSwan, 159-178.