Monika Hirmer is a PhD candidate at SOAS, University of London, in the Department of Religions and Philosophies, where she also was teaching assistant in the course ‘The Margins of Philosophy: Postcolonial, Gender and Queer Epistemologies’ during 2018-2020.
Trained as an anthropologist at the University of Hyderabad, India (MPhil) and at SOAS (MA), her research lies at the intersection of anthropology and philosophy, to which she applies a decolonial perspective.
In 2020 she co-founded the multilingual, open access, peer-reviewed publishing platform Decolonial Subversions, aiming to bring to the fore marginalised voices and bridge the gap between academia, activism and art.
Publications:
- Hirmer Monika. forthcoming 2022. ‘“Let Us Now Invoke the Three Celestial Lights of Fire, Sun and Moon into Ourselves”: Magic or Ordinary Practice? A Critique of Magic for an Emic Approach to Śrīvidyā’. In Tantra, Magic and Indigenous Religions: Experiences, Practices, and Practitioners in Monsoon Asia, edited by Andrea Acri and Paolo E. Rosati. Routledge Studies in Tantric Traditions. Routledge.
- Hirmer Monika and Istratii Romina. 2021. ‘Editorial: A Time for Change’. Decolonial Subversions II: 1–7.
- Hirmer Monika. 2020a. ‘“Devī Needs Those Rituals!” Ontological Considerations on Ritual Transformations in a Contemporary South Indian Śrīvidyā Tradition’. Religions of South Asia 14 (1–2): 117–49.
- Hirmer Monika. 2020b. ‘A Manifesto for Decolonial Subversions’. Decolonial Subversions I: 120–130.
- Hirmer Monika. 2018. ‘The Art of Telangana Women and the Crafting of the Decolonial Subject. From Dialectics of “Othering” to Expressions of Radical Alterity’. The SOAS Journal of Postgraduate Research 11: 48–62.
Areas of Interest:
South Asia, anthropology, ontology, decolonial studies, Tantra and Śrīvidyā, Goddess traditions, cosmologies, motherhood, gender.
Statement of Interest:
I have come across the Indian Posthumanism Network website as I was doing some research for a Special Issue on vernacular culture in South Asia of Decolonial Subversions, which I am editing. Even though I am not yet very familiar with post-humanism, I was immediately drawn to the selection of articles that you host and, in particular, the informative talk with Debashesh Banerjee on your page.
I thus understood that some core elements of my own research could be defined post-human too; in particular, studying the Tantric tradition Śrīvidyā (into which I have been initiated) I have looked at ontologies that challenge the binary between human and divine, but also at cosmological architecture, where divinities, temples and the environment are, ultimately, one.
I realised that I shun away from posthumanism because I associated it with transhumanism.
I would now like to get to know more about posthumanism and, in particular, from the Indian angle. Having lived in South India for nine years, and working on South Asia, I am keen to acquire some understanding on posthumanism from the Indian perspective.
I would also like to have the opportunity to read your journal, possibly also publish in it, and attend conferences you organise.