Purity is the End of Thought and the End of Philosophy.” Interview with Leela Gandhi

Leela Gandhi is internationally acknowledged as one of the foremost critical voices in contemporary postcolonial thought. In this conversation, Gandhi retraces her intellectual journey – from her formative years at the University of Delhi and the University of Oxford, to her sustained engagement with postcolonial theory, the ethics of nonviolence as a shared universal inheritance, and the significance of affect in philosophical inquiry and political life. The text is a transcript, elaborated and revised by Gandhi herself, of the dialogue she had with her interviewers and the audience at the masterclass held on 22 May 2024 at the Department of Humanities of the University of Trento.