The domain in which my argument operates is the domain of international relations (IR) analyzed from the perspective of contemporary cultural politics. By cultural politics I mean a tendency to analyze political global society in terms of cultural conditions rather than merely in terms of legal and economic structures. This “culturalism” is indeed typical of the post-colonial paradigm, distinguishing it from Marxist and neo-liberal approaches to IR. Great part of this article is devoted to discuss the cultural politics of post-colonialism and the nature of its conjunction with post-modernism. This conjunction – I claim – is perverse and its consequences are culturally and politically dangerous. This is a good reason to avoid it.
To put it in a different way, one could distinguish in post-colonial thought between a first order and a second order argument. By a first order post-colonial argument, I mean here the substantive part through which the main political theoretical thesis is defended. By a second order post-colonial argument, I mean here the meta-theoretical way through which it is possible to philosophically justify the first order argument. What I am suggesting is that in many post-colonial theses the substantive part, that is the content of the first order argument, is reasonably sound. On the contrary, what does not work is the second order argument behind it, that is the meta-theoretical counterpart of the argument. To be more to the point, I believe that the post-modernist second order argument –included in many post-colonial theses- does not permit to properly support the main normative or substantive tenets. As a first consequence, it seems that the post-modernist second order argument is a too heavy burden for post-colonialism.
In the following, my argument goes like that:
(i) Post-colonial theories present narratives of discontent based on resentment toward colonial exploitation and cultural hegemony;
(ii) The substance matter of post-colonial narratives (their first order argument) is sound;
(iii) Post-colonial theories often rely on a post-modern philosophical argumentative structure (their second order argument);
(iv) The second order argument is not able to support the first order argument;
(v) In particular, the nihilist consequences of post-modernism make impossible the construction of a (post-colonial) discourse through which the discontent is transformed in basis for a reasonable political action;
(vi) The lack of such a discourse is source of despair and predispose to political fragmentation and violence;
This complex argumentation can prima facie appear too abstract to be sensible (I should probably discuss some post-colonial authors one by one to be precise). After reflection, I do not think so. On the opposite, I am really convinced that avoiding the liaison dangereuse between post-colonialism and post-modernism can help to promote a reasonable discursive path in the global setting. If a narrative, based on sound reasons, like post-colonialism, does not find a discursive path, then it will blow up in pieces with destructive consequences, both materially and spiritually. Note that I am not suggesting that post-colonial theories are responsible for this. Colonial exploitation and hegemony get the real responsibility, to do not speak of some Western blindness as inability to see the asymmetry between the theory and the practice of liberal-democracy in the global setting.
I am quite conscious of the ambition and the difficulty connected with my principal aim. The de-construction of the part of the theoretical bulk of post-colonialism in IR is not an easy task. Moreover, my argumentation is surely permeated by some utopian naiveté and several (hidden) assumptions. For example, it would be normal to criticize the assumption that a sophisticated philosophical methodology, like post-modernism, can have immediate practical consequences. Or it is not difficult to object that my presentation of post-modernism looks like a too thin silhouette, being in other words more a caricature than a fair account.
Eventually, however, my claim is not so bizarre. It is a claim in favor of more objectivity and universality in approaching cultural politics from a post-colonial point of view. Of course, here the objection from within post-colonialism is that universalism and objectivity are forms of disguised Euro-centric political culture. I am just suggesting that without universalism and objectivity even the right claims implicit in post-colonial political culture cannot be appropriately formulated and communicated. That is why what I am trying to argue is in the end neither too complex nor exceedingly controversial. For I am saying that post-colonialism should care more about universal discourse whereas Western liberals should care more about the effects of cultural side of political theory (I will omit the second part of the argument –concerning liberalism- in this paper). The conclusion of the argument is quite clear: post-colonial scholarship is committed to engage liberal universalism to invoke justice, and liberal scholarship must care of post-colonial tenets to do not give up to its basic principles in significant areas of IR.
As far the economy of this article is concerned, it is divided in three sections: section two discusses some fundamental theses of post-colonialism; section three emphasizes the post-modern arguments usually taken up by post-colonialism and stresses their most evident limits.
2. In this section, I try to sketch some basic tenets of post-colonialism as political culture. Here, I summarize what I called the first order argument for post-colonialism, that is the core of its normative and substantive theses. Roughly speaking, I think that there is not too much to object to this first order argument. In so doing, my methodology is voluntarily simplifying, and I do not pretend to be complete in listing some among the main tenets of post-colonialism. Rather, I have in mind only the general structure of a widespread social-scientific literature such as post-colonialism and the reasons for its main claims. In the following, I will specially draw my theses from an analysis of the Indian tradition, even if I think that they are potentially more general and could apply to the whole post-colonial literature. My presentation does not intend to be particularly rigorous from a historical point of view. It just aims at providing a minimal framework for the general theoretical purpose of this paper.
Post-colonialism is a political culture continuing the anti-colonial and nationalist trends widespread in the “third world” after 1945. Its configuration is complex, being a diasporic product in which indigenous and cosmopolitan elements merge (this is particularly evident in post-colonial art). Post-colonialism is basically a mixture of local culture and general political principles. All this is contaminated and spread out by the political activism of many movements, going from proper political parties to mass migration groups, from sophisticated intellectual elites to suburban activism. From this point of view, there is an inherent ambiguity in post-colonialism, being post-colonialism both a historical trend and a mode of theoretical analysis.
Among the main tenets of post-colonial political culture are the following ones:
(i) Explicit anti-colonialism
(ii) Strong Anti-Eurocentrism
(iii) Emphasis on cultural localism
(iv) Political priority of the marginal people
(v) Return to religion
(vi) Counter-history both as: reconstruction of the past from the present point of view; and anti-historicism
(i) Post-colonialism is a complex and differentiated political culture. The cement of post-colonial political culture is surely the consensus against the legacy of western colonialism. European expansion in the period 1492-1945 is condemned from a shared moral point of view. In particular, what is in the focus of post-colonialism is the cultural –rather than economic or military- dominance of the West. The political culture of colonial states coincided with an apology of western modernity, conceived both as the final destination of global civilization and the normative point from which history must be reconsidered. According to the generality of post-colonial thinkers, the trade-off between this (supposed) exportation of modernity and the costs for the colonized in terms of exploitation, humiliation and sufferance have been tragically negative.
(ii) This thesis should imply that colonialism must be ethically rejected in universalistic terms from the global (universal) justice point of view. Global (universal) justice in fact cannot approve systematic exploitation, humiliation and sufferance. This straightforward thesis is however made impossible by the strong and reasonable anti-Eurocentric background of the post-colonial paradigm. In complex ways, modernity, capitalism and universalism are associated by post-colonial political culture. Modernity implies –in this view- an original form of stability detached from metaphysics and related to the public culture of liberal-democracy (Rawls and Habermas are paradigmatic from this point of view). This shift, from metaphysics to public culture, is promoted by capitalism and affirmed by European colonialism. That is why the legacy of European modernity is so controversial from the post-colonial point of view. Ranajiit Guha presents his post-colonial thesis in opposition to the Hegelian idea of “Weltgeshichte” or world history, both denouncing the hypocrisy of this “public” reconciliation of reason and history as Euro-centric and reclaiming a logical-historical space for Indian subaltern masses. The core of modern public culture is supposed to be however universalism. Post-colonial thinkers often see universalism as the other face of Eurocentrism. That is why anti-colonialism, anti-Eurocentrism, anti-modernism and anti-universalism are –for many post-colonial thinkers- all aspects of the same unacceptable package. This stage makes difficult the relation between post-colonial and liberal political culture.
(iii) This anti-Eurocentric attitude with its implicit rejection of universalism implies a bias in favor of localism. Localism is the way in which postcolonial thought looks for hetero-spatiality, through which it tries to convert the “there” of the Eurocentric narrative in a “here” situated in the post-colonial space. The scope of this localism can be either terribly wide, like Asia, or much narrower, like the history of Bengali or even a personal narrative in opposition to the public “colonial” history (like Tagore in Guha Appendix). The common core of different forms of localism consists in denouncing the cultural hegemony (Gramsci) of the West, proposing on the other hand the richer cultural background of some local cultures (Gandhi). There are different degrees of localism, also in dependence of the center-periphery location of the specific culture discussed. Assuming that the core of Euro-centrism is Atlantic, one could distinguish for example a Mediterranean peripheral localism from an Oriental one.
(iv) Localism has a lot to do with rediscovering marginalization. One of the typical claims of post-colonial political culture consists in the emphasis on neglected populations, in an attempt to rescue their expressivity and role. Again here, the scope of this movements toward the margins can be highly differentiated. Generally speaking, one can imagine three different levels of distinction: Western culture; élite local cultures; and marginal people local culture. Whereas the moral condemnation of Western culture is ubiquitous, the emphasis on the separation between local elite and marginal people is typically post-colonial. This emphasis could imply several degrees of distinction, ranging from mere separation to explicit condemnation of the local élites (for complicity with the West). This stage permits to disconnect post-colonialism –which divides elites from marginal people- from anti-colonialist and nationalist trends –which did not. At the same time, the emphasis on marginal people makes post-colonial political culture near to traditional Marxism (more Sartre than Althusser) [2].
(v) Systematic recovering religion puts however post-colonial political culture at odds with Marxism (with some possible exceptions like Liberation Theology). What is really extraneous to post-colonial political culture is Marxist economicism (Note however that there are also religious interpretations of Marxisms). From this point of view, post-colonialism is much more spiritually oriented than Western culture including Marxism. In this perspective, Marxism and liberalism are both targets of post-colonialism in the measure in which they over-emphasize rationality in the motivational set of the individual and in the reconstruction of history. Religions can be rediscovered –within a post-colonial horizon- in different ways, ranging from the most spiritual and apolitical to the more politicized (like often in the Islamic world). Almost superfluous to say, it is quite impossible to disentangle the religious revival form the localist trend and the traditionalist sympathies of post-colonialism.
(vi) Religious revival, localism but more than anything else revaluation of marginal people are at the origin of post-colonial counter-history. With counter-history, post-colonialism looks for hetero-temporality, aiming to transform the “not yet” stage in which Western narratives locate the Rest in a “now”. Counter-history can be presented in at least two different ways: (vi a) as exploiting unusual reconstructive paths in the re-interpretation of the past. With the time the marginalized colonial subject begins to be separated from the bourgeois nationalists, being post-colonial story told from the perspective of the first rather than of the second. This trend implies a re-politicization of subaltern masses seen as the real victim of exploitation and hegemony. Indian historians, within this trend, try to locate the revolutionary agency and the force of change in the hands of “subalterns”[3]. In such a way the theory of culture intersects the theory of change. The attempt is of course to make this new subaltern point of view hegemonic in an original way[4]. Cognitive failure is consequently denounced when the counter-historical interpretation is confronted with traditional historiography. Finally, the narrative of the subaltern alienated consciousness is written to substitute the élite reconstruction of the past. (vi b) Post-colonial thought often presents itself as frankly “anti-historicist”[5]. Here, the counter-history point lies in a critique of the historicist argument according to which the history of the East is a primitive phase of world history (which culminated in the Western epiphany). This thesis is typically Hegelian-marxist but can be also liberal[6]. The recommendation for the colonized here is to wait. From which one can drive a vision of history based on the ”not yet” (not modern enough), to which the nationalist colonized opposes his-her “now” (idem 9). The opposition here is with the idea that the colonial world is someway pre-political[7].
3. In this Section, I recapitulate some elements taken from what I called the second order argument for post-colonialism, that is its meta-theoretical apparatus based on post-modernist thought. As I anticipated, on this point my view is critical. Of course, it would be preposterous if not absurd to present post-modernism in few lines (pages). This is the reason why here I just try to sketch some guidelines of a sub-set of postmodernist visions to see how it influences the post-colonial movement. By post-modernism here I mean a philosophical climate characterized by the rejection of western modern philosophy from Descartes to Kant with their contemporary descendants like analytical philosophy with all its political consequences. This philosophical climate includes a skeptical attitude toward modern epistemology and metaphysics and their claim to knowledge. In some way, this trend is antique, taking its origin from the “Young Hegelian” disempowering of philosophy and from Nietzsche[8]. Philosophical post-modernism presents itself in conjunction with similar cultural patterns in esthetics and political theory. In political theory, which concerns us more, post-modernism is usually associated with the condemnation of great meta-narratives (Lyotard and Jameson up to Rorty) from Marx to Rawls.
On the one hand, to the rationalist outlook that characterizes philosophical methodology in the Descartes-Kant tradition, post-modern thinkers generally oppose the contingency and the conventionality of the “normative”. Against the rigor of logical argument, post-moderns make a plea for the force of rhetoric and the metaphorical significance implicit in the artistic works. In such way, they contrast modernist universalism in name of the absolute specificity of particular life-worlds and forms of knowledge, main consequence of this contrast being taken up as a rejection of philosophical foundationalism. In opposition to foundationalism, post-modern authors privilege heterogeneity, fragmentation, particularity, contingency, localism.
On the other hand, post-modernism presents itself as a dramatic revision of modern subjectivity, around which the Descartes-Kant view was centered. Against the universalistic, noumenal and mentalist self, post-moderns invoke an embodied subject whose partition is revealed by the relevance of the (Freudian) unconscious[9]. Against the rational subject of modernity, post-moderns launch their claim for the economy of desire and the power of the irrational. Against the unencumbered individual of the Kantian legacy, post-moderns emphasize the social character of the person. The negative discourse about the subject, inaugurated by Levi-Strauss, becomes -especially in Foucault and Derrida- the starting point for a radical critique of modernity.
I rely here on that particular segment of the post-modernist trend that is often called “French Theory”, which can be taken as an American popularization of some post-structuralist French argumentative patterns and styles of thought. Following the interpretation of Heidegger and Nietzsche, already since the period between the two world wars of the twentieth century, some French intellectuals began to nourish anti-Western sentiments in matters concerning metaphysics and politics. In this unusual way, they often became anti-colonial before the time of post-modernism. Francois Fanon and Jean Paul Sartre represent, in different moods, this anti-colonial attitude, and can be considered among the forerunners of the Western influence on post-colonialism. For several reasons, however, they cannot be properly ranked among the authors of the French Thought such as Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze, Lyotard, Lacan, Bourdieu, Baudrillard. My thesis is that this post-modern (French Thought) background – notwithstanding its oppositionist contribution to the Western discourse of the Enlightment – makes impossible potentially objective and universal rights claims of post-colonialism, usually directed to rescue the worst-offs from exploitation and hegemony.
French Thought intersects post-colonialism in different ways, among which radical constructivism in IR and social sciences, literary criticism, legal hermeneutics, women studies, psychology. Here I will mention just two post-modern options influencing post-colonial political-theoretical literature: (i) the Foucauldian option; (ii) the deconstructionist option.
The work of Foucault constitutes a basic inspiration for post-colonial studies not only in India (see Chatterjee). Authors like Edward Said[10] and Valentin Mudimbe[11] (L’invenzione dell’Africa) strictly rely on Foucault, when they formulate their central tenet connecting colonial power with science and knowledge.
Foucault work is silent about colonialism[12]. From this point of view, his work remains strictly euro-centric. His main theses however present a significant and radical criticism of Western theoretical tradition. That is why, some of his theoretical tools can be used and have been used for the sake of post-colonial arguments. In particular, I have in mind three of these patterns:
(i) The idea of bio-political power;
(ii) The relation between truth and power;
(iii) The local character of the critical point of view.
(i) the idea of biopolitics, and of a biopolitical power, comes from the last part of Foucault career. It someway derives from the Nietzschean origin of his thought and from the post-modern emphasis on the economy of desire (Deleuze-Guattari). In spate of the traditional Lebensphilosophie (Dilthey), Foucault sees power as the real transcendental space from which a historical approach is supposed to begin. The significance of biopolitics is linked to the disciplinatory power of the state and the totalitarian institutions (prisons, mental illness clinics, etc.). Progressively, for Foucault, politics moves from the manipulation of life and death to the caring of bodies. The biopolitical stance reveals the centrality of the body and the complexity of the self in its relationships with the social practices. The centrality of the body is invoked by many post-colonial authors as an instrument against the rationalistic and scientific dominance of the West.
(ii) The emphasis on the relationship between truth and power is formulated by (the younger) Foucault in his Archeology of the Power, and basically re-presented by Said[13]. It depends on conceiving any discourse with truth claims as part of dominium. In this sense, truth and power are not two different things. On the contrary, truth claims are part of the legitimatory apparatus power physiologically needs to be stable. This intersection does not operate at the conscious level of the researcher, rather it represents a hidden premise of any inquiry aiming at truth. Power, in this view, does not work in an uniform way, but rather through a series of micro practices. Into the concept of practice, Foucault sees the moment of coercion. All the forms of social control are included in the range of practices, going from police measures to legal devices, from pedagogical disciplines to clinical instructions. The unmasking of these forms of social control as potential forms of exclusion (as in the case of clinics) should make evident the intrinsic relation between discourse and power. Foucault’s central argument, from this point of view, goes from (pure) knowledge to the savoirs, from the savoirs to the discursive practices and finally from the discursive practices to truth seeking norms. From this perspective, power is never fully pervasive, to avoid a performative contradiction that would completely close the logical space of any possible critique.
(iii) The local character of the critical point of view takes seriously radical historicity. What is the deconstruction of metaphysics for Heidegger and Derrida is the deconstruction of historicity for Foucault. It has a double meaning, the one being cultural the other political. In the first meaning, it presents an invitation to doubt of totalizing paradigms and in general of any form of structural coherence. For Foucault, only limited and marginal forms of knowledge are seriously revelatory. In the second meaning, there is a claim for the point of view of subalternity, of the unspoken and of the repressed. Within the complex Foucauldian genealogy, the fusion of local memories (le savoir des gens) and of rare and erudite forms of knowledge are one face of the moon, the other being the rescue of the “underdogs” and the forgotten. In such a way, this radical historicist point of view challenges liberal pluralism in name of the emancipation from marginalization. Against the epistemic objectivism, taken as the background of western thought and political liberalism, Foucault defends an anti-scientific and particularistic vision strongly oriented toward emancipation.
(ii) Derrida[14] was an internal-external (suburban Algerian, philosophically French from Paris) radical critic of western metaphysics, following the tracks of Heidegger. Conceiving himself like a “marrano” , he saw someway himself as a subaltern subject. His work can be put under the label “post-structuralism” (Saussure and Levi-Strauss are a necessary readings to understand his philosophy). In structuralism he always saw a powerful form of western ethnocentrism. Against this background, he forced out “deconstructionism”, which is a philosophy and a strategy, whose main aim is to shake the whole basis of western thought. Deconstruction is directed to fight the ontological violence that sustains western metaphysics and is revealed in structure of the language. Its effects concern history, politics, ethics and language. His main contributions to post-colonialism:
(i) Margins (Margins of Philosophy, 1972). This concept, coming from the core of the critique of metaphysics, meets the need to redefine subaltern positions, that is typical of post-colonial enterprise (Spivak, Chatterjee). The post-colonial subject is obliged to inhabit the cultural space of the colonizer, and the deconstruction offers an alternative logical niche from which to create a derivative discourse (Chatterjee). In this sense, Derrida radicalizes the work of Levi-Strauss, whose first merit was to dispute the cultural difference between civilized and primitive. Related concepts, developed by Derrida, are diaspora and difference (note the distinction in French between “difference-differance”) are naturally expandable from the original meta-theoretical intention to be reformulate in the light of the experience of subaltern groups.
(ii) Otherness. The centrality of the other –following Levinas – is an essential element of Derrida philosophy. The deconstruction of Western metaphysics and the idea itself of “differance” presuppose the linguistically other (here the derivation is from Lacan). In such a way, Derrida deconstructionism becomes an element of radical multi-culturalism. This fact explains why his international success is some way linked to the expectations of American multi-cultural community[15]. Post-colonial thinkers adopted Derrida idea of otherness to formulate basic concepts such as hybridism, métissage and creolization, used to give an account of the inextricable next which is the basis of every culture[16]. It is also possible to use this Derridian idea to distinguish western subalterns from third world subalterns, comparatively defending the second ones.[17]
Even admitting that my account of post-modern contributions to post-colonialism is cursory and exceedingly simplificatory, I think one can derive from it some weaknesses of the combined paradigm (the liaison dangereuse). Characteristics of this weakness are:
(i) Lack of objectivism. It is a standard critical stance toward post-modernism. Post-modernism strongly relies on a sort of normative criticism of normativity. Major institutions, starting with capitalism and state, are considered able to impose their own patterns through a series of practices in a falsely neutralized way. This kind of pattern is present both in Foucault and Derrida. It is, however, difficult to find in their theses any argument for such a critical point of view. Someway, the post-modern radical normativity represents a contradictio in adjecto. To be clear: it seems that the archimedean perspective that such a radical criticism of objectivity (the post-modern one) presupposes a privileged point of view. In other words, it needs more and not less objectivity. Which by definition is impossible within the post-modernist framework.
(ii) Lack of objectivism is connected with anti-scientism and anti-rationalism. It has been noted that the relativistic stance, implicit in the post-modern trend, implies a kind of epistemic populism[18]. Hegel wrote in is Phenomenology of permanent “struggle between Enlightenment and superstition”. The Hegelian account is supposed to be apologetic toward the West. We must admit, however, that too often, within the legacy of post-modernism, post-colonial thinkers have been on the side of “superstition”. Often, It would have been more sensible and simple to state that colonial power was deeply unjust and irrational. Even sophisticated intellectuals like Nandy, Guham, Spivak, Cattherjee and Bhabba run the risk of considering antique Indian astrology and the classic religious texts (like Veda) on a par with modern science[19]. This attitude, shared in different contexts by Islamic fundamentalists and –outside the realm of post-colonialism- by the inglorious “soviet biology” of the past, puts at risk not only western modernity but any possible vision of modernity. It can be also seen as a premise for a false progressivism and a substantial traditionalism. From this point of view, false progressivism and real conservatism –connected with anti-scientism- could be accused even of favoring the caste system.
(iii) Anti-objectivism and anti-scientism imply the impossibility of universalism. For post-modernism universalism can be considered as a kind of false consciousness. For post-colonialism, it is strictly linked with that entelechia of reason which is considered essential to the Eurocentric narrative. The impossibility of universalism has two pernicious consequences. On the one hand, post-modernist anti-universalisms rely on a perverse trust in spontaneity and naiveté[20] (Spivak). Contrary to the Marxist legacy, in which the hegemonic claim of the oppressed is defended through an universalistic apparatus of revolt, here the voice of the subaltern is supposed to be immediately able to rescue by itself a history of domination. It is highly controversial however that the localism of community and religion can support a radical revolutionary claim like the post-colonial one. On the other hand, and for the same reasons, the post-modern attitude of post-colonialists localizes the conflict so to say “depoliticizing” it. In such a way, it deprives the political stances of the subalterns of vision, condemning them either to be confined within the esthetic realm[21] or to be confronted with in a series of particularistic negotiations (Zizek). This condemnation is connected with the impossibility – from a post-modern point of view – of raising the bar up to the level of universality, whose preclusion makes impossible to reclaim the humanistic (in the kantian sense) basis of the post-colonial claim against exploitation and hegemony. In such a way, post-modern anti-universalism precludes the appeal to dignity and human rights with all the emancipatory options these notions provide. Otherness, within a post-modern outlook, is always confined in the singularity of an experience (African, Indian, Islamic, even a village, etc.) or even to the privatization of the emotions against the public history, and never offered to the possibility of an emancipatory Aufhebung through the universal mediation of reason.
(iv) Anti-modernism. The post-colonial thought is often ambiguous about its relation with political modernity. It is often characterized by the coexistence of two logics. One logic derives from the experience of subalternity and protest, and is clearly anti-historicist and anti-modernist in the sense previously defined. A second logic derives from the liberal constitutional legacy and the universalist philosophy of European origin. I think that both these logics are necessary parts of the post-colonial argument and that post-modernism makes impossible to rely on the second logic.
Conclusion
To conclude, it seems of general interest to save a post-colonial political thought that can embrace the pursuit of reason in name of social justice. To do this, post-colonial political thought has to put on the table the questions of hetero-spatiality and hetero-temporality associating them with notions such as reason and justice. It has to abandon the view of the (original) ethnographer and the historicist, to sensibly transform the “there” in “here” and the “not yet” in “now”[22]. But this aim seems better served by the admission of a path-independence of universalism, modernity and objectivity rather than by their post-modernist nullification. In other words, from a post-colonial point of view modern pluralism –there are many relevant “now” and “here”- works better than nihilism.
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The final/definitive version of Sebastiano Maffettone’s essay was published in Philosophy&Social Criticism, vol. 37 number 4 May 2011, SAGE Publications Ltd, (LA, London, New Delhi, Singapore and Washington DC), all rights reserved, p. 493-504, Special Issue: “Realigning Liberalism: Pluralism, Integration, Identities”, Reset-Dialogues on Civilizations Istanbul Seminars 2010, Edited by: Alessandro Ferrara, Volker Kaul and David Rasmussen. Link to the issue http://psc.sagepub.com/content/37/4.toc
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Notes
[1]I particularly thank Giovanna Borradori, Akeel Bilgrami, Aakash Singh, Domenico Melidoro, Valentina Gentile and Will Kymlicka for discussing this paper at length. The Reset-Dialogues Istanbul Seminars 2010 – taking place at Istanbul Bilgi University from May 19-24, 2010 – were an optimal conceptual and emotional space to present the paper: Giancarlo Bosetti, Seila Benhabib, David Rasmussen, Alessandro Ferrara, Volker Kaul made there very useful comments and I thank them for improving the arguments (albeit probably less than they would have liked…).
[2] See C.Nelson and G.Gorssberg (eds.), Marxism and the Interpretations of Cultures, Universiyt of Illinois Press 1988
[3]See Ranajit Guha & Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (eds.), Selected Subaltern Studies, Oxford University Press 1988
[4]Idem.’See also of Guha, Dominance without Egemony: History and Power in Colonial India, Harvard University Press 1997
[5]See Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe (Postcolonail Thought and Historical Difference) , Princeton University Press 2000
[6]Idem p.8
[7]see Guha critique of Hosbawm in Elementary Aspects of Peasants Insurgency in Colonial India, Oxford University Press, Dehli 1983.
[8]See Karl Loewith, From Hegel to Nietzsche, Columbia University Press 1964
[9]see the excursus on Odysseus in Max Horkheimer & Theodor W. Adorno, Dialectic of the Enlightment, Stanford University Press 2002
[10]See his Orientalism: Western Representation of the Orient, Penguin 1985. See also E.Said ‘Foucault and the Imagination of Power’, in David Couzen Hoy (ed.) Foucault Critical Reader, Blackwell 1986
[11]See his The Invetion of Africa, J,Currey Ltd and Indiana University Press 1988
[12]I base my discussion of Michel Foucault on his L’archeologie du Savoir, Gallimard 1969
[13]Op. cit.
[14]I base my reading od Jacques Derrida on his L’ecriture et al difference, Seuil PUF 1967
[15]See Jean-Loup.Amselle, Occident decroche, Editions Stock 2008
[16]European culture included, see Salah Hassan and Iftikhar Dadi (eds) Unpacking Europe, Museum Van Beuningen, Rotterdam
[17]See G.C. Spivak, A Critique of Postcolonial Reason, Harvard University Press 1999
[18]See M.Nanda, Prophets Facing Backward, Rutgers University Press 2003
[19]On contemporary Indian political philosophy see Aakash Singh and Silika Mohapatra (eds.), Indian Political Thought, Routledge 2010
[20]A Crique…cit
[21]See the classic Juergen Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, MIT Press 1987
[22]Here I draw from Chakraberty, op cit Epilogue