Date: Fri, 14 Feb 1997 08:36:40 +0100 From: Hinrich Kuhls <kls-AT-unidui.uni-duisburg.de> Subject: Re: M-I: Meera Nanda replies to Marxism-International Thanks to Meera for responding to the list. I think she outlines some politically and theoretically important points, and her post makes me [my knowledge of India is small] curious to know what it means in concrete terms: "Marxism is a far superior position: it denies essentialism by historicizing national identities but retains space for universalism." Hinrich Meera Nanda wrote: >WHat has led to this anti-science fervor in India that the right wing >finds so consonant with its own political ends? This is a very important >question. I don't deal with it in the Dissent paper, which was not so >much about Indian politics but about drawing connections >between the science wars a al Sokal and reactionary politics in India. It >was meant to emphasize that ideas have unintended consequences and >sometimes it is the distant strangers who end up paying the price for >intellectual sophistry. > >About POMO as "*causing*... the non-progressive cultural and educational >policy in India": > >First, I don't claim that postmodernism has "caused" the reactionary >cultural and educational policy that I describe. I claim that pomo has >*lent intellecutal respectability* to certain trends that have deep roots >in the post-independence trajectory of India's political economy. I would >say that if it were not for POMO erupting in the West, the cultural >natioanlism in India and other non-Western countries would have still >been there, only expressed in a different idiom and without the pretense >of left-wing avant-guardism. In India, Gandhism has always provided one >such idiom and many so-called progressives, thanks to their >anti-imperialism, get trapped in that rather reactionary mindset. > >In fact, I would caution agianst treating the BJP's brand of cultural >nationalism -- which many supposedly left wing intellectuals share -- as >a case of full-blown POMO. A consistent POMO would carry >anti-essentialism further and deny that the nation has any specifically >virtuous, non-Western traits. Third World nationalists (religious and >secular) make a rather opportunistic use of POMO -- they only take its >anti-Eurocentric and anti-Enlightenment elements and present >their own traditions as the polar opposite of the West. For Third World >intellectuals, to paraphrase Muslim theorist Akbar Ahmed, "POMO means a >shift to ethnic or religious identity as against an imported one; a >rejection of modernity..." > >Please don't misunderstand me: I am not suggesting that Third World >intellecutals *should* adopt a more consistent POMO. I object to POMO not >because it is anti-essentialist but because it denies reason and any >basis for human universals. That is why I remain convinced that Marxism >is a far superior position: it denies essentialism by historicizing >national identities but retains space for universalism. > >But the question remains: What are the reasons why Third World >intellectuals would be drawn to the anti-science and anti-progress >elements of POMO? > >Speaking for India, I think the reasons have to do with an incomplete and >very uneven modernization. Again, unlike my fellow Indian-leftists >including some Marxists, I don't put the entire problem on the door steps >of "imperialism" or "neo-colonialism." I think many internal factors have >played a much bigger role than foreign capital, which until recently >has been quite miniscule: a feudal culture, an authorotarian >mind set, a highly >inefficient, thorougly corrupt, rent-seeking bureaucracy. BUt the >result >is that at the end of 50 years of independence, modern institutions have >lost their legitimacy. YET, there have been undenible shifts in political >power -- thanks to formal democracy. The older cultural and political >elite does not have near exclusive sway over political and cultural >institutions. There is a war of position going on and I am not very >clear just yet who is positioned where. > >But in all of this, it is very clear that given our colonial history, all >the institutions that have become dysfunctional can be very conviniently >attibuted to the "evil outsiders." Different groups, depending upon their >need for legitimacy, use this anti-western rhetoric quite effectively. >(Gandhi after all used it agianst the British). Right >now it is the right-wing's turn. The pity in all of this is how the >supposed left in India and in the West has created a vocabulary which >serves the right wing very well. > >As I said in my dissent piece, just the fact that the right can so easily >appropriate the left's discourse should ring a loud alarm bell. --- from list marxism-international-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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