Date: Sat, 05 Sep 1998 16:58:41 +0500
Subject: [Fwd:"Opt,""The Locality of discourse"]


Hullo,
I have been joyfully sandwiched electronically these days between two
friends debating over the location, discourse etc. Thought it might
interest you as well and tempt some one to respond.

Cheers,
iqbal


>>>>>>>>>>>
Subject: opt
From:  Nadeem Omar Tarar <ntarar-AT-brain.net.pk>

Let me first thank you for taking time off to write a detailed response
to what you termed as my "locality discourse thesis" (though I have
trouble owing it).  Your questions have thrown open too many important
issues that relate to much of critical thought in contemporary west. The
questions of identity and its formation, the notion of pure and impure,
the role of experience in the construction of knowledge, nature of
rational inquiry, and of course my hobby horse, cultural relativism.
Before we get down to Pandora box of your questions, let me share an
idea. A few days back I decided to build a case for philosophical or if
you like epistemological relativism
grounded in cultural diversity. Later,  we can talk of alternatives
sciences etc, if we are convinced by the strength of arguments (and not
by our mercy appeal to emotions!--how god dammed sexist!!!).

But lets consider your points first. Forgive me for paraphrasing you,
but what you are saying is that: Is there any thing as "indigenes" at
all. Is there anything as "reality" (in ontological sense) and if both
are granted, whats that thing called indigenous scholar" using different
tools of analysis or mode (and not mean, which has rather specific
meanings in terms of mere instrument) of inquiry. Now you are correct in
pointing out  what is clothed in the indigenous is not only foreign,
what's constructed as pure desai, hides vilayyatee impurities, but more
importantly, a heterogeneity. Indigenes as a concept denies the
heterogeneity of relations, with economics, ethnicity, (and more
disturbingly) with power, to name a few. Homogeneity from outside
contains heterogeneity from within.  So please stop that political
repression, because construction of identities and labels is an act of
power: power to name and tell who are you in essence.

My response would be, yes, I agree with you and naming is violence
through words, but we have to be cruel to be kind! Lets relocate
ourselves as hybrid, a product of expanding diversity. We are not pure
in the lands of impure. We are inflicted with cultural, social, economic
and you name it types of contamination. We don't stand alone in the
house of mirrors. Having said that I wont let hybridity shoot us down. I
must ask, how hybrid are us. Do we all have a earned a equivalence in
the scale of hybridity. Are all biological traces of political
inequality has been erased from the faces of hybrids? Does Anglo Indian
hybrid stands on equality footings in the court of culture, crowned by
relations of global political economy?

My answer is NO, our inequality cannot be eliminated by the blessing of
hybridity, it can only be desensitized by the culture it creates. I am
all too familiar with senior academics you named (and I may like to add
a few more of my liking) who consent with ideologies of hybrity have
been manufactured by their widened exposure to western institutions of
Higher Learning and  inspirations from those citadels of power/knowledge
complex.
Moreover, to fasten my further, I must say that technological change is
slower than cultural change, but/and intellectual change is the slowest.
I mean, changes in material cultures, does effect the cognitive and
ideological component; the battle of ideologies of consumerism and
religions does play out in cultures, but the cultural rooted ideologies
have greater strength to persist over time and escape  conditioning of
institutional training. (We still flounder in office hours, despite
institutional control). To cut a long story short, I am saying, to see,
the world view, grounded in local mode of cognition prevails despite
social ( in  wider sense of  society) and cultural changes. This mode of
cognition/thought, the epistemological matrix is also grounded in the
existential motives of Being, and dictates the epistemological
conditions that can produce knowledge. In other words, who we are and
how were are the fundamental principles that determine how we should
relate to the world. Instead of going into philosophical examples, which
try belabor the point that there exist epistemological difference
between eastern and western mode of thinking ( but here I guess, the
western differences gets privileged as intellectual advantages due power
of western knowledge factories), I will refer to a simple observation of
how a peasant relates to the earth, (as mother goddess) in most cultures

, giving rise to mythology or folk philosophies which speak great deal
to their mothers, and what social attitudes, customs, rituals he adopts
(to befriend it).  Th process of interpreting the world, is indeed what
one means by construction/production of knowledge. A peasant doesn't
write poetry, doesn't write great philosophies to express her mode of
thought. The  knowledge he produces is embeded in his everydayness, the
waves he organize its entire life. (For a more precise description of
alternative system of knowledge construction, please see Tariq Banuri's
book on systems of knowledge, first chapter, where he defines, what is
it and its constitution etc).


Given that background (or defense!), let me take on the questions of
research techniques, you call tools of analysis and related point of
concepts, which I missed above in the heat of identity question. Second
point first, what we call concepts are the generalizations from a range
of observation (empiricist like Locke would insist them being based on
sensory perception and rationalist would consider it analytic). What I
am saying that observation which is put forward as objective is not
objective in the strict sense of the word. It contains a in-built bias,
which cannot be eliminated by either training or sensitization (how ever
it can desensitized to certain extent, and that is the extent -- as a
possibility of objective observation--that is premised in the case for
objective observation), because its structural (in architectural sense)
and ideological as well. If that's understood, then one can rightly
acknowledged that certain ideologies of science have won, and quite
legitimately so, given the material progress of the human kind (an
environmentalist might have difficulty in accepting the growth of
science through rational inquiry as progress, in face of impending
ecological threat). But this demonstrated progress doesn't eliminate,
however, it might weaken the case of competing ideologies, the search
for alternate inquiry that cannot be considered as rational in the
proper sense of the word. If you managed to read that far, let me then
say that tools of analysis doesn't merely give 'point of references' or
perspective or what Thomas Kuhns calls "paradigms". They are not
innocent tools, as Gayatri Spivak might consider adequate to be
improvised by a bricolage. (Brocloage in French means a tinkering man,
in local terms dasee motor mechanic,  who improvise tools to his ends).
Conceptual tools doesn't only provide a framework for analysis, they
don't frame they observation or analysis, they also wrap it up in
straightjackets, which serves a blinders, what
to see and what not to see. The interplay of not seeing (through
concepts/theories) is what provides substance to the knowledge
factories. Feminist claim, that concept of class doesn't provide voice
to gender, led to the rise of academic feminism. If feminism can rope
the epistemology question around the axis of gender, then why a certain
half baked locations can not try make a plea of articulating the
knowledges pegged in place.

As increases the (modern) knowledge,  so increases the ignorance (to
pre/non-modern knowledge)

Let me also reluctantly add that by arguing that knowledge is
Essentially based on experience we run the risk of damming half the
population (this is what some feminist did, while trying to refuse
Derridean or post-structrlaist critique of
experience-as-self-presence).  I am already single and cannot encourage
the prospects of remain being so, whole of my life. My argument would be
that we need to produce knowledge along all multiple axis, we can
conceive off, to a point of inner
regression. If there is Islamic interpretation of culture, there is
competing capitalist interpretation of culture, and then Marxist and
then feminist, and why not location interpretation of cultures?

This is as far as I can get in a single stretch. Later I can review and
reconsider leadings. forgive the un-proof read draft.


bye
nadeem


>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Zubair Murshid had written:

The Locality of Discourse:
Nadeem, your locality of discourse thesis challenge the qualification of
western/ foreign scholar to analyze the indigenous reality. If one tries
to understand the basis of this challenge, three things come to mind; on
the basis of which we can say that western scholar does not qualify. I
would try to describe them below. When we say that the indigenous
scholar is in a better position to talk about local reality, following
things come to my mind: You may take them as my questions.

1) Does the indigenous scholar use different tools of analysis?
2) Does the indigenous scholar have ‘a different relationship’ with the
local society and to my understanding if there is that different
relationship that could be linguistic and experiential in its nature?
3) Does the nature of social phenomena is different in the indigenous
societies?

Before going into detail about the three questions I would also request
you to please define the local and the foreign. How do you differentiate
between the foreign and local scholar? On the basis of race, training or
both? Where do you place people like Mehbobul-haq, Tariq Banuri, Hamza
Alvi, Salman Rushdi etc (foreign-local)?

My questions:
Now as for as the tools of analysis are concerned, you say that your
tools are the same like that of a western scholar. Turning to the second
question, the linguistic and experiential relationship of the indigenous
scholar, I think when we talk of the experiential and linguistic
relationship of the local scholar, we need to think about many things.
The construction of language and experience depends upon many things in
Pakistan; i.e. are you peasant, feudal, tribal, labourer, businessman,
white collared, urban, rural, women, men, religious, secular, Punjabi,
Baluchi, Sindhi, Pushtoon, Kashmiri and Suraiki etc. I think all the
socio-economic and linguistic diversities are quite sharp in Pakistan
and in many other so-called indigenous societies alike. The situation is
contrasted to the western societies, which may have these linguistic and
ethnic / racial differences but the nature of socio-economic phenomena
is almost homogenous; predominantly urban, industrialized, educated,
secular, democratic etc. The homogeneous nature of social phenomena in
‘North’ perhaps may allow the scholar to generalize about any discourse
over there, but the heterogeneity in a society like Pakistan does not
allow the scholar, indigenous or foreign to generalize some thing about
Pakistan. Saying that the Pakistani women’s discourse on is this and
that etc. sounds false, because there is nothing like a Pakistani woman
(Perhaps you will call it the interpretation of an indigenous scholar
about indigenous discourse). The experiences and issues of a Tribal
Balochi Woman could be totally different to that of the Punjabi Lahori
woman living in Mughalpura. These are broader social divisions on whose
basis one can perhaps talk about some social formations. But if we keep
on further breaking these categories, then at one level the individual
to individual sharing becomes difficult. Since at the perceptual level
individuals have different images and context of words. And it is very
difficult to transmit the spirit of one’s experience to the other. The
point I want to emphasize is that perhaps only common language and
experience (which gives preference to the local scholar over foreign)
does not allow any local scholar to talk about society. There are some
other variables, which also are the constructing elements of social
phenomena that allow the social scientist to generalize about things.

My third question also becomes relevant here, which is about the nature
of social phenomena. Normally as I have learnt, there are certain
factors, which are considered as elements on whom all social phenomena
is constructed. These are economy, geography, religion and historical
experience of a people. The nature of a particular society or social
formation might be different, on the basis of qualitative difference in
the accumulation of these factors into that particular society or social
formation at some specific time period. The interpretation of social
phenomena is also made on the basis of these and / or some other factors
i.e. the nature of that social formation or society’s relationship and
interaction with other/ external societies/social formations.  Now the
interpretation and understanding of a certain social phenomena by the
social scientist depends upon his/her point of reference and bias
towards the subject phenomena. Also, towards the variables of
interpretation (economic, religious, geographical, historical factors,
and about how he/she views the relationship of that social formation
with others). Does s/he gives more importance to the economic factor,
religious factors, historical factor, geographical factor and or the
relationship of that society with others. And then what is his/her
vision and view (ideology) of that factor (variable). This is the reason
that different social scientists interpret the same phenomena in
different ways, irrespective of the fact that they are local or western.
For example there are different interpretations about present day
Pakistani society. There are people who view it as an Islamic society
(both in positive and negative terms); Irrespective of the fact that
they are local or western i.e Qazi Hussain (Jamaat Islami) and
Huntington. Huntington does not mention the name of Pakistan but he
talks of Islamic civilization and its clash with the west. Ironically
Qazi also says that despite being on pools apart. There are people from
the west and east who interpret the phenomena in terms of a post
colonial society. They would say that this society had a rich history
before colonial intervention, was economically developed, was destroyed
by the colonial masters and is still being extracted through
neo-colonial modes. There are people who interpret it as a transitory
society, which is historically backward and has to follow the standard
path of capitalist development. They think it is a technologically
underdeveloped resource poor society. And there are people in the North
and in the South (environmentalists) who rank the indigenous societies
and system as better for conservation in comparison to the Northern
ones. There are local and western feminist scholars who interpret it in
terms of an authoritarian/ patriarchal society based on female
suppression. There are also some western scholars and locals who think
that the family system of indigenous societies is a positive phenomenon,
and there are others on both sides who think it's a curse. The point
which I want to emphasize is that it is not the racial, linguistic or
geographical locality of a scholar that matters in his/her
interpretation of social phenomena. That whether it is indigenous or
not, but his /her bias and point of reference towards the
variables/factors I mentioned earlier (economy, religion, geography,
historical experience and relationship with the other (external) social
phenomena).

(From: Zubair-AT-sdpi.org)



     --- from list postcolonial-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---