On Mon, Nov 3, 2008 at 6:16 AM, <R.Thomas-Pellicer@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> Chetan,
>
> I would rather approach the issue as the Modern Age/episteme
> being a culmination of the history of Western metaphysics,
> which does include the Western scientific method of "making
> the law to others" (another description for positivism).
>
> This is in any case an occasion to refine the question:
> if Plato up to Lévi-Strauss, subtracting the critical line of
> Marx-Nietzsche-Freud-Heidegger-Bataille-Levinas-
> Foucault-Derrida-etc. (all to a certain extent, depending
> who is speaking), are consummate practitioners of Western
> metaphysics, what does one make of the Renaissance
> and classical epistemes? Are these mere variations of
> Western metaphysics in an attempt to reconcile Derrida
> with Foucault?
To ask such questions, we had better first ask another question: how
did the the "West" come into being, practically as well as
ideologically, so much so that today there is a great deal of overlap
between the "West" and the "North" (as in the global North above the
global South in the international division of labor) objectively, not
just subjectively, Japan being the only country that is usually
classified as economically of the "North" but not culturally of the
"West" (though politically of the "Free World" and thus of the "West"
during the Cold War)?
During the Renaissance, let alone in ancient Greece, the "West" as we
know it -- therefore "Western metaphysics" -- arguably did not exist
yet.
The modern episteme is to a large extent a product of the development
of capitalism, so the episteme in question (especially the scientific
method dedicated to increasing labor productivity and economic growth)
lodged itself -- though not without struggle, including cultural
struggle -- as soon as the capitalist mode of production was
established in countries outside the West.
In countries outside the West -- with a few exceptions such as Japan
and to a lesser extent Turkey -- modernity came with colonial and
neo-colonial attempts to remake and exploit their peoples and natural
resources. Hence many peoples outside the West were forced to
experience modernity first and foremost as "colonial modernity" to use
Hamid Dabashi's term. There have been various responses to colonial
modernity on the part of its victims, of which the revolution in Iran
was one. It is the Iranians' attempt to overcome colonial modernity
-- including the metaphysics that comes with it -- that won Foucault's
sympathy, which becomes clearest in his essay titled "The Shah Is a
Hundred Years Behind the Times," a critique of modernization theory in
development economics.
But the confusion of the modern episteme (which crosses all manner of
borders) with the idea of the "West" in Iran's Islamic Revolution has
proved as troublesome -- especially on the questions of
sex/gender/sexuality -- as the reduction of it to the capitalist mode
of production in socialist revolutions. Foucault perhaps
underestimated the problem of the former, while rightly critical of
the latter.
But it would be unwise to dismiss Foucault, and other critics of the
West, as merely "Orientalist," as some do. An "Orientalism" born of
Western critics' discontents with the West and elective affinities
with those who struggle with colonial modernity is not the same thing
as an Orientalism designed to impose colonial modernity -- by force if
necessary. Even Edward Said (whose projection of the modern episteme
onto pre-modern worlds has been criticized by Aijaz Ahmad in his book
In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures) noted the difference (though
without pursuing it very far, the pursuit subsequently taken up by Ian
Almond in The New Orientalists, Mohammed Sharafuddin in Islam and
Romantic Orientalism, and so on). Besides, some criticisms (Afary and
Anderson, recent works of Fred Halliday, etc.) of romantic Orientalism
are essentially attempts to reinforce a color-blind liberalism that
tells us that we can -- should -- be all subjects of liberalism and
its material foundation -- capitalism and neo-colonialism -- for There
Is No Alternative.
Yoshie
>
> Chetan,
>
> I would rather approach the issue as the Modern Age/episteme
> being a culmination of the history of Western metaphysics,
> which does include the Western scientific method of "making
> the law to others" (another description for positivism).
>
> This is in any case an occasion to refine the question:
> if Plato up to Lévi-Strauss, subtracting the critical line of
> Marx-Nietzsche-Freud-Heidegger-Bataille-Levinas-
> Foucault-Derrida-etc. (all to a certain extent, depending
> who is speaking), are consummate practitioners of Western
> metaphysics, what does one make of the Renaissance
> and classical epistemes? Are these mere variations of
> Western metaphysics in an attempt to reconcile Derrida
> with Foucault?
To ask such questions, we had better first ask another question: how
did the the "West" come into being, practically as well as
ideologically, so much so that today there is a great deal of overlap
between the "West" and the "North" (as in the global North above the
global South in the international division of labor) objectively, not
just subjectively, Japan being the only country that is usually
classified as economically of the "North" but not culturally of the
"West" (though politically of the "Free World" and thus of the "West"
during the Cold War)?
During the Renaissance, let alone in ancient Greece, the "West" as we
know it -- therefore "Western metaphysics" -- arguably did not exist
yet.
The modern episteme is to a large extent a product of the development
of capitalism, so the episteme in question (especially the scientific
method dedicated to increasing labor productivity and economic growth)
lodged itself -- though not without struggle, including cultural
struggle -- as soon as the capitalist mode of production was
established in countries outside the West.
In countries outside the West -- with a few exceptions such as Japan
and to a lesser extent Turkey -- modernity came with colonial and
neo-colonial attempts to remake and exploit their peoples and natural
resources. Hence many peoples outside the West were forced to
experience modernity first and foremost as "colonial modernity" to use
Hamid Dabashi's term. There have been various responses to colonial
modernity on the part of its victims, of which the revolution in Iran
was one. It is the Iranians' attempt to overcome colonial modernity
-- including the metaphysics that comes with it -- that won Foucault's
sympathy, which becomes clearest in his essay titled "The Shah Is a
Hundred Years Behind the Times," a critique of modernization theory in
development economics.
But the confusion of the modern episteme (which crosses all manner of
borders) with the idea of the "West" in Iran's Islamic Revolution has
proved as troublesome -- especially on the questions of
sex/gender/sexuality -- as the reduction of it to the capitalist mode
of production in socialist revolutions. Foucault perhaps
underestimated the problem of the former, while rightly critical of
the latter.
But it would be unwise to dismiss Foucault, and other critics of the
West, as merely "Orientalist," as some do. An "Orientalism" born of
Western critics' discontents with the West and elective affinities
with those who struggle with colonial modernity is not the same thing
as an Orientalism designed to impose colonial modernity -- by force if
necessary. Even Edward Said (whose projection of the modern episteme
onto pre-modern worlds has been criticized by Aijaz Ahmad in his book
In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures) noted the difference (though
without pursuing it very far, the pursuit subsequently taken up by Ian
Almond in The New Orientalists, Mohammed Sharafuddin in Islam and
Romantic Orientalism, and so on). Besides, some criticisms (Afary and
Anderson, recent works of Fred Halliday, etc.) of romantic Orientalism
are essentially attempts to reinforce a color-blind liberalism that
tells us that we can -- should -- be all subjects of liberalism and
its material foundation -- capitalism and neo-colonialism -- for There
Is No Alternative.
Yoshie