INSIDE THE ROMANTICIST EPISTEME 79
epistemic project emerged in discussions with V. Dhareshwar, Partha Cahtterjee, Susie Tharu and many others in the course of seminar on 'Cultures of Modernity'. I had the privilege to participate in Mysore a 18-23rd November, 1995.
It is interesting to note the virtual competition in current debates regarding which of the major Asian cultures really constitutes the other of the West. The writings of Said on Orientalism and the general 'post-orientalist' focus on historical productions of knowledge and subjects rather than contemporary institutional dynamics in non-western societies, seems to make its interpretive strategy almost self-propelling. The problem in the notion of non-western incommensurability as an epistemic project is that it ends up in a sort of comparative civilisational-religious history, where the West is (essentially) Christian, and the East a in paradoxical neo-Orientalist move becomes essentially Hindu, Buddhist, etc. Not only is this sort of comparative civilisational history traversed by essentialist concepts and antecedents from the German Kulturwissenschafft, it also acquires certain affinities with the narrative of civilisational contest and clash forecasted by Samual Huntington. I believe that Roy Boyne has a point when he suggests that deconstruction arid post-structuralism as a theoretical project has reached its limits and eclipsed as a philosophical line of inquiry, though it far from has exhausted its potentials within the human and social sciences. Many areas still await the whirlwinds of deconstruction. Boyne argues, that the strength of deconstruction lies in its critique of power and taxonomisation, whereas it is vulnerable in its celebration of difference. Boyne quotes Derrida's unequivocal critique of apartheid and defence of equality as a supreme value in Jacques Derrida, the laws reflection: Nelson Mandela, in Admiration' in Jacques Derrida and Mustapha Tilli (eds.), For Nelson Mandela, Seaver, New York, 1987 and Foucault's 'Kantian turn' towards personal autonomy and ethics in his late works, as proofs of the recognition by both Foucault and Derrida of the inevitability of ethical foundations in notions of individual sovereignty, equality or other of the both universalist and foundational values they both have criticised so severely. Roy Boyne, Foucault and Derrida: The Other Side of Reason, Unwin Hyman, London, 1990, pp. 157-60.
David Kolb, The Critique of Pure Modernity: Heidegger and After, Chicago University Press, Chicago, 1986, p. 259.
I am here indebted to Manas Ray's thoughtful and inspiring call for research and critiques that explore historically specific and complex institutions and structures of governmentality, to replace the totalising perspective ii> much critique cast in the deconstructionist mould. Manas Ray: 'Ethics and Government: Setting Limits to Critique1, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol XXVII, Sept. 26. 1996, pp. 2119-24.