Let me make it clear that the raging Medusa of cultu­ral rela­ti­vism is not rea­ring her ugly head in my dis­cus­sion at this point. To allow for plu­ra­li­ty, signi­fied by the plu­ra­li­ty of gods, is to think in terms of sin­gu­la­ri­ties. To think in terms of sin­gu­la­ri­ties, however—and this I must make clear since so many scho­lars these days are prone to see paro­chia­lism, essen­tia­lism, or cultu­ral rela­ti­vism in eve­ry claim of non-Western difference—is not to make a claim against the demons­trable and docu­men­table per­mea­bi­li­ty of cultures and lan­guages. It is, in fact, to appeal to models of cross-cultu­­ral and…

Subaltern his­to­ries writ­ten with an eye to dif­fe­rence can­not consti­tute yet ano­ther attempt, in the long and uni­ver­sa­lis­tic tra­di­tion of “socia­list” his­to­ries, to help erect the subal­tern as the sub­ject of modern demo­cra­cies, that is, to expand the his­to­ry of the modern in such a way as to make it more repre­sen­ta­tive of socie­ty as a whole. This is a lau­dable objec­tive on its own terms and has undoub­ted glo­bal rele­vance. But thought does not have to stop at poli­ti­cal demo­cra­cy or the concept of ega­li­ta­rian dis­tri­bu­tion of wealth (though the aim of achie­ving these ends will legi­ti­ma­te­ly fuel many…

Consider the fol­lo­wing des­crip­tion from the 1930s of a par­ti­cu­lar fes­ti­val (still quite com­mon in India) that entails the wor­shi­ping of machi­ne­ry by wor­kers : “In some of the jute mil­ls near Calcutta the mecha­nics often sacri­fice goats at this time [autumn]. A sepa­rate alter is erec­ted by the mecha­nics… . Various tools and other emblems are pla­ced upon it… . Incense is burnt… . Towards eve­ning a male goat is tho­rough­ly washed … and pre­pa­red for a … final sacri­fice… . The ani­mal is deca­pi­ta­ted at one stroke … [and] the head is depo­si­ted in the … sacred Ganges.” This…

One his­to­ri­cizes only inso­far as one belongs to a mode of being in the world that is ali­gned with the prin­ciple of “disen­chant­ment of the uni­verse,” which under­lies know­ledge in the social sciences (and I dis­tin­guish know­ledge from prac­tice). But “disen­chant­ment” is not the only prin­ciple by which we world the earth. The super­na­tu­ral can inha­bit the world in these other modes of worl­ding, and not always as a pro­blem or result of conscious belief or ideas. The point is made in an anec­dote about the poet W. B. Yeats, whose inter­est in fai­ries and other non­hu­man beings of Irish…

Why was it impor­tant that the modern indi­vi­dual be concep­tua­li­zed in terms of this inter­nal struggle bet­ween passion/sentiments and rea­son ? Timothy Mitchell’s dis­cus­sion of Durkheim in Colonising Egypt offers a sug­ges­tive ans­wer. The very concep­tion of modern indi­vi­dual, Mitchell says in dis­cus­sing Durkheim’s texts, poses a threat to the concep­tion of the social and the gene­ral, for if indi­vi­duals are endo­wed with infi­nite indi­vi­dua­li­ty (which is what the dra­ma of pas­sions is sup­po­sed to reveal—each per­son his or her own nove­list and ana­ly­sand at the same time), what is there to gua­ran­tee the uni­ty of the social ? What would prevent…

The pre­fix pre in “pre­ca­pi­tal,” it could be said simi­lar­ly, is not a refe­rence to what is sim­ply chro­no­lo­gi­cal­ly prior on an ordi­nal, homo­ge­neous scale of time. “Precapitalist” speaks of a par­ti­cu­lar rela­tion­ship to capi­tal mar­ked by the ten­sion of dif­fe­rence in the hori­zons of time. The “pre­ca­pi­ta­list,” on the basis of this argu­ment, can only be ima­gi­ned as some­thing that exists within the tem­po­ral hori­zon of capi­tal and that at the same time dis­rupts the conti­nui­ty of this time by sug­ges­ting ano­ther time that is not on the same, secu­lar, homo­ge­neous calen­dar (which is why what is pre­ca­pi­tal is…

[…] Eu égard au dis­cours aca­dé­mique de l’his­toire – l’« his­toire » en tant que dis­cours pro­duit dans le site ins­ti­tu­tion­nel qu’est l’u­ni­ver­si­té –, l’« Europe » demeure le sujet théo­rique sou­ve­rain de toutes les his­toires, y com­pris de celles que nous appe­lons « indienne », « chi­noise », « kényane », et ain­si de suite. De façon très étrange, toutes ces his­toires ont ten­dance à deve­nir des variantes d’un récit maître que l’on pour­rait appe­ler « l’his­toire de l’Europe ». En ce sens, l’his­toire « indienne » se trouve elle-même dans une posi­tion de subal­ter­ni­té ; c’est au nom de cette his­toire seule­ment que l’on peut arti­cu­ler des posi­tions sub­jec­tives subal­ternes. […]…