Modernity as Coloniality

WHAT IS MODERNITY?

“Modernity is easy to inhabit but difficult to define” (Dipesh Chakrabarty, Habitations of Modernity, 2002: xix).

The postcolonial writer Homi Bhabha asks the following pertinent questions “ What is this “now” of modernity? Who defines this present from which we speak? Why does it insist, so compulsively, on its contemporaneous reality, its spatial dimension, its spectatorial distance?” (The Location of Culture, p. 244).

In mainstream western accounts of history, ‘modernity’ has generally been associated with a particular region of the world - “the West” (and specifically in relation to the period being discussed, Europe). This association and the elision of modernization with westernization in my view requires much greater critical interrogation. Stephen Toulmin writes of two sources of modernity but locates both of them in Europe (indeed more specifically in the works of two Frenchmen Montaigne and Descartes). The irony is that, whilst “to be modern” is to be peculiarly aware of one’s separation from history and tradition (indeed for some to be quintessentially modern is to be at 'the end of history'), it has been notoriously difficult to pinpoint an historical point of origin for modernity itself (see Toulmin for a discussion of some possibilities). This should not really surprise us since on the one hand “modernity” is above all a highly contested and debated ideological notion, whilst on the other, it is clear that “the modern (that is, the contemporary) world” in which we live is the product of diverse cultural and historical tributaries. The idea that the modern was born in Europe is little more than regional propaganda!

There are in fact I would suggest many modernities, intersecting, overlapping and challenging each other. They are all "framed" however by the events of the last few centuries. It is difficult for us “moderns” to appreciate that the last 500 years has witnessed a remarkable historical anomaly that has irrevocably shaped the emergence of the modern world as we know it. This anomaly relates to the circumstances whereby one relatively small region of the world – Europe – came to exercise dominion over almost the entire globe. This story is usually told as the ‘birth of the modern world’ but what such narratives usually fail to convey is the sheer complicity between colonial domination and the emergence of those features ascribed to modernity. For some, such as Latin American writers such as Anibal Quijano, Edward Mignolo and Enrique Dussel, the condition of coloniality is little more than the shadow-side of modernity. What relatively affluent populations of “the First World” experience as modernity, is for others a history of colonial occupation and domination. This is so much so, argues Quijano, that he advocates using the hyphenated term ‘modernity-coloniality’ so as to keep in mind the two sides of this complex phenomenon, rather than be seduced by “first world” accounts of history.


WHERE DID MODERNITY ORIGINATE?

What kind of question is this anyway? Modernity is usually portrayed as arising first in Europe and then being exported to the rest of the world (often “unevenly” when it is seen as not corresponding closely enough to the original prototype). Such an account of course is a history written by the conquerors. As the South Asian historian Dipesh Chakrabarty has noted, the writing of history usually privileges ‘Europe” as the centre of gravity – the point of orientation – for all other histories. This he argues, has been as true for modern histories of “the Third World’ as it has been for histories of the West. Why I wonder are we so keen to accept claims about the distinctiveness of Europe as the driving force of modernity, as if as Chakrabarty puts it, “the self-fashioning of the West were something that occurred only within its self-assigned geographical boundaries.”

The history of Europe, in fact cannot be divorced from the unfolding of events beyond Europe since what we call ‘modernity’ is itself a contested space borne out of the encounter between Europe, Asia and the rest of the world. There is now an emerging body of critical scholarship that challenges the idea that Europe can be pinpointed as the isolated locus of the emergence of Capitalist modernity as our mainstream histories would have us believe. Janet Abu-Lughod’s work suggests that global networks of economic and cultural exchange were in operation in the 13th and 14th centuries, long before the emergence of Europe as a major player on the scene (see J. Abu-Lughod, (1989), Before European Hegemony: The World System A.D. 1250-1350, New York: Oxford University Press) Similarly, macro-historian Andre Gunder Frank has argued that in fact the last few centuries of European economic and political domination is better understood as a recent blip in what is in actuality an Asian-centred global network and economy. The much vaunted rise of Asia as an economic powerhouse in the 21st century Frank suggests is more accurately to be seen as a return to “normality” if you like – to the Asian-centred context that persisted before the fifteenth century (see A. G. Frank (1998), ReOrient: Global Economy in the Asian Age, Berkeley: University of California Press).


MODERNITY AND THE THREE PHASES OF EUROPEAN COLONIZATION

Following the work of the Latin American philosopher Enrique Dussel, it is possible to view the last five hundred years in terms of three phases of colonialization. The first Dussel calls the first modernity. It corresponds to the discovery and early conquest of the Americas, Africa and South Asia by Europeans from the late 15th century and was primarily driven from the Mediterranean by the Spanish and Portuguese, with its economic and ideological centre being Seville. A strong motivating theme throughout this period was the economic prosperity that could be gained by the conquest and exploitation of the natural resources and the peoples of these regions, but the primary ideology behind this phase of European colonial expansion was the explicit aim of the Christianization of the ‘New World’. It is in this period that we see the rapid growth in slavery as a profitable mass-industry, utilizing the ‘human resources’ of Africa and the Americas for the empire building of the emerging European nation-states. Historians are generally agreed that it was the discovery and exploitation of natural resources such as silver in the Americas that allowed the Europeans to gain an economic advantage over Asia, in particular China, for the first time. This is also the period of the Renaissance and the emergence of humanist ideals, such as las Casas – are these not human also!!

With the Protestant Reformation in Northern Europe, the papal sanction that allowed Portugal to monopolize much of the commercial enterprise in South and South East Asia and Spain in the Americas, was increasingly challenged by a new power-bloc in Europe, this time centred not in the Mediterranean, but in the emerging economic centres of the Netherlands, England and France. Eventually, this region gave birth to a social and intellectual shift that has come to be known as “the Enlightenment”, characterized by the emergence of notions such as ‘liberty’, ‘equality’ and secular humanism and a notion of social revolution exemplified by events such as the French Revolution of 1789 and the American War of Independence. This phase of history is described by Dussel as ‘the second modernity’, since it was soon claimed by its Northern European protagonists to be the point of origin for the rise of modernity itself. With the loss of the “New World” after the American Declaration of Independence, England and its Northern European neighbours increasingly looked towards the East for economic conquest and also cultural and religious inspiration. This second phase of colonialism was not moulded primarily by an explicit Christian sensibility, but it was no less missionary for that. Although many still justified European exploitation of other region in the language of Christian evangelism, the primary ideology behind empire-building in this second phase of colonialism was the ‘spread of civilization’.

The cultural and intellectual revolution of ‘the Enlightenment’ in Northern Europe, the new social and individual freedoms created by the rise of anti-clericalism and the displacement of the traditional stranglehold of the Christian church upon society also coincided with the rise of the natural sciences in something approaching their ‘modern’ form These developments convinced many Northern Europeans that they had achieved the apex of civilizational development . This myth of social progress was further enhanced by the increasing interest in Darwinian-inspired theories suggesting that all human societies undergo a process of social evolution from a primitive ‘dark age’ to modern “Enlightenment’ but at different stages. The heathens and unbelievers of the first phase of colonialism thereby became the savages and primitives of the second, now in need of European ‘know-how’ and cultural upliftment to ‘liberate’ them from their ancient and uncivilized traditions, institutions and superstitions. During this period, the British reached the zenith of their global reach, building and then consolidating their empire, with India as the ‘jewel in the crown’. France colonized parts of Africa, Indo-China and the Dutch expanded their sphere of influence along the trade routes of South-East Asia, particularly in Ceylon (Sri Lanka), before the British took over, in Indonesia and in the East Indies (e.g. Surinam).

The third phase of colonialism emerged from the watershed of transformations brought about by the second world war. In the post-war period, those who had fought on behalf of the victorious Allies, rightly argued that they should no longer be considered dependent colonies and long struggles for independence finally came to fruition with the emergence of new ‘independent’ nation-states throughout Asia and Africa. As a result we often find the current period of history described ‘post-colonial’ as if colonialism had come to an end in the twentieth century. However, we continue to see the military, economic and political domination of the globe by the “European peoples’ of the world, though through the mass migrations of the last few centuries, this power is now dispersed in ways that resist easy geo-political classifications. Rather than the West dominating the rest, however, it is perhaps more meaningful to speak of the ‘Northerners’ dominating the peoples of the Southern hemisphere. The primary mode of rationalization for economic and political domination in this third phase of colonialism has again shifted (as have the ‘power-centres’ around which such ideologies gravitate). Capitalism has become the new ideological driving force behind colonialism in the late twentieth century, further emboldened by the collapse of the Soviet Union and Francis Fukuyama’s much heralded ‘end of history’.

As with the previous two phases, the primary engine for this process has shifted according to the geopolitical movement of the “centre of gravity” from Northern Europe to the United States of America. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, now with the benefit of hindsight seen to have been an important bulwark against the expansionist tendencies of the American version of Capitalism, we have seen the development in the 1990s of a new world order – and a new form of global Capitalism – no longer explicitly tied to material production itself but rather to the exchange of electronic information on computer screens. The new world order that is emerging, like the ‘internet’ that has arisen alongside it, is de-centralized, making it inherently de-stabilizing for sovereign-states that can no longer control the flow of capital across their national boundaries. Thus we have seen the rise of a variety of unelected organizations such as the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) with the aim of maintaining this new system and regulating its “anomalies” in such a way that the global dominance of “the developed nations” is not significantly threatened. At the beginning of the twenty-first century at least, it is the USA that provides the primary (and most powerful) exemplar of its values.

Tropes of global designs for domination from earlier periods of history continue as persistent traces even in the contemporary era. For many Christian evangelicals the mission to convert all peoples of the world to the ‘good news’ of the gospel retains its central significance. For others, whether Christian or secular humanist by persuasion, there remains a residue belief that the West is somehow more civilized, liberated or more modern than the peoples and societies of ‘the two-thirds world’. We can see this for instance in the continued references to Islamic societies as “medieval” and ‘backward’ or in the rhetoric of ‘under-development’ that characterizes modern economic theories of development. Rarely are the questions asked – ‘who defines what counts as modern?’ ‘what counts as civilized?’ and ‘under-developed according to whose criteria?’ Nevertheless, George W. Bush’s description of the “war on terrorism” as a “crusade” and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s claim that the West is a “superior civilization” to Islam notwithstanding, contemporary western leaders have generally learnt not to use the language of the first and second phases if only because such rationalizations have become largely discredited amongst their own electorates.


CONSIDERING THE THIRD PHASE AND ITS SELF-NAMING:
"GLOBALIZATION", "THE WAR ON TERROR" AND THE MARCH OF NEOLIBERALISM

Rather than setting out to convert the heathen to the gospel (Christianity), or bring civilization to the primitive (the Enlightenment), the explicit goal in this third phase of colonialism is to convert the people of the world into consumers (Capitalism) and all human societies into markets. This involves the replacement of traditional institutions and modes of authority with new forms and policies designed to precipitate the active transformation of the consciousnesses of human beings through the mass media, education and advertising as a means of creating new desires for the latest consumer products. In this way, bombarded by media images of western affluence and celebrity endorsements of the “virtues” of unending consumption, we are increasingly finding more and more aspects of our lives being presented to us in the language of the marketplace, as a series of choices between competing brand-names and privatized (rather than state-organized) social services. Students become consumers, rail passengers become customers, politicians become ‘spin-doctors’ promoting their own brand of managerialism, and religious ideas and practices become commodities for sale. The theology underlying this process in the late twentieth century is neo-liberalism. The marketization of more and more features of human life and culture that the spread of neoliberalism is creating within societies has now reached such heights (or perhaps depths), that we can now legitimately (that is, in legal terms) talk of the commodification of life itself, with the patenting of human genes by multi-national companies and the emergence of intellectual copyright laws which attempt to maintain restrictions upon the ownership of ideas, now increasingly seen as forms of “intellectual capital”.


IS RESISTANCE FUTILE?

Lest we despair, it is important to note that there has been important points of resistance to such colonialism in all three phases. The European conquest, enslavement and slaughter of the indigenous peoples of the Americas also precipitated counter-ideologies and philosophies, most notably Father Bartholomew Las Casas’ call to accept the common humanity of the American peoples, and the birth of Renaissance humanism – both important precursors of later notions of civil liberties and fundamental human rights. During the Enlightenment period, we find the emergence of a powerful anti-slavery movement, articulated according to the Enlightenment’s own values of equality, liberty and human rights, but applied universally to all peoples, regardless of race, creed or color. We also see the birth of Marxism, liberation theology, and anti-colonial movements throughout the world. In our own era, we are beginning to see the emergence of new forms of resistance to the neo-liberal hegemony of the “Washington Consensus,” with the activities of a variety of so-called ‘anti-capitalist’ movements and groups, many brought together for the first time under “the Seattle Coalition”. It is not yet clear precisely what ideologies and philosophies will develop from this emerging context that will sufficiently capture and mobilize the public imagination to be effective engines of change and resistance. As Carrette and King have argued (Selling Spirituality, Routledge, 2005) any attempt to develop a truly global network of resistance to the current phase of colonial capitalism must remain open to the intellectual resources and communitarian ethics of the various philosophical and religious traditions of the world. To engage on a global scale such resistance cannot remain intellectually confined to the secular ideologies of contemporary western-educated elites. Given that the vast majority of humans in the “two-thirds worlds” do not interpret the world from the perspective of secular modernity (the Enlightenment philosophies of the second phase of colonialism), philosophies of resistance that develop in this emerging context must take seriously the indigenous Christian, Buddhist, Islamic, Hindu and Confucian/Daoist traditions as vehicles for mobilizing resistance to the ongoing process of the commodification of everything.

What is Geo-sophia?

Wisdom goes by many names - in the Indo-European lexicon of Greek and Sanskrit alone: sophia, gnosis, prajna, jnana. In the west those who 'love wisdom' are known as philosophers, but western philosophers have tended to limit their interests to thoughts that derive from ancient Greece and what became known subsequently as "the European classical tradition". Today, "philosophy" generally refers to specific traditions of systematic thought that occurs according to the prescribed parameters of that particular imagined tradition (the Anglo-American and Euro-Continental traditions). Wisdom (sophia), however, occurs wherever human beings have taken the time to reflect upon the conditions of their existence and knows no such geo-political or cultural boundaries. Hence the coining of the neologism " GEOSOPHIA".

This site is devoted to musings reflecting upon this fact - the plurality of expressions of wisdom (I am not an advocate of the perennial philosophy or of bulldozing cultural differences). Not all wisdoms are the same. What they share in common is an attempt to understand humanity, the cosmos and, what two very different thinkers Pierre Hadot and Friedrich Nietzsche might call, "the living of an authentic life". To explore these diverse wisdom traditions however requires that we also reflect upon the occidentalism that has supported hegemonic constructions of "wisdom". Along the way perhaps we might also consider why these particular knowledge-constructions are coming under increasing fire. Some might call this contemporary unravelling of Occidental power, "globalization" (more on that later), others might say that it reflects the fact that we now live in an apparently "postcolonial" era. There are good reasons to be sceptical about both of these claims, as we shall see.