- Record: found
- Abstract: found
- Article: found
A World without Others? Specter of Difference and Toxic Identitarian Politics
Abstract
The specter of “difference” has been haunting the modern world since the time of colonial encounters. The paradigm of the “One,” which portended the death of difference and diversity, is equally problematic. Consequently, the modern world faces resilient and paradoxical notions of a world without difference, which continues to throw up toxic identitarian politics predicated on racism, tribalism, sexism, patriarchy, xenophobia, homophobia, and even “walled states” that invest massive resources in containment of transnational human mobilities. The recent highlights of these toxic politics include Brexit and the rise of Trumpism, which are reincarnations of the politics of a world without others in the midst of a globalized universe. This article offers an overview of the key contours of difference and the manifestations of the toxic identitarian politics haunting the twenty-first century through a broad critique of Cartesianism and egocentrism, Enlightenment reason and the idea of Europe, Eurocentrism and the notion of empty lands, and Orientalism and Islamophobia, in the process exploding the resilient myths of a world without others and highlighting the possibilities of pluriversalism. In short, the article spells out the dystopia of the world without others as it also reflects on the utopia of a world with others (pluriversity).
Content
Author and article information
References
Amin, S. (2009). Eurocentrism: Modernity, religion, and democracy: A critique of eurocentrism and culturalism. New York: Monthly Review Press.
Appiah, K. A. (2016). The Reith Lectures—Kwame Anthony Appiah: Mistaken identities. BBC. Retrieved from https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b080twcz/episodes/guide
Arana, R. V. (2002). The epic imagination: A conversation with Chinua Achebe at Annandale-on-Hudson, October 31, 1998. Callaloo, 24, 505–526.
Bhambra, G. K. (2007). Rethinking modernity: Postcolonialism and the sociological imagination. London, England: Palgrave Macmillan.
Blaut, J. M. (1993). The colonizer's model of the world: Geographical and Eurocentric history. New York, NY: The Guilford Press.
Bongie, C. (2009). Edouard Glissant: Dealing with globality. In C. Forsdick & D. Murphy (Eds.), Postcolonial thought in the French-speaking world (pp. 90–101). Liverpool, UK: Liverpool University Press.
Brown, W. (2010). Walled states, waning sovereignty. New York, NY: Zone Books.
Cesaire, A. (2000). Discourse on Colonialism (J. Pinkham, Trans.). New York, NY: Monthly Review Press. (Original work published 1955.)
Chabal, P. (2012). The end of conceit: Western rationality after postcolonialism. London, England: Zed Books.
Cornell, D., & Seely, S. D. (2016). The spirit of revolution: Beyond the dead ends of man. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.
Dabashi, H. (2015). Can non-Europeans think? London, England: Zed Books.
Descartes, R. (1968). Discourse on method and the meditations (F. E. Sutcliffe, Trans.). New York, NY: Penguin Books.
Du Bois, W. E. B. (1898). The study of the Negro problem. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, XI, 1–23.
Du Bois, W. E. B. (1903). The souls of Black people. New York, NY: Dover Publication.
Du Bois, W. E. B. (2001). The Negro. New York, NY: Dover. (Original work published 1915.)
Dussel, E. (1995). Eurocentrism and modernity (introduction to the Frankfurt lectures). In J. Beverley, J. Oviedo, & M. Aronna (Eds.), The postmodernism debate in Latin America (pp. 65–77). Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Dussel, E. (2008). A new age in the history of philosophy: The world dialogue between philosophical traditions. Prajna Vihara: Journal of Philosophy and Religion, 19, 1–21.
Dussel, E. (2011). Politics of liberation: A critical world history (T. Cooper, Trans.). London, England: SCM Press.
Gilroy, P. (2010). Darker than Blue: On the moral economies of Black Atlantic culture (the W. E. B. du Bois Lectures). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Goldberg, D. T. (2015). Are we all postracial yet? Debating race. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.
Goody, J. (2006). The theft of history. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Gordon, L. R. (2000). Existentia Africana: Understanding Africana existential thought. New York, NY: Routledge.
Gordon, L. R. (2008). An introduction to African philosophy. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Grosfoguel, R. (2007). The epistemic decolonial turn: Beyond political-economy paradigms. Cultural Studies, 21(2–3), 211–223.
Grosfoguel, R. (2013). The structure of knowledge in westernized universities: Epistemic racism/sexism and the hour genocides/epistemicides of the long 16th century. Human Architecture: Journal of Self-Knowledge, XI, 73–90.
Headley, J. M. (2008). The Europeanization of the world: On the origins of human rights and democracy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Heller, M. (2008). Derrida and the idea of Europe. Dalhousie French Studies, 82, 93–106.
Hobson, J. M. (2007). Is critical theory always for White West and for Western imperialism? Beyond Westphalian towards a post-racial critical international relations. Review of International Studies 33, 91–116.
Hobson, J. M. (2012). The Eurocentric conception of world politics: Western international theory, 1760–2010. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Lewis, M., & Wigen, K. (1997). The myth of continents: A critique of metageography. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Maldonado-Torres, N. (2007). On coloniality of being: Contributions to the development of a concept. Cultural Studies, 21, 240–270.
Mamdani, M. (2004). Good Muslim, bad Muslim: America, the Cold War, and the roots of terror. New York, NY: Pantheon Books and CODESRIA Book Series.
Marx, K. (1976). Capital: Volume 1. London, England: New Left Books. (Original work published 1867.)
Mbembe, A. (2016). Why do we believe that difference is a problem? Goethe-Institut. Retrieved from https://www.goethe.de/ins/rw/en/kul/mag/21274609.html
Mbembe, A. (2017). Critique of Black reason (L. Dubois, Trans.). Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Mignolo, W. D. (2000). Local histories/global designs: Coloniality, subaltern knowledges, and border thinking. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Mignolo, W. D. (2007). Delinking: The rhetoric of modernity, the logic of coloniality, and the grammar of de-coloniality. Cultural Studies, 21, 449–514.
Mignolo, W. D. (2015). Foreword: Yes, we can. In H. Dabashi (Ed.), Can non-Europeans think? (pp. viii-xlii). London, England: Zed Books.
Mignolo, W. D., & Walsh, C. E. (2018). On Decoloniality: Concepts, analytics, praxis. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Mudimbe, V. Y. (1994). The idea of Africa. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Mudimbe, V. Y. (2013). On African fault lines: Meditations on alterity politics. Scottville, MI: Scottville University of KwaZulu-Natal Press.
Ndlovu-Gatsheni, S. J. (2013a). Empire, global coloniality and African subjectivity. Oxford, UK: Berghahn Books.
Ndlovu-Gatsheni, S. J. (2013b). Coloniality of power in postcolonial Africa: Myths of decolonization. Dakar, Senegal: CODESRIA Book Series.
Ndlovu-Gatsheni, S. J. (2018). Epistemic freedom in Africa: Deprovincialization and decolonization. London: Routledge.
Nyamnjoh, F. (2006). Insiders and outsiders: Citizenship and xenophobia in contemporary Southern Africa. Dakar, Senegal: CODESRIA Books.
Said, E. W. (1978). Orientalism. New York, NY: Vintage Books.
Santos, B. d. S. (2007). Beyond Abyssal thinking: From global lines to ecologies of knowledge. Review, 30, 45–89.
Smith, A. (1976). An inquiry into the nature and causes of the wealth of nations. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press. (Original work published 1776.)
Smith, A. D. (1992). National identity and the idea of European unity. International Affairs, 68, 55–76.
West, C. (1999). The Cornell West reader. New York, NY: Basic Books.
Žižek, S. (1998). A leftist plea for Eurocentrism. Critical Enquiry, 24, 988–1009.
Žižek, S. (1999). The ticklish subject: The absent centre of political ontology. London, England: Verso.
Žižek, S. (2008). In defence of lost causes. London, England: Verso.
Žižek, S. (2010, October 3). Liberal multiculturalism masks an old barbarism with a human face. The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/oct/03/immigra tion-policy-roma-rightwing-europe
Žižek, S. (2011). Living in the end times. London, England: Verso.
Žižek, S. (2012). Less than nothing: Hegel and the shadow of dialectic materialism. London, England: Verso.