Cultural Critique

Cultural Critique 47 (2001) 3-15

In the Wake of Eurocentrism
An Introduction

John Mowitt

Where Do Papers Come From?

In the spring of 1998 a conference was convened here at the University of Minnesota under the auspices of the Interdisciplinary Center for the Study of Global Change at the University of Minnesota. It followed upon a seminar I had organized with my colleague Qadri Ismail, a seminar whose roster of invited speakers included Réda Bensmaïa, Pradeep Jeganathan, Ajay Skaria, Richard Monette, and Karen Brown Thompson. Arif Dirlik gave the keynote lecture of the conference, and a subsequent version of that paper, "History without a Center," has already appeared in the pages of this journal (Cultural Critique 42).

Driving both the seminar and the conference was our shared preoccupation with what felt like a paradox, namely, that the more closely the globalization of culture has approximated the universalist ideals and aspirations of Western humanism, the more globally discredited Western humanism has become. ¹ In designing the seminar and then mounting the conference, this paradox came to be refashioned as something like the following questions: If the critique of Eurocentrism that now preoccupies humanistic knowledge production in the West is indeed an expression of solidarity with the peoples of the non-European world, how specifically is this critique both taken up and challenged by those on whose behalf it is being articulated? Is, for example, the nihilistic repudiation of human values that allegedly attends the critique of Eurocentrism as articulated "here" confirmed or repudiated when examined from the perspective of societies out "there"? Or, from another angle, are there critiques of Eurocentrism so different from our own that "we" would fail to recognize them? How might they be engaged? [End Page 3]

In framing such questions we wanted to do more than simply provoke reflection about the effects of Western knowledge production in the non-European world (the perhaps all-too-familiar "colonial discourse" problematic). Instead, we wanted to underscore the importance of fostering a specific intellectual, and ultimately political, exchange around the practice of cultural critique, an exchange that would begin to clarify both the reception of the critique of Eurocentrism outside the West, as well as the so-called indigenous articulations of the cultural political "interests" embodied in this critique. Edward Said has succinctly characterized the situation to which we were hoping to respond. "Without significant exception the universalizing discourses of Europe and the United States assume the silence, willing or otherwise, of the non-European world. There is incorporation, there is inclusion, there is direct rule, there is coercion. But there is only infrequently an acknowledgment that the colonized people should be heard from, their ideas known" (Said 1994). As is often the case, this proved easier said than done. Nevertheless, our conference attempted not only to consider the very critique of Eurocentrism in this light, but--in attempting to reach beyond or after Said--it also sought to initiate reflection upon how one might put in place the institutional conditions for encountering and therefore being response-able to the ideas of non-Europeans, particularly of the former colonies.

Beyond Eurocentrism and Multiculturalism

Arguably, one of the most pervasive developments in the humanities of the past half century has been the unforgiving critique of humanism that emerged within the predominantly French movements of structuralism and poststructuralism. Though initially framed during the '50s and '60s, so-called antihumanism--a development that, I would contend, derives from the strategic compromises effected by existential humanism during the period of anticolonial struggle in Southeast Asia and Northern Africa--is still very much in the air. So much so, that during the '80s national educational policy--as articulated by then Secretary of Education William Bennett--explicitly sought to "reclaim the legacy" of the humanities from the clutches [End Page 4] of antihumanism. Outrage indeed. With the later ascension of the Cheneys (again, sadly, looming on our political horizon), it became relatively easy to establish that the push toward martial and economic globalization seemed to require a certain defense of humanism and a concerted ferreting out...