Judaline Torcato

Exclusions in Philosophy: Postcolonial Approaches

(Assignment)

Raghuramaraju in the Introduction to his book Enduring Colonialism: Classical Presences And Modern Absences
In Indian Philosophy, discusses the aspect of absence as a core theme in Philosophy.1 It is discussed in relation to a
pertinent question: Why is there something rather than nothing?. In a slightly different context , Gayatri Spivak, in
her discussion on Philosophy would discuss, how the presence of a philosophical text is undergirded by an
absence, a foreclosure of the native informant.2 Spivak interrogates three classical texts by Kant, Hegel and Marx in
search of the (im)possible perspective of the native informant which for her signifies the expulsion from the notion
of Man which shares a Eurocentric prejudice. This prejudice is not just textually limited but is also reflected in the
neocolonial strategies adopted by the North to perpetuate its dominance over the South in the form of aid and the
financialization of the globe. Spivaks professed methodology of deconstruction is used to demonstrate the
imperialist assumptions underwritten in the texts of the aforementioned thinkers whose work form the staple of
Western Philosophy.
Spivak in her book A Critique Of Postolonial Reason employs the metaphorical theme of the native informant , to
disclose how the idea of being a Man is exclusive. The three texts that she explores marks those expulsions differently
and much of what we understand as critique Spivak argues, is borrowed from them . Therefore postcolonial studies
have employed Kantian Hegelian and Marxian strategies to challenge Western imperialism, and Spivak places
herself in this complicit relationship in critiquing these texts in search of the Other. The native informant , whose
lack of agency has denied it a position to put forward his/her perspective has helped to consolidate the narratives and
cultural representations of these texts.
In the section on the Critique Of Judgement Kant delineates his notion of the beautiful and the sublime, where the
latter represents the superiority of the rational over the sensible, for such a tendency is ingrained in human nature.
Spivak refers to this notion of sublime as a trope that requires receptivity to ideas that can be realized through culture,
for though such a judgement may be grounded in human nature, it requires culture to actualize this tendency. For
what is sublime, may appear fearful for man in the raw. Spivak clinches on this phrase of Kants to argue that such
a phrase could imply the poor, the child , the woman and the primitive. For such a raw man the sublime which is
infinite may appear terrifying and could be remedied through the corrective measure of culture. This would bring in
the imperial mission of philosophy to civilize the primitive through culture, though such a project may never succeed.
The New Hollanders and the Tierra del Fuego are not the subject of Kants text, they are treated as a mere aside of a
rhetorical detail as they do not constitute the Kantian Man of cognition and judgement. According to Kant, what
renders the abyss of infinity comprehendible as sublime is God, for God is the necessary supplement which is lacking
in primitive societies. Polytheism is defined as demonology contra to the Christian concept of God as wondrous
because it is closer to philosophy.
Thus Kantian philosophy presupposes the moral man who exercises reason , in order to comprehend nature as
sublime. The primitive, which would exclude much of humanity, is incapable of this rational judgment. Access to
humanity, requires access to culture, defined according to European standards. It is through the moral being that the
purpose of creation can be understood. The primitive man cannot be the noumenal subject, he cannot be the citizen of
the burgerliche gesellschaft. Kant excision is thereby based not only on the exclusion of rationality, but on the moral,
cultural and religious superiority of Europe.
The demand that ethnics speak for themselves is dubious , for there is no authentic voice to be captured. Though in
her analysis of Hegels philosophy and the Srimadbhagvad Gita (henceforth referred to as simply Gita) Spivak calls
for an implied reader of these texts in order to lay bare theirs assumptions, she is fully aware that such a perspective is

impossible for one can never authenticate it. Spivaks professed aim is to problematize the binary between the
colonial and the colonized, by which she refers to the texts of Kosambi and Matilal where the emphasis is on how the
Gita as an exhortatory text, helped to maintain Brahmin domination over the lower castes. This is the structural
complicity that the Gita shares with Hegelian Philosophy. For Hegel, Indian time is static and monotonous which
breeds lethargy. This provides for a de-contextualized reading of the Gita, for not only is the charge of ahistoricity
inapplicable for a text like Gita, as Krishna teaches Arjuna that all appearance is an illusion and that Krishna contains
all time within himself, thus rendering the veracity of sequential time redundant. The exception to this schema is
provided by the error in Arjunas request of viewing Krishnas divinity, for what is monstrosity without aim and
measure for Hegel, Spivak argues is the suppression of time as lived experience, by the graph of Time. The
authority of the present moment is denied and it is in this mood of temporal condescension that the four castes are
named.
Both the Hegelian texts and the Gita are complicit is justifying exclusion, while much of Hegels views are expressed
to fit the narrative structure of German greatness as the ultimate telos, whereby he selectively picks two thousand five
hundred years to show how Indians have stagnated in History and Indian art is forever striving for a unity in self
knowledge by the incessant struggle between form and content. The Gita on the other hand clarifies the origin and
purpose of the caste system and marks the transition to the modern state system where killing ones kin in political
interest is justified.3 Spivak avoids the kind of ethnocentric sensitivity that characterizes scholars when writing
about their culture.4 As Matilal points out, that ideas which did not have a counterpart in the Western world were
looked upon as deviations, and was stamped with the label of irrationality.5 Thus much of the Hegelian criticism is
based on a notion of rationality as understood in the West.
While in the Hegelian system , sublation as such is never achieved as the dialectics moves on, for Marx the question
of accounting for such difference is crucial. Two conceptualizations of the subject remain crucial: Species Being and
Species Life. While the former signifies mans consciousness as an agent of change, free and universal, the latter
signifies an abstract human being, that is part of nature and lives off it, but lacking in voice consciousness. The
Asiatic Mode Of Production is the mark of that alterity, that signifies the Other. The crucial difference between need
and making, is what enables value to be in excess of what is produced by the Species-Being to sustain the SpeciesLife. This excess then lends itself amenable to exchange, which for Marx constitutes the economic coding of value.
This coding enables the formation of Capital as the accumulation of surplus. Thus the two major classes of Capitalism
are those who have Capital and those who do not. This difference can then be sublated only in Communism , where
self determination acquires a universal character. Therefore capitalism becomes a necessary rite of passage to achieve
the resolution of difference. In the Asiatic Mode Of Production, property is mediated through a despot. The
individual is defined in terms of Species-Life, as property marks the relationship of the individual with nature. Spivak
draws a parallel between this notion of Species-Life and primitive man of Terra Fuego. Property being mediated by
the despot represents the under-developed consciousness of the individual, still dependent on the Patriarch. That the
Asiatic Mode Of Production was a generic term that glossed over the specificities of actual production, did not matter
as long as the structural coherence of the narrative was maintained with the presupposition of Capital as its logic. This
model of historical narrativizing is highly Eurocentric, for it takes Capitalism as experienced by Europe as a superior
mode while dismissing the Asiatic mode as static and without merit.6
Spivaks reading of Marxs discussion of value, has been difficult to comprehend, and one can only venture an
interpretation . In the sphere of colonial trade value as such has an expansive notion. It includes , chainsendless
seriesof disparate and unconnected expressions of value7. Therefore the Asiatic Mode Of Production becomes the
site of alterity, which represents the attempt of the money form of value trying to overtake other expanded forms of
value. This leads to a foreclosure of the subaltern woman operating in a patriarchal system where her reproductive
labour, and homeworking are excluded from such a restricted notion of value. In the text of Kant, the woman was
reduced to a means for the propagation of the species and such a dismissal was argued in the text itself. Thus though

impossible, the perspective of the native informant as the Third World woman, poses a crisis in the narrative of the
financialization of the post Soviet world, where Capital is the driving logic in its neo-colonial avatar. The foreclosure
of the savage man , the notion of Time in Hegel or the Marxist notion of Asiatic Mode of production represent a
continual marginalization of the subaltern, which has found its spillovers in the contemporary globalized world with
the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, operating under the Capitalist logic. Spivaks intervention
represents an effort towards what K.C Bhattacharya would refer to as the open eyed struggle to achieve
independence in ideas. 8For Bhattacharya ideas of the west, fixed in language have fettered the Indian mind. The plea
to translate foreign ideas into native ideas serve to also expose the imposition of foreign concepts, where for example
notions of Historical Time are taken as an exemplar against which to judge other concepts of time. The argument that
western education and therefore western language itself has become somewhat caste like in its exclusivity, raises an
important question posed by Raghuramaraju with respect to the dependence that Indian social categories have over
their western counterparts. The modification of the Gita itself, as a moment of the Spirit, to suit the Hegelian notion of
the Geist is a case in point9. However unlike Spivak , Bhattacharya does not take the economic asymmetries, which
are responsible for certain ideas being superimposed over others. The superiority of the spiritual sphere, over the
material sphere where no compromise is required, becomes problematic, when the authenticity of that
sphere/perspective gets questioned.10 Moreover it is the excessive spiritualism that for Vivekananda, was
responsible for the marginalization of the masses and the exclusive nature of that spiritualism, that Aurobindo
criticized as confined to a few.
The new nexus that is proposed is that of ignorance/power, where the status of oriental scholarship as knowledge is
negated.11 Spivak questions Marxs sources on the transition to monopoly capitalist colonialism which was written
by people who were not well versed in the earlier systems of what was called the Asiatic Mode. The argument, that
we need to think in terms of our own concepts, in order to achieve svaraj (Bhattachrya; 1984), overlooks the
absence that is noticed in Indian Philosophy post the classical age, which has rendered thinking in indigenous
concepts anachronistic.12 Instead of searching for indigenous concepts, it is important to understand, how far those
concepts may be relevant to contemporary times. A major question resonating from Spivaks work is how far those
concepts can represent indigenousness. The post-colonial holds the nostalgia for authenticity, for recovering the
excluded. But such a search must take into account the power dimensions present in the world. The text needs to take
in to account what lies outside it.13 The lack of review in academic journals of Chandidass book : Desire and
Liberation: The Fundamentals of Cosmicontology may provide a partial answer.

END NOTES
1

Raguramaraju. A Introduction in Enduring Colonialism: Classical Presences and Modern Absences in Indian Philosophy (New Delhi: Oxford
University Press)

The reference here is specifically to the texts of Kant, Hegel and Marx , that Spivak engages with to varying extents. The term foreclosure
as she metions herself is borrowed from Lacanian Psychoanalysis where the Ego rejects an incompatible Idea together with the Affect. See
Spivak (1999) Philosophy in A Critique Of Postcolonial Reason ( Kolkata: Seagull Publishers)

(Ibid)

Matila B.K On Dogmas Of Orientalism in Jonordon Ganeri (ed) Mind, Language and World, (New Delhi: Oxford University Press)

(Ibid)

Here Spivak is referring to the implications of Samir Amins work

Spivak A Critique p 101

Bhattacharya . K.C (1984) Svaraj in Ideas in Indian Philosophical Quarterly XI (4), 384-393.

See Spivak A Critique p49

10

Spivak argues that there is no authentic indigenous voice as such which can be recovered. The perspective of the native informant is
mistaken, for one cannot authoritatively represent such diverse heterogeneous experience.
11

Raguramaraju questions the status of knowledge accorded to Oriental scholarship. He quotes Kavirajs argument as to how traditional
knowledge systems were rejected en bloc without subjecting them to the verificationist procedure of the West.
12

(Ibid)

13

The de Manian version of deconstruction focus on the outside of a text, by tracing the anthropomorphic moments of a text.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Spivak. G (1999) Philosophy in A Critique Of Postcolonial Reason ( Kolkata: Seagull Publishers)

Matilal. B. K (2002) On the Concept Of Philosophy in India and On the dogmas of Orientalism in
Mind, Language and World, ed, Janardan Ganeri, (New Delhi: Oxford University Press)
Raghuramaraju. A (2009) Introduction to Enduring Colonialism: Classical Presences and Modern
Absences in Indian Philosophy (New Delhi: Oxford University Press)
Bhattacharya . K.C (1984) Svaraj in Ideas in Indian Philosophical Quarterly XI (4), 384-393.