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Film Screening in JNU on 17th April2007 Film'
Venue: Kaveri Hostel Mess, JNU ( 3 p.m )
RECENT EVENT WORKSHOP ON EUROPEAN AND NON-EUROPEAN PARADIGMS (Co-organised with Department of Sociology, Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi) Since the turn of the last century, European thinkers have been filled with a sense of foreboding when they address the issues of the fate of Europe. And they have also been aware that the fate of Europe implicates the fate of the entire world, as we know it. The struggles of the non-European nations to escape European imperialism of the not-too-distant past have been more or less aware of the crisis of Europe and the importance of this for their own future. In their struggles, non-European nations have related ambivalently and equivocally to the European intellectual heritage, that they have simultaneously addressed as the cause of their bondage and the possibility of their liberation. They have drawn selectively from both the European tradition and their own native traditions to forge an identity capable of withstanding the European intellectual and moral onslaught somehow implicated in their dependence and bondage to Europe. As the European crisis becomes deeper and wider in its influence with the dismantling of political colonialism, and as the moral weight of missionary European modernism loses its imperative force and coercive possibilities, an intellectual vacuum begins to manifest itself and confusion looms large and impending. To explore this crisis and to enter into the terms of its self-understanding, holds possibilities for philosophies and orientations of the future. The discussion on the theme of ‘European and non-European Paradigms’ was organised in order to enter into and explore the intellectual dimensions of this crisis and the question of alternative orienting visions. The workshop was held on the 18th and 19th of January 2007. The deliberations are expected to provoke debate and consideration in wider circles, if we have been able to rise to the challenge of the occasion, and contribute, if not to orienting visions, at least a greater clarity about the issues involved than that currently prevails. Dates : 18th & 19th of January 2007 (Thursday and Friday at 9.30 a.m.) * On each day a film was screened at 5.30 p.m.
Venue : Department of Sociology, Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi, Delhi-110007 Ph. No : 01127667858 Convenor : Dr. Rabindra Ray Contact : +91-11-27667083, +91-9911073565 E-mail : ssrindia@gmail.com
Abstracts of the papers presented Faith Paradigms in Public Discourse in Europe By His Excellency, Dr. Hans-Joachim Kiderlen The contemporary interest in religion is mainly because of its relation to and involvement in politics. In a certain general sense, Islam seems more political than Christianity. There is a difficulty as to where the dialogue can begin. The recent incident in which the Pope was involved provoked a singular exchange of opinion concerning this dialogue. The Danish cartoon incident seems unfortunate and seemed to have closed possibilities of dialogue. At the root of difficulties in dialogue is the divide between secular and religious orientation to the world and politics. The secular world of Europe established it self through religious war which culminated in recognition of the freedom of conscience. This lies at the base of the tolerance practiced by the secular. But the crucial question is whether this recognition will be effective in the contemporary confrontation.
Future of Knowledge: Towards Exact Humanities By Dr. Navjyoti Singh Europe and its intellectual hegemony is a mere episode in the history of the world and its people. The crux of this hegemony is European scientific thought that is characterized by materialism and the logical closure of language. This point of view relegates the understanding of all non-European people into the humanities. Whereas European thought is characterized by the idea of continuum of reality, non-European modes of knowledge are fundamentally discrete and necessitate new concept structures. Developments in science itself, as well as the rising material power of non-European peoples such as India and China indicate a changing structure to the future of science. It seems to me, that in not-too-distant future, the fundamental approaches of science need to and will undergo fundamental changes in order to account for those areas of experience that are gradually moving into the centre of thought and intellectual effort. It seems to me that with the attempt to understand consciousness and intelligence, non- European intellectual traditions will necessarily come into their own as underwriting the science of the future.
High Modernism and the Deceptive Plebeianization of Culture By Dr. Rabindra Ray The period from about 1857 to 1968 can be characterized as the period of high modernism. Beginning with Charles Baudelaire’s Fleurs du Mal and the first Indian war of Independence and closing with the intellectual revolts of the sixties and the staging of Becket’s Godot, the period is characterized by a proliferation of modernist ideologies and their overwhelming popularity. This modernism, an aristocratic distancing from the bourgeois, strives not upwards but down, and invents a plebeianism from which the plebeians themselves are excluded. And yet the mass response for it is attracted not by the downward movement but the upward aspiration. A phenomenological exploration of this terrain shows the paradoxes of hierarchy of which it is composed. It is at the post-modern turn that this plebeian turn needs to be addressed and contested.
Gandhi, Dipesh Chakrabarty and the Eurocentrism of the once colonized By Dr. Shankaran There is a European hegemony of thought and this hegemony has European Christian hegemony. It overshadows intellectual discourse in our time, and especially academic discourse. Dipesh Chakrabarty suggests a provincialisation of Europe as the way out of this bind but such a procedure is not enough. There are difficulties in the very categorical structure of European thought that pose obstacles to the understanding of non-European peoples and their history. For example, the word ‘religion’ is widespread in understanding of people in their history. There is no such thing as religion in the history of the Indic people; there are only cults and philosophy. And this holds true not only for non-European peoples but also for the very case of the pre-Christian, Greek Civilization of Europe. In a manner of speaking, the difficulty pertains to the very nature of truth and the way in which it is understood. The European approach to the truth is essentially essentialist and absolutist. Gandhi’s notion of truth is fundamentally anti-essentialist with no provision for an absolute truth.
Pluralism and the Vernacular Face of Identity By Dr. Anuradha Shah Where as the classical theory of Europe can be characterized as schizophrenic and pathological. Vernacular views are healthy. The classical view is characterized four dichotomies—mind-body, individual- collective, private-public, secular-religious. The vernacular view of identity is composed of the trinity of body, labour, and self-sacrifice, welded into a unity. Whereas identity in the classical view is fractured and schizophrenic, in line with its dualities, the personhood of the identity in the vernacular inheres in the very name itself. The vernacular way of life is characterized by community ad plurality of conscience. There is singular non-dualism about it that escapes the classic formulations.
Gandhi and the West By Dr. Amit Sharma Gandhi’s thought is an alternative to both the western paradigm and Gnana Marg. Gandhi was not an intellectual but a Bhakti Margi. His doctrine can be summed up as Antaratma ki Awaz. His was a Lok Vidya where loka is not merely folk or ethnos. Unless the west gives the non-west the honourable position requires, there can be no East-West dialogue, only conflict. The thought of Gandhi is not open to ismic interpretation.
Science as Pramana Sastra: Reflections on the Science and the Order of Knowledge By Dr. Avinash Jha There are plural knowledge systems, and knowledge is regulated by normative practices. A conception of knowledge underlies learning. Conflicting claims lead to investigations of these Meta conceptions. Pramana Shashtra is the name for the discussion of these norms. Even though there are various views of the nature of science there is consensus on the meta conceptions. One cannot selectively accept scientific explanations. Science establishes its authority by itself not recognising authority. This attitude of scientific knowledge comes from the normative structure. Knowledge is explained as the effect of an outside stimulus on inner experience. Science is justified by either its methods or its marvels. The argument of testability is strange because it is already implicates the theory. Science distinguishes it self from its application. Will new science change the relation between science and the human and the social?
Questioning European Paradigms By Dr. Shridhar TilveThe paper is an attempt at a non-academic, non-western historical paradigm to fit the Indian case. It tries to find a native heritage and a typology to which the author can subscribe without capitulating to Westernisms or western-influenced Academia. It attempts from the moment of contemporary engagement what it sees as the necessary idea system of its resolution.
Beyond Dichotomy: The Flexibility of Paradigms By Dr. Katharina Fleckenstein The paper is an ethnographic exploration of a Pakistani, Islamic, and modernizing women’s organization called Alhuda that is involved in Islamic education. It draws flak from the orthodox for being western and from the western for being Islamic. Negotiating these contradictions in its own way it provides a flexible medium between dogmatic fundamentalism and an equally dogmatic modernism.
Muslims, Multiculturalism and Liberal State: A Comparison of India and Western Europe By Prof. Anwar Alam The multicultural discourse of Europe is a monolithic construct with no place for minority rights. It’s not open to diversity and the Universalistic claims of other paradigms. It is the state that arrogates to itself the ambit of religion in the interest of what it perceives as order. Though there is no explicit Indian paradigm, the Indian aspiration to Unity in Diversity allows for a true multiculturalism. In this respect Europe has too much to learn from India.
Mind and the World in Modern European Sociology By Prof. J.P.S. Uberoi Western knowledge and its idea system are fundamentally characterized as a dichotomy between the mind and the world. The academic disciplines and the practical arts mediate this fundamental dichotomy in the accepted categorizations of the arts and sciences. The philosophical problem of mind versus the world without any transcendental unity receives three modern elaborations—the monistic denying the negation fleshed out as either Bacon’s objective empiricism, or as Descartes’ subjective rationalism; or the unistic affirming the duality as in the critical idealism of Kant; or the dialectical as in the system of Hegel trying to overcome and go beyond the dualism. In the social sciences, the Hegelian approach is represented by Marx, the Kantian by Durkheim, and the monistic vacillating between an empiricism and rationalism by Weber.
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