Hans Raj College, University of Delhi - K.S Arsh, 2010 - 2013: an account of what animated my bachelors

There was a moment in college when I was convinced that I wanted to re-write the history of western philosophy. I saw Derrida and deconstruction as an adversary that had to be overcome. I read his work, guided primarily by Sanjeev Nandan Prasad at Hansraj college. We had focused on the essay Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences, originally a lecture delivered at John Hopkins University in October 1966.

I traced back to the early impetuses that may have promoted what I identified in deconstruction [1], especially it's application by some proponents of post-colonial criticism (many who taught in DU) as a promotion of moral relativism that was antithetical to values enshrined in the Enlightenment. [2]

Characteristic of the kind of deconstructive practice adhered to by post-colonial theorists, at least in literature classrooms in India - was a tendency to portray a narrative which emphasised the colonial subjugation of the country by Imperial Britain. 

This was often done without taking into consideration a) the relative autonomy of the East India Trading Company  (at least prior to 1857) from the crown, b) as well as the fact that India at the time was largely a conglomerate of warring kingdoms. This was done, while generally promoting a xenophobic view of the world - in the sense that it identified the phenomena of capitalist exploitation as a foreign disease that had to be extinguished.

Being inclined towards a Marxist reading of history - I lean towards a reading of this as perhaps a necessary evil at that stage as it at least served to raise the populace out of the bonds of feudalism that were their manacles at the time.

Since then, I have been fortunate to discover in the works of leading philosophers such as Slavoj Zizek and Alain Badiou - powerful critiques of the kind of narrative deployed by nationalists in particular, that placed Imperial Europe as a symptomatic centre of the imperial malaise of capitalist exploitation that swept the world.

I think it may be useful to highlight the polemical strategy often employed by these post-colonial (and often feminist critics). Particularly so for it mirrors, cruelly the structural attributes which an Imperial power may exercise over a colony - though in a far more delimited spatial metaphor. This narrative would place a people, India - at the centre, which is imagined as self sufficient (and in some of the ludicrous accounts - a happy republic of villages) - which was brutally intruded into by foreigners who plundered the land, and took away resources, which were used to fuel their own industries.

The generic reading produced here was characterised by a reification of the moment of imperial subjugation, to the status of almost a Biblical event which cannot be erased in the construction of any possible narrative of the people. Which had to continually be referred back to, extracting from such a moment the anger which fuels the post-colonial's polemics.

Sober questions which can be asked in retrospect are why was it there? And how did it become the dominant form of historiography and interpretative allegory which coloured our reading of narratives in the sub-continent?

An inquiry in this direction may have been fruitful. However, questioning the hegemony of this narrative often was treated with a degree of disdain, almost always immediately being read as a form of reactionary defense of what was described as "grand narrative" - be it of progress, Enlightenment values or Marxism. 

Being a student, I tried to follow what was said in the class and read around it - carrying my queries and observations back to the teacher and classmates. This was the extent of my reading of the discipline then. I recognise now what may have been an important facet left incomplete in such an engagement - the conditions of the reproduction of the discipline itself.

The situation in the classroom was often this - the teacher, representing the center of authority, placing forth such an account, prescribed in the curriculum (B.A English Honours, DU) to students, whose fees, which along with government subsidies, paid for the faculties salary. 

These were concrete externalities to what some (including Marxists) may describe as the immanence of disciplinary inquiry and critique itself.

Even then, and my predisposition towards his work is reinforced by the considerations of these conditions - Althusser was a point of reference, whose account of the functioning of Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses provided powerful metaphors for the predicament I found myself in. 

[1] A kind of reading which searches a narrative for inconsistencies.

[2] Characterised as a period in philosophy which included a movement towards secularisation and the transfer of power from the church and king to nation states and the newly emerging bourgeoisie, or traders who made their money through selling their wares rather than living off rent. This was witnessed in Europe was was the forerunner to modernity and the industrial revolution.