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Their contrast was with the
terms such as essence, unidirectional casualty, mirroring,
objectivity, logocentricism, etc. On the other hand,
capitalism was sought to be equated by some as liberal
capitalism as a pragmatic way of balancing both the concepts
of liberty and equality. This was taken to justify
globalisation as against the voice of the locals. For the
authors local is the Third World. So far the debate has been
largely in the West and by the West. The Third World has been
only on the margin as a perspective. There is no Third World
discourse. The third generation post-modernism of the authors
is intended to assert this discourse.
The authors
adopt common-place vulgar understanding of Derrida.
Structuralism held the significance (meaning) of the word to
be relational and its naming arbitrary. Derrida held that
there was no true meaning of the world but only meanings and
in the process of coming together of differences to constitute
a meaning some differences are elongated slowing down the
process-deferral. This creates difference. The text becomes
contextual. The authors hold that the context for a particular
meaning is always contrived and by the reader. A hierarchy of
words, primary or elite words; derived or subaltern words, is
created.
The authors
emphasise a third category of forgotten words. This is linked
to surplus meaning, mimicry. This is the voice of the
subaltern. Derridian rereading reverses/displaces the
hierarchy and creates a supplement to the text. Hegemony is
challenged. Context opens up the number of supplements. But
the authors point out, Derrida retains the hierarchy of the
text and supplement. This places an outer limit, a closure.
Derrida gets undertheorised. The authors seek to get out of
this limit by inverting it. Supplements are loosened from the
text. They free-float to create a new text/texts. The text is
de-colonised.
Post-colonialism
is colonisation without the coloniser. This has made colony
the Third World. Post-modernist discourse is the discourse of
the First World. The Third World is absent.
"Post-modernism forces on us a happy consciousness. It
celebrates difference, universalises it and thereby writes off
the ‘specificity’ of our being different, our colonised
existence. Post-modernist difference, in our context,
overdetermines, reduces for us, to become and be its
mimicry." The Third World has to be re-inscribed.
Post-modernism has open totality, leaving everything hanging
in balance, a Derridian re-reading. It has to be grounded to
apply a closure with the Third World at the margin. This
requires strategic essentialism (for analysis). This will
leave it epistemologically open but discursively closed. For
this the authors resort to the threefold technique of entry
point, contradiction and over-determination developed by
Resnick and Wolff. Entry point is the point to start, to break
the hermeneutic circle. This can be classified as an
adjective, a position taken by the critical theorist in order
to abstract from the multiplicity of the process. This will
make the Third World the Other of the First World and give it
a voice.
"To say
that theory is an over-determined process in a society is to
say that its existence, including all its properties and
qualities, is determined by each and every other process
constituting that society. Theory is the complex effect
produced by the interaction of all those processes." This
makes one think of the processes that mutually constitute and
determine and effect each other, none of which is the ultimate
cause, origin or essence for the others. This method frees us
from the limits of reason. This reformulates the concept of
hegemony and the authors concretise it with reference to the
tradition-modernity debate in India.
The authors
start with the Hegelian concept of "universal" and
its "parts", the latter splitting, contradicting,
expanding, contracting and again coming together in a
historical process moving from lower moment of idea to a
higher moment of idea. Marx brought this to thesis,
anti-thesis and synthesis. Gramsci in his study of the rise of
fascism in under-developed capitalism of Italy found that the
bourgeoisie, unable to overcome feudalism, have created an
alliance with some of its elements to create their instrument
of state. (This is spatial dimension.) This blocked synthesis
and is termed as "surrogate synthesis". This is
Gramsci’s "silent revolution", a "struggle
for position vis-a-vis a struggle for manoeuvre". MOM
(margin of margin) rejects this concept of hegemony.
Incorporation of elements of feudalism does not leave it as
the Other of capitalism. Marx envisages total incorporation of
the antithesis to create synthesis, termed as simple synthesis
with a common space incorporating totality of synthesis and
antithesis. It can incorporate neither complex common (hybrid)
space leaving the identity of thesis and antithesis intact nor
the synthetic hybrid space overdetermining one vis-a-vis the
other. Both Marx and Gramsci have to be rejected.
The hegemony
paradigm envisages the presence of a dominant and a
subordinate. The dominant resorts to persuasion (reality) and
repression (negation) while subordinate elements are
collaboration (reality) and resistance (negation).
The
effectiveness of persuasion or collaboration depends on
commonality of essence, a common culture. If the two occupy
autonomous spaces, are identifiably different, there is no
predetermined dominant subordinate relationship and there can
be neither persuasion nor collaboration. This is the case with
the tradition-modernity dialogue in India. To understand the
process of hegemony MOM resorts to Laclau-Mouffe (LM) concept
of metaphor which brings out the hidden meaning and metonym,
which takes away the surplus meanings.
Metonimy
creates images hiding the unacceptable meanings of the
dominant to dwarf, diminish and displace the collaborator.
This is by stealth, by the principle of exchange, which is
unequal. The dominant does not change its meanings, the
identities remain autonomous but a new relationship is created
— of the colonised and the coloniser. This creates mimicry
of over-determination, hegemony. This dwarfing identified the
subaltern. In this model dominant-subaltern relationship is
the point of arrival and not the point of departure as in the
case of Marx or Gramsci..
In the case
of the modernity-tradition dialogue, one can see that the
total submission by Keshub Sen or Surendranath Bannerjea to
the empire could not create synthesis because both tradition
and modernity occupied autonomous space. Partha Chatterjee’s
attempt at the portrayal of the concept of Indian national
emerging as a surrogate universal that joins modernism,
colonial heritage and indigenous tradition has been severely
criticised in MOM. It is argued that the very concept of
indigenous gets altered, dwindled and dwarfed during and
within such nationalist discourse. What finally emerges out of
it is a concept of traditions constituted by modernist
discourse. Let us take the case of Hindu God Krishna and see
how does it get reconstituted by the coloniserGod, nay, the
son. First, create metonym God hiding Christian son. Then
create cowherd’s staff as the staff of the son. The image of
the cow can be blurred to a four-legged animal with a
look-alike of sheep. Colour can remain black but in course of
time the figure can develop a small beard. The image of
Krishna gets dwarfed, diminished and dwindled. For the
coloniser, however, the son remains within his tradition. The
collaborator is the one that gets displaced. This is unequal
exchange. This is synthetic hegemony. This over-determines the
Indian end of the God and creates its mimicry. Traditional
goddess is found in "denim jeans".
This is met
by counter-hegemony. MOM resorts to Nietzsche’s servant
forgotten by the master. The servant can either try to be good
as envisaged by the master. This will be mimicry theorised by
Edward Said or Spivak denying a voice to the subaltern except
through the elite. A subaltern intellectual can only be a
native informant. Alternately, the servant may decide to
remain bad. Self-immolation as sati is bad but it also
establishes a will to commit suicide for a principle as argued
in MOM. As long as a person is willing to commit suicide,
undertake a fast unto death for the sake of his values, there
is no subjugating him. The coloniser is scared; he has no
answer to it. Tradition can remain untainted. This creates the
unrepentant collaborator. Here MOM travels beyond Laclau and
Mouffe, beyond post-Marxism and become the third generation
post-modernists. However, here one is reminded of Sartre. It
has also some lesson for the current anti-terrorist measures.
Capital
over-determines Marx by insisting on the irreconcilability of
his two formulations; (1) quantity of surplus value equals the
quantity of profit for the economy and the (2) sum of prices
is equal to the sum of values. MOM argues that the apparent
irreconcilability of the second equation with the first arises
because the value of domestic labour is not counted in the
latter part of the second equation. This is the forgotten part
of Derridian re-reading. Foucault is held to be determinist
even if he expands the Kantian limit of reason and makes its
boundary unfixed to create the dialogue of power whether by
economics or psychology or sexuality or its censoring.
Margin is at the periphery of
the centre. Margin of margin brings this within discourse
giving the subaltern a voice, specifically as
counter-hegemony. It opens many new areas of dialogue and
debate. If it fails, we will prove Edward Said right that the
colonised can only mimic and that too only through a kind
westerner. This reviewer has confined himself to a summary
fully aware that it is in many ways inadequate. This is done
in the hope that the book will be read and will generate a
debate. One can have reservation about the re-reading of Marx.
It is also possible to speculate that over-determination may
itself create a meta-narrative. But this will have to be part
of much more open, probably unbounded, discourse with
temporary and shifting boundaries.
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