Definition of Eurocentrism.

[Guest guest]

GthomGT writes on Saturday, May 05, 2001 8:22 AM:

 

"The point of your ref. to Blaut was to imply that Indologists need to

examine their motives, in short to examine their latent cultural racism."

 

RESPONSE:

 

We must start by defining what we mean by Eurocentrism, especially as it

pertains to scholarship and education. Here is my definition, a thick

description. To start with, I DO NOT conflate it with racism, but there can

be inter-relationships.

 

Euro-centrism is simply a view of things as seen from Europe's perspective.

By the same token, Indo-centrism is a view from India's perspective,

Afro-centrism is Africa's point of view, and America-centrism is what the US

President is paid by the citizens to represent in the world. There is

nothing a priori racist or even wrong with any centrism, the above being

merely a few examples.

 

Eurocentrism is not the view of every ethnic European; it is simply a

certain approach to viewing things. Also, many non-Europeans are

Eurocentric, as they hold views from the European perspective. There are

numerous Africans, Asians, etc who hold Eurocentric views, and cultivating

this amongst India's elite was the explicitly stated strategy of Lord

Macaulay in the 1830s. Hence, 'Eurocentrism = racism' is a false conflation

indeed, and possibly the reason for people being afraid to discuss the topic

openly.

 

What makes Eurocentrism a problem, and why do I bother raising it, if it is

merely analogous to any other centrism? Answer: Being the dominant view

today, and having been the dominating paradigm of much of the modern era,

including the construction/fabrication of views on all sorts of matters,

Eurocentrism assumes special powers amongst all other perspectives. This is

analogous to the fact that under anti-trust (anti-monopoly) laws, the

company that has dominating control over a certain industry gets placed

under the microscope with special focus and gets examined for hegemony,

restraint of trade and the free flow of ideas and competition. It is the

dominating quality of Eurocentrism that makes it imperative that the world

should examine the distorting influence it continues to have over free flow

of scholarship. So, while in principle every company in an industry comes

under equal scrutiny and regulation, if one party controls the vast majority

of the production or distribution, it would be placed in a special status

for review. Such is the position of Eurocentric thought. Just as all

products from all suppliers should have an equal right to compete, so also

should all centrisms - this has been called intellectual de-colonialization.

The purpose of such interventions is merely to level the playing field.

 

In summary, what makes Eurocentrism problematic today are two factors: (1)

Its dominant status, thereby subverting other views; and (2) the historical

origin of Eurocentrism as the intellectual component of colonialism, thereby

making it important to re-examine very thoroughly its premises and

unquestioned conclusions.

 

Eurocentric views are also important to put on the table, but provided this

is accompanied with equal importance to the other centric views that have

relevance to a given situation. In teaching 1492 and Columbus in schools,

the view from Spain (Eurocentric) is nowadays being balanced in many places

with a view from the Native American side - and these are very opposite

views on what happened and what it meant! Most history is the view from the

winning side, but should it not also give the view of the centrism that

lost, even though the winners get to demonize the losers as not having any

legitimacy at all? Students must learn a cross-section of views both for

their future involvement as world citizens and traders, and also for

multiculturalism at home. Hence, the importance of studying the effects of

ANY dominating centrism, which today means Eurocentrism.

 

The most serious centrism is one that infects others outside its original

ethnic and cultural boundary. When Africans, Indians, etc turn Eurocentric

as they often have, they become far more dangerous than the Eurocentric

Europeans, as the relative value of Eurocentric ideas is presumed to be

universal and absolute. Hence, the Eurocentric incentive schemes of tutelage

of others - i.e. the Macaulay Program. Many Macaulayites have nowadays

become the intellectual Indian sepoys to help police the Eurocentric

discourse.

 

In the absence of a credible view from other centrisms, Eurocentrism assumes

itself to be the God's eye view or absolutist view. This is the particular

scholar's own culturally invested centrism disguised, using pedigrees and

degrees to defend the view as being 'objective', branding others who

complain from outside the framework. This also (ab)uses logos/mythos as a

hermeneutics of prejudice - seeing its own beliefs as logos and universal

standards, while seeing all others' beliefs as their peculiar ethnographic

mythos.

 

My 'ideal' hermeneutics for cross-cultural dialog could be called

multi-centrism and would involve: (1) Symmetric peer-to-peer relationship

must be created amongst the cultures, each able to critique the others with

impunity. (2) Direct representation should replace the present indirect

representation through anthropologists who arrogantly claim to speak for

some culture they have studied from above the glass ceiling. Given the

technological and economic feasibility of video conferencing via the

Internet, I am in the process of setting up such mechanisms so as to allow

direct dialog through interpreters, bypassing the hegemony of the

Eurocentric scholar in the middle. This would create a new role for the

scholar seen more as facilitator and interpreter of a conversation but

empowering the parties to engage directly - similar to 'Larry King' on CNN.

(A recent event was held in Delhi to bring together so-called backward

communities with so-called modern ones and various kinds of organizations. I

am told that it was quite successful, and that all parties learnt quite a

bit from each other.)

 

The one-way asymmetric hermeneutics that privileges one lens, one unstated

context and kind of scholar, should be replaced by a symmetric relationship

amongst the civilizations of the world. It is in this direction that the

proposed Institute of Westology in India (and then other countries as well)

shall seek to bring views of the 'Others' as they pertain to the dominant

culture. It is merely the rest of us wanting a voice in a global arena in

the same manner as democracy gives on a smaller scale.

 

After discussion on this proposed definition, and after making appropriate

adjustments based on the feedback, I shall then be happy to propose my

criteria and metrics for empirical measurement of Eurocentrism today,

including both qualitative and quantitative measures.

 

RM