- Paperback: 320 pages
- Publisher: Princeton University Press; illustrated edition edition (31 Aug 2000)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0691049092
- ISBN-13: 978-0691049090
- Product Dimensions: 22.4 x 15.5 x 2.8 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,285,262 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
Provincializing Europe
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Review
Chakrabarty's work gives us a richer, more penetrating language to deal with modernity and the colonial encounter... It is the ambiguity of Chakabarty's own position as both a critic and archivist of modernity that gives his study its poetic undertow and its intelligent irresponsibility. -- Amit Chaudhuri London Review of Books The great value of this book lies in Chakrabarty's exceptional ability to bring to light what constantly gets glossed over and forgotten when we can only speak the standard languages of the academy. To do this requires the kind of bilingual consciousness which can bring into illuminating relation Adam Smith and Tagore. Chakrabarty makes you regret that so few are capable of doing this with a high degree of eloquence and insight. -- Charles Taylor IWM Newsletter This masterful re-examination of rationality, universality, and difference in the postcolonial world should prove inspiring for serious historians of all lands. -- Alice Ballard Theory and Society
Product Description
Can European thought be dislodged from the center of the practice of history in a non-European place? What problems arise when we translate cultural practices into the categories of social science? "Provincializing Europe" is one of the first book-length treatments on how postcolonial thinking impacts on the social sciences. This book explores, through a series of linked essays, the problems of thought that present themselves when we think of a place such as India through the categories of modern, European social science and, in particular, history. "Provincializing Europe" is a sustained conversation between historical thinking and postcolonial perspectives. It addresses the mythical figure of Europe that is often taken to be the original site of the modern in many histories of capitalist transition in non-Western countries. This imaginary Europe, Chakrabarty argues, is built right into the social sciences. The very idea of historicizing carries with it some peculiarly European assumptions about disenchanted space, secular time, and human sovereignty. Measured against such mythical standards, capitalist transition in the third world has often seemed either incomplete or lacking. Chakrabarty finds that "Nativism," however, is no answer to Eurocentrism, because the universals propounded by European Enlightenment remain indispensable to any social critique that seeks to address issues of social justice and equity. "Provincializing Europe" proposes that every case of transition to capitalism is a case of translation as well - a translation of existing worlds and their thought-categories into the categories and self-understandings of capitalist modernity. Chakrabarty demonstrates, both theoretically and with examples from colonial and contemporary India, how such translational histories may be thought and written. "Provincializing Europe" is not a project of shunning European thought. It is a project of globalizing such thought by exploring how it may be renewed both for and from the margins.
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First Sentence
IT HAS RECENTLY BEEN SAID in praise of the postcolonial project of Subaltern Studies that it demonstrates, "perhaps for the first time since colonisation," that "Indians are showing sustained signs of reappropriating the capacity to represent themselves [within the discipline of history]." Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
IT HAS RECENTLY BEEN SAID in praise of the postcolonial project of Subaltern Studies that it demonstrates, "perhaps for the first time since colonisation," that "Indians are showing sustained signs of reappropriating the capacity to represent themselves [within the discipline of history]." Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Chakrabarty manages to unite quite elegantly several old and new essays into a meaningful and directed book. This is not the first theoretical book on postcolonialism and history, but it is one of the only to deal with history as an idea and discipline in a deeply interrogative manner, rather than just with cliched discussions of 'the nation'.
The author's project, to 'provincialize Europe', is an important and interesting banner under which historical writing could march, while also providing ample room for critique. His take on Marx remains evident, incisive and well-justified, and his idea of the 'inequality of ignorance' between East and West is attractive. While I had problems with his definitions of 'historicism', and the way he sometimes seems to caricature contemporary historical writing ignoring some of its more recent and interesting manifestations, its broad range and dilligent scholarship serve very well in forming a point about which to consider ideas and contest such issues.
But most of all, I was impressed with Chakrabarty's general awareness of the cliches and dead alleys of present postcolonial academic writing. All in all, it is an important and pathbreaking text which should please fans of high theory and concrete examples equally, as well as bring relief to those frustrated by the writing styles of a Spivak.
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4 reviews
88 of 119 people found the following review helpful
Whither subalternity?
11 Dec 2000
Format:Paperback
Pace Chakrabarty, "Provincializing Europe" is replete with intellectual antics, including an inventive chapter devoted to re-reading "Das Kapital", and charged with 'ubiquitous obliquity' (to borrow Tom Stoppard's phrase from another context). However, it is not the detailed argumentation of the book that concerns us here; its essence will suffice to indicate the direction neo-Subalternism has taken. Chakrabarty's book aims to dismantle historicism itself, identified as that evil of the Enlightenment which views social phenomena as unities and historically developed. To achieve this, it proposes the disruption of metanarratives grounded in a 'single and secular historical time' (Chakrabarty 2000, 16 et passim) - (neo)colonial, nationalist, Marxist, whatever - by introducing authentic 'difference' thereto. This difference is sought in religion and the inclusion of gods and spirits as agents of history. Meanwhile, despite the repeated insistence that this is still Subalternist historiography, the subaltern meanders in the wings of Chakrabarty's stage, while his world of the Bengali middle-class male comes to constitute his 'archive' (Chakrabarty 2000, 117-236). As for the question of power, the analysis of relations of domination and subordination internal to society has given way to the power struggle between the oppressive Enlightenment and the recalcitrant historian in the new brand of "Subaltern Studies". Here, power is indeed entirely dispersed and only appears to coalesce in the Enlightenment and its intellectual heritage.
While enticing in its intellectual sharpness and breadth (Chakrabarty discusses Einstein and Marx in one fell swoop), there are a number of problems with this approach. The most urgent among these is that it paralyzes organized secular politics, lends credence to the politics of the religious right wing, and hence legitimates communal and sectarian carnage - a fact of life in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Furthermore, the fact that religion is the traditional stronghold of patriarchy as well as exploitation based on caste appears to escape Chakrabarty's notice. Only intellectuals located at a distance of oceans and continents from the destructive forces they valorize can afford to be so blasé about the very real threat of annihilation faced by minority groups in the context of an ascendant right. Polemics and reality (that specious construct) aside, and on a more scholarly note, the problematic of power stands sidelined. Subscribing to the idea that power is universal, and refusing to acknowledge that it coheres in concentrated form at certain sites (between subaltern and elite) is counterproductive to understanding power as it is exercised in systems of domination and subordination. By no means is such anxiety limited to the scholarship being released under the banner of Subaltern Studies. Susan Pedersen recently voiced similar concern over the direction of feminist history. Her eloquence merits citation in extenso: "[I]nsights that have proven so productive for cultural analysis - insights about the multivalent, collaborative and web-like nature of power - tend to be less useful for the study of narrower political processes. For, once we assume power is everywhere, it usually turns out to be nowhere very much; if it is analytically directionless, it scarcely needs to be taken into account. Our acceptance [...] of the truth that power is everywhere and that the weak, like the strong, play the game of power, has led us away from grasping the other truth that the players are not equal, that even multivalent systems can have internal movements preponderantly in one direction or another, that there are degrees of power, that a middle ground exists between an assumption of total agency and an assumption of total fixity - and that it is on this crucial middle ground that the most interesting questions are found and much interesting history happens."
Finally, the fact that Chakrabarty's archive is the Bengali middle-class male and that he, along with his associates, is mired in theorizing to the neglect of substantive research of subaltern history speaks for itself. ....
18 of 30 people found the following review helpful
Well written book on Indian culture
23 Jun 2001
Format:Paperback
"Provincializing Europe" by Dipesh Chakrabarty (no relation of mine), a professor of history at the University of Chicago is a delightfully written book on rather serious topics. The basic thesis propounded by Chakrabarty is about the predominant influence of European thoughts and ideals shaping the socio-political systems in India and its neighboring countries. Despite the recent uproar by many minority groups as well as women against the predominance of "dead white males" in the core curricula of most universities, we have to admit that these authors shape the economic and political models. Chakrabarty here has attempted to portray the integration of the non-western minds with the western ideals and philosophy.
In doing so Chakrabarty covers a wide territory in terms of ideology, time and geography. The chapters on Marx and Heideggar are heavy reading; but it is worthwhile to spend one's energy to go through them. Because, he has very expertly explained the the!oretical basis of the tenets of these philosophies that attract the Indian mind, particularly, the Bengali mind. These chapters provide a good background to understand the basis of cultural differences between the west and the east. I find this extremely valuable not only for the students of humanities, but also students of International business.
Several of the important facets of Indian, Bengali in particular, society are discussed in great length. The chapter on widows and women in general is a very valuable topic. Plight of women Indian society is not new by any means. Even the Indian epic, Mahabharat through the questions of Draupadi to the Kuru elder Bhisma introduces the issue of women's freedom. But neither Bhisma in Mahabharat nor the leaders of Indian society provided a definitive solution. Chakrabarty and I share the view that economic independence (and therefore proper marketable education) is the necessary condition for betterment of women's lot.
<br!>I was delighted to read the chapter on "Adda", a unique Bengali culture. In Europe, café culture comes close to it. The French had the "salon" culture. Having participated in many "adda" in my youth in Calcutta, I miss it while living in the US or in Europe. Chakrabarty does a favor to my occidental friends by properly explaining what it means and what it did for Bengali social system.
Summing up, I would recommend this book to several groups of people. First, if you want to learn about the intricacies of the Indian, particularly Bengali, culture, this book is for you. Second, of course, this book is a required reading for any serious student of India and Indian culture. Third, students of international business should also be interested in this book as it lays the foundation of the many cultural tenets that are important in economic activities.
In doing so Chakrabarty covers a wide territory in terms of ideology, time and geography. The chapters on Marx and Heideggar are heavy reading; but it is worthwhile to spend one's energy to go through them. Because, he has very expertly explained the the!oretical basis of the tenets of these philosophies that attract the Indian mind, particularly, the Bengali mind. These chapters provide a good background to understand the basis of cultural differences between the west and the east. I find this extremely valuable not only for the students of humanities, but also students of International business.
Several of the important facets of Indian, Bengali in particular, society are discussed in great length. The chapter on widows and women in general is a very valuable topic. Plight of women Indian society is not new by any means. Even the Indian epic, Mahabharat through the questions of Draupadi to the Kuru elder Bhisma introduces the issue of women's freedom. But neither Bhisma in Mahabharat nor the leaders of Indian society provided a definitive solution. Chakrabarty and I share the view that economic independence (and therefore proper marketable education) is the necessary condition for betterment of women's lot.
<br!>I was delighted to read the chapter on "Adda", a unique Bengali culture. In Europe, café culture comes close to it. The French had the "salon" culture. Having participated in many "adda" in my youth in Calcutta, I miss it while living in the US or in Europe. Chakrabarty does a favor to my occidental friends by properly explaining what it means and what it did for Bengali social system.
Summing up, I would recommend this book to several groups of people. First, if you want to learn about the intricacies of the Indian, particularly Bengali, culture, this book is for you. Second, of course, this book is a required reading for any serious student of India and Indian culture. Third, students of international business should also be interested in this book as it lays the foundation of the many cultural tenets that are important in economic activities.
8 of 23 people found the following review helpful
Brilliant
29 Nov 2004
Format:Paperback
The anti-colonial struggle was a heterogenous one whose revolutionary impetus came from the struggles of people teleologically minded historians would call 'pre-capitalist', 'pre-modern', 'pre-political', 'savage' or 'barbarian' - take your evolutionist pick. Conventional Marxist epistemology is questionable and riddled with the same evolutionist thinking that led colonizers to the genocide and massacre of 'subordinate species'.
This is a fantastic book that unpacks and rejects the historiography that would deprive the 'savage', 'barbarian' and 'precapitalist' communities within colonial states of autonomy and agency in history. Chakravarty brilliantly re-reads the category "capital" in a way that splits its unifying assumptions.
Its about time Marx's categories were themselves historicized - please read this book, and also Ranajit Guha's "Dominance without hegemony".
This is a fantastic book that unpacks and rejects the historiography that would deprive the 'savage', 'barbarian' and 'precapitalist' communities within colonial states of autonomy and agency in history. Chakravarty brilliantly re-reads the category "capital" in a way that splits its unifying assumptions.
Its about time Marx's categories were themselves historicized - please read this book, and also Ranajit Guha's "Dominance without hegemony".
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