1st Edition
Theory and Praxis Reflections on the Colonization of Knowledge
This book proposes a New Enlightenment – a new way of looking at the non-Western world. Breaking new ground, the essays chart a course beyond Eurocentric discourses (which completely ignore the contributions of Asia, Africa and Latin-America) and forms of nativism (which are usually ethnocentric discourses).
The volume:
- Focuses on the historical aspects of knowledge-production and its colonization;
- Examines the genre of multilinear histories that displaces hegemonic Eurocentric discourses;
- Enlarges the scope of multilinear historicism whereby Asia, Europe, Africa and the Americas are drawn in a new humanistic knowledge system;
- Studies how colonization is resisted in both the non-Western and Western world.
Lucid and engaging, this book will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of social theory, education, politics and public policy.
List of contributors. Preface and acknowledgements. Introduction: on the New Enlightenment. Murzban Jal Part I Reflections on history 1. Beyond unilinear evolutionism: rethinking Marx’s relevance for the non-Western world. Peter Hudis 2. Marx at the margins: exiting Eurocentrism, entering global revolution. Kevin B. Anderson 3. Marxism and Islam. Zaheer Ali Part II Decolonizing education 4. Humanism and science. Murzban Jal 5. Education, utopia and ideology. Bhuvan Chandel 6. Education and national development. D.P. Chattopadhyaya 7. Aryabhata Dalit, his philosophy of ganita, and its contemporary applications. C.K. Raju Part III Inequality and the logic of exclusion 8. Social inclusion and exclusion: the Sinti and Roma minority in the European Union. Horst Friedrich Rolly 9. Democracy in Indian classrooms: equalizing educational opportunities. Jyoti Bawane 10. Reimagining reservation. Anupama Souri Das Part IV: Philosophy, culture and politics 11. KnowEthics: a philosophical play in three acts. Daniel Raveh 12. Democracy and the paranoiac strategy of pseudo-threats: knowledge, law and violence in light of Walter Benjamin’s ‘Critique of Violence’. Dorian Miller 13. Education and the formation of the multitude. Muzaffar Ali Index.
Biography
Murzban Jal is Professor and Director at the Centre for Educational Studies, Indian Institute of Education, Pune, India. He was Fellow at the Indian Institute of Advanced Studies, Shimla and Senior Fellow at the Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR), New Delhi, India. He is the author of ten books including The Seductions of Karl Marx (2010), Zoroastrianism: from Antiquity to the Modern Period (2012), The New Militants (2014), Why We Are Not Hindus (2015), What Ails Indian Muslims (2016), Challenges for the Indian Left (2017), In the Name of Marx (2018), Zarathushtra and the Inmates of Paradise (2018), Yusuf and Zuleika: On the Return of the Despot (2019) and The Prison House of Alienation (2019). He has published extensively in various national and international journals.
Jyoti Bawane is Associate Professor at the Centre for Educational Studies, Indian Institute of Education, Pune, India. She has a doctorate in Education and has done her master’s in education and psychology. She is the author of Ashram Schools: Teacher Context and Challenges (2012) and has published extensively in the field of education. She is a Fulbright Scholar and an Erasmus Scholar.
