Transmodern Liberation Philosophies

Abstract

Indian Dalit and Latin American liberation philosophies are among the most fertile discourses of emancipation the modern world has produced, despite their vastly different geographical, historical, political, and sociocultural coordinates. Yet little critical attention has been devoted to systematically connect or compare these two powerful ideological formations. This essay attempts to fill this gap by delinking the Indian Dalit thinker B. R. Ambedkar from the theoretical discourses of postcolonialism and postmodernism, and linking him to the decolonial framework of transmodernism developed by Latin American liberation philosopher Enrique Dussel. Framing the affiliation between Ambedkar and Dussel in terms of ideological similarity and political solidarity, I present Ambedkar as a transmodern thinker who precedes and exceeds Dussel, placing him at the head of a global vanguard fighting to lay the epistemological foundation for a critical universal enlightenment.

Keywords:

• Ambedkar, B. R
• Dussel, Enrique
• liberation philosophy
• postcolonialism
• postmodernism
• transmodernism

Acknowledgments

Earlier versions of this essay were presented at the 17th International Conference on “Re-Imagining Theory: Towards New Horizons in the Humanities and the Social Sciences”, Center for Contemporary Theory, Goa, India, 21–24 December 2014, and the Mellon-Sawyer Seminar on “Beyond Medieval and Modern: Rethinking Global Paradigms of Political Economy and Culture”, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, 8–9 April 2016. In addition to thanking the conference participants for feedback I would like to express my gratitude to the two anonymous readers of Interventions for their comments and suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 There have been few scholarly attempts to connect or compare the material and intellectual histories of postcolonialism and decoloniality; notable exceptions are Bhambra (2014) and Sirohi and Gupta (2020).

2 Dussel (1936–) is the most systematic and influential exponent of transmodernism; other contributors include Spanish philosopher and feminist Rosa María Rodríguez Magda and Belgian philosopher and theologian Marc Luyckx Ghisi.

3 Critical universality is about rejecting forms of universality which are eurocentric, exclusionary, or totalitarian, while strategically claiming it with full awareness of historicity for the subaltern; Mignolo prefers the term “pluriversality” (2007, 497).

4 Anzaldúa (1987) proposed the term “border thinking”. As the “epistemology of exteriority”, border thinking sutures the split between theory and praxis, thought and experience (Mignolo and Tlostanova 2006, 206; Mignolo and Tlostanova 2008). For an extended conversation about experience and theory in the Indian context, see Guru and Sarukkai (2012).

5 My formulation draws upon Rao's felicitous description of Ambedkar as an “epistemic individual” who “inaugurates a way of thinking for which he is both figure and ground” and “around whom are constellated forms of thought that precede and exceed him” (2013, 44).

6 For Dalit literature's misfit within postcolonialism, see Krishnaswamy (2005), Gajarawala (2012), and Sinha (2017).

7 Dussel bifurcates western thought into two opposing streams: a pagan Hellenistic stream that produces abstract speculative philosophy and culminates in Cartesian thought's instrumental reason; a Judeo-Christian stream focused on concrete ethics that culminates in radical liberation theology and Levinasian thought; he contends that “an ethic of liberation with planetary scope ought first of all to liberate philosophy from Hellenocentrism” (Dussel 1996, 57). Dussel (2006) gives a good overview of the evolution of his thinking.

8 Dussel takes Levinas in a less eurocentric direction, just as he takes Marx in a more ethical direction.

9 For eurocentrism in Levinas, see Drabinski (2011, 5–7).

10 Mignolo explains Dussel's distinction between re-formation and trans-formation as the difference between an alternative and “something otherwise” (2000, 34).

11 Ambedkar's analysis of gender and bramanical patriarchy is showcased in Rege (2013).

12 The modernity of early Buddhist thought is evident in the concept of dharma with its emphasis on causality, in refutations of the self and ego, in conceptions of the arbitrary character of the linguistic sign, promotion of vernacularization and urbanization, influences on practices of kingship, currency, and monasticism (Benavides 1998, 2004; Donne 2010).

13 My assertion of early Buddhism's “anachronistic” modernity differs from notions of Buddhist Modernism and Engaged Buddhism, which typically refer to forms of Buddhism that emerged after the nineteenth century under the influence of colonialism/Protestantism, and reinforce postmodern interpretations of Ambedkar's Buddhist turn. It also undercut the Sanskritized interpretation of Ambedkar's turn to Buddhism as a sign of alienation from Indic traditions (Vajpeyi 2012). On Ambedkar's reconstruction of Buddhism as a global religion, see Rodrigues (1993) and Stroud (2017). Sangharakshita (1997) points out that “so long as religion is thought of in exclusively theistic terms and philosophy remains divorced from any kind of ethical and spiritual discipline” as in the western/Judeo-Christian tradition, Buddhism is neither religion nor philosophy (84).

14 Ambedkar's reinterpretation of Buddhism has been extensively discussed: Viswanathan (1998), Illaiah (2000), Omvedt (2003, 2004), Jaffrelot (2005), Zelliot (2013), Vinayaraj (2014), Skaria (2015), Pradeep (2008).

15 More than “Buddhist materialism” (Ambirajan 1999), Buddhist socialism suggests a full-fledged social theory.

16 Rao (2012) makes a similar argum.

17 Rao describes Ambedkar's strategy as the “exacerbation of difference in order to obviate it” (2009, 23–5); Pandey suggests that Dalit signifies a negative identity with a positive political value (2006, 1781); Skaria (2015) argues that Ambedkar questions not only the liberal concept of minority but also the dissolution of the minor staged in Marx's critique simultaneously of religion and secularism, turning Buddhism itself in the process into a “religion of the minor”.

18 This is a serious epistemological problem not only in the Latin American Subaltern Studies project that draws on Dussel, but also in its Indian model (Chibber 2013).

19 Rao describes Ambedkar's strategyas the “exacerbation of difference in order to obviate it” (2009,23–5); Pandey suggests that Dalit signifies a negative identity with a positive political value (2006, 1781); Skaria (2015) argues that Ambedkar questions not only the liberal concept of minority but also the dissolution of the minor staged in Marx's critique simultaneously of religion and secularism, turning Buddhism itself in the process into a “religion of the minor”.The influence of Buddhism on Ambedkar's thinking about identity is detailed in Viswanathan (1998,238–9). On Ambedkar's use of Hindu/Muslim stereotypes, see Sajjad (2019).