Abstract
This chapter looks at an “Indian” reading of Hegel by the noted postcolonial and feminist critic Gayatri Spivak. Here, as in many of her writings, Spivak rejects any outright opposition between East and West or colonized and colonizer. She argues in fact that there is a kind of complicity between Hegel and the Bhagavad Gitā in that they both suspend history as lived experience in favor of general laws, each with an ideological interest. The Gitā aims to give sanction to the Indian hierarchical caste system, while Hegel suppresses the actual development of Indian history and aesthetics in his attempt to demote it. Nonetheless, according to Spivak, there is no historically available authentic Indian point of view that can somehow reclaim its place in the narrative of world history.
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Notes
- 1.
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, A Critique of Postcolonial Reason: Toward a History of the Vanishing Present (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 1999), p. 37. Hereafter cited as CPR.
- 2.
See also Andreas Nehring’s “‘Mistaken Readings’—Gayatri Spivak’s Deconstruction of Hegel and the BhagavadGītā ,” in The Fuzzy Logic of Encounter: New Perspectives on Cultural Contact, ed. Sunne Juterczenka and Gesa Mackenthun (Münster: Waxmann Verlag GmbH, 2009), pp. 147–156. Nehring briefly contextualizes Spivak’s reading of Hegel on the Gītā within the responses of Neo-Hindu readings which see this poem as advocating central concepts of Hindu ideology or even political action.
- 3.
For a broader contextualization of Hegel’s views on India , see Robert Bernasconi , “With What Must the History of Philosophy Begin? Hegel’s Role in the Debate on the Place of India within the History of Philosophy,” in Hegel’s History of Philosophy: New Interpretations, ed. David Duquette (Albany: SUNY Press, 2003), pp. 35–50; see also Bradley Herling, “Either a Hermeneutical Consciousness or a Critical Consciousness: Renegotiating Theories of the Germany-India Encounter,” Comparatist 34 (2010): 63–79.
- 4.
Adding a further dimension to our concern with Spivak’s strategy, the Indian scholar Aakash Singh Rathore has been kind enough to share with me proofs of his forthcoming book Indian Political Theory, which problematizes the notion of svaraj or “authentic autonomy.” He argues that many postcolonial theorists and theorists of Indian politics are “high-caste” privileged intellectuals who are still immersed in a system of Western categories; this very mentality, he argues, needs to be decolonized, Indian Political Theory (Taylor and Francis, 2018), pp. 10–16.
- 5.
Vyasa’s Mahabharatam , Bharadvaja Sarma (Delhi: Bimar Kumar Dhir, 2008), p. 414. Hereafter cited as MHB.
- 6.
The edition used here is the one cited by Spivak: The BhagavadGītā in the Mahābbārata, trans. J.A.B. van Buitenen (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), I, 40–43. Hereafter cited as BG.
- 7.
In fairness to Hegel, he does admit that the state of German scholarship and knowledge of the Gītā is far from complete, “Über die unter dem Namen Bhagavad-Gītā bekannte Episode des Mahabharata von Wilhelm von Humboldt,” Berliner Schriften 1818–1831 (Werke in zwanzig Bänden, Vol. 11) (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1970), p. 133. An English version of this text is available: On the Episode of the Mahabharata Known by the Name Bhgavad Gita, by Wilhelm Von Humboldt, ed. and trans. Herbert Herring (New Delhi: Indian Council of Philosophical Research, 1995), pp. 1–151. This text is included in Hegel’s India (HIR). Hegel did have available to him Henry Thomas Colebrooke’s account of Indian philosophy; and the Gītā had already been received enthusiastically by Romantic authors such as Herder and August Wilhelm Schlegel who translated it into German in 1825. See Nehring, pp. 146–147.
- 8.
It is clear from his essay of 1827 “On the Episode of the Mahabharata” that Hegel is aware of these differences, but he rejects the idea that withdrawal of interest from the fruit of action can have an adequately moral basis or motivation since it invokes “superstitious” beliefs concerning the soul’s fate after death, HIR, pp. 91–95.
- 9.
Partha Chatterjee , “A Response to Taylor’s ‘Modes of Civil Society’,” Public Culture, 3.1 (1990): 129–131.
- 10.
See P.J. Chaudhury, “Indian Poetics,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 24.1 (1965): 197–204.
- 11.
See Edwin Gerow, Indian Poetics, Vol. V. of A History of Indian Literature, ed. Jan Gonda (Wiesbaden: Otoo Harrassowitz, 1977), pp. 265–268, which is an extremely comprehensive account.
- 12.
Theodore W. Adorno, Aesthetic Theory, trans. Robert Hullot-Kentor (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), pp. 225–226, 245, 250.
- 13.
Herbert Marcuse , The Aesthetic Dimension: Toward a Critique of Marxist Aesthetics (Boston: Beacon, 1978), pp. ix, xi, 4–5, 38.
- 14.
Fredric Jameson , “Postmodernism and the Consumer Society,” in The Cultural Turn: Selected Writings on the Postmodern, 1983–1998 (London: Verso, 1998), p. 111. It should be noted, however, that Jameson and others have argued that this subversive power has been lost through the commodification of art , through the very marketability of its alienating effects, and hence by the saturation of social life by aesthetic experience to the point that true artistic specificity—and with it political opposition —is lost. Art is no longer a “plausible other.” See Jackson Petsche, “The Importance of Being Autonomous: Toward a Marxist Defense of Art for Art’s Sake,” Mediations, 26.1–2 (2012–2013): 143–144.
References
Adorno, Theodore W. 1997. Aesthetic Theory. Trans. Robert Hullot-Kentor, 225–226, 245, 250. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Bernasconi, Robert. 2003. With What Must the History of Philosophy Begin? Hegel’s Role in the Debate on the Place of India within the History of Philosophy. In Hegel’s History of Philosophy: New Interpretations, ed. David Duquette, 35–50. Albany: SUNY Press.
van Buitenen, J.A.B., trans. 1981, The BhagavadGītā in the Mahābhārata I, 40–43. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Chatterjee, Partha. 1990. A Response to Taylor’s ‘Modes of Civil Society’. Public Culture 3 (1): 129–131.
Chaudhury, P.J. 1965. Indian Poetics. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 24 (1): 197–204.
Gerow, Edwin. 1977. Indian Poetics, Vol. V. of A History of Indian Literature, ed. Jan Gonda, 265–268. Wiesbaden: Otoo Harrassowitz.
Hegel, G.W.F. 1970. Über die unter dem Namen Bhagavad-Gītā bekannte Episode des Mahabharata von Wilhelm von Humboldt. In Berliner Schriften 1818–1831 (Werke in zwanzig Bänden. vol. 11, 133. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
Herling, Bradley. 2010. Either a Hermeneutical Consciousness or a Critical Consciousness: Renegotiating Theories of the Germany-India Encounter. Comparatist 34: 63–79.
Herring, Herbert, ed. and trans. 1995. On the Episode of the Mahabharata Known by the Name Bhagavad Gita, by Wilhelm Von Humboldt, 1–151. New Delhi: Indian Council of Philosophical Research.
Jameson, Fredric. 1998. Postmodernism and the Consumer Society. In The Cultural Turn: Selected Writings on the Postmodern, 1983–1998, 111. London: Verso.
Marcuse, Herbert. 1978. The Aesthetic Dimension: Toward a Critique of Marxist Aesthetics, ix, xi, 4–5, 38. Boston: Beacon.
Nehring, Andreas. 2009. ‘Mistaken Readings’—Gayatri Spivak’s Deconstruction of Hegel and the BhagavadGītā. In The Fuzzy Logic of Encounter: New Perspectives on Cultural Contact, ed. Sunne Juterczenka and Gesa Mackenthun, 147–156. Münster: Waxmann Verlag GmbH.
Petsche, Jackson. 2012–2013. The Importance of Being Autonomous: Toward a Marxist Defense of Art for Art’s Sake. Mediations 26 (1–2): 143–144.
Rathore, Aakash Singh. 2018. Indian Political Theory, 10–16. Abingdon: Taylor and Francis.
Sarma, Bharadvaja. 2008. Vyasa’s Mahabharatam, 414. Delhi: Bimar Kumar Dhir.
Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. 1999. A Critique of Postcolonial Reason: Toward a History of the Vanishing Present, 37. Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press.
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Habib, M.A.R. (2017). Gayatri Spivak: An “Indian” Reading of Hegel. In: Hegel and Empire. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-68412-3_8
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