Towards a Critique of Eurocentrism: Remarks on Wittgenstein, Philosophy and Racism

Abstract

Now that the Age of Europe seems to have receded into the past, there is uncertainty as to what has taken its place. Among the various labels used to describe this set of circumstances is post-colonialism. Post-colonialism is rather an ambiguous term. Empirically it is used to designate the post-war regimes that emerged in the wake of the decolonization of European empires. The use of the prefix ‘post’ suggests that colonialism is sous rature (under erasure), that is, there is a recognition that the category of colonialism is no longer adequate to describe the current ordering of the world, but it is clear that the current conjuncture continues to be haunted by coloniality. It is important to understand that post-coloniality does not suggest the end of colonialism. Outside the most dogmatic of unreconstructed dependency theorists, however, most people would accept that in some senses the European empires have been dismantled. At the same time, formal dismantling of the European empires has not simply meant the recovery of a world prior to the Age of Europe. Post-colonial denotes an interregnum; between the end of the Age of Europe and something as yet undefined to come. Conceptually the post-colonial is associated with the field of literary and cultural studies, where it seems to present a Third World analogue to the advanced capitalist countries’ post-modernism.