Beyond Reason
Postcolonial Theory and the Social Sciences
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Oxford University Press Inc
Published:15th Mar '23
Should be back in stock very soon
This paperback is available in another edition too:
- Hardback£44.49(9780197500583)
The knowledge disseminated by universities and mobilized by states to govern populations has been globally dominant for more than a century. It first emerged in the early modern period in Europe and subsequently became globalized through colonialism. Despite the historical and cultural specificity of its origins, modern Western knowledge was thought to have transcended its particularities such that, unlike pre-modern and non-Western knowledges, it was "universal," or true for all times and places. In this bold and ambitious book, Sanjay Seth argues that modern knowledge and the social sciences are a product of Western modernity claiming a spurious universality: that what we treat as the "truths" discovered by social scientific reason are instead a parochial knowledge. Drawing upon and deriving its critical energies principally from postcolonial theory, Beyond Reason traverses many disciplines, including science studies, social history, art and music history, political science, and anthropology, and engages with a range of contemporary thinkers including Butler, Habermas, Chakrabarty, Chatterjee, and Rawls. It demonstrates that while global in their impact, the social sciences do not and cannot transcend the Western historical and cultural circumstances in which they emerged. If the social sciences are not explained and validated simply by the fact that they are "true," it becomes possible to ask what purpose they serve, what it is that they "do." A defining feature of modern knowledge is that it is divided into disciplines, each with its own object of inquiry and corresponding protocols, and thus asking what such knowledge "does" requires asking what purpose disciplines serve. It also requires asking what ways of understanding the world they facilitate and what they disallow. Beyond Reason proceeds to anatomize the disciplines of history and political science to ask what representations and relations with the past and with politics these academic disciplines enable, and what ways of understanding and engaging the world they foreclose.
Beyond Reason makes an ambitious, compelling, and original argument that social science, far from being universal, is instead a parochial form of knowledge that has been globalized through the mechanisms of colonialism and imperialism. With great erudition, Seth combines a broad epistemological critique of social scientific knowledge with a detailed discussion of the disciplines of history, international relations, and political theory. The result is a fascinating reflection on the limits of social scientific reason. * Amy Allen, author of The End of Progress: Decolonizing the Normative Foundations of Critical Theory *
Sanjay Seth's penetrating analysis of the contingent and parochial origins of the social sciences offers novel ways of framing arguments for the decolonization of knowledge. Beyond Reason unfolds a new vision of a twenty-first century social science critically aware of its possibilities and limitations. An outstanding and erudite intervention in an important debate. * Dipesh Chakrabarty, author of The Climate of History in a Planetary Age *
Sanjay Seth's powerful argument takes seriously the historicity and contingency of all knowledge, without falling into relativism. He explores how Western ideas of progress and rationality have been decentered at a time of their unprecedented global diffusion. He anatomizes this paradoxical conjuncture, engaging with important work in science studies, political theory, social history, anthropology, and decolonial studies. He does so without embracing alternatives from the global 'South' or claiming the authority of 'critique', but by espousing an epistemology and an ethics of translation. Seth's rigorous arguments will stimulate much needed discussion and debate on the limits and potential of our present thinking. * James Clifford, author of Returns: Becoming Indigenous in the 21st Century *
After the sweeping critiques of Western ways of knowing by poststructuralist and postcolonial theory, what then? With patience, clarity, and sophistication, Sanjay Seth tackles the paradoxes of a situated examination of situated knowledge. By focusing on the authorizing work of academic disciplines, he brings a fresh perspective to the limits and possibilities of social science. * Webb Keane, author of Ethical Life: Its Natural and Social Histories *
Beyond Reason is a timely and signal contribution to provincialize Western knowledgeÂand ways of knowing. Sanjay Seth does it by cautiously undermining the dogmas that identify the explanation with what is explained and the belief that 'society' is an existing entity rather than a social sciencesâ invention. * Walter Mignolo, author of The Politics of Decolonial Investigations *
ISBN: 9780197688953
Dimensions: 155mm x 235mm x 16mm
Weight: 390g
264 pages