Criticism of “Colonial Modernity” through Kurdish Decolonial Approaches

Western modernity with its colonial application has created an identity trauma and patriarchal domination of the memory of colonized and oppressed peoples. Critiques from colonized territories encourage us to reread the colonial epistemes of modernity, whether or not centered on the West. The Kurdish political movement thus defines a new interpretation of modernity based on the critique of colonialism and global capitalism: “democratic modernity.” This chapter problematizes the relations between modernity, the nation state, the destruction of ecology, social confinement, the relationship of the forces of these relations, but above all the modalities by which it becomes possible to act on them to break the “stalemate” of the modernity of thought in the twenty-first century.

Toward Decolonizing Development Education: Study Tours as Embodied, Reflexive, and Mud-up

The relevance of development studies has come under intense scrutiny with increasing calls for development education to decolonize its materials, pedagogies, and discursive practices. This article draws on a short-term study tour to India, where co-building a mud house with a tribal community and local university became a creative, intercultural site, encouraging reflexivity and learning through embodied insights. Such learnings “from” and “with” knowledges negated by Western modernity are in essence decolonial pedagogies, enabling students to critically examine their own preconceived ideas of development, while building skills to meaningfully navigate the contested contemporary field. Study tours, we argue, have immense potential toward decolonizing development education.

Reframing an author’s image through the style of translation

This paper seeks to explore how the style of translation reframes an author’s changing image. In light of the transformation of Latife Tekin from being considered an author of the poor and dispossessed with whom she identifies to being acknowledged as a translator who channels the marginal world of the dispossessed people into the mainstream, as evidenced in various paratextual and metatextual discourses in Turkey, the study focuses on the style of the English translation of Tekin’s Buzdan Kılıçlar (Swords of Ice). The study underlines that an author’s ontological narrative, which feeds into his or her image, may impact the style of the translation of his or her work. Noting that the style of translation may serve as a way of responding to an author’s ontological narrative, the study highlights that the stylistic features (i.e., italics and quotation marks) added to the translation of Buzdan Kılıçlar appear to be in interplay with the narratives that prepared the ground for Tekin’s self-identification as a translator. Ultimately, the study points out that those stylistic features foreground not only the cultural other against Turkey’s modern and secular establishment but also the Oriental other against Western modernity.

Is Modernity Single and Universal?: Olaju and the Multilateral Modernity

This essay confronts two orthodoxies at the heart of the modernity debate. The first is that modernity, which supposedly originated from the West, is a sin­gle and universal historical development. The assumption therefore is that any genuine modernity elsewhere must proceed from aping the structuratlon of western modernity. The second orthodoxy challenges the first, and coalesces around the idea of multiple modernities, which do not share the historical con­tours of western modernity. Yet, these modernities supposedly take their ini­tiatives from the original source in the West. On the contrary, I will argue that these orthodoxies ignore a critical fact of global history: The concept of the modern was shaped and reshaped within a multilateral framework of confron­tations and conflicts amongst cultures and societies, which enabled each soci­ety to creatively respond and adapt itself to the changes it confronted. I will use the Yoruba concept of olaju as a conceptual foil to reconfigure the understand­ing of this multilateral modernity. With olaju, we arrive at the conclusion that both Europe and non-Europe are complicit in the formation and configuration of what it means to be modern. It is only from this premise that the foundation of multiple modernities can properly be erected. It is also from this premise that various societies can take charge of the elements of social change as well as the power and knowledge dynamics involved in it.

Palingenetic Ultra-Nationalist Christianity: History, Identity, and the Falsity of Peripeteic Dialectics

The recent upsurge of European nationalism is partially an attempt to address the ongoing identity crisis that began with the Bourgeois revolution, which expressed itself through positivistic scientism and aggressive secularization, and culminated in the post-World War II “liberal consensus”: representative democracy and free-market capitalism as the “end of history.” Due to the needs of capitalism after World War II, coupled with the liberalization and Americanization of European societies, there has been a growing presence of “non-identical” elements within Europe, which itself is reexamining the very geography of what it means to be European. In this essay, I explore the historical context of the current identity struggles that are facing Europeans. From a Critical Theory perspective, I challenge the idea that Christianity or a Christian age can be resurrected by ultra-nationalists in their attempt to combat the cosmopolitanism of Western modernity. Moreover, I demonstrate how such attempts to return to an idealized Christian identity are rooted in a false possibility: Peripeteic Dialectics, or “dialectics in reverse.”

Composting arcadia: Stories from Pākehā women “of the land” in Wairarapa, Aotearoa New Zealand

<p>I suggest that this thesis is a compost pile from Wairarapa that slowly turns over harmful but potentially fertile tales of arcadia. I narrate this thesis drawing on the fleshly stories of ten Pākehā (colonial settler) women “of the land’ and the ethico-onto-epistemology of Donna Haraway’s compost making. Composting is Haraway’s (2016) latest feminist call to trouble and queer the self-contained secular humanism of Western modernity. Uprooting the Western separation of ‘nature’ from culture, Haraway’s philosophy provides an earthly foundation in which to compost arcadia. Arcadia is an antique ‘nature’ myth that has been enmeshed in the process of Western world making from Classical Greece to the European ‘Age of Discovery’. Arcadia was used by the British to colonise Aotearoa New Zealand in the nineteenth century. As a Pākehā, I have been compelled to explore this myth because of the way it has seeped into transcendent understandings of land for descendants of colonial settlers like myself. Commonly known as a rural paradise, arcadia was a strategy for ‘normalising’ and ‘naturalising’ European occupancy in New Zealand (Evans, 2007; Fairburn, 1989). British arcadianism arrived on the shores of New Zealand, Victorian and romantic. Therefore, in this thesis I posit that through both settler and romantic ideals, Pākehā continue to use arcadianism to relate to land. For example, presently in Aotearoa there is a populist national debate that has, broadly speaking, pitted farmers and environmentalists against each other. Sparked by recent situations such as the ‘dairy boom’ and the decline in New Zealand’s water quality, tensions have mounted between those wanting to increase agricultural production and those who believe more environmental preservation is needed. After pondering such issues I realised these positions both express contrasting sides to the New Zealand arcadian narrative: A settler arcadia that promulgates the establishment of a small family farm and a romantic arcadia that envisions a pristine ‘natural’ paradise. I worked through these issues on, in, and with, the ground of Wairarapa with Pākehā women who were engaged in various kinds of rural land practice. Using a critical autoethnographic voice and the idea of geography as ‘earth writing’ I draw on creative qualitative modes, visual approaches and ethnographic adventures to form fulsome stories that compost arcadia. The figure of Pan, the deity of the actual place of Arcadia, helps me with this composting project. Pan is a human-goat hybrid, queer trouble maker, and, as a trickster, has invoked in me my critical autoethnographic, fictional voice. My encounters with women and Pan showed me fertile ways in which Pākehā have inherited the histories of arcadia and how these histories are corporeally significant and fruitfully challenge the separation of ‘nature’ and culture. Such meaningful matter or matters have, in turn, provided verdant ways to discuss Pākehā becoming and response-ability. Through the material stories of trees, pasture, hills, mountains, waterways, animals and family, compostable arcadias emerged, yielding, what I call in this thesis, landhome making. Landhome making queers the essentialising qualities of ‘homeland’ and ‘homemaker’ but most importantly relates the significance of land in the making of home for the women of this thesis. Landhome making is about exploring, through everyday practice, what it means to be Pākehā for participants and myself that — resultantly — contributes to wider national discussions on how Pākehā might ‘become with’ land (Haraway, 2008; 2016; Newton, 2009).</p>

Composting arcadia: Stories from Pākehā women “of the land” in Wairarapa, Aotearoa New Zealand

<p>I suggest that this thesis is a compost pile from Wairarapa that slowly turns over harmful but potentially fertile tales of arcadia. I narrate this thesis drawing on the fleshly stories of ten Pākehā (colonial settler) women “of the land’ and the ethico-onto-epistemology of Donna Haraway’s compost making. Composting is Haraway’s (2016) latest feminist call to trouble and queer the self-contained secular humanism of Western modernity. Uprooting the Western separation of ‘nature’ from culture, Haraway’s philosophy provides an earthly foundation in which to compost arcadia. Arcadia is an antique ‘nature’ myth that has been enmeshed in the process of Western world making from Classical Greece to the European ‘Age of Discovery’. Arcadia was used by the British to colonise Aotearoa New Zealand in the nineteenth century. As a Pākehā, I have been compelled to explore this myth because of the way it has seeped into transcendent understandings of land for descendants of colonial settlers like myself. Commonly known as a rural paradise, arcadia was a strategy for ‘normalising’ and ‘naturalising’ European occupancy in New Zealand (Evans, 2007; Fairburn, 1989). British arcadianism arrived on the shores of New Zealand, Victorian and romantic. Therefore, in this thesis I posit that through both settler and romantic ideals, Pākehā continue to use arcadianism to relate to land. For example, presently in Aotearoa there is a populist national debate that has, broadly speaking, pitted farmers and environmentalists against each other. Sparked by recent situations such as the ‘dairy boom’ and the decline in New Zealand’s water quality, tensions have mounted between those wanting to increase agricultural production and those who believe more environmental preservation is needed. After pondering such issues I realised these positions both express contrasting sides to the New Zealand arcadian narrative: A settler arcadia that promulgates the establishment of a small family farm and a romantic arcadia that envisions a pristine ‘natural’ paradise. I worked through these issues on, in, and with, the ground of Wairarapa with Pākehā women who were engaged in various kinds of rural land practice. Using a critical autoethnographic voice and the idea of geography as ‘earth writing’ I draw on creative qualitative modes, visual approaches and ethnographic adventures to form fulsome stories that compost arcadia. The figure of Pan, the deity of the actual place of Arcadia, helps me with this composting project. Pan is a human-goat hybrid, queer trouble maker, and, as a trickster, has invoked in me my critical autoethnographic, fictional voice. My encounters with women and Pan showed me fertile ways in which Pākehā have inherited the histories of arcadia and how these histories are corporeally significant and fruitfully challenge the separation of ‘nature’ and culture. Such meaningful matter or matters have, in turn, provided verdant ways to discuss Pākehā becoming and response-ability. Through the material stories of trees, pasture, hills, mountains, waterways, animals and family, compostable arcadias emerged, yielding, what I call in this thesis, landhome making. Landhome making queers the essentialising qualities of ‘homeland’ and ‘homemaker’ but most importantly relates the significance of land in the making of home for the women of this thesis. Landhome making is about exploring, through everyday practice, what it means to be Pākehā for participants and myself that — resultantly — contributes to wider national discussions on how Pākehā might ‘become with’ land (Haraway, 2008; 2016; Newton, 2009).</p>

Max Weber and political theology of Friedrich Naumann

In the Weberian literature, it has been repeatedly noted that there is no serious theological interest in the most important provisions of the sociology of religion by Max Weber. This seems paradoxical given the religious-theological context for the development of Webers intellectual project of the social-theoretical hermeneutics of Western modernity. In the first part of the article, the author reconstructs the family and friends religious constellation which determined Webers understanding of the existential significance of religious meanings for certain groups of the modern era. The author mentions Webers close ties with a number of leading theologians of Germany in the late 19th - early 20th centuries, which influenced the heuristics of his writings. The second part of the article focuses on the multifaceted figure of Friedrich Naumann, a public intellectual, who was a Protestant pastor and a reactionary-conservative theologian and became a spiritual-political leader of the German left liberals. The author shows the initial ambivalence of the political-religious situation in the German Empire in the 1880s-1890s, in which Naumann tried to combine Christianity and socialism, and provides a brief overview of the young theologian and social activists gradual turning into a prominent figure of the German journalism and politics. In the third part of the article, the author describes the meeting of two thinkers as fateful for both Weber and Naumann, and emphasizes a radical turn in the worldview of the famous religious theorist and practitioner, who under the powerful influence of Webers personality and argumentation gave up both many previous ideas and pastors office. In conclusion, the author identifies the paradigmatic nature of Naumans ideological-political evolution as typical for a significant part of German intellectuals at the beginning of the 20th century, and considers Naumanns Hegelian acceptance of the modern nation-state as the highest value (following Weber) as a self-fulfilling diagnosis for the crisis modernity on the eve of the First World War catastrophe.

Decolonizing Philosophy of Technology: Learning from Bottom-Up and Top-Down Approaches to Decolonial Technical Design

The decolonial theory understands that Western Modernity keeps imposing itself through a triple mutually reinforcing and shaping imprisonment: coloniality of power, coloniality of knowledge, and coloniality of being. Technical design has an essential role in either maintaining or overcoming coloniality. In this article, two main approaches to decolonizing the technical design are presented. First is Yuk Hui’s and Ahmed Ansari’s proposals that, revisiting or recovering the different histories and philosophies of technology produced by humankind, intend to decolonize the minds of philosophers and engineers/architects/designers as a pre-condition for such decolonial designs to take place. I call them top-down approaches. Second is some technical design initiatives that, being developed alongside marginalized/subalternate people, intend to co-construct decolonial sociotechnical solutions through a committed, decolonizing, and careful dialog of knowledge. I call them bottom-up approaches. Once that is done, the article’s second half derives ontological, epistemological, and political consequences from the conjugation of top-down and bottom-up approaches. Such consequences challenge some established or not yet entirely overcome understandings in the philosophy of technology (PT) and, in so doing, are meant to represent some steps in PT’s decolonization. Even though both top-down and bottom-up approaches are considered, the article’s main contributions are associated with (bottom-up) decolonial technical design practices, whose methodologies and outcomes are important study cases for PT and whose practitioners (i.e., decolonial designers) can be taken as inspiring examples for philosophers who want to decolonize/enlarge PT or make it decolonial (that is, a way of fostering decoloniality).

Force fields of the modern

The essentially contested notion of the modern, and its cognate form “modernity,” have a long intellectual history. The emergence and dissemination of the idea of Western modernity was sometimes forcibly imposed, sometimes partially accepted, and sometimes resisted at different levels around the globe. Recent thinking has produced qualifiers and prefixes such as “unfinished,” “post-,” “late,” “inevitable,” “contra-,” “alternative,” or “differential” in relation to modernity, to signal the striations in approaches, interpretations, and positionings towards what is seen as an umbrella term to describe the various possibilities that can be brought to bear while considering contentions in contemporary theory and praxis. The social, economic, political, and cultural dimensions of this field of forces are integral to any thinking about the symbolic contestation of power in multifarious re-imaginings. This article charts this field mainly by looking at the colonial and postcolonial interventions that have impacted and continue to the present day to effect and inflect cultures and societies, including pressing questions of climate change and cyberspace. Sections are sorted under the following sub-headings: “The vortex of the modern;” “Subaltern bodies, subversive minds;” “Communication and colonization: Re-inventing space and time;” “Borderlands, migrations, identities;” and “Contesting and controlling cyberspace.”