We are all hybrids now: The dangerous epistemology of post‐colonial populism

Abstract

This review article considers the political effects of the construction by postcolonial/postmodern theory of an emancipatory project embodying an alternative modernity. It is argued that, in the case of the north Indian peasantry, what is perceived as a subaltern hybridity entails a paradoxical combination: namely, science‐driven technology with an irrational, pre‐scientific worldview. The latter elements, according to postcolonial theory, correspond not just to an authentically indigenous knowledge emanating from an undifferentiated ‘people’ but also to the way in which in non‐Western societies resist the continuing dominance exercised by erstwhile colonial masters through a system of Enlightenment/Western values. Epistemologically, however, such a backwards‐looking critique of science, technology and development has much in common with the discourse of the political right. Postcolonial Developments: Agriculture in the Making of Modern India, by Akhil Gupta. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1998. Pp.xv + 407. £14.95 (paperback). ISBN 0 8223 2243 7 Rivalry and Brotherhood: Politics in the Life of Farmers in Northern India, by Dipankar Gupta. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997. Pp.230. £12.99 (hardback). ISBN 019564 1019 Peasants, Populism and Postmodernism: The Return of the Agrarian Myth, by Tom Brass. London and Portland, OR: Frank Cass Publishers, 2000. Pp.xii + 380. £18.50 (paperback). ISBN 0 71468000 1

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