Back to the rough ground: Textual, oral and enactive meaning in comparative political theory
| Author | Toby Rollo |
| DOI | 10.1177/1474885118795284 |
| Published date | 01 July 2021 |
| Date | 01 July 2021 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article EJPT
Back to the rough
ground: Textual, oral
and enactive meaning
in comparative
political theory
Toby Rollo
Department of Political Science, University of British
Columbia, Canada
Abstract
The emerging field of comparative political theory (CPT) seeks to expand our under-
standing of politics through intercultural dialogues between diverse systems of political
thought. CPTacknowl edges diverse modes of political understanding, yet the field is still
methodologically focused on textual forms of political practice and learning. I argue that
the privileging of political literature in CPT has been inherited from orthodox political
theory and the history of political thought and that the prioritizing of text over oral and
enactive practices places constraints on intercultural dialogue. First, methodological
focus on texts inhibits dialogue with Indigenous traditions that do not prioritize text
in the same way or to the same extent in the reproduction of political culture. Second,
the incorporation of oral traditions tends to conflate orality with text in ways that
obfuscate the contribution of enactive performance. One result of these methodolog-
ical oversights is that CPT risks recapitulating some of the historical exclusionary logics
that it seeks to overcome.
Keywords
Colonialism, contemporary political theory, dialogue, history of political thought,
Indigenous
Corresponding author:
Toby Rollo, Department of Political Science, Lakehead University, 955 Oliver Road, Thunder Bay, ON P7B
5E1, Canada.
Email: toby.rollo@lakeheadu.ca
European Journal of Political Theory
2021, Vol. 20(3) 379–397
!The Author(s) 2018
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DOI: 10.1177/1474885118795284
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Introduction
One of the expressed aims in the field of comparative political theory (CPT) is to
unsettle dominant western concepts and categories of political analysis, in part by
demonstrating how political ideas held to be universal are actually parochial and
particular to European traditions of political thought. CPT promotes intercultural
dialogue (Dallmayr, 2004) and challenges the summary disqualification of non-
European political systems for allegedly lacking any rational structure (Shogimen,
2016). In this respect, CPT provides a corrective to the colonial assertion that
political ideas are always abstract and portable by emphasizing how some cultures
view collective norms and decision-making as inextricably embedded in particular
places and worldly practices. As James Tully observes, the promise of intercultural
dialogue is linked in no small part to the cultivation of practices that go beyond the
traditional analysis of transposable and transportable texts toward direct cultural
engagement in which “the interlocutors’ utterances have their meaning in this
worldly sense” (Tully, 2016: 59).
For the most part, theorists are attuned to the fact that conventional methods of
analysis have failed to meet non-western political systems on their own terms. They
continue, for example, to privilege the work of cultural elites. Farah Godrej (2009) has
cautioned against over-reliance on elite literature, observing that the political under-
standings we seek to engage are not always or necessarily limited to texts but can also
be found in the everyday words and deeds of the community. Roxanne Euben (2006:
13) makes a similar observation in her work on early-modern travel-writing:
There is much about the phenomenon of human mobility not captured in writing, and
many travellers past and present do not have the education, leisure, or institutional
power to produce a written text of what often were and continue be harrowing
experiences of dislocation.
This has prompted theorists to suggest that CPT has yet to consider the ways in
which political theorizing outside of western traditions “may even take nontextual –
even nonverbal? – forms” (Thomas, 2010: 16–17). After all, texts are rarely
“transparent emissaries for political cultures,” given that they tend to “obfuscate
as much as reveal the character of actual politics” (Freeden and Vincent, 2013:
21–22). To that end, Leigh Jenco has called for a broadening of the scope on enquiry
to include “texts, practices and self-understandings” (2007: 742), which she takes to
include “oral traditions, extratextual practices of study, and pedagogical customs” as
well as “supplemental regimes of extratextual practice and familiarization” (750).
Jenco explains that we must account not just for the knowledge found in texts and
speech but also for that which is “implicit within traditions of practices” or
“extratextual means such as embodied practice” (2007: 751). Jenco (2007) has
shown, for example, that in some Chinese traditions meaning is understood to
inhere in the practice of producing the text itself. Reading texts alone may be insuf-
ficient since in some cases the conceptual and the practical dimensions of enacting the
script are viewed as complementary and therefore as essential to understanding.
380 European Journal of Political Theory 20(3)
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