Colonialism, Epistemic Injustice and Global Justice
| Author | Göran Collste |
| Published date | 01 September 2014 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1758-5899.12128 |
| Date | 01 September 2014 |
Colonialism, Epistemic Injustice and Global
Justice
G€
oran Collste
Link€
oping University
When reading Rajeev Bhargava’s article ‘Overcoming
the Epistemic Injustice of Colonialism’I was reminded of
one of my master’s students from Pakistan. In a class on
global justice I raised the question whether colonialism
had left any morally relevant traces in the present. She
spoke out and explained, not without some anger in her
voice:
Yes, certainly!Everything Pakistani is today con-
sidered of less worth compared to the west: we
consider our own history as shameful and we
feel that we are still slaves under the British rul-
ers. These feelings have also a cultural impact
today; to be beautiful is to have blonde hair,
not black, to be civilized is to eat with knife and
fork, not to eat in our traditional way, and our
traditional languages are superseded by English.
Bhargava elaborates on the epistemic ground of this
experience. Epistemic injustice is according to Bhargava a
kind of cultural injustice and means that ‘concepts and
categories’providing self-understanding and orientation
is replaced and marginalized by a dominant power, in
his case the colonizer. It was, Bhargava writes, ‘…impor-
tant to conquer not only the land and goods of the colo-
nized but also their culture and minds.’
Bhargava’s contribution is well-argued and convincing,
but also challenging. However, his argument is in certain
respects quite brief and general and in need of some fur-
ther clarifications and distinctions:
1. Bhargava begins with the following statement: ‘The
current conjecture in the world is witness to a dra-
matic, almost irreversible breakdown of the hegemony
of mainstream intellectual traditions of the west. Ideas
and practices associated with the modern west have
been long criticized…’. This kind of generalization of
‘western ideas’seems to be less helpful for the analy-
sis. Among western ideas one finds neo-liberalism, as
well as Marxism, fascism as well as egalitarianism.
What is the point of lumping together so many differ-
ent ideas in this way? Is it really helpful to categorize
ideas into ‘western’or ‘eastern’?
2. Bhargava argues that ‘indigenous cultures’were inferi-
orized, marginalized and anonymized. My question is
if this analysis is equally valid for all kinds of cultural
manifestations; academic, religious, literary, folkloristic
or if there are cultural ‘zones’that are more, or less,
affected.
3. Bhargava writes further that an epistemic framework
is the way ‘…a group understands and evaluates its
individual and collective life’. What constitutes accord-
ing to Bhargava a ‘group’? Obviously, a colonized peo-
ple is such a group, but does his analysis also apply
to other groups like workers, women, Catholics for
example?
4. Bhargava argues that each group has its own ‘…sys-
tem of meanings and interpretations…’That could be
interpreted as implying a kind of relativism because if
each group has its own epistemic framework it is hard
to see how they could communicate with each other.
However, that strong interpretation does not seem to
be Bhargava’s view because he also argues for the
possibility of ‘biculturalism’which means a ‘potentially
common tradition’. Yes, he even foresees ‘…the
renewal of western traditions by nonwestern peo-
ple…’This more universalistic view is in agreement
with, for example, Amartya Sen’s argument that differ-
ent cultures and religions share some common values,
for example freedom (Sen, 1999). Interestingly, both
Bhargava and Sen use the example of 3rd century
Indian emperor Asoka in their arguments; Bhargava
for the need to recapture lost or marginalized per-
spectives, Sen for his aim to show that universal views
A response to ‘Overcoming the Epistemic Injustice of Colonialism’
Rajeev Bhargava*
*Bhargava, R. (2013) ‘Overcoming the Epistemic Injustice of
Colonialism’, Global Policy, Vol. 4, No. 4, pp. 413–417. DOI:
10.1111/1758-5899.12093
©2014 University of Durham and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Global Policy (2014) 5:3 doi: 10.1111/1758-5899.12128
Global Policy Volume 5 . Issue 3 . September 2014
386
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