Overcoming the Epistemic Injustice of Colonialism
| Published date | 01 November 2013 |
| Date | 01 November 2013 |
| Author | Rajeev Bhargava |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1758-5899.12093 |
Overcoming the Epistemic Injustice of
Colonialism
Rajeev Bhargava
Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, New Delhi
Abstract
In this article I consider the epistemic injustice of colonialism. I define epistemic injustice as a form of cultural injustice
that occurs when the concepts and categories by which a people understand themselves and their world is replaced
or adversely affected by the concepts and categories of the colonizers. A deep problem today for the sufferers of epi-
stemic injustice is that western categories both have an undeniable universal potential and they are fully intermingled
with the specificity of western practices; worse, they bear a deep imprint of western domination and hegemony. I thus
argue that we can neither ignore western ideas nor fully show how they can be rescued from the pernicious effects of
their own imperial imprint.
The current conjuncture 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, from both within and outside. They have
been viewed with suspicion and rejected, rightly or
wrongly, in the past. But never before in modern times
has the impact of this critique been so profound as to
lead to a real possibility of transformation of the social
and political imaginary of large numbers of people
throughout the world. A new historical dynamic has
been set in motion in recent times that has fundamen-
tally altered the relationship between what was formerly
the centre and its peripheries. The centre has been plu-
ralized. We now live, as Eisenstadt says, in a world of
continuously shifting hegemonies. Modern western tradi-
tions are just one among many, with certain strengths
and several weaknesses –as much in need of cure as all
others. It has clearly fallen from its high pedestal, as Gan-
dhi once put it. With this, we see the beginning of the
end of what might be called the colonization of the
mind and intellectual cultures; of what may be called
epistemic injustice.
Nowadays, a space has emerged of real intellectual
and civilizational equality between a much-weakened
hegemon and a previously hegemonized world. This
transformative moment gives us an opportunity to
launch a new ethnography of concepts and representa-
tions in different parts of the world, so that we can
understand the subtle but crucial differences in the way
peoples outside a few countries of the North Atlantic
have imagined their worlds. Successfully challenging the
hegemony of the intellectual traditions of that small clus-
ter of societies that we call the west is not going to be
easy. We must avoid both a hysterical rejection of wes-
tern categories and an uncritical, wholly unacceptable in-
digenism. The focus must remain on the concepts and
representations in play today in different parts of the
world, regardless of their origins. Yet a deep intellectual
(epistemic) inequality must be addressed. While a million
reams of paper have been written on a small but domi-
nant number of traditions in the west, little systematic
research has been carried out to excavate the treasures
of other traditions.
Epistemic injustice: forms and mechanisms
What constitutes epistemic injustice? It is best to answer
this question by distinguishing epistemic injustice from
other forms of injustice perpetrated by colonizing states.
Modern colonialism went beyond physical violence,
forcible occupation of lands, and the extraction of tribute
and wealth. It forcibly established a relationship between
the lands of the colonizers and the colonized, and inau-
gurated a flow of human and natural resources that
continually fed the economy of the colonizers and
impoverished the colonized. As the early protagonists of
the movement of Indian independence from British rule
argued, there was a ceaseless drain of wealth from the
colony to the metropolis. This economic injustice was
accompanied by political injustice. The maintenance of
economic asymmetries between the colony and the
metropolis required that the latter kept a near-absolute
political control of the former. Neither economic nor
Global Policy (2013) 4:4 doi: 10.1111/1758-5899.12093 ©2013 University of Durham and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Global Policy Volume 4 . Issue 4 . November 2013 413
Special Section Article
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