INTRODUCTION
Poststructuralism is a
Enlightenment
reason,
a
ideology.
major
Er..li.ghtenment
revelation.
rigorous
The
and
the
and
the
Enlightenment
was
Enlightenment
acti vi ties
and
rejects
put
was
questioning
Science
attitude.
of
rej ected
idea
also
above
characterized
all
of
spheres
the
growth
any
truth
of
of
the
Church,
and
by
a
human
scientific
a
that
cannot
be
Eeason,
Progress, were the three key cluster of ideas which
formed the world-view of the Enlightenment.
of
called
faith
validated by empirical tests and experimentation.
Nature,
of
Eeason acquired center stage in the
thinking
rational
knowledge
Nietzsche
premise
'The Age of Eeason.'
legacy of Nietzschean counter-
Enlightenment
State,
believed
superstition,
and vice together.
that
The philosophes
reason was
ignorance,
impeded by
poverty,
prej udice
The Enlightenment took off in the form
of a challenge to the authority of the Church and gradually
culminat.ed in the belief that the human mind has an infinite
potential which can be realized through scientific reasoning
and
that
mankind
progres~;.
reason
Hegel's
a
thus,
reach
the
zenith
of
its
Nietzsche rej ected such an egalitarian idea of
and
progress.
thc)l;.ght
phi losophy.
in
would,
also
The
German
emerged
as
philosopher
a
Friedrich
counter-Enlightenment
The Enlightenment is totally subj ect-centered
:50verei9n
rational
subject
which
is
"egocentric,
domineering,
objectifying,
sel f-'ag<;rrandi zing.
reason
with
of
the
repressing,
Hegel
,,1
rej ected
self-assertive
the
and
subj ect-centered
Enlightenment
and attempted to
"replace
Knowledge.
Hegel's
of
Absolute
,,2
Knowledge
from contraries,
from the diad of thesis and anti-thesis.
opposed
not
only
the
the
subject
Mind
(Geist) /Absolute
Nietzsche
guarantees
idea
it
Enlightenment
freedom
proj ect
of
reason but also Hegel's phenomenology of Spirit and Absolute
For Niet zsche
Idealism.
the
Hegelian proj ect was
The Enlightenment doctrine was unacceptable
metaphysical.
to him because of its egalitarianism,
and stress on reason.
capacity
of
all
Enlightenment.
and
reason
notion of progress,
Nietzsche never believed in the equal
hUman
beings
celebrated
for
and
by
the
He had faith in the idea of the "Overman"
him
was
'impure'
with
entanglement in history and tradition,
practice
purely
interest,
body
and
its
"unavoidable
society and power,
desire.,,3
Nietzsche
attempted to replace both the "sovereign rational subject"
and "ADsolute Knowledge" by the "irrational subject" "other"
the
of reason.
Nietzsche's thought relies heavily on
two basic premises.
One is the idea that it is not possible
to overlook the influence of the suppressed/silenced "other"
in
the
concept
pure.
of any category taken to be pregi ven
Second
is
his
emphasis
aesthetic dimensions of language.
on
the
rhetorical
and
and
Nietzsche's anti-Hegelian
anti-foundationalism and counter-Enlightenment irrationlism
bred
':wo
streams
of
anti-humanist
6
thinking
in
the
post-
Nietzschean
Jurgen
era.
Habermas
in
The
Philosophical
Discourse of Mbdernity stresses the Nietzschean ancestry of
poststructuralism of which Thomas McCarthy offers a summing
up:
While it is his intention in these lectures to resume
and renew the 'counterdiscourse' that, as a critique of
subjectivism and its consequences, has accompanied
modernity from the start, his immediate focus is on the
"counter-Enlightenment" path hewn by Nietzsche - or,
rather, on the two paths that lead out of Nietzsche
into the present, one running through Heidegger to
Derrida, the other, through Batai11e to Foucau1t.4
Foucault's interest lies in the unmasking of truth as
"will
Reason,
to
power"
and
unraveling
the
tyranny
of
reason.
according to Foucault, oppresses, marginalizes,
!i"'oucau1t's
excludes.
suspicion
of
is
a
reason
and
truth
more
"anarchist"
that
and
strain
of
establishes
an
irrationa1ist/deterritoria1ized/Dionysian/transgressive
subjectivity
in
opposition
subj ecti vi ty
and
standards
of
conduct/action.
opposes
the
universal
Niet;:scJie,
Foucault
to
"rational"
universal
Like
character
of
reaEon ::md posits the local character of truth/argument.
Derrlda pick::', up the thread from Nietzsche's emphasis on the
rhetorical and aesthetic dimension of language and amplifies
his
anti-foundationa1ist rej ection of "presence."
heart
of
philosophy.
his
arguments
If
truth
is
phi losophical discourses
lies
the
rhetorical
At
quality
disengaged and disembodied
the
of
from
the terms used in that discourse
7
are :::tripped. off their meanings
-
philosophical discourse
would be leveled to the size of literature.
claims
to
truth
are
based
on
the
Philosophy's
essential
opposition
between the terms of binary pairs - universal/local truth,
a
priori
/
empirical,
heterogenei ty,
presence
/
certainty
homogeneity /
relies
fallibility,
fragmentariness,
differentiality,
Metaphysics
/
mind
/
sel f
body
solely on the essential
unity
and
/
evident
so
on.
difference and
the anti-foundationalist ideology sees it as a misconceived
notion.
Nietzsche de-essentialized philosophical discourse
through
displacing
the
self-evident
quality
of
the
meaningful philosophical usage by the omnipresent rhetorical
quality of language, which Heidegger later proclaimed as the
"destruction" of metaphysics.
genetically
linked
to
Derrida's "deconstruction" is
Heideggerean
"destruction"
with
"di.fferance" as a new accent.
The anti-essentialist semiotics of truth and discourse
carries three major premises: i) constructivism, i.e., there
is
no
i.e.,
pregiven
absolute
("presence");
truth / meaning is local,
discursive
practices,
absence of a
sway.
"standard"
/
/
pluralism,
i.e.,
in
the
absolute truth relativism holds
a
semiotic
paradigm of meaning
representational
contextual ism,
produced through different
iii)
Post-structuralism is
anti -realist
mimetic
and;
ii)
as
(mirror
(preqjven) pa.radigm of meaning.
8
/
consti tuti ve
against
of
the
nature)
/
humanist
/
realist
The representative formulations from the Indian context
that I have taken up for study,
viz.,
Bhartrhari's Sphota
doctrine, Mandana Misra's critique of negation, Nagarjuna's
Madhyamaka
and
philosophy,
Kalhana' s
theory
Rasa-Dhvani
in
views
literary
on
historiography,
criticism,
are
all
basically foundationalist and essentialist realist theories
of meaning.
This selection of ancient Indian statements is
the
of
outcome
epistemological
ancient
Indian
a
curiosity
excitement
and
the
other
perceptions.
a
look
between
for
a
comparative
poststructuralism
Despite
thought.
opposed epistemologies -
to
their
being
and
apparently
one a semiotic theory of reality
realist
system,
they
also
share
This comparative dynamic provokes
East-West exploration for a
student of
a
'English'
some
special
in India
today.
The reception of poststructuralism in the departments
of English in India has taken the form of the emergence of a
new anti--humanist critical practice
in English pedagogy and
a troubled time of a "crisis" in English studies in India. 5
Poststructuralist
critical
culture
construc'.::i vist,
meaning.
One
pedagogy
rooted
in
in
historicized
an
and
form of dissent
Indian
India
thought
popularized
a
anti-foundationalist,
pluralized
from
sense
of
the poststructuralist
subversion
of
impulse to
fcrge a totally new critical equation with the
9
has
has
been
a
new
hermeneutic
{
<
Indian legacy in philosophy and art out of the contemporary
historical co::npulsions of the coming of poststructuralism.
As a student of "English" literature in a time of critical
disquiet in "English," I
respond to
classical
this
Indian
poststructuralist
crisis
lt it a hermeneutic challenge to
with
theories
theories
a
of
of
comparative
meaning
and
language,
study of
criticism
li terature
some
and
and
history.
(,
10