Colonialism and Its Legacy brings together essays by leading scholars in both the fields of political theory and the history of political thought about European colonialism and its legacies, and postcolonial social and political theory. The essays explore the ways in which European colonial projects structured and shaped much of modern political theory, how concepts from political philosophy affected and were realized in colonial and imperial practice, and how we can understand the intellectual and social world left behind by a (...) half-millennium of European empires. (shrink)

The introduction of the long-term history of the Earth into the preoccupations of historians has triggered a crisis because it has become impossible to keep the “planet” as one single entity outside of history properly understood. As soon as the planetary intruded into history, it became impossible to keep it as one naturalized background. By problematizing the planetary, Dipesh Chakrabarty has forced philosophers, historians and anthropologists to extend pluralism to the very ground on which history was supposed to unfold. (...) Hence Bruno Latour’s attempt at counting the number of “planets” whose attractions are simultaneously being felt today on any political question. Each of his eight planets are defined by the disconnect between where they are situated and where they are imagined to be moving, which means that each planet is led by a different and incommensurable philosophy of history. Such a “fictional planetology” is then discussed by Chakrabarty, who reviews the difficulties historians have had in taking the nonhuman as a historical agent and then adds to Latour’s count a new planetary body which further complicates the geopolitical situation. The result of their joint effort is to shift questions of philosophy of history to philosophy of geography. (shrink)

Discussion of global climate change is shaped by the intellectual categories developed to address capitalism and globalization. Yet climate change is only one manifestation of humanity’s varied and accelerating impact on the Earth System. The common predicament that may be anticipated in the Anthropocene raises difficult questions of distributive justice – between rich and poor, developed and developing countries, the living and the yet unborn, and even the human and the non-human – and may pose a challenge to the categories (...) on which our traditions of political thought are based. Awareness of the Anthropocene encourages us to think of humans on different scales and in different contexts – as parts of a global capitalist system and as members of a now-dominant species – although the debate is, for now, still structured by the experiences and concepts of the developed world. (shrink)

A wide-ranging interview with Dipesh Chakrabarty, Distinguished Professor of History at the University of Chicago and author of The Climate of History in a Planetary Age and Provincializing Europe. Dipesh Chakrabarty is one of the leading thinkers on climate change in the humanities. He is responsible for introducing concepts like the "Anthropocene," "geological force," and "species history" into history, philosophy, and literary theory.

The author examines the symbolism of the Indian politician's common dress: white coarse khadi cham pioned by Gandhi. Does its continued survival during the post-independence era signify merely hypocrisy, empty ritual? What does it implicitly communicate about the public and private intents ofpoliticalfigures? What values does the khadi conceal in its texture? Do they serve any purpose? Chakrabarty's analysis concludes by admitting that though khadi no longer conveys any message as to the prevalence of Gandhian convictions, yet it constitutes a (...) deep-seated resistance by Indian democracy and politics to the wholesale loss of their identity in the rising surge of global capitalism. (shrink)

The concepts »labor« and »work« have different etymologies that have become entwined in the course of European history. By tracing the changes in meaning these words have undergone, we gain a view to the current situation of anthropogenic climate change and the efforts to think through how this situation affects our categories more broadly. That has consequences for the humanities.

M. K. Gandhi's a series of talks delivered to ashramites at Sabarmati during 1926 and 1927, provides a singular instance in Indian intellectual thought in which the Bhagavad Gita's message of action is transformed into a theory of non-violent resistance. This essay argues that Gandhi's reading of the Gita has to be placed within an identifiable general understanding of the political that emerged among the so-called in the Congress towards the beginning of the twentieth century. Gandhi, we argue, wrested from (...) the their vocabulary and their pre-eminent political text, the Gita, and put them to use in the cause of non-violent politics. But, more importantly, his discourses on the Gita after 1920 suggest an acceptance, on his part, of politics as it actually was. This is where he departed from the projects of Tilak or Aurobindo. The Gita, in Gandhi's hand, became a talismanic device that allowed the satyagrahi his or her involvement in political action while providing protection from the necessary and unavoidable venality of politics and its propensity to violence. (shrink)

This response to Carola Dietze’s critique of Provincializing Europe takes up for examination three key expressions or ideas on which the original argument of the book was founded: hyperreal Europe, historicism, and political modernity. I appreciate the spirit of Dietze’s engagement with the book, but I show that her critique is based on a degree of misapprehension of these three central ideas. While clarifying the details and the degree of my disagreement with Dietze, I provide my own critique of Dietze’s (...) proposal of “equal histories” by arguing that Dietze has not named or explained the unit with respect to which different histories could be considered equal. I also argue that Dietze’s proposals about judging societies only by their “own” standards, and basing human dignity on the idea of a “human nature” that could be seen as a “constant,” do not solve the problems she sees with my book and are themselves open to some serious historical and logical criticism. (shrink)

Historical Teleologies in the Modern World tracks the fragmentation and proliferation of teleological understandings of history--the notion that history had to be explained as a goal-directed process--in Europe and beyond throughout the 19th and into the 20th century. Historical teleologies have profoundly informed a variety of other disciplines, including modern philosophy, natural history, literature, humanitarian and religious philanthropism, the political thought and practice of revolution, emancipation, imperialism, colonialism and anti-colonialism, the conceptualization of universal humankind, and the understanding of modernity in (...) general. By exploring the extension and plurality of historical teleology, the essays in this volume revise the history of historicity in the modern period. Historical Teleologies in the Modern World casts doubt on the idea that a single, if powerful, conception of time could function as the unifying principle of all modern historicity, instead pursuing an investigation of the plurality of modern historicities and its underlying structures. By bringing together Western and non-Western histories, this book provides the first extended treatment of the idea of historical teleology. It will be of great value to students and scholars of modern global and intellectual history"--From publisher's website. (shrink)

The goal of this article is to introduce a Merleau-Pontyan reading of the Four Theses of Dipesh Chakrabarty. In the first part of this article, we identify the theoretical problems that undergird Chakrabarty’s claims by connecting them to an attempt to rethink the concept of history in a non-historicist manner in light of the questions raised by the Anthropocene and by anthropogenic climate change. Our hypothesis, which we explore in the second part of the article, is that the idea (...) of history developed by Merleau-Ponty, which finds in the concepts of “institution” and “transcendental geology” its fundamental theoretical articulations, can provide the framework for a rereading of the Four Theses. In the last section, we attempt to provide an interpretation of Chakrabarty’s proposition by reading the problem of the relationship between geological history, life history, and human history as a relationship of institution. In conclusion, we indicate some potential developments for this proposition that move in the direction of a narrower intersection between philosophy and earth system science. (shrink)

With catastrophic events of «nature» like global warming, arguments emerge that insinuate an equivalence of vulnerability, responsibility or being affected by these catastrophes. Such an alleged equivalence when facing climate catastrophe is already visible, for example, in the notion of the «Anthropocene» itself, which obscures both causes and various vulnerabilities in a homogenized as well as universalized concept of humanity (anthropos). Taking such narratives as a starting point, the paper explores questions about the connection between catastrophe, temporality, and history, following (...) mainly Walter Benjamin, Dipesh Chakrabarty and Jean-Luc Nancy with the goal to provide (1) a critique of the concept «Anthropocene» on the basis of nonequivalence while retaining its key features to still grasp the catastrophic present, (2) an analysis of anthropocenic time and the chronical structure of catastrophe, (3) philosophical considerations on the intersection of catastrophe and history. (shrink)

Dipesh Chakrabarty has identified Immanuel Kant’s distinction between the human’s moral and animal dimensions as an underlying source of the failure of the humanities to respond to the ecological crises of the Anthropocene. Although relevant for the environmental humanities generally, Chakrabarty’s critique is especially germane to contemporary environmental philosophy. It shows how the reality of anthropogenic climate change renders central aspects of Kant’s influential conception of human nature untenable. While closer examination of Kant’s writings corroborates the core of Chakrabarty’s (...) reading, there nonetheless remain positive resources in Kant’s philosophy for contemporary environmental thinking, for, although Kant does regard the human’s moral and animal dimensions as conceptually separable, he also understands them to be inextricably bound within the nature of human beings. Attending to the interplay between these Kantian commitments, a new critical insight into one of the basic tensions of the Anthropocene era can be attained. (shrink)

Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte, Volume 45, Issue 3, Page 434-451, September 2022.

Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte, Volume 45, Issue 3, Page 434-451, September 2022.

In his Dipesh Chakrabarty’s report, Michael Hardt finds capital governing by the levy on the society of an uniform and homogeneous temporality.. Historiographical colonial tradition always worked by temporal differentiation with regard to Europe, playing the role of universal intermediary. Chakrabarty refuses this mediation. There are no stages in historical progress but a multiplicity of incommensurable temporality existing simultaneously. Challenge is, so, to build a history of pure difference in which every event must be seized in its peculiarity.

This commentary on Dipesh Chakrabarty’s Climate of History initially frames the work in the context of the ongoing transdisciplinary project of creating synergies or more precisely “consilience” between the sciences and humanities. When this project is engaged in on the premises of the humanities (and the social sciences), we end up with the Earth system and the planetary as the basic lifeblood of human society—what foregrounds existence in common. That this realization is already bringing forth new justificatory principles for (...) governance in a planetary age is then related through a history of ecological justice concerns. (shrink)

This essay interprets Dipesh Chakrabarty’s The Climate of History in a Planetary Age in light of the European tradition of thought about the sublime. The first half of the essay stages Chakrabarty’s historiography within that tradition focusing on a critical understanding of Kant. Then, the essay considers how the trace of the sublime in Chakrabarty’s approach to planetary history is interpretable as a form of social alienation. That argument draws on the critical theory of Steven Vogel and decolonial critique. (...) Finally, the essay considers the moods of protest as non-alienated responses to the planetary bypassing the coloniality of the sublime. (shrink)

As the final installment of Public Culture’s Millennial Quartet, Cosmopolitanism assesses the pasts and possible futures of cosmopolitanism—or ways of thinking, feeling, and acting beyond one’s particular society. With contributions from distinguished scholars in disciplines such as literary studies, art history, South Asian studies, and anthropology, this volume recenters the history and theory of translocal political aspirations and cultural ideas from the usual Western vantage point to areas outside Europe, such as South Asia, China, and Africa. By examining new archives, (...) proposing new theoretical formulations, and suggesting new possibilities of political practice, the contributors critically probe the concept of cosmopolitanism. On the one hand, cosmopolitanism may be taken to promise a form of supraregional political solidarity, but on the other, these essays argue, it may erode precisely those intimate cultural differences that derive their meaning from particular places and traditions. Given that most cosmopolitan political formations—from the Roman empire and European imperialism to contemporary globalization—have been coercive and unequal, can there be a noncoercive and egalitarian cosmopolitan politics? Finally, the volume asks whether cosmopolitanism can promise any universalism that is not the unwarranted generalization of some Western particular. Contributors. Ackbar Abbas, Arjun Appadurai, Homi K. Bhabha, T. K. Biaya, Carol A. Breckenridge, Dipesh Chakrabarty, Ousame Ndiaye Dago, Mamadou Diouf, Wu Hung, Walter D. Mignolo, Sheldon Pollock, Steven Randall. (shrink)

In the Parthenon frieze, the time of mortals and the time of gods seem to merge. Dipesh Chakrabarty has argued that with the advent of the Anthropocene the times of human history and of the Earth are similarly coming together. Are humans entering the ‘monumental time’ of the Earth, to stand alongside the Olympian gods of the other geological forces? This article first looks at the cultural shifts leading to the modern idea of separate human and Earth histories. It (...) examines the changing use of monuments to mediate between human and other temporalities. It explores the use of ‘stratigraphic sections’ as natural monuments to mark transitions between the major time units of Earth history, and the erection of intentional monuments nearby. It suggests that the Anthropocene, as a geological epoch-in-the-making, may challenge the whole system of monumental semiotics used to stabilize our way of thinking about deep time. (shrink)

In the late 18th century, Immanuel Kant attracted attention for his criticisms of colonialism, that problematized the established boundaries between civilization and barbarism, and chastised English colonialism in particular. Some years later, however, in his lectures on Anthropology, he ventured some oddly racist views, concerning the specific differences between European and Indigenous peoples. Kant's racism is by now well‐documented. However, less attention has been paid to the peculiarities of that racism, and especially its foundations in a theory of virtue. His (...) racism comes to light especially in his discussions of the virtues of patience and courage, and in passages which have rarely been subject to critical scrutiny still to this day. This article starts out from an analysis of the functions of Kant's concepts of courage and patience in his account of European versus Indigenous difference, with a view to interrogating the politics of virtue in the present, where this discussion is reoccurring in new guises. What Kant considered courage has now been devalorized, while what he considered patience is now valorized. This reversal of perspectives on what counts as virtuous has occurred in correlation with a reversal in western perspectives on Indigeneity. Such that contemporary accounts of courage are correlated with contemporary accounts of Indigeneity. These reversals of perspective must be understood in context of the transformation which philosophical anthropology has undergone under the duress of the Anthropocene. Contemporary works by Dipesh Chakrabarty and Jonathan Lear are of great relevance to this correlated transformation and will be discussed here. The article analyses what both Chakrabarty and Lear understand by courage today, its relevance to the Anthropocene, and points out the limitations of their theories. Ultimately the article argues for a rethinking of the definition of courage as a political virtue of the Anthropocenic present. (shrink)

This essay traces the ontological and political limits of Bruno Latour’s conceptualization of the ‘common world’. Latour formulates this concept in explicating how modernist scientific and political institutions require a metaphysical foundation that is anti-democratic in rigidly partitioning nature from society. In the stead of nature/society, Latour proposes a ‘cosmopolitics’ in which we recognize our embroilment in systems comprised of heterogeneous human and nonhuman actors, and seek to innovate appropriate procedures for governing such systems and composing a more peaceful common (...) world. However, feminist and postcolonialist science studies scholars have argued that Latour’s project fails to apprehend the experiences of subjects marginalized by scientific and political structures of representation. Thus, science studies scholars seem to be faced with a problem; to avoid ontological dissonance and contradiction in integrating Latour’s program with feminist and postcolonialist critiques we must defer his claims that the cosmopolitical program entirely supersedes contemporary social movements and oppositional politics. I offer an alternative. Namely, I argue that Latour’s formulations of cosmopolitics’ procedures and the common world’s boundaries actually require an incipient model of the limits of democratic representation. I modify Latour’s proposed system of representation by reading it against Dipesh Chakrabarty’s concept of ‘subaltern pasts’, which are unassimilable to academic historical narratives (in their attribution of agency to nonhuman gods, for example). This reading emphasizes how Latour does not adequately theorize and politicize the partially autonomous reality of those excluded from the common world and thus fails to attend to how this externalization replicates the violence of modernist representational institutions. (shrink)

Hydrological landscapes played a significant role in the elaboration of Gaston Bachelard’s and Martin Heidegger’s historical epistemologies. More specifically, both philosophers relied on hydroelectric landscapes to explore nonlinear time and profound epistemological shifts in the history of knowledge. The landscapes they invoke are composed of hydroelectric dams, thunderstorms, and related landmarks like mountains, rivers, and lakes. Together, these varied yet connected elements offer rich environmental and conceptual terrains that I revisit to situate human knowledge formation within a much older natural (...) history, and to lay the groundwork for a deep time theory of knowledge. Such theories promote timefulness and geological consciousness by establishing less anthropocentric historical narratives – or what Dipesh Chakrabarty calls “planetary history” – on more suitable epistemological grounds. (shrink)

Systematically addresses the philosophical implications of the postcolonial. In this book, Emanuela Fornari systematically examines the philosophical implications of postcolonial studies. She considers postcolonial critique not as a school or a current of thought but rather as a multiform constellation that—from the celebrated Orientalism of Edward Said to the contributions of authors like Homi Bhabha, Gayatri Spivak, Ranajit Guha, and Dipesh Chakrabarty—has called into question the assumptions that underlie key concepts in the history of philosophy. Fornari addresses themes such (...) as history and memory, borders, the subject, and translation, engaging classical authors such as Kant, Hegel, and Marx alongside more contemporary theorizations by authors such as Walter Benjamin, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Étienne Balibar, and Jacques Rancière. “Fornari’s book is purposeful in its construction, framed by themes she puts into motion and in which each considered thinker is set. The result is an investigation of philosophy and the postcolonial that does not rely on familiar associations and gestures, but rather rigorous, original theorizing of key concepts. This is a compelling book that displays mature, important thinking on some of our most pressing philosophical issues.” — John E. Drabinski, coeditor of Between Levinas and Heidegger. (shrink)

The paper starts from the wonderment-reverence distinction introduced by Dipesh Chakrabarty in his book The Climate of History in a Planetary Age. While Chakrabarty’s concept of the planetary as the framework for the Anthropocene is accepted, his skepticism about the political relevance of wonder(ment) in the Anthropocene is challenged. Pace Chakrabarty, the link between wonder(ment) and curiosity is severed, and wonder is instead defined through the connections to the faculties of listening and reflective judgment. As such, wonder can be (...) relevant to politics in the Anthropocene when engaging with the planetary. (shrink)

In this article, I examine the debate about the Anthropocene through the lens of two images that animate this debate like presuppositions: that of the Globe and that of the Earth. After analyzing the characteristics of the former, I attempt to define the status of the concept of Earth in Merleau-Ponty’s works in relation to the concepts of Nature, life, and background. In a final section, I attempt to valorize the main theoretical objectives achieved by reading Merleau-Ponty in the direction (...) of a new reflection on the notion of the Anthropocene, beyond the Promethean discourse on the Anthropocene (which originates in a vision of the planet as a Globe). For this, we will read together some recent works by Dipesh Chakrabarty and Jeremy Devies that focus precisely on the attempt to rethink the Anthropocene beyond the image of the Globe. (shrink)

Among his generation of intellectuals, the eighteenth-century German philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder is recognized both for his innovative philosophy of language and history and for his passionate criticism of racism, colonialism, and imperialism. A student of Immanuel Kant, Herder challenged the idea that anyone--even the philosophers of the Enlightenment--could have a monopoly on truth. In Herder: Aesthetics against Imperialism, John K. Noyes plumbs the connections between Herder's anti-imperialism, often acknowledged but rarely explored in depth, and his epistemological investigations. Noyes argues (...) that Herder's anti-rationalist epistemology, his rejection of universal conceptions of truth, knowledge, and justice, constitutes the first attempt to establish not just a moral but an epistemological foundation for anti-imperialism. Engaging with the work of postcolonial theorists such Dipesh Chakrabarty and Gayatri Spivak, this book is a valuable reassessment of Enlightenment anti-imperialism that demonstrates Herder's continuing relevance to postcolonial studies today. (shrink)