ABSTRACT

The hegemony of discourse is not a red herring by any means. Certainly not for many non-Western2 (and non-White) scholars and activists. Whether in neo-colonial settings or Western academe,3 they have to struggle daily with

this aspect of domination in their scholarly and activist lives.4 This hegemonic discourse is acutely played out in the universal versus relativist debates and the secular versus religious/“fundamentalist” arguments. Although these charges and defenses have long been part of the general social science discourse, they have assumed renewed urgency in recent times with world globalization, in which the human rights debate has assumed a central position.