ABSTRACT
The author argues that despite the recent intellectual opening characterized by the institution of cultural and postcolonial studies, certain parts of the world (such as the Middle East, Eastern Europe) and social movements (such as politico-religious and ethnic) continue to occupy the paradigmatic status of backward cultural Others in the ruminations of writers from the left and right of the political spectrum. Taking S.Hall’s essay ‘Culture, community, nation’ that appeared in the October 1993 issue of Cultural Studies as a template, the author shows how arguments made with a progressive political agenda sometimes converge argumentatively and epistemologically with those of the conservative right in their failure to decenter normative assumptions derived from the entelechy of Western European history about ethnic and religious aspirations. Illiberal results of profoundly liberal ideologies, such as nationalism, continue to be explained through culturally particularistic arguments so as to avoid critiquing the fundamentals of Western European liberal-humanist projects. Symptomatic analyses that explain the success of ethnic and politico-religious movements as signs of socio-cultural disorder, cultural backwardness and/or lack of appropriate modernization fail to take these movements seriously: that must be dealt with through argumentation. Both the critics and champions of modernity take the West as their point of departure, and political languages that depart from the recommended repertoire of public expression are often dismissed. The author calls for a historically specific and culturally nuanced analysis of movements that are often considered to be the antithesis of modernity in order to both parochialize the Western experience of modernity, and to understand the significance of these movements to the present historical moment.
