ABSTRACT
In recent years there has been a proliferation of political projects that claim to be manifestations of authentic cultural practices, untainted by western influences. These projects of cultural absolutism have an ambiguous relationship between what is problematically referred to as ‘postmodernity’. Ziauddin Sardar argues that postmodernity is nothing more than the continuation of western cultural imperialism by other means (Sardar 1998: 8-9). I think he does this because he understands the postmodern condition to be associated with relativism and the valorisation of the hybrid (e.g. ibid.; Gellner 1992: 24). Postmodernists seem unambiguous in their rejection of cultural absolutism – that is, a set of arguments which see cultures as some invariant transhistorical set of specific practices and beliefs exclusive to a particular membership. Postmodernists would deny that cultures can be hermetically sealed units. They would favour arguments which advocate cultural hybridity. Advocates of cultural hybridity argue that cultures are not fixed or closed entities which enframe a particular membership; rather they argue that cultures are relatively open and intermeshed, thus it is difficult to decide upon the boundaries of any particular cultural formation, since cultural forms seep through attempts at (en)closure (Gilroy 1993: 7-8). Sardar thinks that the postmodernist rejection of cultural authenticity masks a promotion of western cultural values. I tend to agree with him, but I am not sure that the opposition between postmodernists and the rest is very helpful. I want to suggest that, under the slippery rubric of postmodernism, a critique of universalism and a rejection of essentialism, become conflated. The confusion arises when the critique of essentialism is given primacy over the critique of universalism. In other words, though postmodernism is blamed for being another attempt to reinforce the West’s cultural hegemony, I think the project to inscribe western superiority goes beyond those who are by any stretch of the imagination postmodernists. The opposition, as I see it, is between those who represents western culture as universal and those who see these attempts as ways of trying to recover the authority of the West, in a context in which its cultural centrality is increasingly contested. In the rest of this chapter, I want to show how those who oppose the project of cultural authenticity rely on the rejection of essentialism. Anti-essentialism without a critique of universalism is simply another means of promoting and endorsing western hegemony.
