ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the deep role of what the author calls ‘trajectorism’ in European thought, the tendency to always see its history as some sort of predetermined journey to a desirable destination. Trajectorism is a deeper epistemological and ontological habit that always assumes there is a cumulative journey from here to there, or more exactly from now to then, in human affairs. The chapter argues that trajectorism is the great narrative trap of the west and is also, like all great myths, the secret of its successes in industry, empire and world conquest. One must recognize that contrary to the dominant meta-narrative of western modernity, it is not itself a cumulative, predictable or inevitable outcome of any discernable history. This meta-narrative is itself an expression of a trajectorist ideology, which tends to see Europe itself as a logical outcome of ideas that led from one phase or idea to the next, in some sort of destined manner. The chapter uses this point of view to propose a new angle on the deep contradiction between the ethical goals of the Enlightenment (including its central emphasis on the universality of human reason) and its imperial project, which required the enslavement and exploitation of much of the non-European world.
