Nick Hostettler - Eurocentrism: a marxian critical realist critique

The political and social structures of modernity are dominated by really Eurocentric forms and relations, yet the theorisation of the Eurocentricity of modernity remains barely developed. At the same time, modern political and social theory is fundamentally Eurocentric, yet the critique of Eurocentrism remains marginal to Marxian and critical realist theory.

Addressing the Eurocentrism of both modernity and modern theory, Eurocentrism: A Marxian Critical Realist Critique discloses the deeply embedded constraints it imposes on historical and social reflexivity.

Building on the insights of post-structuralism and post-colonialism, Eurocentrism shows how the powerful anti-Eurocentric tendencies of the Marxian critique of civil society and the critical realist critique of philosophy have been misunderstood or ignored. It develops the latent potential of these traditions to develop a systematically anti-Eurocentric approach to understanding and explaining modernity.

Nick Hostettler teaches political and social theory and International Relations at Queen Mary University of London. He holds a PhD in political theory. His research to date has been concerned with the historical reflexivity of modern political and social theory, and the nature of modernity

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First published 2012
by Routledge
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Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
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2012 Nick Hostettler

The right of Nick Hostettler to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Hostettler, Nick.
Eurocentrism: a Marxian critical realist critique / Nick Hostettler.
p. cm.
1. Eurocentrism. 2. Political scienceEuropePhilosophy. 3. Socialism
Philosophy. 4. Political sociology. 5. Civilization, Modern-European influences.
I. Title.
JA84.E9H67 2012
306.2094dc23

2011049344

ISBN: 978-0-415-56510-3 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-203-86190-5 (ebk)

Typeset in Bembo
by Taylor & Francis Books.

For Sam and Freddy
My pride and my joy

Eurocentrism, capitalism and modernity

What are the relationships between eurocentrism, capitalism and modernity? These are the questions that Eurocentrism sets out to answer. The questions with which it engages are obviously large ones, not only in the sense that they cover vast areas of political and social history stretching over at least 300 years. For these are crucially important questions, the answers to which enter back into our history, reinforcing some tendencies at the expense of others, shaping our world for good or ill. Eurocentrism accepts, of course, that there cannot be any simple answer to this set of questions, in part because of the scale and complexity of both the debates and the reality with which they deal, and because meanings and values continue to be contested many times over. The main problem here, though, is not the lack of consensus on the answers: it is that there is no clarity on how to go about asking them.

The real problem concerns the problematic of enquiry, i.e. the framework of presuppositions, both real and imaginary, that informs and shapes that enquiry. Without an understanding of their common problematic, the debates over all of these questions remain irresolvable. Yet the very fact of irresolvable debate is a crucial symptom of the constraints that modernity tends to impose on social and historical reflexivity, on the modern capacity for self-understanding. Understanding eurocentrism, capitalism and modernity requires that we understand and overcome those constraints. Indeed, the way to understand them is precisely by transcending the limits they would impose on our ability to do so. The cognitive constraints we confront, however, are not absolute: Eurocentrism argues that while modernity does indeed restrict our capacity to make sense of it, it also makes it possible to reach an adequate understanding. It is possible to disclose the deep structures of the debates about the modern, and in so doing to reveal the common reality in which such contests are grounded. Eurocentrism also acknowledges what appears to be a certain paradox in this response to the problem, for the disclosure of the real nature of the problematic of modern intellectual life is, at one and the same time, the disclosure of the essentially eurocentric structures of capitalism and modernity.

To enquire into eurocentrism is to enquire into the forms of modern self-understanding. It is also to enquire into their limits, and in so doing to go past them. Two processes are driven forward by engaging with the real problems of eurocentric theory: practice and reality. The first is the disclosure of the eurocentric problematic of modern intellectual life; the second is the emergence of an anti-eurocentric mode of thought. Together, they show how the three critiques of eurocentrism, capitalism and modernity are internally related and that the dominant processes and forms of modernity, including its theories and practices, are essentially eurocentric. Without developing the capacity to fully understand the eurocentricities of the deep structures of modernity there is no prospect of fully understanding modernity, and understanding the deeply eurocentric structures of modernity is a necessary condition of possibility of understanding modernity as a whole.