Notes on: de Sousa Santos, B. (2012)
Public Sphere and Epistemologies of the
South Africa Development, XXXVII (1):
43 – 67
Dave Harris
This paper offers a 'meta-theoretical critique of
the concept of the public sphere' [in Habermas],
and wants to argue instead for epistemological
diversity, 'intercultural translation'and
mutual intelligibility.
Habermas's concept of public sphere 'reflects, in
a stylised way, the political practices of the
European bourgeoisie at the beginning of the 18th
century… Its theoretical and cultural
presuppositions are entirely European' (44).
Habermas himself recognised that he had excluded
women, workers and non-proprietors (?). The issue
is whether 'the global South' needs this concept,
and whether we can make it fit by 'adjectivising
or qualifying' the concept. If not, we need to
develop a more adequate concept, more
post-imperialist, more 'truly decolonised', and in
the process, discuss the issues connecting theory
and practice. Generally, we should start with 'a
hermeneutics of suspicion' addressing all social
theories produced in the global North: the
differences between the views of the North and the
South 'are so vast that they seem to refer to
different worlds' (45).
Modern solutions proposed by liberalism or Marxism
no longer work, including Habermas and his
reconstruction. It still traces an 'abyssal line'
between metropolitan societies in Europe and
colonial societies. Habermas can see this but not
overcome it. His theory of communicative action,
for example is supposed to be 'a telos of
development for all humanity', but he was once
asked if it would be useful 'to the struggles of
democratic socialism in developed countries', and
apparently Habermas (1984) answered that he was
inclined to reply no, that his was a limited and
Eurocentric version. Santos comments that this
'actually excludes 4/5 of the world population…
Habermas's universalism turns out to be a
benevolent but imperialist universalism' deciding
what to include and exclude (46)
[I think this is total bollocks, and
misunderstands Habermas's own discussion of the
links between theory and practice, say in his Theory
and Practice {!} 1974, chapter 1, where he
says that theorists should focus on critiquing
other theories and their claims to truth, but when
it comes to political action, those who are
actually willing to take the risks should take the
difficult decisions]
What we actually need is a more '"transgressive
sociology"' distanced from Western modernity,
closer to marginalised versions of maternity,
focusing on 'absences and emergences', confronting
epistemologies of the global North with 'an [just
the one] epistemology of the South'. In particular
we need oppose the tendency in 'Eurocentric
critical theory — 'the loss of critical nouns and
the phantasmal relationship between theory and
action' [real woefully idealist crap]. [The idea
is that the old nouns belonging to critical theory
like socialism, class struggle and alienation and
so on have been weakened and modified by various
adjectives like alternative, democratic or
sustainable. The adjectives are supposed to
'creatively take advantage of nouns', but the
nouns still 'limit its debates and proposals'
(47). What we need to do instead is to introduce
new concepts 'without precedent in Eurocentric
theory' often expressed in languages other than
the colonial ones, seen, for example in new
adjectives like 'subaltern, plebeian, counter
insurgent', belonging to new groups like
'indigenous, peasant, women, Afro descendants' and
demands for 'dignity, respect, territory… Mother
Earth' (48). All these were 'highly visible in the
World Cup social Forum in 2001']
As examples Zapatista, Argentina piqueteros, , the
landless in Brazil, indigenous movements in
Bolivia, Ecuador, Uruguay, Chavez, Morales in
Bolivia, Lugo in Paraguay, Mujica in Uruguay — all
emancipatory but not theorised [reminds me of
Debray who said it better] (49).
There is epistemological and ontological
difference between these movements and Eurocentric
critical theory, because they are based on
'ancestral, popular and spiritual knowledge that
has always been alien to Eurocentric critical
theory', (50) distinct from Western individualism,
stressing community where the ancestors are
present 'as well as animals and mother Earth'.
There is an emancipatory project based on 'ethnic
and peasant themes' which will replace Marxist
ideology. They demand the unthinkable and develop
surprise, 'theoretical work that goes hand-in-hand
with the transformative work of the social
movements', symbolically enlarging it.
The 'epistemology of the South' means 'the
retrieval of new processes of production and
valorisation of valid knowledges', scientific and
nonscientific, and with new relations among them,
formed by classes and social groups that have been
oppressed. He admits that 'the South is here
rather a metaphor of the human suffering caused by
capitalism in colonialism and… of the resistance
to overcome or minimise such suffering… An
anticapitalist, anti-colonialist, anti-imperialist
South' (51). Its characteristic understandings are
broader than those of the West, so it can offer
change in unforeseen ways. It embraces an infinite
diversity of the world with very different modes
of being thinking and feeling, 'ways of conceiving
time' and ways of organising life.
These alternative epistemologies are built by four
steps: 'sociology of absences, sociology of
emergencies, ecology of knowledges, intercultural
translation''[so we do it for the poor bastards?].
First we show that what does not exist 'is
actually actively produced as non-existent… [as]an
unbelievable alternative… Ignorant, backward,
inferior, local or particular, and unproductive or
sterile', depending on the logic in operation at
the time, which itself depends on the particular
'monoculture' [do keep up]. The '"monoculture of
knowledge" and "rigour of knowledge"' sees science
and high culture as the 'sole criteria of truth
and aesthetic quality. The '"monoculture of linear
time"' says that history has 'a unique and
well-known meaning and direction'so that things
that are backward or asymmetrical can be declared
to have nonexistence (52). There is also a logic
of social classification based on the monoculture
of '"naturalisation of differences"', categories
that naturalise hierarchies, like racial and
sexual ones, and racial classification is
particularly important of course. Then there is
the '"logic of the dominant scale"' where,
universal or global categories are more important
than any other realities depending on context.
Finally there is the '"logic of productivity"'
where economic growth is unquestioned, so anything
that serves it is unquestionable as well (53).
Second, we have to develop the notion
of emergence to combat the emptiness of the future
of linear time [?] with 'plural and concrete
possibilities, utopian and realist'. Here we can
rely on the work of Bloch [isn't he a European?]
And his concept of 'not yet' which means a
concrete possibility and capacity that is real but
not predetermined (54) — [further explained as
being something dynamic, between reality and
necessity]. It involves caring for the future,
dealing with frustration by hope, 'symbolic
enlargement' through sociological imagination.
There is a necessary subjective dimension —
'cosmopolitan consciousness and nonconformism
before the waste of experience' (56).
Third we have to develop an ecology of
knowledges, rejecting the idea of ignorance or
knowledge in general, where 'every kind of
ignorance ignores a certain kind of knowledge'.
When we learn some kinds of knowledge we forget or
ignore others, but there is a utopia where we can
learn other knowledges without forgetting, an
ecology of knowledge, assuming more than one form.
Modern capitalist society favours practices in
which scientific knowledge prevails [still? Where
has he been?] and this favours groups who can
access scientific knowledge. Alternatives are
ignored. With a proper ecology of knowledge,
'granting credibility to nonscientific knowledge
does not imply discrediting scientific knowledge.
What it does imply is using it in a
counterhegemonic way' — we have to explore
alternative scientific practices and promote
'interdependence between scientific and
nonscientific knowledge' [after you pal]. All
knowledge has internal and external limits, the
former concerning interventions in the real world,
the latter recognition of alternative
interventions from other possible forms of
knowledge. To defeat hegemony we have to deal with
both, and this is found in challenges facing
African philosophy today — identify Eurocentric
remains and then reconstruct the possibilities of
the African legacy, keeping both alive in 'mutual
intelligibility… which must not result in the
"cannibalisation" of some by others' (58).
[Intercultural translation, fourth,
introduces my favourite concept] — '"diatopical
hermeneutics"' — interpreting two or more cultures
to identify isomorphic concerns and the different
answers they provide. He has done this elsewhere,
bringing together Islamic umma and Hindu dharma,
and has also tried Western philosophy and African
sagacity. He describes African Sage philosophy, a
mixture of popular wisdom and didactics wisdom,
rational thought, which can be critical of popular
wisdom, often unwritten, sometimes influenced by
the West but '"basically that of traditional rural
Africa"'. Diatopical hermeneutics assumes all
cultures are incomplete and so can be enriched by
confronting or talking to other cultures [an
additive notion, no conflict?]. This is not
relativism, nor is it universalism in the Western
sense. It is 'negative universalism, the idea of
the impossibility of cultural completeness' (59).
General theory is impossible, and the point is to
try to keep alive what is best in say Western
culture and at the same time recognise the value
of thought in the rest of the world. Translation
also means 'mutual intelligibility among forms of
organisation' especially types of struggle, say of
two social movements, 'the feminist movement and
the labour movement' (60). The aim is to identify
which 'constellations… Carry more counterhegemonic
potential' [he likes Zapatistas, and says much
more work is to be done, via the World Social
Forum, perhaps]. This will therefore proceed both
on knowledge and culture and practices and agents,
the latter 'an aggregation from bottom up', not at
all one 'imposed by general theory or a privileged
social actor'.
And certainly not organised by a public sphere
which is the 'tribalism of the European
bourgeoisie at the beginning of the 18th century',
which was rapidly turned into a global aspiration
and a universal theoretical concept', at the very
moment that an 'abyssal divide' emerge between
metropolitan and colonial societies which denied
its very principles. He has shown the way
theoretical work can position itself 'as the
facilitating or supporting rearguard of the social
movements and struggles that fight against
capitalism' instead (61). [I just hope the global
South are grateful.]
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