Conversation with Satya 18

From Indian Literature to World Literature:
A Conversation with Satya P. Mohanty

Rashmi Dube Bhatnagar and Rajender Kaur

Can this emerging interdisciplinary focus on alternative modernities contribute to our understanding of what world literature is? I am sure it can. But a lot depends on whether more literary scholars become interested in this subject and whether we are willing to shed our disciplinary inhibitions and work between and across cultural and disciplinary boundaries. One key empirical thesis I’d urge scholars to consider is that Indian modernity does not begin with colonial rule and that its elements can be discerned much earlier, in many different strands of culture and society. If it is likely that there are various forms of modernity, the concept of modernity can be disaggregated – that is, its constituent features can be taken apart and imaginatively re-examined in new combinations in different social and cultural contexts. (I suggested this in my introduction to CML.) Literary and cultural critics can explore the emergence of modern ideas, values, and cultural forms through close textual analysis, especially if we remain both historically imaginative and philosophically precise. Such analysis can complement, and even inspire, related work done by anthropologists, sociologists, and historians on cultural ideologies and social institutions.

Q: We find immensely energizing your critique of cultural and moral relativism, your advocacy of a cross-cultural learning that is not the literary equivalent of making polite conversation, but is instead a vigorous engagement with difference. The cultural interpreter is not afraid to disagree or pass judgment. This seems to be a call to return to intimacy with all its attendant messiness and conflicts. This is a position not of indifferent tolerance but of the recognition that difference is in fact the very condition of engagement.

SPM: Yes, the challenge is to go beyond what you call “indifferent tolerance.” We’ve all learned about the dangers of ethnocentrism, but relativism — which is not its opposite but merely its mirror image — does not take us too far. Its very logic produces indifference, as many critics of relativism have argued. We need to go beyond both ethnocentrism and extreme forms of cultural relativism and take the risk of making judgments, of being wrong, of revising our views by examining where and how we went wrong. This cannot be a purely theoretical project. Even though our theoretical presuppositions sometimes contribute to our skewed judgments, the solution cannot be found purely at the level of theory.

As I—and so many others—have argued, it helps in such a situation to have a belief in a non-positivist, supple, and complex notion of objectivity as an ideal of inquiry. That is what I find attractive in philosophical realism. A belief in objectivity as a revisable ideal, and in the fact that even our best current beliefs are corrigible, produces the kind of humility we need as students of culture, especially of phenomena that overlap and cross cultural boundaries. One of the many advantages of the present moment is that the long intellectual shadow of the Age of European Empire seems to be receding a bit, and we have remarkable opportunities to work across cultures to learn from one another. We can retreat from this challenge and embrace a form of generalized skepticism – “How can we ever really understand other cultures?” “How can anyone really know anything?” But I think such questions aren’t genuine ones if they are pitched at this level of abstraction. Skeptical questions become useful if they are grounded in clearly defined intellectual contexts, contexts where (for instance) the sources and causes of our errors can be localized a bit more, made specific enough to understand and, where possible, eliminate.

Once you consider the epistemic guidance provided by the ideal of objectivity (and the related notion of “error”), the literary-critical conception of “realism” becomes less useful for the purposes of textual interpretation. Literary realism is a vague and ambiguous term, sometimes pointing to generic conventions while at others emphasizing analytical ambition and depth. Considering its use in anthologies and by the popular press, it is not likely that the term “literary realism” is going to disappear any time soon, and we will probably keep using it as a period concept. But if the distinction between descriptive and analytical realism is a helpful one, it suggests that for the purposes of textual interpretation the term “realism” will need to be used in more precise ways, with its meaning disambiguated. One advantage of the concept of analytical realism is that it does just that. It also enables literary critics to contribute to a larger project that they can share with historians, philosophers, and social scientists – a project that takes as its object social reality and the many textual ways it is both mediated and interpreted. Analytical realism points to more than the accretion of mimetic details. It encourages us as readers, and as professional critics, to look at the epistemic work that is done by literary and cultural forms, styles, modes, and conventions. What underlies the concept is a “cognitivist” view of literature and culture, a view that is sharply at odds with the kind of overly general – and often apriori and decontextualized – skepticism that is popular in some literary-critical circles.

I suppose it won’t come as a surprise to you that I think of “world literature” as a realist and cognitivist project – much more than just a canon of important texts. It implies, as Goethe suggested, a sustained epistemic engagement with other literatures and cultures, and part of what we achieve through such engagement is a greater awareness of our own cultural and historical situatedness. Translations make such a project possible, but it is more fundamentally a hermeneutical process: it involves the kind of focused cross-regional and cross-national comparative interpretation we discussed earlier in the context of Indian literature. In my view, work on “world literature” will have to be necessarily interdisciplinary, and it will draw on a very flexible conception of what literature is. The non-relativist cross-cultural project implied by the idea of “world literature” — of unlearning deeply ingrained prejudices and learning new ways of thinking — will end up taking us out of the spaces traditionally reserved for literature. I’ve placed “world literature” within quotes to indicate that it is a bit like any good slogan, useful to refer to the future that we want but haven’t yet fully imagined. That future is shaped by our social and political ideals, not just literary ones. And good slogans – like “Another World Is Possible!” or “We Are the 99%” – help by providing a general sense of direction.

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Essays in this Forum

Rethinking the Global South
by Mukoma Wa Ngugi

From Indian Literature to World Literature: A Conversation with Satya P. Mohanty
by Rashmi Dube Bhatnagar and Rajender Kaur

Asia in My Life
by Ngugi wa Thiong'o

The Global South and Cultural Struggles: On the Afro-Asian People’s Solidarity Organization
by Duncan Mceachern Yoon

The Fault Lines of Hindi and Urdu
by Sanjay Kumar

Reframing Colonialism and Modernity: An Endeavour through Sociology and Literature
by Gurminder K. Bhambra

Varieties of Cultural Chauvinism and the Relevance of Comparative Studies
by Tilottoma Misra

Literature to Combat Cultural Chauvinism: A Response
by Shivani Jha

Is There an Indian Way of Thinking about Comparative Literature?
by E. V. Ramakrishnan

Modernity and Public Sphere in Vernacular
by Purushottam Agrawal

West Indian Writers and Cultural Chauvinism
by Jerome Teelucksingh

Oral Knowledge in Berber Women’s Expressions of the Sacred 
by Fatima Sadiki