Of Cyclopes and Žižek
Fig. 1. Weltchronik by Hartmann Schedel, pg. XII (Schedel 1493)[1]
Of Cyclopes and Žižek
Cyclopes are one-eyed monsters. In 2011, when I was a student at the University of Bremen, I came across an Early Modern German book, namely the ‘Weltchronik’, also known as the ‘Nuremberg Chronicle’. It was an encyclopaedia of the world written in a biblical fashion (i.e. modelled after the Bible) by Hartmann Schedel in 1493. As I was reading the book, I was struck by one particular page. This page said that people in India bark and have dog heads; they eat birds and wear animal skins (In dem land india sind mensche myt hunds koepffen und reden pellede. nern sich mit vogelveng und klaiden sich mit thierhewtten, Fig. 1). It claimed further that Indians have only one eye that is placed on their forehead right above the nose. I found the description amusing and laughed. But in the evening, when I was home, I did look at myself in the mirror once. What I had read in the Weltchronik ran through my mind. I wondered how one could possibly think – even in pre-Enlightenment times – that humans from the other part of the world would be griffin-like creatures with semi-human and semi-beastly features. To re-emphasise, the ‘Weltchronik’ was supposed to be an encyclopaedia, whilst what it did was to present a fabulous account of the world.
Conceptions of the ‘Other’ have appeared in a multitude of forms throughout history. In Bremen again, a similar incident occurred when I was reading Parzival, a medieval German Arthurian romance written by Wolfram von Eschenbach in the thirteenth century. This time I was struck by the description of the character ‘Feirefiz’ who is half-brother of the main protagonist Parzival. His father Gahmuret, who is also Parzival’s father, is white and his mother Belacane is a Moorish queen. Feirefiz is described as ‘a parchment written upon in black and white here and there’ (als ein geschriben permint / swarz und blanc her unde dâ, 747.26–27, Eschenbach 1891). In another medieval romance ‘The King of Tars’ that was written in the early fourteenth century, the black skin of the Saracen king turns white upon converting to Christianity (Lampert-Weissig 2010: 76). These were fascinating accounts for me. I was fairly taken by the patterns of Western imaginations from the Middle Ages and early modern period about India and other parts of the world.
Fascinating as these works may be, one might question if one can dedicate serious critical engagement to such descriptions, as these works were written in a period before the Enlightenment took place. Today’s readers might be willing to reprieve such portrayals because they were written in an era before science and scientific thinking became the dominant episteme. Hence, it might be useful to look at some examples of portrayals of the ‘Other’ in the post-Enlightenment period. Hegel, one of the most celebrated philosophers of his time, claims in his ‘Lectures on the Philosophy of World History’ that, when it comes to India and China, we cannot speak of history as such. In Hegel’s words, ‘world history is the portrayal of the labour of spirit to arrive at knowledge of what it is intrinsically’, and ‘the Orientals do not know that spirit, or the human being as such, is intrinsically free’. He claims further that ‘because they do not know this, they are not themselves free’. Stones (2017: 9) observes that, for Hegel, colonialism is justified because it spreads freedom to peoples who otherwise both lack it and have no native means of acquiring it. Hegel’s denial of full history to the Orientals, Stone (2017) notes, showcases his Eurocentrism.
Hegel is not the only thinker to make such egregious claims. In his preface to Kant’s ‘Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime’, the editor Frierson (2011: xxvii) notes that Kant’s ‘discussion of non-European peoples contains some truly horrific mischaracterisations’. The mischaracterisation that Frierson mentions concerns Kant’s highly questionable claims about different races that include sentences such as ‘the Negroes of Africa have by nature no feeling that rises above the ridiculous’ (Kant 2011: 58). Frierson (ibid.) observes that Kantian anthropology is highly taxonomic, but also notes that his ‘desire to characterise individuals by reference to clear categories looks more dangerous from our twenty-first century perspective when this categorisation falls along lines of sex and race’. Such descriptions sound really problematic, especially when one takes into account that it is Kant who came up with the dictum that enlightenment means freedom from self-incurred immaturity.
The ‘horrific mischaracterisations’ outlined above were not uncommon in the works of Enlightenment-era thinkers. David Hume, for example, writes in his essay ‘Of national characters’ that ‘negroes, and in general all the other species of men (for there are four or five different kinds) to be naturally inferior to the whites’. Hume continues: ‘There never was a civilized nation of any other complexion than white, nor even any individual eminent either in action or speculation. No arts, no sciences. On the other hand, the most rude and barbarous of the whites, such as the ancient Germans, the present Tartars, have still something eminent about them, in their valour, form of government, or some other particular. Such a uniform and constant difference could not happen, in so many countries and ages, if nature had not made an original distinction betwixt these breeds of men.’
It is possible that some readers might wish to argue that the works of these philosophers have to be read within their context. The problem, however, is that such mischaracterisations have not been totally done away with. Remnants of Kantian anthropology can be found even in works from the twenty-first century. Whilst writing on the Vedas, one of the central texts of Hinduism, Žižek (2011: 16) posits that the Vedas contain ‘a brutal cosmology based on killing and eating’, as the ‘higher things kill and eat […] lower ones, the stronger eat the weaker’. Life is, as Žižek (ibid.) claims, a zero-sum game in which one’s victory is another’s defeat. He writes further that the ‘great chain of being’ becomes the a ‘great chain of eating’ in the Vedas, as ‘gods eat mortal humans, humans eat mammals, mammals eat lesser animals who eat plants, plants “eat” water and earth’.
The Indian theorist Aditya Nigam has taken a critical view of this account in his work ‘Decolonising theory: thinking across traditions’ (Nigam 2020). Nigam questions the originality of Žižek’s claim about the ‘great chain of being’ becoming the ‘great chain of eating’, and points out that it was a ‘formulation of nineteenth- and twentieth-century scholars of Indology like Sylvain Levi and Francis Zimmerman that Žižek does not cite’. Moreover, Nigam finds it problematic that Žižek theorises on the basis of reading only one book. The book in question is Hugh Urban’s ‘Tantra: Sex, Politics and Power in the Study of Religion’. For Nigam, what Žižek presents as ‘some truth’ about Indian civilisation is a ‘specific reading’. Nigam (2020: 102–103) writes:
»This breathtaking reduction of an entire civilization to a matter of trickery and contract is done entirely on the basis of the reading of a single text, in the English translation, by one scholar. For Žižek’s information, we could mention that there are at least three other English translations of the same text […] by different scholars (starting with William Jones in the eighteenth century), with their own readings of the text—not to speak of entire libraries of books in Sanskrit, Persian, Pali and other regional languages that give a sense of the range of beliefs, practices and intellectual debates on the thing that comprises what we know as ‘Indian civilization’. Scholars working in the field have long grappled with this ocean of material—but the Philosopher’s engaged subjectivity gives him direct access to ‘the truth’, merely on the basis of a superficial reading of a single translation of a single text.«
As evident from this passage, the mischaracterisation of the ‘other’ that shapes the works of Kant and Hegel is also present in Žižek’s writings. What I aim to highlight here is that despite the advance made in the humanities and social sciences, Eurocentric thinking is not a relic of the past. One might still encounter such problematic and one-dimensional narratives. Žižek is one of the most celebrated thinkers in Europe today, and finding problematic narratives in the works of such meritorious scholars tells us that Eurocentrism has not been done away with.
Before I conclude this section, I concur that one might argue that in the era of rising colonialism it would be difficult to find anybody who did not at some stage have a remark with racial implications.[2] One might question whether these remarks exhaust the entirety of works of the thinkers named above and what the position of these remarks is in their oeuvre. These remarks obviously do not exhaust the entirety of their work, and my aim is not to question the entire work of these thinkers. Rather, my aim is to show the continuity of certain patterns of thinking from the Middle Ages to the current area. My main emphasis is to show how important it is to read beyond certain intellectual traditions. Nigam (2020) argues that in order to decolonise theory, we need to learn to ‘think across traditions’. If understanding the nature of reality is the prime goal of all intellectual endeavours, then it must be learnt that Eurocentrism or any other one-dimensional approach of that kind is a barrier to this goal. In this vein, thinking across traditions will be one of the foundational epistemes of this work.
2 Why this book? Or the three needs
2.1 The need for thinking across traditions
Peter Hans Nelde was one of the most prominent sociolinguists of the last century, renowned for his work in the field of contact linguists and language policy. In one of his essays, however, Nelde (2003: 17) made a rather perfunctory claim for a researcher of his stature. The essay which focused on the European Union’s language policy posited that ‘the experiment of the European Union to recognise and implement 11 official and working languages is unique in the history of mankind’.[3] This statement is highly problematic because it ignores certain crucial facts. Acknowledging a large number of languages as official was not something unique to the European Union – India acknowledged 13 languages as official back in 1967, and this number has steadily grown. Currently, India has 23 official languages. Evidence of large-scale official multilingualism can also be found in other parts of the world. The South African Constitution of 1993 listed 11 languages as official (Art. 1.3), and this provision was retained in the new Constitution that was enacted in 1996 (Art. 6.1).
For an eminent sociolinguist to commit such factual mistakes is problematic. But Nelde is not the only one who has produced a one-dimensional narrative. Works that claim to deal with India’s language policies are symptomatic of problems that emerge from non-inclusive research in the sense that subaltern views are not taken into account. For example, while commenting on the state of linguistic minorities in India, Skutnabb-Kangas (2009) claims that India committed ‘linguistic genocide’ and a ‘crime against humanity’. This claim needs to be problematised because it creates the impression that the state of India actively worked against the existence of its linguistic minorities, while the reality is that the economic concerns in the initial years after the independence of India were an impediment to the promotion of linguistic minorities, as the primary concern of the polity included other issues such as the eradication of poverty. In recent years, the funding for languages has increased, however the primary beneficiaries of such funding are languages spoken by communities strong enough to influence political processes. Language policy choices in India have also had to address pragmatic concerns such as avoiding political instability, and concomitantly promote languages that were politically influential. Such a complex political scenario resulted in disproportionate financial support of languages in India. Skutnabb-Kangas ignores such realities, and her analysis cannot be considered entirely objective, especially in light of the use of terms such as ‘genocide’, as it makes her observations unbalanced.
The choice of words whilst commenting on language policies of states one might not be entirely familiar with can be problematic. In his review of Weinstein’s (1983) book ‘The Civic Tongue: Political Consequences of Language Choices’, Pattanayak (1983) criticises Weinstein for ‘misunderstanding Indian ethos’, primarily because of Weinstein’s (1983) claim that ‘Gandhi and Nehru were hostile to English’. Gandhi and Nehru had differing opinions on this matter. Gandhi was keen on promoting Hindustani, as for him it was important for India to get rid of the colonial influence. On the contrary, Nehru viewed English as a ‘window to the world’. In this sense, Weinstein’s claims are not entirely true. What is particularly problematic is the use of the word ‘hostile’. If a postcolonial state wants to rid itself of colonial influences, then it should not be viewed as ‘hostility’. Weinstein makes the same mistake that Skutnabb-Kangas does i.e. they do not make an effort to put themselves in the position of those about whom they are writing. As a result of this disconnect, their observations do not come across as balanced.
The one-dimensional views highlighted above are not limited to certain scholars. The discipline itself is punctuated with incomprehensive narratives. For a discipline that has as one of its aims to highlight the consequences of the dominance of English in the world and even take a stand against such dominance, a large part of language policy scholarship (mainly originating in the US) has remained limited to research published in English. An example of such narration is the book ‘Language Policy’ (Johnson 2013).[4] Johnson’s work is outstanding in terms of offering an overview of language policy as a discipline and one of the most important works of language policy scholarship from the last two decades, but its main drawback is that it does not discuss works of many notable researchers from Europe (Jeroen Darquennes, Peter Hans Nelde, Miquel Strubell, Jiří Nekvapil, to name a few).[5] Viewed from the perspective of Indian scholars, policy research, as well as its historiography, has been centred around theories and models emanating from the ‘West’ (Singh 1995), while the works of scholars who are not from the US or Europe cannot be easily found in the historiographies produced by European or US-American scholars. Trying to solve the ‘language problems of developing nations’ was one of the key aims of language policy scholars in the 1960s and 70s, but representative works such as Ricento’s (2000) essay, which can be seen as a benchmark for explaining the historical development of the field, do not consider how the views of these scholars were received by scholars in ‘developing nations’, and how non-European or non-US-American scholars perceived the language-related issues of their respective countries.
The concept of ‘difference’ lies at the heart of the debate here, as scholars from India have pointed towards the ‘difference in perception of the traditions of scholarship’.[6] Singh (1995: 45) argues that ‘many of the scholars from the West have approached language problems of the developing nations with a simplistic formula on ideas of language as a unifying or divisive force’.[7] Moreover, Pattanayak (1981) argues that ‘while a Western scholar faced with massive linguistic heterogeneity would start with a “why” question, the Eastern scholar, being accustomed to living within a plural situation, would start with an explanation of ‘how’ the communication pattern was organised in such a nation’.[8] A telling example of ‘difference in perception’ would be Nelde’s (1987) maxim, also referred to as ‘Nelde’s law’ by de Bot (1997), which states that ‘there can be no contact without conflict’. This is in stark contrast with the views of some Indian scholars, who present linguistic minorities as a ‘cohesive force in the Indian federal process’ (Chaklader 1981).
To sum up, there is a need in language policy research for ‘thinking across traditions’. The aim of examining the above-cited statements from different scholars is to demonstrate what could go wrong if research on language policies is conducted from a single perspective. After all, it was for a reason that Goethe (1963: 508) proposed the idea of ‘getting to know oneself by getting to know the other’.[9] Europe is not new to multilingualism, but its acknowledgement and official recognition are relatively recent. The European Union (hereafter EU) can in this case take a cue from societies where multilingualism (as well its official acknowledgement) has been a tradition, and this idea is the point of departure of this book, in which I undertake a comparative study of the language policies of the EU and India, and investigate how language and power interact with each other in the EU and India in the context of their language policies.
2.2 The need for a diverse set of theoretical frameworks
The second motive behind writing this book is to examine whether or to what extent comparative research can contribute to new theoretical frameworks. The lack of comprehensive comparative studies influences the theories or approaches that have been employed to describe language policies in the sense that they remain inexact.[10] An example of such an inexact description would be Ricento & Hornberger’s (1996) metaphor of ‘peeling an onion’, which suggests that language policies consist of different layers. In a similar vein, McCarty (2011) describes language policies as ‘multilayered constructs’. I want to emphasise that these descriptions are not wrong because language policies are indeed multi-layered. But they are inexact because they do not specify the nature of the different layers of language policies or offer any analytical categories that can be used for gaining a better understanding of the nature of language policies.
In addition to the problem of inexact descriptions, it should be noted that language policy research has seen theoretical contributions that might be difficult to translate into reality. For example, Makoni & Pennycook (2007) talk of ‘disinventing’ and ‘reconstituting’ languages. They argue that ‘languages were, in the most literal sense, invented, particularly as part of the Christian/colonial and nationalistic projects in different parts of the globe’ (Makoni & Pennycook 2007: 1). For them, languages and nations are dialectically co-constructed (Makoni & Pennycook 2007: 9). Their claims can be deemed true to a certain extent, especially in light of Pollock’s (2006: 476) observation that ‘nowhere in South Asia before colonialism did the emotive and naturalising trope “mother tongue” find expression’. For Makoni and Pennycook (2007), languages are social constructions and can be dis-invented the way they were invented in the first place.
The question we need to ask here is what concrete implications does it have for research and language policies. How do we exactly ‘dis-invent’ languages? Makoni and Pennycook (2007: 30) state that ‘it is more realistic to think in terms of viable alternatives than solutions’. For them, the conceptual alternatives vary between situations because ‘in some situations the viable solution may lie in essentializing mother tongues, in other cases, in problematising them’ (ibid.). The constructivist approach has been criticised by Skutnabb-Kangas (2003) on the grounds that ‘knowing and accepting that a concept is socially constructed does not in any way need to invalidate the concept’. According to Skutnabb-Kangas (ibid.), all science is socially constructed, but still ‘our conclusion is not that we should stop talking about science or stop using it, or that we should somehow “disinvent” it’. Kandiah (2002: 320) warns against the danger of not applying postmodern theory carefully, and posits that the ‘valorisation of indefiniteness’ proposed by postmodern theory can cause research to be removed from the determinate realities of its material context into ‘a perpetually uncertain and ambivalent world of textual hermeneutics’.
In light of the inexact frameworks outlined above, I aim to examine in this book if it is possible to create – through comparative research – a diverse set of theoretical frameworks that could do greater justice to their object of study by offering more productive tools of investigation. This book aims to make a case for comparative works that are systematic and comprehensive in nature. By ‘systematic’ and ‘comprehensive’ I mean that investigations of language policies should not confine themselves to studying only one or two policy domains (such as education or administration), but they should also take into account the formulation and implementation of policies in a greater number of policy domains. There are a number of works that seek to undertake a comparative perspective, however such comparisons are either limited to European states or not systematic and comprehensive enough. In this book, I examine eight different policy domains to examine if a comprehensive analysis could offer more useful insights into understanding language policies.[11]
2.3 The need to address the text-context divide
The third need for writing this book lies in what can be termed the ‘text–context divide’. The current research on language policies has been heavily focused on examining contexts, which has led to the problem of certain policy texts being ignored by theoreticians.[12] Moreover, even if a study includes policy texts, its focus tends to remain limited to a few texts which generally receive a lot of attention. For example, a discussion of texts related to EU language policies is likely to discuss the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages (henceforth ECRML), but might exclude a number of other EU regulations, directives, and decisions, which are equally important for understanding the language-related priorities of the Union. For example, the Commission Regulation (EEC) No 585/93 of 12 March 1993 on the implementation of promotional and publicity measures in respect of milk and milk products states that if the final report is not drawn up in English, the summary, résumé and key words must be provided in that language.[13] Such policies are not directly related to the issue of language but they do exercise an impact on the manner in which languages are used in an institution. I call such policies, which do not receive enough scholarly attention, ‘less discussed policies’.
The ‘less discussed policies’ mainly comprise legislative texts such as acts, orders, directives, regulations, etc. The main reason for statutes not being discussed enough is related to the fact that they mostly focus on other issues (such as media) and do not explicitly mention ‘language’ in their titles. These statutes, which are indirectly related to language use in different policy domains, can be crucial for understanding state policy on language. For example, hardly any work on the language policies of the UK has reported on the phenomenon of determining ‘British-ness’ on the basis of language. This phenomenon can be found in statutes such as the Films (Definition of “British Film”) Order 2006, or the Cultural Test (Television Programmes) Regulations 2013, etc. The purpose of these orders and regulations is to determine whether a film, a video game, or a television programme may be certified as ‘British’ because certification of a programme as ‘British’ makes it eligible for tax relief under the Corporation Tax Act 2009. Language is one of the criteria for determining whether a film or a TV programme is ‘British’, and the languages which constitute a British identity according to the statutes mentioned above include British Sign Language, Cornish, English, Gaelic, Irish, Scots, Ulster Scots, and Welsh. In a similar way, my research on UK statutes on Welsh shows that there has been a gradual democratisation in the UK since the 1950s as far as the use of Welsh in public domains is concerned (see §4.4 for textual analysis).
In light of these epistemological gaps, I want to emphasise that texts, especially statutes, are as important as contexts for gaining a thorough understanding of language policies, and the best way to analyse language policies is to use a combination of texts and contexts. The contexts that I refer to include historical, socio-political, and economic factors which lead to the formulation of language policies in a given polity. These factors could be so diverse in nature, especially when comparing polities such as India, that answering questions using texts alone could be difficult. For example, after WWII, Luxembourg wanted to replace the use of German by Luxembourgish in public domains, and introduced spelling reforms to standardise the orthography of Luxembourgish. However, this initiative was not accepted by the public which prompts one to ask why such initiatives were rejected even though the immediate post-war era in Luxembourg was imbued with anti-German sentiment because of the Nazi occupation of Luxembourg during WWII. An answer to this question can only be reached by examining the context (i.e. the historical, socio-political, and economic factors). In view of the texts and contexts discussed in this section, I argue that language policy research needs to combine texts and contexts in order to gain a better understanding of language policies.
[1] Creative Commons CC0 License. [2] I am thankful to Anil Bhatti for his valuable inputs on this issue. [3] The EU had only 11 official languages at the time when Nelde wrote this paper. The original quote (in German) reads: ‘Das Experiment der Europäischen Union, 11 Amts- und Arbeitssprachen anzuerkennen und einzusetzen, ist in der Geschichte der Menschheit einmalig […]’. See Nelde (2003:17). [4] I admit here that this drawback applies to my previous works too in which the list of resources used is limited to English-language publications. See Sharma (2013) or Sharma (2015). [5] See Darquennes (2007), Nelde (1987, 1990, 2003), Nelde, Strubell & Williams (1996), and Nekvapil & Nekula (2008). [6] ‘Difference’ is a crucial concept, especially if we look at the debates between proponents of subaltern studies and those opposed to it (cf. Workman 2016). While I argue for the importance of subaltern views, I do not adhere to an essentialist view of ‘difference’. As far as Indian language policies are concerned, they can and should be analysed by scholars of any background because research benefits from diversity of opinions. However, it is important to consider Indian views when writing on India and, as Ricento (2000: 5) argues, researchers should be aware of their political and epistemological biases. [7] Singh (1995) refers here to Kelman’s (1971) postulate of ‘language as a unifying force’ and ‘language as a divisive force’. [8] My own stand on this issue is that the ‘linguistic heterogeneity’ is as much a European phenomenon as in any other part of the world; however, such heterogeneity has been subjugated by the policy of standardisation. [9] This is my reading of Goethe’s aphorism which in its original form states ‘Wer fremde Sprachen nicht kennt, weiß nichts von seiner eigenen’ (one who does not know foreign languages does not know anything of one’s own). [10] By ‘comprehensive’, I mean that comparative research should not remain confined to one or two policy domains, but concern itself with a greater number of policy domains. [11] These eight policy domains are as follows: administration, legal safeguards for minority languages, law, education, media, healthcare, business and social welfare. Details on the choice of these domains can be found in §1.6.3. [12] By ‘contexts’, I mean historical, socio-political and economic factors which lead to the formulation of language policies in a given polity. [13] This Regulation is not in effect anymore. Its original text can be accessed using the following link: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/en/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A31993R0585 [accessed 13 Dec. 2020].
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