CULTURAL-STUDIES AND ETHNIC ABSOLUTISM - COMMENTS ON HALL,STUART CULTURE, COMMUNITY, NATION

The author argues that despite the recent intellectual opening charact erized by the institution of cultural and postcolonial studies, certai n parts of the world (such as the Middle East, Eastern Europe) and soc ial movements (such as politico-religious and ethnic) continue to occu py the paradigmatic status of backward cultural Others in the ruminati ons of writers from the left and right of the political spectrum. Taki ng S. Hall's essay 'Culture, community, nation' that appeared in the O ctober 1993 issue of Cultural Studies as a template, the author shows how arguments made with a progressive political agenda sometimes conve rge argumentatively and epistemologically with those of the conservati ve right in their failure to decenter normative assumptions derived fr om the entelechy of Western European history about ethnic and religiou s aspirations. Illiberal results of profoundly liberal ideologies, suc h as nationalism, continue to be explained through culturally particul aristic arguments so as to avoid critiquing the fundamentals of Wester n European liberal-humanist projects. Symptomatic analyses that explai n the success of ethnic and politico-religious movements as signs of s ocio-cultural disorder, cultural backwardness and/or lack of appropria te modernization fail to take these movements seriously: that must be dealt with through argumentation. Both the critics and champions of mo dernity take the West as their point of departure, and political langu ages that depart from the recommended repertoire of public expression are often dismissed. The author calls for a historically specific and culturally nuanced analysis of movements that are often considered to be the antithesis of modernity in order to both parochialize the Weste rn experience of modernity, and to understand the significance of thes e movements to the present historical moment.