The return of orientalist frames within the multicultural academe that emphasizes the need for mapping out other cultures in order to generate profits for TNCs is played out in the form of the mushrooming of "culture experts" across university campuses. These "culture experts" use the language of cultural sensitivity and multiculturalism to serve an industry of orientalist politics with neocolonial agendas. With the increasing emphasis on culture across the academic disciplines, there is a growing turf war about the legitimacy of who gets to participate in this enunciative politics and in the politics of representation. Who gets to be the one that is doing the "representing?" First, it is worth noting that much of this turf war is situated within the terrains of West-centrism as Western scholars find themselves amidst a situation where they now have to make justifications in order to maintain the privilege embedded in their enunciative position amidst this highly profitable business of representing the other. The emergence of postcolonial scholars from the spaces of the global South which have historically served as the primitive subjects of Western knowledge has also meant that the fundamental expertise of Western scholars is no longer unchallenged. Questions are being raised about the legitimacy of the methods as well as the legitimacy of the representative positions that have gone unchallenged over the decades, asking questions such as: Who speaks? With what agendas? What are the political implications of these enunciative positions? What are the politics of race and culture that are tied to these positions of enunciation?
The whiteness of binaries that erase the Global South: On Communicative Inversions and the invitation to Vijay Prashad in Aotearoa
When I learned through my activist networks that the public intellectual Vijay Prashad was coming to Aotearoa, I was filled with joy. In my early years in the U.S., when learning the basics of the struggle against the fascist forces of Hindutva, I came in conversation with Vijay's work. Two of his critical interventions, the book, The Karma of Brown Folk , and the journal article " The protean forms of Yankee Hindutva " co-authored with Biju Matthew and published in Ethnic and Racial Studies shaped my early activism. These pieces of work are core readings in understanding the workings of Hindutva fascism and how it mobilizes cultural tropes to serve fascist agendas. Much later, I felt overjoyed learning about his West Bengal roots and his actual commitment to the politics of the Left, reflected in the organising of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), a political register that shaped much of my earliest lessons around Global South resistance, collectivization, and orga...