Mohan Dutta: Culture-Centered Approach

C u ltural interpretations are both occasioned by and enter arenas of ideological conflicts. As is evident from the initial readings and the different blog posts,  its also about horizons and perspectives. Its about ontologies and epistemologies and what the person subscribes to or has been schooled in or maybe has found a comfort zone in, to live his/ her life.  Spivak brings out some aspects in her essay on politics of interpretation. Her account of Said's mothers' experience with the British authorities highlights a critical point...of interpretation, of your ideology and where you stand. Further, the comments made on her possible reasons for her inclusion/participation, in the Chicago symposium on "The politics of Interpretation" also underscores the cultural politics. In last semester, I mentioned very confidently about FGM (Female Genital Mutilation) in front of my African faculty who exploded in a burst of anger and corrected me passionately saying that I had n...

From my piece on Performativity and the Third World academic Today we were talking about issues of health and gender in South Asia in this one graduate seminar I am attending. The teacher, a recently minted PhD from a midwestern university, a White woman, stood in front of the class and eloquently discussed the primitiveness of South Asian cultures that are steeped in patriarchy and age old values. She talked about how these cultures needed to be changed, and the role of interventions in bringing about such change. She talked about the lack of agency of South Asian women and how they needed empowerment (of course, by the White saviors embodied in the dominant paradigm of development and health communication who only knew too well the so called strategies to develop and uplift). Then she went on to discuss examples of empowerment-based campaigns that have changed the terrain of the Third World, and brought about development. Her triumphant note articulated their (West-centered agents of...