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1. Introduction1
Nikita Dhawan
The intellectual and political legacies of the Enlightenment endure in our
times, whether we aspire to orient ourselves by them or contest their claims.
Whenever norms of secularism, human rights, or justice are debated, we are
positioning ourselves vis-à-vis the Enlightenment, which provides important
intellectual, moral, and political resources for critical thought. Immanuel
Kant’s dictum, “Have courage to use your own reason!” succinctly captures
the Enlightenment claim of emancipation through the exercise of reason. In
the face of feudality, violence, prejudice, and subservience to authority, the
Enlightenment intellectuals enunciate ideals of equality, rights, and rationali-
ty as a way out of domination towards freedom. Contesting traditionalism,
authoritarianism, and the legitimization of social inequalities, the Enlighten-
ment, it is claimed, inspired radical movements like the French and Haitian
revolution, while influencing progressive political thought including liberal-
ism and socialism. Enabling a critical reflection on political norms and prac-
tices, it has fostered the accountability of institutions, equality before law,
and the transformation of social relations. Emancipatory movements for
suffrage, abolition of slavery and civil liberties can all be traced back to the
Enlightenment, even as it continues to inspire contemporary social and polit-
ical movements. The Enlightenment idea of individual rights and dignity, it is
believed, enables the exercise of political agency and expands individual
freedom.
However, as has been pointed out by both scholars of Postcolonial Stud-
ies as well as Holocaust Studies, Enlightenment’s promise of attaining free-
dom through the exercise of reason has ironically resulted in domination by
reason itself. Along with progress and emancipation, it has brought colonial-
ism, slavery, genocide, and crimes against humanity.
Against this background, the present volume engages with the contradic-
tory consequences of the Enlightenment for the postcolonial world. In the
past decades, there has been a spate of revisionist historiography that at-
tempts to recuperate imperialism as a virtuous exercise. The ideological dis-
tinction drawn between “good, responsible” and “evil, irresponsible” imperi-
alism in recent accounts emphasize its “positive” force to highlight the bene-
fits of empire. These glorifying narratives disregard the coercive context in
which Europeans emerged as ethical subjects in the guise of redeemers of the
“backward” people and dispensers of rights and justice. The fact that Europe
1 A special thanks to Johanna Leinius and Anna Millan for their support in preparing the
manuscript.

2. 10 Nikita Dhawan
drew and continues to draw profits from the surplus extracted from its former
colonies is conveniently ignored in these accounts. International systems that
emerged at the end of colonialism create and ensure global inequality. The
fruits of modernization have been accompanied by systematic pauperization.
The aim of the present volume is to question the hollow myth of the En-
lightenment’s long march to freedom and emancipation. However, instead of
a polemical dismissal of the Enlightenment, the effort is to conceptually
reposition its role in processes of decolonization, even as the Enlightenment
itself must be decolonized. This is not a simple task of undoing the legacies
of the Enlightenment and colonialism; rather it is a more challenging under-
taking of reclaiming and reconfiguring the “fruits” of the Enlightenment. The
various contributions in this volume address diverse aspects of colonialism
and its enduring economic, cultural, social, and political consequences both
for the global North as well as the global South. The four sections of the
volume deal with key issues of the entangled legacies of the Enlightenment
and colonialism, transnational justice, human rights, and democracy from a
postcolonial feminist perspective. On the one hand, the various contributions
engage with the allegation that discourses of transnational justice, human
rights, and democracy are ideological expressions of a coercive will to power
of the global North. On the other hand, they investigate how these Enlight-
enment concepts can function as aspirational ideals while providing evalua-
tive criteria to critically assess our socio-cultural, legal, and economic prac-
tices. By exploring the orchestrating and regulative effects of Enlightenment
norms as well as their emancipatory and coercive dimensions, the aim is to
delineate the challenges in “decolonizing Enlightenment”. This opens up
space for social and political transformations as well as contestations with the
aim to overcome inequalities and injustice in a postcolonial world.
In Provincializing Europe, Dipesh Chakrabarty (2000: 5) argues that al-
most by definition postcolonial thinkers are obliged to engage with abstract
and universal categories that were forged during the Enlightenment and in-
form the theorizing of historical, social, and economic phenomena in the
postcolonial world. It is not so much the European “origins” (Genese) of the
norms of human rights or democracy that compromise their “validity” (Gel-
tung), but much more the “normative violence” (Butler 1999: xx) that is
exercised on those who violate the hegemonic definitions of these norms.
Postcolonial theorists seek to retain these norms, which opens up possibilities
of negotiation, appropriation and transformation of these norms, while con-
testing their Eurocentric bias. As Chakrabarty (2000: 4) argues, political
modernity, with its ideas of citizenship, the state, civil society, the public
sphere, human rights, the rule of law, democracy, popular sovereignty, social
justice, scientific rationality, and secularism is a legacy of the Enlightenment
thought and history. It is inadequate, but nonetheless indispensable in under-
standing the postcolonial condition. At the same time, the postcolonial world

3. Introduction 11
is not a passive recipient of these concepts, but is actively involved in recon-
figuring key concepts like universality, secularity, liberty, and equality,
which were created and re-created in the interaction between colony and
metropolis. The challenge is how to negotiate the Enlightenment legacies of
democracy, justice, and rights without reproducing the constitutive violence
that has marked the emergence of these norms.
By subjecting religious and political authorities to reasoned criticism, the
Enlightenment fashions itself as a movement toward human liberty and
equality, knowledge and progress. However, the historical triumph of reason
and science brought with it terror, genocide, slavery, exploitation, domina-
tion, and oppression. My own opening contribution “Affirmative Sabotage of
the Master’s Tools: The Paradox of Postcolonial Enlightenment” addresses
this “disenchantment” with the Enlightenment. Colonialism and the Holo-
caust are testimony to the fact that the progressive ideals of the Enlighten-
ment were in fact tainted. However, a number of recent publications seek to
provide a corrective to what is contended is a misrepresentation of the En-
lightenment’s epistemological investment in imperialism by recovering criti-
cal perspectives within European political thought. As a counterpoint to the
postcolonial critique of the Enlightenment it is argued that the Enlightenment
was in fact anti-imperialist. My paper critically engages with these claims to
explore the dilemmatic relation of postcolonialism to the Enlightenment.
Following Michel Foucault’s recommendation of freeing ourselves from the
“intellectual blackmail of being for or against the Enlightenment”, I explore
the possibilities of “re-enchantment” with the Enlightenment and the costs
and challenges of this endeavor.
The other three essays in the first section of the volume similarly engage
with the ambivalent relation between colonialism and the Enlightenment. In
her contribution “Under (Post)colonial Eyes: Kant, Foucault, and Critique”,
Karin Hostettler outlines a postcolonial reading of Foucault’s “Introduction
to Kant’s Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View”. In Foucault’s view
Kant’s Anthropology occupies an exceptional position within the Kantian
system, especially with regard to the question of critique, even as it builds
upon his previous writings. Despite his insightful reading of Kant’s Anthro-
pology, Foucault, in Hostettler’s view, ignores global colonial power rela-
tions in his reflections. Focusing on Kant’s discussion of different human
races, Hostettler unpacks the Eurocentric assumptions that haunt Foucault’s
critical approach. At the heart of her endeavor is the challenge of overcoming
the Eurocentric bias of the critical tradition, which paradoxically inspires
postcolonial thought.
Susan Buck-Morss’s book Hegel, Haiti and Universal History establishes
a previously unexplored link between the German philosopher Friedrich
Hegel and the Haitian Revolution, which were traditionally conceived of as
belonging to two incommensurable geographies and histories. Along similar

4. 12 Nikita Dhawan
lines Jamila Mascat’s chapter “Hegel and the Black Atlantic. Universalism,
Humanism and Relation” connects Hegel to the “Black Atlantic”. However,
in contrast to exploring the influence of the colonial world on European
thinkers, she investigates the reception of Hegel, particularly The Phenome-
nology of Spirit, in French-Caribbean scholarship. Focusing on the works of
the three Martinican writers Aimé Césaire, Frantz Fanon, and Edouard Glis-
sant and their appropriation of Hegel for anticolonial thought, Mascat ana-
lyses the literary-philosophical cross-fertilization that occurred between He-
gel and the Black Atlantic.
Efforts to link colonialism and the Third Reich are perceived as a provo-
cation by a number of scholars, especially by historians. In her contribution
“Uncanny Entanglements: Holocaust, Colonialism and Enlightenment” Ma-
ría do Mar Castro Varela argues that thinking together the gruesome atroci-
ties committed during colonialism and the Third Reich would help develop a
more nuanced and deeper understanding of the relation between colonialism,
the Holocaust, and the “Project of Modernity”. Drawing on the writings of
Theodor Adorno and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, the chapter explores the
role of education in the aftermath of historical violence in envisioning non-
dominant futures.
The second section of the volume engages with the issue of historical and
contemporary justice from a transnational perspective. Ulrike Hamann’s
contribution “A Historical Claim for Justice – Re-configuring the Enlighten-
ment for and from the Margins” focuses on Mary Church Terrell’s visit to
Berlin in 1904. Daughter of former slaves and member of the women’s suf-
frage movement in the USA, Church Terrell was invited to deliver a talk on
“The Progress of Colored Women” at the “International Women’s Con-
gress”, where she was the only woman-of-color participant. In contrast to her
bourgeois white German colleagues who did not have access to higher edu-
cation on account of their gender, Church Terrell had a college degree, but
nonetheless experienced blatant forms of racism in the US as well as in Ger-
many. Against the background of three intersecting contexts, namely, the
European feminist movement, post-slavery USA, and German colonialism,
Hamann analyses Church Terrell’s efforts to re-configure the Enlightenment
ideal of “progress” by inscribing hitherto excluded subjects such as Black
women into discourses of emancipation and rights.
Sourav Kargupta’s chapter “Feminist Justice Beyond Law: Spivakian
‘Ab-Use’ of Enlightenment Textuality in Imagining the Other” engages with
Spivak’s reading of Kant’s Critique of the Power of Judgment in the form of
an affirmative deconstruction. Spivak’s reading retrieves the figure of the
native informant as a mark of a violent expulsion that the Kantian text per-
forms in thinking its central subject. This nuanced reading is unmistakably
“postcolonial” in its intimate undoing of the Enlightenment textuality. How-
ever, in a related move Spivak shows that the eruption of the native inform-

5. Introduction 13
ant, as a supplement that the text desires and yet denies, persists in the post-
colonial text as well, this time as the effaced figure of the subaltern woman.
This insistence in persisting with the work of deconstruction, even at the cost
of questioning the very ground of a postcolonial critique as discourse of
“man”, positions Spivak not merely outside the average paradigm of the
postcolonial fabric, but also configures a deconstruction which is more open
to the notion of the persistent work of feminist justice. Kargupta argues that
such critical labor of feminist deconstruction might point toward a new con-
figuration of “reason” that is aware of its necessary constitution as a generali-
ty, and yet remains attentive to eruptions of singular and located gendered
moments which may both disrupt and inform it.
Despite increasing research on transnational justice in contemporary criti-
cal scholarship, there is a marked absence of the examination of historical
injustice in the form of colonial exploitation, violence, and domination,
whose legacies persist in the postcolonial world. Drawing on the writings of
Iris Marion Young and Joan Tronto, Jorma Heier’s essay “A Modest Pro-
posal for Transnational Justice and Political Responsibility”, presents an
account of transnational justice that problematizes “privileged irresponsibil-
ity”. Moving beyond territorialized understanding of justice that limit the
commitment to justice within the nation-state, Heier addresses the history of
colonialism, structural injustice, and epistemic ignorance to present a post-
colonial feminist account of transnational justice. She proposes that Uma
Narayan’s idea of “methodological humility” and Spivak’s notion of “learn-
ing to learn from below” offer possibilities of reconfiguring the asymmetrical
relation between the dispensers and receivers of justice.
Along similar lines, Anna Millan and Ali Can YÕldÕrÕm critically engage
in their contribution “Decolonizing Theories of Justice” with the Eurocentric
framework of liberal theories of global justice, in particular with the writings
of John Rawls and Martha Nussbaum. Examining the violent exclusions and
elisions operating within these theories of justice, Millan and YÕldÕrÕm seek
to shift the focus to the position of subalterns, who are most strongly affected
by global injustices. Supplementing mainstream theories of justice through
postcolonial-feminist insights like Spivak’s reflections on the ethics of re-
sponsibility, Millan and YÕldÕrÕm aim to trace the silencing and marginaliza-
tion of subaltern groups, especially subaltern women, in global theories of
justice. To undo subalternity demands a different practice of representation
that will allow disenfranchised individuals and groups to make claims and
emerge as subjects of rights.
The third section of the volume explores the postcolonial critique of hu-
man rights discourses. Human rights, in mainstream theories, are considered
as a gift of the European Enlightenment to the world. The rights’ narrative is
commonly constructed chronologically from the English Bill of Rights in
1689, through the US Declaration of Independence in 1776, and to the Dec-

6. 14 Nikita Dhawan
laration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen in 1788 emerging from the
French Revolution. According to this narrative, these declarations reached a
culminating point in 1948 with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
and the subsequent “generations” of rights. Julia Suárez-Krabbe’s contribu-
tion “The Other Side of the Story: Human Rights, Race, and Gender from a
Transatlantic Perspective” shifts the focus from Europe to the Americas,
from the era of Enlightenment to the late fifteenth-century “discovery” of the
Americas to provide an alternate account of how human rights discourse not
only took white male subjectivity as the norm, but was crafted to protect the
Spanish colonizing elites. In light of this analysis, Suárez-Krabbe urges a
legal and political reconsideration of the emancipatory assumptions of con-
temporary human rights discourses.
Judith Schacherreiter’s chapter “Propertization as a Civilizing and Mod-
ernizing Mission: Land and Human Rights in the Colonial and Postcolonial
World” deals with the emergence of property as a human right in Europe,
which occurred in the historical context of the propertization of soil. Backed
by theories of natural law and the legal philosophy of the Enlightenment, the
Western understanding of property was universalized through colonialism,
while communal land usage, as practiced by peasants in pre-capitalist Europe
and by the indigenous population in the Americas, was disqualified as “pre-
modern” and “primitive”. Applying the theories of Dipesh Chakrabarty,
Enrique Dussel and Edmundo O’Gorman to Mexican agrarian history,
Schacherreiter argues that the universalization of property contains a colonial
way of thinking that is inherently biased against communal forms of land
usage, which are viewed as mere anachronisms. However, if propertization
constitutes an attack on the commons, then taking the commons seriously
would mean contesting the universalism of property in the era of neocoloni-
alism.
Chenchen Zhang’s essay “Between Postnationality and Postcoloniality:
Human Rights and the Rights of Non-citizens in a ‘Cosmopolitan Europe’”
examines the tensions between postnational articulations of EU membership,
both in terms of normative expectations and institutional construction, and
the post/neocolonial politics of citizenship and migration in today’s Europe.
Revisiting the Arendtian critique of human rights and questioning the prob-
lematic construction of the subject of human rights and of the citizen, Zhang
examines how EU citizenship continues to reproduce differential inclusion
and an essentialist cultural identity at the supranational level. Zhang argues
that neither institutional nor morality-based versions of cosmopolitanism can
sufficiently account for the political implications of European migration
politics that reinforce the gap between the universal human and the national
citizen.
The doctrine of cultural relativism is frequently employed to explain ethi-
cal systems that diverge from the Enlightenment consensus of universalized

7. Introduction 15
morality. Designating ethical practices as culturally relative was hitherto
confined to societies that the colonial project deemed “primitive”. Cultural
relativism has been employed by critics of the human rights project as a
strategy to challenge its universality and civilizing narrative. Relativistic
arguments are also used by state parties to international human rights treaties
to justify their own human rights abuses. Frederick Cowell’s contribution
“Defensive Relativism: Universalism, Sovereignty, and the Postcolonial
Predicament” examines the increasing employment of “defensive relativism”
by Western states to contest international human rights treaties. Analyzing
the UK government’s relativism towards the European Court of Human
Rights, Cowell outlines a theory of “defensive relativism” that compromises
the universality of human rights instruments.
The final section of the volume addresses the challenging relation be-
tween decolonization and democratization. An increasingly significant con-
cern with democratization as an emancipatory political project relates to the
ways in which liberal rights function in various political and economic con-
texts. Lyn Ossome’s chapter “Democracy’s Subjections: Human Rights in
Contexts of Scarcity” examines the complex relation between human rights
and democracy in Uganda and South Africa, two countries in which monopo-
ly capitalism and questions of state sovereignty appear at the core of debates
on decolonization. Ossome suggests that liberal notions of human rights
applied in contexts of political, cultural, and economic exclusion and lack
actually reproduce human rights violations instead of resolving them.
Engaging with Carl Schmitt and Giorgio Agamben, Navneet Kumar’s pa-
per “Statelessness and the Power of Performance: A Reading of Resistance in
the Face of Agamben’s Sovereign Power” explores the increasing ability of
states to produce “state of exception”, which puts the constitutional rights of
citizens in abeyance, while creating non-citizens out of some. According to
Agamben, once categorized as non-citizens, such people are classified as
stateless and even assumed to be outside the sphere of power or any influ-
ence. To contest this equation of non-citizens as stateless and powerless and
to illustrate that statelessness can be equated with performative power, Ku-
mar provides an innovative reading of Harold Pinter’s Mountain Language
and draws on the works of Judith Butler and Spivak to demonstrate that the
category of non-citizenship need not be necessarily equated with disposses-
sion.
Aylin Zafer and Anna Millan’s chapter “Provincializing Cosmopolitan-
ism: Democratic Iterations and Desubalternization” juxtaposes Seyla Ben-
habib and Spivak’s theorization of democratic change. Drawing on the writ-
ings of Jacques Derrida and Robert Cover, Benhabib’s notion of “democratic
iterations” addresses the challenge of making universal norms respond to
particular interests, while remaining true to a universalist liberal model. The
goal is to achieve consensus between different positions within a heterogene-

8. 16 Nikita Dhawan
ous liberal democratic society. In contrast, Spivak’s pedagogical strategies
for desubalternization focus on the “ethical singularity” of the subaltern sub-
jects in the global South, which resist universalizing tendencies and blue-
prints. Both Benhabib and Spivak aim for the increased democratic participa-
tion of disenfranchised individuals and collectivities within contemporary
globalized capitalist structures. While Benhabib envisages marginalized
individuals like migrants using the constitutional mechanisms of liberal na-
tion-states to challenge their exclusion, thereby strengthening the universal
norms of democracy, human rights, and citizenship, Spivak’s strategy for
furthering democratization aims to undo “class apartheid” through epistemic
change at both ends of the postcolonial divide to enable “democracy from
below”.
Bibliography
Buck-Morss, Susan (2009): Hegel, Haiti, and Universal History. Pittsburgh: Universi-
ty of Pittsburgh Press.
Butler, Judith (1999): Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity.
10th ed. London: Routledge.
Chakrabarty, Dipesh (2000): Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and His-
torical Difference. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

9. I. Entangled Legacies

11. Affirmative Sabotage of the Master’s Tools: The
Paradox of Postcolonial Enlightenment
Affirmative Sabotage of the Master’s Tools
Nikita Dhawan
The term “Enlightenment” is widely disputed and is understood to encom-
pass a diverse range of attitudes, concepts, practices, institutions, texts, and
thinkers. The enduring conversation between the defenders and detractors of
the Enlightenment remains vibrant and controversial. Judith Shklar (1998:
94), for instance, explains that
part of the eighteenth century that we call ‘The Enlightenment’ was a state of intellectual
tension rather than a sequence of simple propositions.
Given the plurality of perspectives encompassed under the label of “the En-
lightenment”, Sankar Muthu (2003: 265) suggests that an exhaustive defini-
tion that could fully capture this diversity is impossible. He proposes a nega-
tive definition of the Enlightenment based upon what enlightened thought is
against, namely, orthodox understandings of religious doctrine and tradition-
al understandings of state power. This move refrains from limiting the vi-
brant intellectual period of the Enlightenment to a singular meaning or com-
mon project. Anthony Cascardi (1999: 21) remarks that the term Enlighten-
ment simultaneously designates a historical epoch as well as describes a
conceptual paradigm. A critical engagement with the Enlightenment entails a
historical analysis of the modern world even as it examines the nature of
reason itself, with the antinomy of history and theory making Enlightenment
a “site of an impasse” (ibid).
Going into the historical context in which the question “What is Enlight-
enment?”1
was posed against the backdrop of discussions on censorship,
political authority, and religious faith, James Schmidt (1996: 2) unpacks how
despite the differences in the response to this question, one common feature
was that none of the respondents understood it in terms of a particular histor-
ical period. Instead of scrutinizing claims of living in an “enlightened age”
(ibid: 17), Kant [1784], whose essay became canonical, was principally con-
1 Johann Friedrich Zöllner published an article in the Berlinische Monatsschrift (December
1783) asking: “What is enlightenment? This question, which is almost as important as what
is truth, should indeed be answered before one begins enlightening! And still I have never
found it answered!” (cit. in Schmidt 1996: 2). On 17 December 1783, J. K. W. Mohsen read
a paper at the Mittwochsgesellschaft (a secret society of “Friends of the Enlightenment”) on
the question “What is to be done towards the enlightenment of fellow citizens?” (ibid: 3).
Subsequently the Berlinische Monatsschrift published responses from Moses Mendelssohn
and Kant.

12. 20 Nikita Dhawan
cerned with the political and not the historical aspects of the question.
Schmidt (1996: 5) argues that Kant’s focus was principally on tracing the
publicness of reason that marked this period. With the flourishing of coffee
houses, salons, reading societies and scientific academies, reason went pub-
lic. The public use of reason2
was closely linked to the autonomy of the indi-
vidual, which led Kant to recommend that under no circumstances should it
be restricted. This was one of the cornerstones of Enlightenment political
thought.
Schmidt (ibid: 29) faults thinkers who try to approach the original ques-
tion and responses in terms of drawing generalizations about “the Enlight-
enment project” and its legacies for our age. According to him, the respond-
ents to the question “What is Enlightenment” sought to explain a process and
not define a period. Contemporary critics of the Enlightenment are accused
of taking as their point of departure some current problem, like totalitarian-
ism or the ecological crisis, and linking it causally to the Enlightenment lega-
cy of instrumental reason and the rise of discourses of individual rights over
the ethics of duties. While Schmidt rejects approaches that blur the difference
between defining the Enlightenment and evaluating the various projects it
allegedly championed, he nonetheless perceives as legitimate the question of
what counts as Enlightenment and the demands it elicits from us.
In light of the recent discussions in both political thought as well as post-
colonial studies on the contradictory legacies of the Enlightenment, the aim
of this chapter is to provide an overview of the different positions in this
debate to unpack the strengths and weaknesses of the various arguments.
Beginning in the first section with the critics of the Enlightenment, most
notably the scholars of the Frankfurt school, postmodernists, feminists, and
postcolonial theorists, who point to the pernicious consequences of the En-
lightenment, the second section moves on to the defendants of the Enlight-
enment, who hope to bring to light the long neglected anti-imperialist im-
pulses of eighteenth century political thought, with particular focus on Ger-
man Enlightenment. The third section takes stock of the simultaneously im-
perialist and anti-imperialist nature of the Enlightenment. I propose that
while postcolonial theorists risk homogenizing the Enlightenment by primari-
ly focusing on its violent legacies, advocates of eighteenth century political
thought do not adequately consider the postcolonial-feminist critique in their
efforts to recuperate Enlightenment thought. The fourth section deals with
one of the core questions that brings together postcolonial and Enlightenment
scholarship, namely, the role of critical practice in transforming social and
political relations. The concluding section addresses the ambivalent relation
between postcolonialism and European Enlightenment, and the challenge this
sets up for politics in the postcolonial world.
2 Feminists point out the gendered nature of the public versus private distinction on which the
Kantian understanding of the “public” and “private” uses of reason rest.

13. Affirmative Sabotage of the Master’s Tools 21
The Disenchantment of Enlightenment
From the outset, reflections on the Enlightenment have been inseparable
from the hopes and fears about what the project epitomizes. The critique of
the Enlightenment and skepticism about reason itself has a long tradition.
From Edmund Burke to Friedrich Hegel, from Karl Marx to Friedrich Nie-
tzsche3
, the merits and triumphs of discourses of reason, science, rights, and
law have been a matter of dispute and polemics. The critique of the Enlight-
enment is equally a critique of its self-representation as having overcome
history and its constraints. One of the disenchantments with the Enlighten-
ment derived from its connection to the French Revolution: Some of the
earliest challenges to the Enlightenment came from Catholic opponents in
France, who linked the anti-Catholic fervor of the Revolution to the Enlight-
enment critique of religion. The idea that the Enlightenment caused the
Revolution connects the terror that ensued with the values of the Enlighten-
ment (Jordanova 1990: 203). Thus the emancipatory potential of the Enlight-
enment is cast in doubt. It is argued that the Enlightenment struggle against
established authorities and efforts to create alternatives, ushered in political,
theological, and philosophical authoritarianism in the form of Napoleon
Bonaparte (ibid: 207).
As critics point out, the Enlightenment’s presentist bias as well as correc-
tive stance condemns the past as an underdeveloped version of the present
(Cascardi 1999: 25–26). The “pre-Enlightenment” world is characterized as a
period of darkness and ignorance plagued by superstition and dogmatism, to
which the Enlightenment introduced the notion of progress, in which reason
marked the advancement of an enlightened self-consciousness. Its self-
congratulatory stance serves as an ideological tool to produce self-serving
explanations that justify the rejection of its historical antecedents, while
claiming that the Enlightenment is both the result of and the cause of pro-
gress in history. It points to its own success as proof that progress is indeed
possible (ibid: 27).
Enlightenment presents itself as a triumph of reason over superstition, as
a movement towards human liberty and equality by subjecting religious and
political authorities to reasoned criticism (O’Neil 1990: 186). Its denuncia-
tions of tyranny, superstition and intolerance go hand in glove with the prom-
ise that knowledge and science will bring justice, peace, democracy, and the
end to suffering and distress. However, as critics have outlined, the Enlight-
enment has undeniably also reinforced the values and norms of a hegemonic
3 Many argue that the best account of the consequences of the failure of the Enlightenment
project is to be found in the work of Nietzsche (see MacIntyre 1981, Garrard 2004). Accus-
ing Kant as an enemy of the Enlightenment, Nietzsche called for the denouncement of the
entire eighteenth century political thought.

14. 22 Nikita Dhawan
class that ushered in new modes of social domination and coercion. The rise
to power of a particular idiom of reason and science rendered unintelligible
other forms of knowledges and cosmologies (Clark/Golinski/Shaffer 1999).
The Enlightenment’s attempt to create a world in which all individuals, so-
cieties, and institutions would be measured against the standard of rational
utility has culminated in oppression.
One of the staunchest contestations of the emancipatory claims of the En-
lightenment came from the first generation of the Frankfurt School of social
theory. Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer contend that the Enlighten-
ment represents Western culture’s attempt to dominate by means of a con-
trolling rationality. In Dialectic of Enlightenment [1944] they argue that far
from ensuring equality and liberty, Enlightenment reason resulted in the
barbarism of fascism. As an instrument of power in the service of its own
vision of what is true and good, the exclusion of non-normative subjects has
been at the heart of the Enlightenment, they argue. Furthermore, they are
unconvinced by claims of its self-corrective nature.
Another powerful challenge comes from post-structuralism (Baker/Reill
2001, Gordon 2001). In his earlier work, for example in Madness and Civili-
zation [1959] as well as Discipline and Punish [1975], Foucault directs his
critique at “the classical age” or “age of reason”, which has engendered what
he calls “the disciplinary society.” Examining the emergence of institutions
like hospitals, asylums, and prisons as closely tied to the development of the
“human sciences”, Foucault shows how these discourses and institutions
rationalized new forms of discipline and control through the deployment of a
particular form of reason. He challenges the self-representation of the age of
reason as “humanitarian” and “progressive”. While Kant understands the
Enlightenment as a challenge to the arbitrary use of political power, Foucault
focuses on the link between rationalization and the excesses of political pow-
er. He thus uncovers the coercive aspects of Enlightenment reform and
emancipation: The introduction of supposedly more humane practices and
institutions, whether penal or medical, legitimized the systematic marginali-
zation and silencing of the Other. The aim was to purge society of individu-
als that were perceived as a threat. In the name of curing it, madness became
“mental illness” and thereby effectively silenced. The regulating and normal-
izing urges of the classical age ruptured the dialogue between madness and
reason; modern prisons became a symbol of “civilized societies”, with sur-
veillance replacing torture, reform replacing physical violence as more “hu-
mane”. The earlier technologies were not only critiqued for being cruel, but
for being inefficient and uneconomical. Teachers, psychologists, and social
workers became protectors and enforcers of the norm throughout the entire
social body. This ensemble of techniques of normalization was at the heart of
the new tactics and micro-physics of power that emerged during the age of
reason. Corresponding to the social institutions and practices of the classical

15. Affirmative Sabotage of the Master’s Tools 23
age is what Foucault calls “the classical episteme”, the distinctive way in
which knowledge was conceived, ordered and constituted in the eighteenth
century.
It must of course be borne in mind that Enlightenment philosophers like
Kant have been acutely aware of the ambivalent nature of reason, which is
why he does not limit his critique to the Church and the State, but applies it
to reason itself (O’Neil 1990: 187–188). As Kant explains, the Enlighten-
ment is an expression of rational will, an exit from self-incurred tutelage
(Kant 1977c: 53). The radical social change promised by the Enlightenment
is premised on the exertion of the will to empower ourselves and to transform
social realities. Two key distinguishing features of the Enlightenment are its
claim to freedom to reason and to criticize rather than to think and act in
accordance with external authority. “Private” uses of reason are partial and
tempt us into obedience (ibid: 53), in contrast to which the “public” use of
reason is exercised by “men of learning” (ibid: 55). Autonomous thinking
and acting follows principles of reason that are against both subservience and
arbitrariness. However, Kant repudiates any individualist interpretation of
autonomy, in that he argues that a solitary individual cannot expect to escape
“immaturity;” rather, autonomy in thinking is always intersubjective and
exercised through the public use of reason. He claims that, for the emergence
of an enlightened public, the freedom to make public use of one’s reason is
more significant than political reform (ibid: 55–56). The Kantian “categorical
imperative”, as principle of autonomy, is a matter of acting only on principles
that could be chosen by all, that is, on maxims which can be willed as univer-
sal laws. The only obstacles to freedom and emancipation are cowardice,
laziness, or restrictions on the public use of reason, which must be overcome
(Kant 1974: 51).
This brings us to the other defining characteristic of the Enlightenment,
namely, its universalizing4
ambitions, most clearly expressed through its
emphasis on universal principles, which all human beings assumedly aspire
to irrespective and independent of their race, class, gender, sexual orienta-
tion, religion, and nationality. These universal principles are neither contin-
gent nor negotiable, so that they are undeniable by any rational person inde-
pendent of particular times and places. Proponents of the Enlightenment
aspire to speak rationally and objectively about the world as a whole and to
establish the legitimacy of knowledge by means of the systematic separation
of value from fact (Cascardi 1999: 90). As has been repeatedly pointed out
by its critics, a common malady of the Enlightenment is its attempt to divorce
reason and cognition from experience, intuition, and affect. It was contrary to
the goals of enlightened critical thinking to derive the laws that prescribe
4 Universalism, for Kant, involves determining whether a particular maxim can be consistently
taken up by everyone else or whether one is required to make an exception of oneself, and
thus apply a rule to oneself that cannot, without contradiction, be willed by others.

16. 24 Nikita Dhawan
what ought to be done from instances of what actually is the case (ibid: 83–
84). To derive values from the world of fact would leave us with impure and
unreliable forms of value contaminated by “interested” egoism.
The move to subject reason to critical inquiry has raised concerns about
whether attempts to criticize reason would result in nihilism (ibid: 52). In
response to such doubts, Kant reiterates his faith in reason, understood as
autonomy in thinking and in action, to overcome conflicts and bring about
lasting peace (ibid: 192). However sceptics nonetheless highlight Kant’s
admiration for Frederick the Great, who asserts: “Argue as much as you like,
but obey!” as proof of Enlightenment’s ambivalent relation to political free-
dom.
Another significant challenge to the Enlightenment model of emancipa-
tion comes from postcolonial studies.5
The Enlightenment claim of having
overcome “barbarism” in Europe, justified its spread to the “uncivilized”
non-European world. The rational ideal of the Enlightenment and its accom-
panying idea of progress set up a singular, universal goal for humankind,
namely, indefinite improvement and development. Its stadial view of history
justified colonialism on the grounds that through contact with Europe, “sav-
age” and “barbarian” populations could advance to “higher” stages of devel-
opment (cf. McCarthy 2009). Differences between European and non-
Europeans were explained in terms of historical, geographical, social, cultur-
al, political, and economic factors, which could be overcome if the non-
European world accepted the European model of civilization as the blue-print
for its future. Colonialism was the way to overcome “backwardness”, where-
by the guidance and support of the Europeans would guarantee a positive
social, economic, and political outcome.
Inspired by the Frankfurt School and the poststructuralist critique of the
Enlightenment, postcolonial theorists emphasize the profound interconnec-
tion between Europe’s imperial ventures and the Enlightenment veneration of
reason, science, and progress that made possible the very thinking of the
world as a unified whole. These “world-knowing” and “world-creating”
strategies were at the heart of European colonialism. Imperialist ideologies
were successful in translating their provincial understanding of knowledge,
norms, values, and ideals into explanatory paradigms with universalist pur-
chase. The universalizing project of Enlightenment imposed a uniform stand-
ard of instrumental reason, privileging European conceptions of knowledge
and institutions. The Enlightenment reform of legal, administrative, and
economic policy in the colonies, instead of ushering in freedom and equality,
5 Festa and Carey (2009: 7) remark that the “terms ‘postcolonial’ and ‘Enlightenment’ share a
kinship to the extent that both simultaneously describe a period, a kind of political order, a
cluster of ideas, a theoretical purchase point, and a mode of thinking”. Both terms are “his-
torical breaking-points” that mark political and epistemic shifts, in that they are both modes
of oppositional critiques informed by a plurality of local instantiations (ibid).

17. Affirmative Sabotage of the Master’s Tools 25
opened a new chapter of the history of domination. It introduced practices of
subjectification, surveillance, regulation, and discipline. Attempts at enlight-
ened and humanitarian reforms regularly resulted in the increased control
over the individuals in whose name these reforms were carried out. As ar-
gued by David Scott (1999: 35), colonialism produced not just extractive
effects on colonized bodies, but also governing effects on colonial conduct.
Although the focus has primarily been on time, it is important to bear in
mind that the Enlightenment association with and embeddedness in the geo-
graphical region “Europe” is a decisive aspect of its self-consciousness. From
this perceived “center”, the Enlightenment thinkers began to theorize the
“peripheral” parts of the world, comparing their own societies and cultures
with the rest of the world. Colonialism was the “age of discovery”, when the
Europeans claimed to have “found” new worlds by bravely encountering
“cannibals” and “savages” (Hulme 1990: 20).
Not being great travelers did not deter the Enlightenment thinkers from
theorizing and judging other societies. Although few of them had direct ex-
perience of the colonies, several worked closely with private and state bodies
that were responsible for formulating the colonial policies of European pow-
ers. Relying on travel literature, ethnographic sources, and literary accounts
they assessed and judged the moral, political, social, and economic practices,
institutions, and traditions in America as well as Asia and Africa. At the heart
of the Enlightenment idea of history was the notion of “progress” of mankind
from “savagery” to “civilization”, based on a complex developmental model
with Europe on top of the “civilizational pyramid”. For instance, in his re-
flections in Leviathan [1651], Thomas Hobbes draws on events in the Amer-
icas to substantiate his claim that the state of nature is savagery (Hobbes
2003: 103). In his view, the “savages” hold a mirror up to the “reality” of
human nature; they show the frightening image of a society bereft of those
attributes which make it civilized (Hulme 1990: 24). Hobbes proposes that
the state of nature is a state of war, thereby legitimizing the eventual ac-
ceptance of an ultimate earthly authority, namely Leviathan, who will guar-
antee peace and order. The implied relationship between Europe and Ameri-
ca becomes apparent in this metaphorical map of the world where the former
symbolizes civilization and the latter savagery (Hulme 1990: 25). The lan-
guage of development and the metaphor of maturation deem the natives infe-
rior to European standards. Or, in John Locke’s famous words: “in the be-
ginning all the world was America” (2003 [1689]: 121).
Colonial discourse was the epistemological corollary to colonial violence:
It authorized Europeans to construct and contain the non-European world
and its people by defining and representing them as racially and culturally
inferior. By constituting them as objects of European knowledge, the colonial
subject’s perspectives were disqualified and devalued. The universalist agen-
da of colonial discourse laid the foundations for the ideological justification

18. 26 Nikita Dhawan
of colonialism as a civilizing mission. Its Eurocentric, totalizing teleology
stripped non-European peoples of agency and historicity, while the focus on
reason silenced other perspectives disqualifying them as “irrational” and
“unscientific” (Clark/Golinski/Shaffer 1999).
The indigenous inhabitants of the New World were declared “subhuman”
and not acknowledged as free and self-governing peoples. The genocide of
aboriginals was justified on the grounds that their barbaric traditions threat-
ened the moral sanctity of European civilization. It was argued that those
who wanted to qualify as “human” must adopt European practices, values,
norms, and institutions. While sixteenth century Salamancan theologians like
Franscisco de Vitoria and Bartolemé de Las Casas intervened in the dehu-
manizing discourses that regarded natives as “natural slaves”, they did not
oppose imperialism as such (Anghie 2007: 27). They believed that “inferior”
peoples could rise on the universal scale of progress with the help of their
Christian brothers. Ironically the recognition of the humanity of the Amerin-
dians did not end their political and economic subjugation. Erasing native
forms of sovereignty, a radical break between premodern political society
and modern imperial sovereignty was presumed (Anghie 2007).
One of the most powerful impulses of the Enlightenment was the drive to
examine and find scientific explanations for natural and social phenomena as
well as human nature, body, and mind. This led to the development of “the
science of man” (Jordanova 1990: 206), which covered disciplines like med-
icine, natural history and anthropology. There was newfound interest in the
brain as the presumed physical location of thought, experience, and the soul.
The rise in knowledge about fossils and comparative anatomy led to the
investigation of skulls and skeletons of different vertebrates, including hu-
mans. Anatomists developed graduations between “species” and “races”
(Hulme/Jordanova 1990: 9).
Thinkers like Jean-Jacques Rousseau, while celebrating the Amerindians
as “noble savages”, still considered them racially and morally inferior to the
Europeans. In fact the celebration of the “raw man”, devoid of the artifice of
culture or civilization, ended up “animalizing” the natives. The idea of what
it meant to be human was determined by Eurocentric understandings of hu-
man nature. Thus, even when Amerindians were “formally” recognized as
equals, it was argued that they had forfeited both their individual natural
rights and collective sovereignties by virtue of their “barbaric” social and
cultural practices like human sacrifice and cannibalism. Ironically in being
acknowledged as part of humanity, they were measured according to the so-
called “civilized” European norms. Paradoxically, the benevolent bestowal of
agency made the colonized authors of their own domination (Scott 1999: 27).
Another important indicator of the “debased” condition of the natives was
their failure to make rational use of land, whereby pre-agricultural societies
were seen as lacking moral and political order. The “agriculturalist argu-

19. Affirmative Sabotage of the Master’s Tools 27
ment” proved the lack of sovereign status of the natives and was part of the
ideological justification for the colonial appropriation of non-European terri-
tories and “wasted” natural resources (Hulme 1990: 28–30). The nomadic
practices of some natives were judged inferior to sedentary forms of life. The
threat of “masterless” men justified enclosure and expropriation. The idle and
unproductive natives, it was argued, were ignoring the divine gift of land to
humanity, even as the unwillingness to use one’s labor was an indication of
moral failure and lack of exercise of reason. The focus was on the industri-
ousness of Europeans, who appropriated land through their labor and conse-
quently contributed to the public good while pursuing their private interests.
For instance, for Locke (2003: 116), the central division is between those
who “improve” land and those who, like animals, merely collect what nature
provides; only the former are fully rational and therefore fully human. Here
labor and reason is inextricably linked and characterize the difference be-
tween “savage” and “civilized” societies (Hulme 1990: 28–30).
The propertization and exploitation of land, forests, hills, and other natu-
ral resources was at the heart of capitalist expansion. European land-use
practices became normative, with the enclosure of common land into private
property being monopolized by the colonizers. The scarcity of land in Europe
was solved through the colonial theft of indigenous lands in the name of the
“rational use of land”. The colonizers’ increasing demand for land provoked
native resistance, which in turn led to reprisals justifying the forfeiture of the
native’s right to their land (Hulme 1990: 20). In an ironic reversal, the Euro-
pean settlers became the legitimate inhabitants, while the original inhabitants
were driven from their own territories. The colonizers deployed the legal
doctrine of vacuum domicilium6
to acquire land titles and political jurisdic-
tion, disregarding the sovereignty of indigenous populations. Any resistance
to this theft led to colonial terror: not the Hobbesian war of all against all, but
the war of the righteous against those they perceived as attacking rational
principles of land ownership and land use. The language of just war was
mobilized to legitimize imperial aggressions towards the natives in the name
of self-defense (Anghie 2007: 24–26).
Against this background, the universal aspirations of the Enlightenment
and its faith in the power of reason are undeniably tainted by this history of
terror and violence. Enlightenment self-representations as harbinger of pro-
gress and emancipation are countered by postcolonial interrogations and the
“analytic of suspicion” (Scott 2004: 178). Frantz Fanon highlights this histor-
ical irony as follows:
Leave this Europe where they are never done talking of Man, yet murder men everywhere
they find them, at the corner of every one of their own streets, in all the corners of the
globe (Fanon 1961: 251).
6 Terra nullius and vacuum domicilium are sometimes used interchangeably.

20. 28 Nikita Dhawan
The postcolonial critique of European colonial discourses and institutions has
led to the rethinking of the Enlightenment as “ideology, aspiration and time-
period” (Festa/Carey 2009: 2). The Enlightenment is accused of sugar-
coating the bitter nature of empire (ibid: 9). Patrick Williams and Laura
Crisman remark: “The Enlightenment’s universalizing will to knowledge
[…] feeds Orientalism’s will to power” (1994: 8).
Another powerful critique of the Enlightenment has come from feminist
scholars who emphasize feminism’s troubled relation to the Enlightenment
principles of rationality, universality and autonomy (Knott/Taylor 2005).
There is an important overlap between the feminist critique of the Enlight-
enment and the challenges formulated by postmodernism and postcolonial-
ism. While some feminist scholars argue that the Enlightenment ideals of
equality and emancipation have crucially informed the demand for women’s
liberation, others highlight that the exclusion and silencing of women’s voic-
es and agency is inherent to the Enlightenment. Enlightenment thinkers like
Kant and Rousseau did not consider women to be fully rational and recom-
mended restricting their educational opportunities. The defendants of the
positive aspects of Enlightenment principles, however, propose that these
blind-spots can be easily corrected by extending rights and equality to previ-
ously excluded groups, to which critics respond that the epistemic and dis-
cursive violence of the Enlightenment cannot be easily doctored or purged of
its pernicious aspects. Going beyond the question of “mere” exclusion, critics
emphasize that feminist contestations of autonomy and rationality subvert the
fundamental principles of the Enlightenment. They outline how the Enlight-
enment claims of universality and transhistorical truth are themselves a re-
flection and imposition of androcentric patriarchal ideology.
Furthermore, feminists also argue that the imperative to detach the self
from the uncertain realm of phenomenal existence incorporates the denigra-
tion of femininity as contingency and embodiment. Analyzing the historical
implications of the Enlightenment for European women,7
Robin May Schott
examines the decline in women’s rights in the eighteenth century. Focusing
on France, she outlines how the uniform legal system enshrined the Rous-
seauian concept of the difference of women from men. The Civil Code rec-
ognized the rights of all citizens, while excluding women from citizenship.
Therefore, women’s status worsened in relation to men during this period
(May Schott 1996: 473). The Enlightenment principles of individual rights to
freedom and equality were not secured for women in France until 1879. As is
well-known, the feminist political activist Olympe de Gouges dictated all her
works to a secretary because she was unable to write. Women were excluded
from university education in both France and Germany, including Königs-
berg University where Kant studied and taught. Far from challenging wom-
7 May Schott fails to specify that she is focusing exclusively on European women, thereby
reproducing the universal category “women”.

21. Affirmative Sabotage of the Master’s Tools 29
en’s exclusion from education on egalitarian grounds, Kant mocks women’s
attempts at serious philosophical and scientific work, asserting that women’s
character, in contrast to men’s, is wholly defined by natural needs.8
He views
women as unsuited for scholarly work, not because of their lack of training
or access to education, but because of their lack of autonomy, which in his
view is intrinsic to their nature. He asserts that he understands that women
want to be more like men, although men do not want to be like women (ibid:
474).
Along similar lines Jane Flax (1992), in her essay “Is Enlightenment
Emancipatory?” examines the shortcomings in Kant’s conception of “pure”
reason. According to Flax, Kant keeps reason “pure” from merely contingent
bodily and social influences, to which he accords no significant value. He
segregates the domestic, “feminine” private sphere of the body, the locus of
affect, the subjective, the particular, the familial, from the “masculine” public
sphere of reason, the locus of autonomy, maturity, universality, objectivity,
and reason (Flax 1992: 242). Thus rational power denigrates and marginaliz-
es “the feminine” as the “Other” of the Enlightenment, while the universal
autonomous individual devoid of gender pursues dispassionate, disinterested,
value-free, objective knowledge, making other ways of being and knowing
illegible and illegitimate.
Kant’s call to free oneself from self-imposed tutelage is a universal one
that ignores the social, economic, cultural, and historical context in which the
individual struggles to “have courage to use his own reason”. Kant claims
that all women are afraid of the Enlightenment as they are unable to freely
exercise reason (May Schott 1996: 476–477). Tutelage, Kant explains, is
man’s inability to make use of his understanding without direction from
another. Self-incurred is this tutelage when its cause lies not in lack of rea-
son, but in lack of resolution and courage to use it without direction from
another. Having middle-class men with education and civil office in mind,
Kant’s discussion of tutelage does not consider obstacles faced by non-
normative subjects exercising their reason. Further, his disregard of emotion
and passion excludes all those associated with these affects from exercising
epistemic, moral, and aesthetic agency.
The Enlightenment’s attempt to free the world from domination falls prey
to a fatal dialectic in which the Enlightenment itself fosters new forms of
domination that are all the more insidious since they claim to be vindicated
by reason itself. This is the most incisive critique presented by Adorno and
Horkheimer, who propose the self-canceling nature of Enlightenment ration-
ality (1972: 2). The Enlightenment, in their view, is the embodiment of the
self-negating ideals of bourgeois culture that regards change as possible
8 Kant’s remarks on women’s character occur both in Anthropology (1983: 255, 261) as well
as in Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime (1992: 39–40, 54) (cf.
Kneller 1993, 1996, May Schott 1996: 474).

22. 30 Nikita Dhawan
through thought alone. Their interpretation of the Enlightenment and its
consequences represent “a pervasive disenchantment or world-loss” (Cas-
cardi 1999: 3). Enlightenment’s efforts to emancipate mankind have resulted
in death and destruction. While overcoming superstition, the instrumentaliza-
tion of reason makes it a tool to whatever power that deploys it (Schmidt
1996: 21). Colonialism and the Holocaust are testimonies to the fact that
despite the Enlightenment or maybe because of it, emancipatory ideals are
tainted (Cascardi 1999: 4). In contrast to the Hegelian idea of subjective self-
consciousness that continuously evolves into some higher or more complex
form, Enlightenment self-consciousness, in Adorno’s and Horkheimer’s
view, is self-canceling in that it is haunted by that which it excludes and
represses (ibid: 24). Freedom and domination are deeply entangled, even as
Enlightenment rationality refuses to acknowledge its implication in such a
dialectical process (ibid: 25). It assumes an absolute and omnipotent stance
over and against its objects, only to reinforce the very conditions it had set
out to overcome (ibid: 25).
Re-enchantment of Enlightenment
Most of the significant scholarship on Enlightenment either ignores colonial-
ism or treats it as marginal to the more important issue of recuperating the
Enlightenment (Hampson 1968, Krieger 1970, Yolton et al. 1991, Outram
1995, Gay 1996, Schmidt 1996, 2000, Porter 2001, Himmelfarb 2004, Dupre
2004, Bronner 2004, Louden 2007, Headley 2007, Todorov 2009, Trevor-
Roper 2010). Even critical thinkers like Adorno, Horkheimer, and Foucault
disregard colonialism in their critique of the Enlightenment. For instance, the
erasure of the Haitian Revolution, one of the most significant appropriations
of the Enlightenment principles, within the mainstream history of ideas indi-
cates the inability and unwillingness of the European intellectual tradition to
recognize the agency of Others (Fischer 2004). Paul Gilroy similarly prob-
lematizes the omission of slave experiences from accounts of modernity
(Gilroy 1993).
Against this background, there has been an encouraging development in
the last decade in the scholarship on eighteenth century political theory, in
that there has been a concerted effort to address the connection of the En-
lightenment to European colonialism. A number of publications (Muthu
2003, Festa/Carey 2009: Levy/Young 2011) seek to provide a corrective to
what they claim is a misrepresentation of the Enlightenment’s epistemologi-
cal investment in imperialism. Recovering critical perspectives, they high-
light subversive operations at work particularly within eighteenth century
European political thought. Both the post-modern as well as the postcolonial

23. Affirmative Sabotage of the Master’s Tools 31
critique of the Enlightenment is accused of unfairly indicting the Enlighten-
ment of providing the intellectual infrastructure for coercive practices and
institutions in the colony. It is lamented that the Enlightenment is erroneously
used as shorthand for rationalism, universalism, scientism, and other “isms”,
which post-modernism and postcolonialism seek to indict. Postmodern and
postcolonial criticism is accused of converting the Enlightenment into a
“monolithic bogeyman” (Cheah 2003: 267). Critics of the Enlightenment are
charged with being sloppy regarding chronological boundaries and of pro-
jecting current problems on the past, holding eighteenth century thinkers
responsible for many ills that plague us today. Another common claim is that
the postcolonial indictment of the Enlightenment merely echoes the critique
leveled against the Enlightenment by previous scholars from within the En-
lightenment tradition or by writers of the Counter-Enlightenment9
(Fes-
ta/Carey 2009: 9).
As a corrective, the effort is to provide a counterpoint to the postcolonial
critique of the Enlightenment by highlighting that the Enlightenment was in
fact anti-imperialist. Emphasizing the plurality of the Enlightenment project
that brings together a diverse set of philosophical doctrines and principles, it
is argued that Enlightenment thinkers were in fact staunch critics of the colo-
nial politics of European states. In his hugely influential work Radical En-
lightenment Jonathan Israel (2001) proposes that radical theorists of the En-
lightenment pushed the ideas of reason, universality, and democracy to their
logical conclusion, nurturing a radical egalitarianism extending across class,
gender, and race.
Sankar Muthu, in his book Enlightenment against Empire (2003), con-
tests the misrepresentation of eighteenth century political thought by high-
lighting its anti-imperialist impulses. He explains that he uses the term “En-
lightenment” as a temporal adjective, referring to the political thought of the
eighteenth century (2003: 1). He also clarifies that he neither wishes to de-
fend nor attack the Enlightenment, rather simply to broaden our understand-
ing of Enlightenment-era perspectives. Drawing on philosophical and politi-
cal questions about human nature, cultural diversity, cross-cultural moral
judgments, and political obligations, Muthu’s stated aim is to “pluralize our
understanding of the philosophical era known as ‘the Enlightenment’” (ibid).
Particularly focusing on the late eighteenth century, he unpacks how thinkers
like Diderot, Kant, and Herder criticized imperialism, not only highlighting
the injustices of European imperial rule, but also emphasizing the dangers of
colonialism for the corruption of Europe (ibid). Instead of seeing Europe as
standard-bearer of liberty and rights for the rest of humanity, it was critiqued
as the primary source of social and political injustice around the world (ibid:
281). Muthu bemoans that contrary to anti-slavery writings, for instance of
9 It is claimed that the Counter-Enlightenment in fact invented the Enlightenment (Berlin
1998).

24. 32 Nikita Dhawan
Charles de Montesquieu, Enlightenment anti-imperial political theory has
been neglected. While anti-slavery activists decried the abuses of imperial
power in the form of genocide, exploitation, and dehumanization, it was
Enlightenment political thought that questioned the legitimacy and morality
of the imperial mission (ibid: 4). Thinkers like Jeremy Bentham, Edmund
Burke, de Condorcet, and Adam Smith argued for the right to sovereignty,
cultural integrity, and self-determination of the colonized and denounced the
illegal and unjust means by which the ostensibly “civilized” nations ruled the
non-European world. They also questioned the means and justifications of
the expanding commercial and political power of European states and impe-
rial trading companies (ibid). Legislative efforts by anti-imperialist Enlight-
enment thinkers like Burke, who scandalized the unfair trading practices of
the East India Company, were ridiculed by his contemporaries (ibid: 5).
In defense of anti-imperialist Enlightenment thinkers, Muthu outlines
how they highlighted the cultural difference and cultural agency of non-
European populations, who were characterized as possessing a range of ra-
tional, aesthetic, and imaginative capacities (ibid: 7–8). They, thereby, con-
demned the imposition of European values and norms on non-European
cultures. Drawing on Rousseau’s understanding of humans as free and self-
making creatures, but rejecting his idea of the “noble savage”, thinkers like
Kant, Herder, and Diderot argued that non-European peoples were cultural
agents whose practices, beliefs, and institutions were simply different from
Europe’s (ibid: 9). Instead of being viewed as deviations from the normative
European way of life, cultural differences were presented as proof of human
freedom and reason by these thinkers.
Muthu (2003: 272) outlines three principal philosophical sources of En-
lightenment anti-imperialism to be found in the writings of Diderot, Kant,
and Herder, which in his view, resulted in a more inclusive universalism
fostering goodwill and hospitality towards Europe’s Others: The first and
most basic idea was that human beings share a common humanity and de-
serve respect by virtue of being human. The second idea was that human
beings were not merely products of nature, but also cultural beings pos-
sessing cultural agency. And thirdly, by presuming moral incommensurabil-
ity, not only did they contest the comparison of cultures and peoples, but also
any efforts to rank or measure them against each other. By including cultural
agency and incommensurability in their understanding of universal humanity
and human nature, Diderot, Kant, and Herder, in Muthu’s view, present an
anti-imperialist critique, rather than justifying imperialism through universal-
ism. By challenging the exclusion of the Amerindians from the language of
natural rights and their dehumanization by Europeans, these thinkers rejected
imperialist paternalism (ibid). Kant and Herder, in Muthu’s view, also cri-
tiqued Lockean views of property as well as the language of just war, which
allowed Europeans to declare native lands as res nullius (no man’s land) and

25. Affirmative Sabotage of the Master’s Tools 33
seize them. They even upheld the rights of the natives to defend their inter-
ests and presented the New World inhabitants as fellow cultural beings (ibid:
275). Muthu argues that Diderot, Kant, and Herder questioned the belief that
European norms and values were universal standards to compare and rank
non-European peoples and cultures (ibid: 275). In fact they were suspicious
of the very notion of “civilization”, emphasizing moral incommensurability
and cultural difference (ibid: 280). Condemning the Bengal Famine of 1769–
1770 as well as the transatlantic slave trade as instances of European immo-
ralities abroad, Diderot attacked European colonial rule as unacceptable.
Rejecting the ranking of peoples on a civilizational scale, Herder too advo-
cated respect for cultural differences. Along similar lines Kant, in Muthu’s
view, abandoned his earlier views of racial hierarchy in favor of cosmopoli-
tanism and humanity in his later writings (cf. Kleingeld 2007).
Like Muthu (2003), Daniel Carey and Sven Trakulhun (2009: 240) pro-
pose that universalism remains one of the most contentious features of En-
lightenment thought. One of the main criticisms against Enlightenment uni-
versalism is that it is accused of negating cultural diversity. For instance, the
very notion of “man” as a universal category emerges through the exclusion
and marginalization of those who cannot or will not confirm to its normative
force, such as “woman” or “the native”. While sexual and racial difference is
implicit in subject formation, the assumption of a common human nature or
essence overlooks the power effects of these gendered and racialized inflec-
tions. The impulse to universalize claims of reason, rights, and sovereignty in
order to substantiate a shared human nature or fashion history in a grand
narrative of progress has been targeted as exclusionary and violent. This
critique refutes claims that the Enlightenment’s universalizing tendencies
represent a liberating force.
Muthu (2003), Lynn Festa and Carey (2009), and Carey and Trakulhun
(2009) endeavor to convince us that Enlightenment universalism does not
disallow diversity to flourish and that in fact knowledge about other cultures
and peoples in the “age of discoveries” strengthened the awareness of cultur-
al diversity, which in turn contributed to the emergence of cosmopolitan
perspectives. They recommend a more nuanced reading of the writings of
Enlightenment thinkers before judging their faults. They contest the claim
that Enlightenment ideals naturalize one particular political model as a uni-
versal telos and propose that these can be reconciled with difference without
automatically perpetuating racism.
In their view, one of the best examples that repudiates charges of relent-
less universalism is the Enlightenment tolerance of religious difference.
Locke’s Letter Concerning Toleration [1689] is presented as a prime illustra-
tion of the Enlightenment investment in the irreducibility of difference.10
10 Interestingly Locke excluded Catholics and Atheists from his doctrine of toleration.

26. 34 Nikita Dhawan
Muthu (2003: 266) and Festa and Carey (2009: 20) highlight the multiplicity
of universalisms across Enlightenment political thought. They claim that
encounters with other peoples led to revisions of the European understanding
of the universal even as it radically altered concepts of human nature and the
representation of non-Europeans. Likewise the struggle over religious tolera-
tion within Europe led to the acknowledgement of a plurality of truth claims.
Thus, while the Enlightenment contestation of superstition reinforced modern
scientific rationalism, it also supported religious tolerance (ibid).
Another significant area where anti-imperialist nature of Enlightenment
thought is discussed is the issue of cosmopolitanism. From Francisco de
Vitoria’s reflections on the right to hospitality to Hugo Grotius’s support of
the mare liberum (the free or open seas), the right to commerce and Enlight-
enment cosmopolitanism are inextricably linked (Muthu 2012: 202–203).
Key Enlightenment ideals of global commerce and trade were based on the
premise that humans are inherently commercial beings (ibid: 200). Herein,
commerce refers not only to market trade and economic arrangements, but
also to communication, exchange, and interaction. Underlying this idea of
transcontinental trade is the spirit of a universal community of humankind. In
contrast to earlier concerns that longstanding contact with alien societies and
ideas could have a corrupting influence, the rise of cosmopolitan thought,
advocating the common ownership of the earth and the kinship of all human
beings, altered the approach to transcontinental trade and travel (ibid: 202).
Commerce was considered a civilizing agent, which transformed feudal
economies through cultivating the commercial spirit of the natives into com-
mercial societies (ibid: 218). Condorcet, for instance, while being a staunch
critic of slavery and empire, suggested that corrupt military enterprises and
imperial regimes be replaced by communities of European merchants who
engage in commerce as part of a non-imperial civilizing mission (ibid: 218–
220). Thus, while subjecting global commerce to critical scrutiny, eighteenth
century Enlightenment thinkers sought to nevertheless defend it in terms of
the right to travel, seek contact with others, exchange ideas and goods and
foster partnerships. Kant suggested in Toward Perpetual Peace [1795] that
since the community of nations of the earth has now gone so far that a violation of right on
one place of the earth is felt in all, the idea of a cosmopolitan right is no fantastic and
exaggerated way of representing justice (Kant 1977b: 216–217).
The flow of goods, ideas, and people across borders, in Kant’s view, made a
theory of cosmopolitan justice (ius cosmopoliticum, Weltbürgerrecht) imper-
ative. This did not concern just sovereign states or particular commercial
entities, but humanity as a whole. Kant employs Verkehr to refer to trade and
Wechselwirkung to describe the communicative and interactive functions of
commerce (ibid: 214). He celebrates the potential of the “spirit of commerce”
to create mutual self-interest among nations (cf. Muthu 2012: 298 fn 20).

27. Affirmative Sabotage of the Master’s Tools 35
At the same time, thinkers like Kant were aware of the profound connec-
tion between maintaining liberty at home and furthering commercial and
maritime empire (ibid: 206). Thus the paradox was that while global com-
merce made the reform of social and political institutions in Europe possible,
it also enabled exploitation and subjugation in the colonies. The irony of the
term “Wechselwirkung” is that it implies reciprocity, a mutual (Wechsel-)
exchange and influence (Wirkung); however, there was no reciprocity in the
imperial “spirit of commerce”. The Enlightenment scholars, plagued by con-
cerns regarding the corrupting effects of the exploitative European colonial
rule, struggled with the deeply unjust global system of commerce, arguing
that imperial domination would ultimately ruin of European civilization itself
(ibid: 207–208).
Focusing on the writings of anti-slavery activists, Muthu views these as
distinctive contributions of Enlightenment discourse that emerged in the
context of transnational commerce and global interconnections (ibid: 215).
Highlighting the moral implications of Europeans in slavery, it was argued
that it was imperative to reform the system of global commerce. With British
Members of the Parliament being invested in the Atlantic Trade and being
plantation owners, anti-slavery legislation was considered unlikely, so ap-
peals were made to wealthy merchants, trading companies, and other elites.
The “enlightened consumer” was called to boycott slave-produced goods like
sugar and rum, thereby intervening in dehumanizing trading practices. It was
argued that the consumption of sugar makes European consumers accessories
to theft and murder (ibid: 218).
Given that the agents of commerce were also the agents of slavery and of
conquest, of the expropriation of goods and lands, Kant points out that the
primary violators of cosmopolitan right are the civilized commercial states.
Thus, thoughts about global society, world citizenship, and transcontinental
trade were balanced out with concerns about imperial and commercial ex-
ploitation and domination. Kant, for instance, was acutely aware that instead
of building peaceful and enlightened societies, global commerce could lead
to universal empire, wars, and oppression (ibid: 208). Some, like Fichte,
advocated national isolationism and self-sufficiency, while others, like Kant,
reiterated the virtues of cosmopolitanism without losing sight of the irony
that the Enlightenment reform of social and political institutions and practic-
es made possible by global commerce was also dehumanizing the non-
Europeans (ibid: 209). For Kant “increasing civilization” did not guarantee
perpetual peace, so he advocated “moral cultivation” through long term pro-
cess of the education of human beings and citizens (ibid: 224). Defending
norms of hospitality and just commerce, Kant condemns exploitative trading
practices (ibid: 226). He is against a world state, whereby his understanding
of global justice is a peaceful community even as he does not rule out rivalry
and antagonism in his conception of global relations (ibid). His idea of “un-

28. 36 Nikita Dhawan
social sociability” encourages productive resistance in the interest of self-
preservation and not conquest. Thus friction and tensions must be balanced
against commercial and communicative connections (ibid: 230).
Global commerce was thus perceived to be a double-edged sword (ibid:
211). Debt and war-making were central issues in Enlightenment debates
about transnational commerce. Kant argues that “perpetual peace” can only
exist if no state increases its national debts to finance wars. Close commer-
cial connections among states would motivate international conflicts to be
resolved through mediation (ibid: 222). Instead of short-term profit, the
“power of money” lies in avoiding a global debt crisis and financial collapse
(Kant 1977b: 226). Kant tempered his celebration of “commercial humanity”
with concerns about transnational commercial domination, acknowledging
the dangerous link between imperial domination and self-domination, be-
tween oppression abroad and moral and political corruption within (Muthu
2012: 207). Diderot and Smith believed that the end of the corrupting influ-
ence of global commerce and international trading companies must come
from outside Europe. The rise of non-European nations would lead to more
equitable global economic relations, not through “mutual friendship”, but
through “mutual fear” (ibid: 214). Ironically they argued that this non-
European anti-colonial resistance would be enabled because of global com-
merce and communication, namely as a result of processes that produced
injustice. The non-European world was in their view humanity’s hope for the
future (ibid: 212).
Muthu claims that the contemporary tendency to attack the Enlightenment
and its justification for modern market-oriented commerce ignores the criti-
cal approach to commerce that many eighteenth-century thinkers deployed in
the course of analyzing and assessing the rise of global commerce in its mul-
tiple forms (ibid: 4). He emphasizes that, for instance, Diderot’s and Kant’s
critical arguments against the coercive effects of global commerce are ne-
glected because they irritate standard narratives that only highlight their
celebration of global commerce (ibid: 16).
Another interesting claim made by Muthu is that in contrast to eighteenth
century political thought, prominent political philosophers of the nineteenth
century like John Stuart Mill, Hegel and Marx explicitly defended European
rule over non-European peoples (2003: 259). Muthu contends that with the
rise of the language of race and nation in the nineteenth century, Enlighten-
ment anti-imperialist thought was marginalized (ibid: 279). One of Muthu’s
strongest claims is that popular nineteenth century political discourses of
race, progress, and nation are projected back into the eighteenth century,
leading to a misrepresentation of the Enlightenment. Contrary to popular
belief, he identifies a return to pre-Enlightenment imperialist sentiments in
post-Enlight-enment scholarship, with eighteenth century political thought
offering a rupture in the imperialist narrative. This innovative perspective

29. Affirmative Sabotage of the Master’s Tools 37
encourages us to rethink prevalent historical and philosophical categories in
political theory. Challenging the typical characterization of “the Enlighten-
ment” as imperialist ideology, Muthu hopes to offer a more discerning un-
derstanding of Enlightenment political theory in order to circumvent the
imperative to either defend or subvert it (ibid: 260). While critics of the En-
lightenment identify a universalist agenda that eschews difference and Oth-
erness and deploys doctrines of progress and emancipation to justify the
subjugation of non-European peoples, defendants of the Enlightenment ide-
als of rights, justice, secularism, rule of law, democracy, and cosmopolitan-
ism see it as championing the cause of the disenfranchised.
Like Muthu, Jennifer Pitts’ A Turn to Empire (2005) traces the displace-
ment of the eighteenth-century critique of empire by nineteenth century im-
perial liberalism. Pitting Hegel, Mill, and Marx against Diderot, Kant, and
Herder, the former are accused of legitimizing the conquest of non-European
peoples and territories, while the latter are revered as anti-imperialists, who
not only denounced European colonial rule as unjust towards the natives, but
also politically and economically disastrous for Europe. In Pitts view, the
liberal turn to empire displaced theories of cultural diversity in favor of no-
tions of European superiority and native “backwardness” (Pitts 2005: 2).
Examining the reasons for the decline of eighteenth-century critiques and the
emergence of new justifications of empire in the nineteenth century, Pitts
investigates how despite a commitment to the values of equality, human
dignity, freedom, the rule of law, and self-government, their investment in
discourses of progress and civilization led liberal political philosophers to
condone imperial projects (ibid: 3). The support for the violent conquest and
des-potic rule of non-Europeans among thinkers normally celebrated for their
progressive ideas implicates the liberal tradition in coercive discourses and
practices.
Thus one encounters a deep contradiction at the heart of European dis-
courses about its Other, which made the otherwise progressive liberal think-
ers imperialism’s most prominent defenders (ibid: 4). While pronouncing
equality and freedom, they endorsed different political standards for different
people resulting in incongruity in their positions on domestic and interna-
tional politics. One of the best examples of this is Mill: While he fought for
democracy at home, he supported despotism in the colony. Burke, in con-
trast, was a committed anti-imperialist, even as he was critical of the revolu-
tionary “rights of man”. Likewise, Bentham too was skeptical of European
claims of cultural and political superiority and was deeply concerned about
the dangers of imperialism for political liberties at home. Others like Con-
dorcet, while denouncing the cruelties of imperialism, rationalized it on the
grounds that non-Europeans were incapable of self-government and self-
improvement and thus required the guidance of the Europeans (ibid: 6–7).

30. 38 Nikita Dhawan
It is claimed that the transition from eighteenth to nineteenth century saw
theories of progress become more triumphalist and less tolerant of cultural
difference. In Pitts view, while eighteenth-century thinkers were staunch
believers of European superiority vis-à-vis the rest of the world, they were
nonetheless troubled by the injustice of European colonial rule (ibid: 4).
Having experienced the violence of autocratic regimes in Europe, thinkers
like Kant, Herder and Diderot vehemently challenged the claim that it was
the duty of the Europeans to spread their political cultures and institutions
across the world (ibid: 15). In the nineteenth century, a number of factors,
from the end of the ancien régime in France and the extension of suffrage in
Britain, to the abolition of the slave trade and slavery and the economic and
technological breakthroughs of the industrial revolution, contributed to the
surge in “civilizational confidence” (ibid: 4, 15). Thus nineteenth-century
thinkers were con-vinced of the rightness of political order at home and be-
lieved that “backward” societies were better off with European despotism
rather than local rule (ibid). In France, the conviction was that they were
uniquely qualified to spearhead the mission civilisatrice thanks to their revo-
lutionary commitment to liberty and equality. Britons, similarly, were confi-
dent of their fitness to spread civilization, in light of their country’s progress
toward political equality. Thus the extension of democratic participation in
Europe went hand in glove with the increased support for imperial expansion
in the name of exporting good government. European superiority was cast in
intellectual, moral, technological, economic, cultural, and political instead of
only biological terms.
One of the most important reasons for the surge in civilizational confi-
dence, in Pitts view, was the rise in economic and technological develop-
ment, which of course was parasitical on the exploitation of the labor, land,
and natural resources in the colonies (ibid: 17). With the colonies functioning
as markets for European goods, the stagnation in the colonial economies was
explained via racial stereotypes of inefficient and unproductive natives and
not in terms of colonial exploitative rule that deindustrialized and deurban-
ized the colonies (ibid). The imposition of trading regimes favorable to Eu-
ropean commercial interests destroyed the manufacturing economy and led to
the emergence of increasingly agrarian and peasant-based economies in the
colonies. This in turn reified religious, caste, and tribal structures leading to
“traditionalization” instead of “modernization”. With racial and cultural
explanations for economic depression in the colonies, colonial rule became
once again the solution for “underdevelopment”. Ironically, while the
“backwardness” of the colonies was invoked as the justification for civilizing
European rule by liberal supporters of the empire, that very regime contribut-
ed to the creation of “backwardness” (ibid).
Liberal notions of progress, liberty, tolerance, democracy, civil society,
and the public sphere converged in the all-embracing civilization thesis.

31. Affirmative Sabotage of the Master’s Tools 39
History becomes episodic, with historical time divided into tradition and
modernity, stagnation and development, superstition and the triumph of rea-
son. The authoritarian irrationality of the East was read as a sign of oriental
despotism and immoral feudalism, which proved that the Orient occupied a
lower stage in the evolution of modernity. Eastern political systems were
seen to deny the possibility of rationality and freedom and thus the develop-
ment of individuality. The legitimization strategy of colonialism as a civiliz-
ing mission and the “dynamic of difference” between civilized and “barbar-
ic” societies conceded the possibility of the natives becoming civilized, but,
of course, guidance by the Europeans was necessary. This was the infamous
colonial pedagogic project of helping “backward” societies to overcome their
“civilizational infantilism” (Mehta 1999: 70). Thus refuting the “biology is
destiny” doctrine, imperial liberalism upheld the “capacity for civilization” of
the natives. It was argued that some societies are at a lower stage of evolution
and have to be educated like children to make them capable of enjoying free-
dom. The political incompetence of the colonized could be corrected through
colonial education and the correct form of government that would enable
them to realize their civilizational potential. This offered the natives the pos-
sibility to overcome the stage of “rawness” (Rohigkeit) that is marked by
instinct and develop requite capacities to reason and thereby exercise free-
dom and consent, which is central to the legitimacy of political authority.
And those who are not in the position to reason and exercise consent may be
governed without their consent (Mehta 1999: 59).
Liberalism rests on the promise that all human beings are born equal and
free and strives toward universal suffrage and self-determination. However,
while human nature was understood to be equal by birth, it was nonetheless
marked by difference due to people’s differing capacities. This justified the
subjugation of some by the others, who became gate-keepers to privilege.
Political inclusion was contingent upon the qualified capacity to reason. This
resulted in the pedagogic obsession to instruct the natives in learning to rea-
son. Locke’s Some Thoughts Concerning Education [1693] is almost like a
manual, ranging from toilet training to instructions about what should be
consumed at what time of the day, how to treat servants and others of “lower
rank” appropriately, and how to temper one’s emotions. And although the
capacity to reason is “natural”, the emphasis is on how rationality must get
inculcated (Mehta 1999: 60–61). Liberalism is a project of breeding civility,
with education becoming a process of initiation. Although we are born free,
we are really free only when we learn to exercise the rationality necessary for
political inclusion. Reform is central to the liberal political agenda and in-
volves the process of realignment, an impulse to better the world (ibid: 62).
At the same time, liberal fantasies of reforming and civilizing the Other were
accompanied by the fear of the reformed, civilized Other who would make
the colonial project of civilizing the “uncivilized” redundant (Bhabha 1994).

32. 40 Nikita Dhawan
The “Paradox of Modernity” is that liberal values were preached to the
colonized, but denied in practice. Belief in the evolutionary difference be-
tween the metropolis and the colony made it possible for a thinker like Mill
to be a radical advocate of freedom even as he endorsed enlightened imperi-
alism. He claimed that “despotism is a legitimate mode of government in
dealing with barbarians, provided the end be their improvement” (1989: 13).
The Tunisian philosopher and historian Hichem Djait (1985: 101) accuses
imperialist Europe of denying its own vision of man. Colonized societies
could be justifiably excluded from the sphere of sovereignty by virtue of
their not fulfilling European norms. Subsequently, those who possess sover-
eignty can legitimately dominate those who do not (Anghie 2007). The con-
struction of the West as a normative power left a trail of violent and exploita-
tive systems in the name of modernity, progress, rationality, emancipation,
rights, justice, and peace. Any non-Western individual, group, or state want-
ing to qualify as “civilized” and modern had to comply and imitate the Euro-
pean norms or risk the violence of being forcibly “civilized” and modernized.
While European norms were deemed worth emulating on the grounds of their
superiority, the natives’ attempts to imitate European norms could only pro-
duce “bad”, “weak”, or “failed” copies, which once again confirmed the
authority of the European “original”.
The overcoming of civilizational deficiencies could be achieved through
building cognitive capacity, inculcating self-governance and discipline, fos-
tering abstract and critical thought, and making the colonized trustworthy and
morally upright (Pitts 2005: 20). Thus, while rejecting biological determin-
ism, tacit assumptions about “national” character justified the exclusion of
the colonized from equality and reciprocity till they were adequately civi-
lized. This progressivist universalism justified European imperial rule as a
benefit to “backward” subjects, authorized the retraction of sovereignty of
many indigenous states, and licensed increasingly interventionist policies in
colonized societies’ systems of education, law, property, and religion (ibid:
21).
A key issue is how Europeans acquired knowledge of the people and so-
cieties they judged. How critical were they of their sources of information
and their evaluative criteria and biases? Pitts outlines how Tocqueville al-
tered his views about what was practicable and appropriate for French Alge-
ria as a result of his journeys, while refraining to write about India because of
his inability to travel there. James Mill, in contrast, boasted that his writings,
which were based on his readings of English-language literature on India,
were impartial and objective because he had not been distracted or contami-
nated through contact with the natives that plagued the writings of travelers
and administrators (Pitts 2005: 6).
At the same time Pitts unpacks the inconsistencies in the writings of
Burke, Tocqueville and Mill (ibid: 242). Despite his failures, Burke was

33. Affirmative Sabotage of the Master’s Tools 41
untiring in his political efforts to challenge British colonialism especially in
India. He accuses British colonizers of disregarding the rule of law, thereby
disenfranchising the Indians, who could be sanctioned, fined, incarcerated, or
killed without recourse to legal protection or appeal (ibid: 247). Pitts propos-
es that Burke was not a singular “freak” figure; rather a number of eight-
eenth-century thinkers were critical of cross-cultural judgments and Europe’s
cultural presumptuousness (ibid: 246).
In contrast, despite awareness of the violence of colonial policies,
Tocqueville’s anxieties about the process of democratization in France con-
tributed to his support for French colonial expansion in Algeria. Contrary to
Burke, Tocqueville argues that the development of a stable and liberal demo-
cratic regime necessitates the exploitation of non-European societies, legiti-
mizing the suspension of principles of human equality and self-determination
abroad in order to secure stability at home. In choosing to pursue national
glory through empire, Tocqueville condoned the subjugation of the Algerians
for the sake of French national consolidation (ibid: 248). Tocqueville’s ar-
guments for French imperial expansion demonstrate how self-interest drew
French liberals into advocating exclusionary and violent international politics
that were a betrayal of liberal humanitarianism. The instrumental value of
imperial expansion for domestic politics shows how the process of democra-
tization in the metropolis was inextricably bound up with imperial politics
(ibid).
Mill, on the other hand, believed that the governance of the empire must
be kept as insulated from the democratic process in the metropolis as possible
(ibid: 249). In contrast to Tocqueville, his justifications for imperialism fo-
cused not on how Britain profited from colonial rule, but rather on the bene-
fits for “backward” subjects (ibid). Interestingly, discussions about the exten-
sion of the franchise at home were often linked to the incapacity of colonial
subjects to participate in political power. The debate was conducted not in
the language of political rights, but in terms of their “character”. “Moral
worth” was viewed not simply in the capacity for self-rule, but in the exer-
cise of power over others, which served as a criterion for political office and
participation (ibid: 249). Debates about extending suffrage to women or
workingmen differentiated between the character of those that were declared
worthy of participation by virtue of being “respectable”, independent, self-
restrained, industrious, in contrast to those who were to be excluded for be-
ing imprudent, dependent, enslaved to passions or customs and incapable of
sustained labor (ibid). Despite the ideological differences between the politi-
cal positions of opponents and advocates of franchise reform, both groups
insisted on the moral integrity of potential voters as they were anxious about
the possible dangers of an expanded franchise for the quality of political
decisions (ibid).

34. 42 Nikita Dhawan
Feminist writings of the period contested the exclusion of women from
political power on the grounds of their “immaturity” and questioned the
analogy between women and children mobilized to deny women political
participation (ibid: 250). However, feminist writers seldom highlighted the
similarities between the woman-child analogy and the barbarian-child analo-
gy, or challenged the exclusion of colonized adults because of their supposed
immaturity. The idea of “backward” colonial subjects participating in their
own governance was considered absurd (ibid). This indicates the tenuous
relation between anti-imperialist thought and Western feminism.
Moral worth was measured for instance through literacy, which legiti-
mized access to political participation. Mill rationalized unequal political
power not only in terms of differing political competence, but on the basis of
people’s unequal worth as human beings. As Pitts points out, he insisted that
the franchise was a responsibility and privilege to be earned and not a uni-
versal right (ibid: 161). Mill characterized the English working classes in
similar terms he used to describe the “semi-barbarous” people of India: they
were subservient to custom and superstition and unappreciative of progress
and innovation (ibid: 162). Here one detects interconnections between exclu-
sions within Europe and in the colonies. Mill proposed that colonial govern-
ments could not be held accountable to their subject populations; that pro-
gress must be imposed by appropriately trained civil servants (ibid).
Interestingly both Tocqueville and Mill later voiced concerns about the
moral and political perils of imperialism. They were cognizant of the vio-
lence involved in European conquests, even as they were confronted with the
hypocritical nature of their theories (ibid: 255). There was increasing anxiety
about the ability of colonial rulers to govern the people they did not respect
or understand. Thus, even as liberalism alleged to be politically inclusionary,
it is deeply linked to the empire and the political disenfranchisement of the
colonized, even as it claimed to empower them.
Imperialist Enlightenment or Enlightenment Against
Imperialism?
In the past few years there has been increasing debate whether postcolonial
scholarship that draws on the insights of Enlightenment thinkers reproduces
Eurocentrism. Especially Latin American scholars like Walter Mignolo
(1995) and Ramón Grosfoguel (2007) categorically reject the Enlightenment
as harbinger of exploitation and destruction in the form of colonialism and
capitalism and critique the ideological erasures and hollow claims of the
emancipatory nature of the Enlightenment. They advocate a “return” to in-
digenous cosmologies uncontaminated by colonialism.