(DOWNLOAD) "Introduction to New Modernities and the "Third World" (Report)" by Valerian Henton, Jennifer E. Ramanathan, Geetha DeSousa * eBook PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Introduction to New Modernities and the "Third World" (Report)
- Author : Valerian Henton, Jennifer E. Ramanathan, Geetha DeSousa
- Release Date : January 01, 2010
- Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines,Books,Professional & Technical,Education,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 89 KB
Description
With regard to the concept of the thematic issue, namely modernities and the "third world," we postulate that the use of the designation of "third world" is with a specific connotation as over the last twenty years several sets of labels have been used to gesture towards the legacies of colonialism. Aijaz Ahmad's critique is relevant here as Ahmad criticized the concept of "third world" on the grounds that when it is applied to literature its imprecision and capaciousness devolved to a form of Orientalism akin to nineteenth-century anthropological thought although at the same time he acknowledged the concept's potential as polemics (4). Other terms have suited particular disciplines more readily while in the humanities and social sciences the concept of the "third world" suggests that the loci of the designation are spaces of struggle to assert self-referential authority in economic, social, cultural, and political spheres albeit more often than not exclusively in relation to the West. We contend that the concept and its corollaries such as "developing world" or "postcolonial spaces" obscure relations of power. The question of whether many countries considered "third world" in the 1955 Bandung conference of non-aligned nations would still be in that category has been raised and the concept's pejorative connotations have been critiqued increasingly. The binary oppositions between "first" and "third worlds" seem to flatten the differences within each broad region, a problem that is addressed by references to the third world in the first (see Ahmad; Tambiah). It is owing to the controversial nature of the concept that our nomenclature has to reflect current positions towards both the world and our fields of study and that no one designation can encompass all the connections made between a field of study and the world at large. The notion of North/South retains some explanatory power, but does not have the influence and currency of the concept of the postcolonial and the myriad contexts in which it surfaces. Postcolonial, while seemingly neutral and more manageable in terms of constituting canons and constructing theories situates colonialism in the past and this appears to us not applicable in many instances. The use and orientation towards a particular concept and term is a matter of emphasis. "World bank literature" (see Kumar) is one new conceptualization where the focus is shifted to how literature, film, and art are produced for a Western readership and Western consumers. A term with broader appeal, "transnational studies" (see Hannerz), while working with migration and the dispersion of populations also has currency at the moment, but is not quite appropriate for the studies in the present thematic issue where in several instances the flows of ideas to specific loci are discussed; the nuances attached to the term "cosmopolitanism" (see Cheah and Robbins), while intersecting with several articles in this thematic issue detracts from the investment in specific ideas of the modern; the specificity of "subaltern studies" (see Guha) and the differences drawn between colonized peoples also does not suit the articles here, as many of them are about metropolitan transactions Another way of posing the validity of the use of the term "third world" with all its imperfections and its ability to forge connections between groups of peoples is to ask whether a moment of "post third world" has arrived and whether the issues presented by the connotations of the term can now be abandoned. This would be analogous to asking if the post-racial and post-feminist moments have been ushered in making the frameworks both of critiques of race and racism and the subordination of women redundant. Granted, the slotting of countries into "third world" spaces is not stable, but arguably the unevenness of development within these countries is a function of purposeful underdevelopment.
 "Introduction to New Modernities and the "Third World" (Report)" by Valerian Henton, Jennifer E. Ramanathan, Geetha DeSousa * eBook PDF Kindle ePub Free){kind=link}