Historicity meets its limits

Post-modernists have been more effective at deconstructing modernity's foundations, including its notions of historicity and the separation of history and faith, while exhibiting scepticism towards affirming alternative conceptualizations of past and present, including those that may be rooted in religious or spiritual world-views. In this article I argue that in the non-west, where modernity and its categories have not always enjoyed a hegemonic status, the boundaries between history and faith have often been fluid. Here the post-colonial intervention becomes necessary both in truly recognizing difference and in suggesting alternative ethical possibilities that point to the limits of historicism and modernity. I read one of India's prominent social reformers from the colonial period, M G Ranade, as someone who while greatly drawn to historicist ideas was also sceptical about the modern separation between history and faith which he believed was not innate to Indian society and was deeply problematic in its ethical implications. Ranade, through a critical engagement with Hindu ‘traditions’ and his own personal piety, both points to the limits of historicism and suggests alternative ethical possibilities to that of the modern secular one

Aesthetics · Archaeology · Colonialism · Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Faith · Hegemony · Historicism · Humanism · Modernity · New Historicism · Piety · Political science · Politics · Skepticism · Sociology · Theology · Anthropological Studies and Insights · History · Law · Philosophy · Religion and Society Interactions · Religion, Society, and Development · Religious studies

• Shared Devotion, Shared Food

  Jon Keune•Shared Devotion, Shared Food•2021

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