Can the theory and practice of the yogic tradition serve as a challenge to dominant cultural and political norms in the Western world? In this essay I demonstrate that modern yoga is a creature of fabrication, while arguing that yogic norms can simultaneously reinforce and challenge the norms of contemporary Western neoliberal societies. In its current and most common iteration in the West, yoga practice does stand in danger of reinforcing neoliberal constructions of selfhood. However, yoga does contain ample resources for challenging neoliberal subjectivity, but this requires reading the yogic tradition in a particular way, to emphasize certain philosophical elements over others, while directing its practice toward an inwardoriented detachment from material outcomes and desires. Contemporary claims about yoga's counterhegemonic status often rely on exaggerated notions of its former "purity" and "authenticity," which belie its invented and retrospectively reconstructed nature. Rather than engaging in these debates about authenticity, scholars and practitioners may productively turn their energies toward enacting a resistant, anti-neoliberal practice of yoga, while remaining self-conscious about the particularity and partiality of the interpretive position on which such a practice is founded.
The emergence of the field of comparative political theory suggests that the encounter with non-Western texts be considered a legitimate and necessary part of political theory, so that the field is reconstituted in a truly cosmopolitan manner. However, this also presents unique challenges to political theorists. Chief among these is the question of what hermeneutic approach would allow us to understand well the ideas contained in these texts. This essay will argue for a particular approach to the interpretation of non-Western texts and ideas, providing an account of a methodologically self-conscious approach to comparative political theory. A serious comparative political theorist will inevitably have to alternate between an internal immersion in the lived experience of the text, and an external stance of commentary and exegesis of the text. Struggling with the conflicting imperatives of these moments is precisely the task of a more nuanced approach to comparative political theory. Ultimately, however, I also argue that this particular approach has implications for the development of a genuine cosmopolitanism in the field of political theory. A cosmopolitan political theory is precisely one in which such struggles and complex encounters with the otherness of texts are increasingly made available to provoke, dislocate, and challenge our own understandings of political life. The method I offer is thus deeply implicated in the evolution of our selfunderstanding as political theorists.
I argue here that a clearer conception of Gandhi’s nonviolence is required in order to understand his resonance for contemporary environmentalism. Gandhi’s nonviolence incorporates elements of both the brahmin or ascetic, as well as the ksatriya or warrior. Contemporary environmental movements by and large over-emphasize the self-abnegating, self-denying and self-scrutinizing ascetic components of Gandhi’s thought, to the neglect of the confrontational and warrior-like ones. In so doing, they often also over-emphasize the ethical dimension of Gandhi’s thought, missing the discursive political dimension with which this Gandhian ethics is interwoven. I will argue here that the warrior-like and confrontational political aspect of Gandhi’s nonviolence must be brought to the fore in discussions of environmentalism. In so doing, Gandhi can be read as an advocate of a certain form of “ecological” citizenship, requiring both the scrutiny of one’s bodily consumptive behaviours, as well as the placement of one’s body on the frontlines of aggressive political contestation.
Cosmopolitan political thought is an emerging subfield of political theory. It is motivated by a turn beyond studying the texts and ideas of the traditional Western canon and also by reflections on what kinds of approaches should characterize such study. It emerges from, yet distinguishes itself from, two other subfields: cosmopolitanism and comparative political theory. It acknowledges that theorizing beyond Western resources is crucial, but it suggests that the more important question is a methodological one. That is, it is not simply about the content of which ideas and texts are studied, but also about how they are studied and what assumptions are revealed by a given way of approaching non-Western resources. Cosmopolitanism traces the emergence of its ideas to the ancient Greek and Roman traditions of Stoicism, calling for recognizing the community of rational beings worldwide as the source of the most fundamental moral and social obligations. Contemporary cosmopolitanisms apply this idea to a diversity of themes and debates, ranging from questions of nationalism and global distributive justice to international law, human rights, global democracy, climate change, and just war theory. Comparative political theory, meanwhile, is a subfield of political theory that emerged to focus on the study of political thought from civilizations outside the West. These studies include, among others, histories of political thought within certain non-Western traditions (such as the Indic, Islamic, Chinese, African, or Latin American ones), the history of particular concepts within civilizations, conceptual comparison across civilizations, and the treatment of interpretive or commentarial debates pertaining to certain concepts or problems within certain traditions. Cosmopolitanism raises the question of broadening the scope of political questions to the global, but it privileges the West and suggests that its intellectual heritage contains resources for such theorizing. Comparative political theory addresses non-Western texts and ideas, but it remains silent on which approaches would constitute a more cosmopolitan evolution in political theory’s self-understanding. Cosmopolitan political thought moves beyond both these discourses, engaging in methodological reflection about how the tasks and purposes of political theorizing might be reconceived so that the very practices of theorizing might become more cosmopolitan. Among other things, it argues that any study of non-Western thought must proceed from within, from a perspective internal to the tradition and its central texts, preoccupations, ideas, and concerns. Thus, it emphasizes detailed study of, and immersion within, any important civilizational intellectual tradition as the prerequisite for any subsequent engagement with such ideas. The study of works within particular civilizations serves to further a more cosmopolitan mode of political theorizing rather than simply serving as an artifact of regionally specific interest.
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