Postmodernism and Post-Colonialism Have Become Cynical Anti-Intellectual Pursuits
By
Nadeem F. Paracha
February 7,
2021
One point
that supporters of Prime Minister Imran Khan really like to assert is that, “he
is a self-made man.” They insist that the country should be led by people like
him and not by those who were ‘born into wealth and power.’
Illustration by Abro
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According
to the American historian Richard Hofstadter, such views are largely aired by
the middle-classes. To Hofstadter, this view also has an element of
‘anti-intellectualism.’ In his 1963 book, Anti-intellectualism in American
Life, Hofstadter writes that, as the middle-class manages to attain political
influence, it develops a strong dislike for what it sees as a ‘political
elite.’ But since this elite has more access to better avenues of education,
the middle-class also develops an anti-intellectual attitude, insisting that,
as a ruler, a self-made man is better than a better educated man.
Khan’s core
support comes from Pakistan’s middle-classes. And even though he graduated from
the prestigious Oxford University, he is more articulate when speaking about
cricket — a sport that once turned him into a star — than about anything
related to what he is supposed to be addressing as the country’s prime minister.
But many of
his supporters do not have a problem with this, especially in contrast to his
equally well-educated opponents, Bilawal Bhutto and Maryam Nawaz, who sound a
lot more articulate in matters of politics. To Khan’s supporters, these two are
from ‘dynastic elites’ who cannot relate to the sentiments of the ‘common
people’ like a self-made man can.
It’s
another matter that Khan is not the kind of self-made man that his supporters
would like people to believe. He came from a well-to-do family that had roots
in the country’s military-bureaucracy establishment. He went to prestigious
educational institutions and spent most his youth as a socialite in London.
Indeed, whereas the Bhutto and Sharif offsprings were born in wealth and power
which is aiding their climb in politics, Khan’s political ambitions were
carefully nurtured by the military-establishment.
An
anti-intellectual attitude is often part and parcel of a politically
influential middle-class that has a strong dislike for what it sees as a
‘political elite’
Nevertheless,
perhaps conscious of the fact that his personality is not suited to support an
intellectual bent, Khan has positioned himself as a self-made man who appeals
to the ways of the ‘common people.’ He doesn’t.
For
example, wearing the national dress and using common everyday Urdu lingo does
not cut it anymore. It did when the former PM Z.A. Bhutto did the same. But
years after his demise in 1979, such ‘populist’ antics have become a worn-out
cliche. The difference between the two is that Bhutto was a bonafide
intellectual. Even his idea to present himself as a ‘people’s man’ was born
from a rigorous intellectual scheme. However, Khan does appeal to that
particular middle-class disposition that Hofstadter was writing about.
When he
attempts to sound profound, his views usually appear to be a mishmash of
theories of certain Islamic and so-called ‘post-colonial’ scholars. The result
is rhetoric that actually ends up smacking of anti-intellectualism.
So what is
anti-intellectualism? It is understood to be a view that is hostile to
intellectuals. According to Walter E. Houghton, in the 1952 edition of the
Journal of History of Ideas, the term’s first known usage dates back to 1881 in
England, when science and ideas such as the ‘separation of religion and the
state’, and the ‘supremacy of reason’ had gained momentum.
This
triggered resentment in certain sections of the British society who began to
suspect that intellectuals were formulating these ideas to undermine the
importance of theology and long-held traditions.
According
to the American historian Robert D. Cross, as populism started to become a
major theme in American politics in the early 20th century, some mainstream
politicians politicised anti-intellectualism as a way to portray themselves as
men of the people. For example, US presidents Theodore Roosevelt (1901-1909)
and Woodward Wilson (1913-1921) insisted that ‘character was more important
than intellect.’
Across the
20th century, the politicised strand of anti-intellectualism was active in
various regions. Communist regimes in China, the Soviet Union and Cambodia
systematically eliminated intellectuals after describing them as remnants of
overthrown bourgeoisie cultures. In Germany, the far-right intelligentsia
differentiated between ‘passive intellectuals’ and ‘active intellectuals.’
Apparently, the passive intellectuals were abstract and thus useless whereas
the active ones were ‘men of action.’ Hundreds of so-called passive
intellectuals were harassed, exiled or killed in Nazi Germany.
In the
1950s, intellectuals in the US began to be suspected by firebrand members of
the Republican Party of serving the interests of communist Russia. In former
East Pakistan, hundreds of intellectuals were violently targeted for supporting
Bengali nationalism.
But whereas
these forms of anti-intellectualism were emerging from established political
forces from both the left and the right, according to the American historian of
science Michael Shermer, a more curious idea of anti-intellectualism began to
develop within Western academia.
In the
September 1, 2017 issue of Scientific American, Shermer writes that this was
because ‘postmodernism’ had begun to ‘hijack’ various academic disciplines in
the 1990s.
Postmodernism
emerged in the 20th century as a critique of modernism. It derided modernism as
a destructive force that had used its ideas of secularism, democracy, economic
progress, science and reason as tools of subjugation. Shermer writes that, by
the 1990s, postmodernism was positing that there was no objective truth and
that science and empirical facts are tools of oppression. This is when even the
celebrated leftist intellectual Noam Chomsky began to warn that postmodernism
had turned anti-science.
‘Post-colonialism’
or the critique of the remnants of Western colonialism was very much a product
of postmodernism as well. Oliver Lovesey in his book The Postcolonial
Intellectual and the historian Arif Dirlik in the 1994 issue of The Critical
Inquiry, take to task post-colonialism as a discipline now populated by
non-white groups of academics who found themselves in positions of privilege in
Western universities.
Lovesey
quotes the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek as saying, “Post-colonialism is
the invention of some rich guys from India who saw that they could make a good
career in top Western universities by playing on the guilt of white liberals.”
Imran Khan
is a classic example of how postmodernism and post-colonialism have become
cynical anti-intellectual pursuits. Khan often reminds us that social and
economic progress should not be undertaken to please the West because that
smacks of a colonial mindset.
So, as his
regime presides over a nose-diving economy and severe political polarisation,
the PM was recently reported (in the January 22 issue of The Friday Times) as
discussing with his ministers whether he should mandate the wearing of the
dupatta by all women TV anchors. Go figure.
Original
Headline: THE DEATH OF INTELLECT
Source: The Dawn, Pakistan
New
Age Islam, Islam Online, Islamic
Website, African
Muslim News, Arab
World News, South
Asia News, Indian
Muslim News, World
Muslim News, Women
in Islam, Islamic
Feminism, Arab
Women, Women
In Arab, Islamophobia
in America, Muslim
Women in West, Islam
Women and Feminism