Abstract
This is one of the significant books that decipher the production of knowledge and formation of subjects of modernity. It reflects upon the triumph of reason entering into scienticism which gives birth to the mixture of constitutive contradictions of innate modernity. The change never was holistic and its direction not essentially linear. The book is an interesting interplay of modernity with ‘enchanted places’ and modern places, their opposition that rests on ‘pervasive procedures of the temporalization of space and the spatalization of time’. The modernity, when encounters with its colonised subjects, the disciplines of knowledge from the sites of power to marginality reveal the mode of opposition rather than the mechanisms of binaries. Thus, its exploration shows, in colonised sites, the past and the present are meshed up in an evolutionary mode that seems like constituted binaries. In the treatment of subjects of modernity, the book reveals how these subjects are formed and transformed by ‘spatial imperatives and temporal stipulations giving birth to the formulate contractions in a blurred manifestations’. Moving in this terrain of historical formations and contemporary impositions, the knowledge of modernity entwines ‘hermeneutic impulses and critical considerations’, which allowed power constitutive of ‘western empire to interplay with the details to present stereotypes of the subjects of modernity. This is neither a fully fledged assimilation of these societies nor does it present embodiment of alternate sites,. Like history and contemporary, the book is located on ‘the cusp of anthropology and history’, which traditionally act like rivals but still find convergence in this book. That is the beauty which a reader would be allured to through the terse prose.
The author, using history and memory in sociological imagination, relates how modernity envisages shifting orientations, which underneath is a play of hegemonic representations that creates the knowledge which never remains a question in time and space. On this edgy discourse, the book, in Chapter 4, critically develops a relationship between history and anthropology with a significant review of literature in a shifting terrain of divergence and convergence, ‘on offer are critical questions here, why and how are archives, fields, disciplines organized in this way that they are. What does this tell us about their very nature? Should not more of contemporary anthropology turn away from the endless difference, often deferred, of recursive formations-traditional or hybrid or modern—to rather become the study of subjects of modernity? Should not more history writing critically query the routine sameness of the modern subjects in order to explore …coeval temporalities in world of modernity and many others’ (p. 131). The book tries to come out from this conundrum of knowledge boundaries in Chapter 5, and in Chapter 6, ‘Modern Subjects: An epilogue’, the book finds pluralities and contradictions of identities acutely entailing the issues of time and space. The book pleads that the divergent process of power technology and representation, relationship of production and mode of production, which articulate historical practices are critical standings for identity formations. He cites illustrations of South Africa, ‘exact divisions and conflicts, critical spatial and temporal dimensions bearings between British and administrators, evangelical missionaries and ditch settlers led to the elaboration of race and empire’ and significant studies in India reveal that the ‘shaping of forests and the making of tribal places in nineteenth century woodland Bengal’, brings together several of the concerns projected in colonial discourses theory of a critical historical geography. Over the past two centuries how ‘large internally differentiated community in order to trace the endeavours of its members within changing relations of power and property under post-colonial regimes and colonial rule in the region; track the groups negotiation and reproduction of ritual authority and gender hierarchies; and explore its articulation of caste and Hinduism, evangelism and empire, and state and nation, especially these were played out in everyday arenas’ (p. 156). The book tries to unfold the overlapping in history and makes an effort to release the present from these manufactured contradictions. This ‘contemporary arrogance’ overplays the uniqueness of our times, the pluralities and differences; its surfacing lies in questioning the dominant history writing which in academic achievement presents an image of reified West and the sharp criticism to the designs of a singular modernity. The process of homogenisation through melting pot thesis has not only failed but also escalated the resurgence of tradition, culture and identity that reason and nation have not been able to stamp out. It is a renewed salience of modernity, and its different shades. In India, the modern subject has yet to bear the ‘immense burden of caste discriminations, gender disparity and centrality of power and domination’. The subject of modernity needs the ‘infliction of alterity by authority’ and acceptance of difference with reflective subjectivity.
The book is a reflective discourse and a dialogue with past by contemporary overlapping of civilisation claims, yet unable to overcome the hierarchical spatial and temporal core. In a subtle way, it hints at the vulnerable subjectivity that brings both past and present to crisis. Dube’s endeavour is a worthy one and its execution is well done, but needs further clarifications on analytic categories that show the rupture of modernity without much pathway in sight. There is a ray of hope offered by time space dynamics for accommodative pluralities. I am more optimistic about the future project of alternate modernity, where future sociologists will focus on non-Western world. No doubt, it would be on identified traditions and emergent consensus which will enrich the project of multiple-modernity. The book is a significant contribution to the study of subject of modernity forcing us to reimagine the meaning and power in time and space intertwined dynamics.