Sweeping critiques of Western colonialism buttress the status quo.

The central flaw in the argument advanced by the CER authors stems from an apparent lack of awareness of contemporary scholarship on the comparative history of imperialism and colonialism. Criticism of the Eurocentric assumptions that inform much mainstream social science is certainly warranted, as is critique of the excessive influence exerted by institutions such as key journals based in North America or Europe. However, when critical arguments rely on selective and historically flimsy claims for the uniquely colonial quality of modern Western culture, the risks are twofold: firstly, and fundamentally, actually to sustain or reinforce Eurocentrism by deflecting the critical gaze from non-Western societies and the patterns of oppression (‘colonial’ or otherwise) therein; and secondly, by the same token to weaken or discredit the case for a more inclusive and culturally sensitive approach to the comparative analysis of education.

The empirical and theoretical flaws of this approach are intertwined with the problematic language in which its arguments are typically couched. Historical and anthropological scholarship on East Asia and other regions amply demonstrates that colonialist or neo-colonialist attitudes and strategies of domination are not and have never been a Western monopoly. But decolonial theory posits the more or less uniform victimhood of non-Western ‘others,’ deriving claims for the moral superiority of ‘authentically’ indigenous perspectives. Debating the validity of such claims is complicated by an emphasis on ‘positionality.’ Readers are exhorted to judge an argument less by standards of evidence or logic (often portrayed as camouflaging a Western ‘will to power’) than on the basis of the writer’s self-identification or ‘positioning.’ The language of ‘epistemic violence,’ ‘secure spaces,’ ‘epistemological diffidence,’ ‘border thinking’ and ‘location’ suggests an image of the critical scholar as revolutionary guerrilla, valiantly sniping at Western hegemony from his or her [their] marginal redoubt. In so far as this reflects a desire for a more just, tolerant and sustainable society – one that values diversity as a resource for mutual learning – it is admirable. However, if we seek to combat oppression, in the educational sphere or beyond, it is incumbent on us to pick our enemies, and our language, carefully. Aiming a blunderbuss at the supposedly illegitimate or self-serving ‘universalism’ of ‘modern Western social science,’ while ignoring how calls for indigenisation and ‘authenticity’ are used to legitimate highly oppressive regimes across Asia and elsewhere, is to risk undermining those universal social and political values (freedom of expression, civil liberties, rule of law) upon which critical scholars themselves rely.

An embrace of ‘opacity’ or ‘epistemological diffidence,’ advocated by several of the CER contributors, threatens to be similarly self-defeating. While they share an admiration for the Argentine theorist of ‘decoloniality,’ Walter Mignolo, the work of his brilliant compatriot, the writer, poet and essayist Jorge Luis Borges, is far worthier of attention. Borges’ famous fondness for ‘labyrinths’ and the paradoxical was combined with a sharp eye for gratuitous obfuscation and circumlocution (see, for example, his story The Aleph, in Borges 1998, 274–286). Offering his own critique of the fashion for opaque jargon in mainstream social science, the émigré Polish sociologist Stanislav Andreski wrote acerbically that ‘one of the pleasures obtainable through recourse to confusion and absurdity is to be able to feel, and publicly to claim, that one knows when in reality one does not’ (1974, 95). ‘Opacity’ in imaginative literature may intrigue or entertain, but in interpreting and explaining unfamiliar societies, cultures and education systems, comparativists especially ought to write in clear, accessible language. And while all social scientists can understand the lure of the sweeping generalisation, we should generalise with extreme caution, especially when categorising large swathes of humanity.

Borges’ earliest collection of stories is entitled A Universal History of Iniquity. This appeared in 1935, when there were already rumblings in both East and West of the conflict that would soon engulf Eurasia. Implied in his title was a truth painfully obvious to many contemporaries: that iniquity is indeed universal. The conflicts of the mid-twentieth century starkly illuminated another truth: that iniquity in the modern world, especially (though not only) that associated with totalitarian societies, often consists in essentialising and de-humanising ‘the other’. Hannah Arendt – a thoroughly Eurocentric thinker, but one who addressed, in ‘totalitarianism,’ a theme with global ramifications – wrote of how, through ‘the murder of the moral person in man,’ totalitarian systems transform their citizens into ‘living corpses’ capable of any outrage (2017, 591). But ironically, in the very act of attacking essentialism as applied to ‘non-Western’ cultures, the CER contributors propagate an essentialised view of ‘the West’ itself. Iniquity in the form of coloniality is in their account attributed solely to Western modernity. This view is both inaccurate and dangerous.

The irony in this approach extends to the attribution of agency. Claims to champion the dignity of subaltern, ‘non-Western’ actors are in fact undermined by assertions of their uniform victimhood. This reproduces the very Eurocentrism that ‘decolonial’ scholars quite rightly seek to challenge. In fact, privilege and victimhood have many dimensions, by no means all traceable to the ‘phenomenon of colossal vagueness’ that is colonialism (Osterhammel 2005, 4). One group or individual can plausibly be portrayed as victim, or perpetrator, or both, depending on context and perspective. Were post-war German civilian refugees from Eastern Europe, or Japanese civilians fleeing Manchuria, victims or perpetrators? Or today, is a privately-educated, English-speaking, upper-caste South Asian scholar more accurately to be seen as privileged or under-privileged, in terms of access to power (‘epistemic’ or otherwise) within South Asia or the global academy? ‘Location’ or identity are not reducible to neat labels or discrete categories. As the Anglo-Ghanaian philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah emphasises, according dignity and agency involves recognising that our identities are not just socially given, but also actively chosen. Culture is ‘a process you join, in living a life with others,’ and ‘the values that European humanists like to espouse belong as much to an African or an Asian who takes them up with enthusiasm as to a European’ (2018, 211). The same applies with respect to value systems we have reason to regard as iniquitous, such as those associated with colonialism or neoliberalism.

What, then, are we to make of the traction that totalising anti-Westernism appears to be gaining within the CIE field? On one level, this may tell us more about the state of campus politics, and politics in general, across contemporary America and the broader ‘Anglosphere’, than about the wider world. The worldview that the CER contributors espouse, even as they strain at the shackles of Western epistemology, is redolent of America’s peculiarly racialised identity politics. And notwithstanding claims to marginal positionality, the increasingly widespread currency of such arguments in North American and Anglophone CIE circles reflects their status as an emergent orthodoxy that in key respects mirrors the very ethnocentrism it rejects.

Although the ideas in the CER special issue are presented as challenging both the scholarly mainstream and a wider neoliberal or neocolonial establishment, the seriousness of this challenge is doubtful. Exhortations to embrace ‘opacity’ or to ‘think otherwise’ in the name of ‘contesting coloniality’ imply no coherent programme, and suggest an overwhelmingly negative agenda. Meanwhile, far from risking ostracism, the contributors can expect warm endorsement of their views from regulars at the major international conferences. For many in the CIE community in North America and beyond, sweeping critiques of Western ‘hegemony’, ‘coloniality’ and so forth hold a strong appeal; it is those seeking to question the balance or accuracy of such theorising who risk opprobrium. As Merquior wrote of Foucault, Derrida and their postmodernist or ‘deconstructivist’ followers, their ‘skepsis’, ‘highly placed in the core institutions of the culture it so strives to undermine,’ has come to constitute an ‘official marginality’ (1991, 160).

The potential – and actual – consequences of this are troubling. Takayama et al call for the WCCES in particular to embrace the agenda of ‘contesting coloniality,’ but one conclusion to be drawn from recent events is that this is already happening, with damaging consequences for civility within the Comparative Education field, and for the wider credibility of its scholarly output.15 Reducing scholarship to the projection of the scholar’s own positionality can only lead to fragmentation and irrelevance. To quote Merquior again (paraphrasing Hilary Putnam), ‘to demote rationality, in a relativist way, to a mere concoction of a given historical culture is as reductionist as the logical positivist’s reduction of reason to scientific calculus’ (160). What he calls the ‘Elixir of Pure Negation’ (159) is an intoxicating brew, but it is unlikely to inspire coherent or constructive contributions to addressing the pressing problems of our age: climate change, poverty, inequality and the ethical crisis that underpins them all.

Indeed, it is very likely to do the opposite. The neoliberal cadres of the OECD or World Bank, along with nationalist autocrats from Beijing to Budapest, will be more than happy for ‘critical scholars’ to fulminate against a vaguely-defined ‘West’ while embracing ‘epistemological diffidence’ (Takayama, Sriprakash, and Connell 2017, S18). As one critic of ‘postmodernism’ has put it, the promotion of ‘epistemological pluralism,’ combined with rejection of any ‘settled external viewpoint,’ means that, ‘so far as real-life ongoing politics is concerned,’ postmodernists, along with de-constructivists, decolonialists and their ilk, tend to be ‘passively conservative in effect’ (Butler 2002, 61). If ‘decoloniality’ promotes a balkanisation of the Comparative Education field into identitybased cliques that prize ‘opacity,’ the risk is that in practice this will only serve to buttress the status quo.