Recentering Political Theory: The Promise of Mobile Locality - 0 views
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Bill Brydon on 02 Dec 11"In this post-universalist era, the idea of providing guidance for culturally different communities and individuals is rightly condemned as imperialist. Yet this very recognition of cultural limitations ironically encourages further Eurocentrism: fearful of making imperialist claims about political life that apply to all, many contemporary theorists carefully qualify the reach of the problems they examine and the applicability of the normative theories they propose. How may this vicious cycle be truncated? The emerging field of comparative political theory joins postcolonial studies, feminism, and subaltern studies to suggest that more sensitively calibrated forms of inclusion may deparochialize our political thinking, without replicating the homogenizing universalism of earlier centuries. Painfully aware that they are situated within the privileged cultural frames of the modern West, comparative political theorists identify their struggle in terms of understanding differently situated others amid power disparities created by colonialism, American hegemony, and the global flow of capital."