What Bhartrihari can Teach Professors of International Relations Theory

I suspect that Spivak asked the wrong question. It is not, can the subaltern speak. It is which language will the subaltern speak in?

In the March issue of Millennium - Journal of International Studies (one of the few brave journals in the world of International Relations theory, brave enough to utter 'Pablo Neruda' and 'Raina Maria Rilke' during serious and solemn investigations of the international) there two articles which discussed the possibility and implausibility of 'Non western International Relations Theory'. The discussion was between Amitav Acharya, whose naivete is almost charming, and Kimberly Hutchings. Both appear to agree that one must 'look' for non Western IR theory. Acharya's essay is therefore aptly named, Dialogue and Discovey: in Search of International Relations Theory Beyond the Rest.

The urgency in their tone is unmistakable: there has been a WW (white and western) war waged in International Relations theory. Like all other world wars, this started off in Europe and Great Britain and then later, involved the United States. And like the previous two world wars, the exodus to the United States has led a shift in power, money and intellect to that state. Now weary of waltzing in the same continent, theorists look elsewhere for stimulating, richer and denser theories to explain the mess this world is in.

How arrogant is that? This quest and petition to broaden the epistomological, ontological, methodological theoretical horizons is based, again, on the assumption that such a theory exists, and that it can be captured. That irrespective of the fact that academia today, is structured in in codes and rules which debilitate the growth of 'indegenious knowledge'? More importantly, what is the 'non west?

The Phd was invented by the Germans, along with chemical weapons and the Holocaust (btw, the source of this information is the incredibly dazzling work by Peter Watson 'A Terrible Beauty'. Watson fills his work which is like a dense, rich and dark forest with a multitude of shiny facts. Such as: the fabric for Freud's clothes were picked by his wife. Now, THAT is important.) Getting back to the PhD, the world is intellectually structured in a manner designed, engineered and controlled by the West. Citations, publications, PhD's, presentations, seminars are all, all, all forms of generation of knowledge, in the West. Anonymity and agnosticism may have been familiar to scholars and pundits in pre-globalized and non-western worlds, but the reduction of the planet to 'one world' means, that thoughts and intellect are modelled uniformly. This uniformity in expectation of the 'intellectual' (Ivy league university professor, German/French/American origin, Holocaust hater, and yes, WW) blocks, very effectively, the acknowledgement of a intellectual who does not possess these traits.

Like Bhartrihari. So even while scholars like Onuf, discuss the works of Wittgenstein the study of language, even when Hutchings speaks dialogue and then, discusses the ancient Greeks and Habermas, there is a rich dense work which exists behind a door, which is never knocked at. The Jain philosophy, for instance, speaks in a language which is completely post-modern. The Jains argue that there are multiple ways of looking at the same object and difference does not mean hierarchy. There can be multiple truths. But is the Jain philosophy drawn into the main discourse with the same conviction and confidence, Bourdieu is? No. Because Bourdieu is published, French and white. Another example: Bhartrihari's vakyapada should be made mandatory reading for all WW's. The Sanskrit linguist and scholar fundamentally differentiates between that which can be expressed, and that which cannot. That which can be is shabda and that which cannot is sphota. Bhartrihari's beauty lies in the assumption that there are limits to the expressions of language, and that which is unexpressed and indescribable is luminous only because it is unexpressed, inexpressable and indescribable.

It is therefore a pity, that while scholars yawn with boredom with 'Western IR Theory', there is a great deal of reluctance to open the world to scholars, who may not have done a PhD or thoughts which have not been 'peer reviewed'.