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Kanchana Mahadevan ◆ Critiques of Modernity: Partha Chatterjee and
Michel Foucault in an Intercultural Perspective
‘– And in India as in Greece they committed the same blunder: ... –“we must have been divine,
for we possess reason!”…’– Friedrich Nietzsche
This paper compares the Indian historian Partha Chatterjee’s critique of European rationality with
that of the French philosopher Michel Foucault. Crossing disciplinary, geographic and cultural boundaries,
it explores both their intersections and divergences. Chatterjee argues that the Indian context
reveals modern rationality and individual freedom as neither universal nor immutable. For modernity
manifests itself in its “other” non-Western world through the avatars of colonial oppression and aggressive
separatist movements. In a patronizing spirit of tolerance, Western liberalism treats these avatars as
cultural obstacles. Yet Chatterjee notes that the resultant dichotomies of progress/colonization, masculine/feminine
and spiritual/material are central to national consciousness. Foucault’s similar critique
of modern reason perceives it as a historical variable. For him the state and subject coevally emerge with
modernity and are linked to power. They are the outcomes of “governmentality” or regulation of both
the self and the other creating internal hierarchies within Europe. Foucault recommends renouncing
modernity’s universality to pursue an aesthetic of existence. Chatterjee and Foucault share a suspicion
towards universal reason, a Nietzschean genealogy and an ambivalence towards modernity. Yet they have
significant differences. Chatterjee’s critique of modernity targets colonialism. In contrast, Foucault
directs his critique to everyday practices such as sexuality and their normalization processes within the
West. Moreover, Chatterjee recommends a collective struggle, while Foucault suggests a more individualistic
path as alternatives to vicissitudes of modernity. This paper will show that the critique modernity
is not homogeneous; its priorities differ in relation to geo-political and cultural contexts. ◆
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