A straightforward response to the rhetorical question “Can Non‐Europeans Philosophize?” is to give examples from African, Asian, or Latin American philosophical traditions to prove that non‐EuropeanFootnote ¹ contexts indeed have their own unique epistemologies and ethical principles distinct from European approaches. The task set up in this article is, however, a different one, in which I will unfold how the normative idea of philosophy, particularly as defined during the European Enlightenment,Footnote ² continues to be hegemonic, thereby delegitimizing non‐European perspectives. In my view, in order to decolonize philosophy, it is not sufficient to integrate previously marginalized and devalued knowledges into the realm of philosophy. Non‐European perspectives, particularly the elite ones, even though they are marginal vis‐à‐vis European epistemic orders, nevertheless produce their own exclusions, so that their addition to the canon simply replaces one dominant paradigm with another, a repetition‐in‐rupture. In my view, in order to desubalternize non‐Western epistemologies, it is imperative to renegotiate our relation to the legacies of the European Enlightenment. To this end, this article begins by focusing on the normative biases of the discipline. In section II, I address the universalization of European philosophy through colonialism, even as I critically analyze the suggestion that the Enlightenment was anti‐empire. I pay particular attention to the claims of the defenders of the European Enlightenment, who hope to bring to light the long neglected anti‐imperialist impulses of eighteenth‐century political thought by focusing specifically on the German Enlightenment and its most important representative, Immanuel Kant. Section III addresses the ambivalent legacies of the European Enlightenment for the postcolonial world with special focus on the “Syrian refugee crisis.” Here I pay attention to the continuing relevance of Enlightenment principles of cosmopolitanism and hospitality, even as I consider the normative violence they exert. In the concluding section, I argue that postimperial philosophy in a global age is not about extracting knowledge from the non‐European world; rather, transnational literacy and planetary ethics, as proposed by Spivak, involves undoing the uneven distribution of epistemic agency globally. Drawing on Gramsci, Spivak explains that although everyone is an intellectual, not everyone in society has the function of an intellectual, and this is a decisive condition of subalternity. Decolonization, I argue, is incomplete without desubalternization, which would entail a reorientation of our understanding of who counts as a legitimate agent of knowledge‐production.

I. Decolonizing Philosophy

In his much‐discussed essay “Can Non‐Europeans Think?,” Hamid Dabashi asks why European epistemic orders receive the dignity of “philosophy,” whereas African, Asian, and Latin American epistemes are designated ethnophilosophy. Dabashi explores how European thinking lays claim to universality by ideologically obscuring its provinciality, such that philosophers like Kant become “universally self‐conscious” and consider themselves as the “measure and yardstick of globality” (Reference DabashiDabashi 2013). Dabashi makes a direct structural link between Empire and European philosophy's claims to universality, between Europeans’ self‐centrism and their ignorance and disregard of other worlds and other ways of being‐in‐the‐world.

Dabashi's analysis draws on decades of postcolonial critique that offers insight into the epistemic violence at the heart of colonial politics. Undergirding military occupation and economic exploitation, colonial discourses became authoritative by delegitimizing and disqualifying non‐European systems of knowledge. Given that Europe disseminated its norms, values, and epistemologies globally through colonialism, decolonization is inextricably linked to the project of deuniversalizing Europe. However, given that academic disciplines like philosophy are not only Eurocentric but also androcentric, the key question is: how can postcolonial feminist scholarship operationalize the project of decolonization of the mind?

Dabashi ends his essay with the claim that with a far more level and democratic playing field, contemporary non‐European thinkers, poets, artists, and public intellectuals are contesting Eurocentrism. Although compelling, Dabashi's optimism about non‐European epistemologies displacing the hegemony of European philosophy does not guarantee reconfiguration of global relations of power, given the exclusions along the lines of class, gender, caste, and sexuality that inform non‐European epistemic orders. For instance, in the case of precolonial Indian philosophical thought, the so‐called “untouchables” and women were exiled from intellectual labor by virtue of being constituted as “impure” and thus ineligible to participate in knowledge‐production, which was considered the privilege of upper‐caste men (Reference DhawanDhawan 2007, 94–95). Thus the mere inclusion in the canon of previously marginalized non‐Western approaches will not undo the normative violence exercised by philosophical discourses; rather, the desubalternization of non‐European epistemologies is a much more complex process, which entails multidirectional critique against Eurocentric as well as elite non‐European epistemic orders.

An oft‐repeated objection to the project of decolonization is that in questioning the Eurocentrism of universalist theory as inadequate for understanding the practices, experiences, and realities of the non‐European world, postcolonial studies ontologizes the difference between the West and the East. If, as claimed by proponents of universalism, humans share common needs and interests independent of historical, cultural, and economic differences, then the postcolonial effort to “provincialize” Europe is rendered questionable in an increasingly interdependent world. Furthermore, any critique of the Enlightenment and its legacies is read as symptomatic of forfeiting emancipatory politics, while justifying an exoticization of the East.

In my view, this dubious dualism between universalism and cultural relativism completely misses the point. For instance, when postcolonial feminists like Spivak critique human rights politics or discourses of gender justice as Eurocentric (Reference SpivakSpivak 2004), it is not because norms like women's human rights originate in Europe and are thus not relevant in other cultural contexts; rather, Spivak traces the violence exerted through the normative framing of both “human” as well as “rights” that disenfranchises those individuals and communities that cannot fulfill these Eurocentric ideals. The notion of “women's interests” shared by all women has led to advocating general solutions worldwide, like the United Nation's Millennium Development Goals. This has resulted in global programs promoting gender justice, which often represent third‐world women as “in need of help,” thereby legitimizing international intervention. Insofar as Western feminists have participated in these kinds of universalizing political discourses and denied the possibility of non‐Eurocentric forms of gender justice, they have contributed to reinforcing Western bias in the pursuit of justice, while holding onto a form of solidarity that reinforces established hierarchies.

Spivak critiques Western feminists like Martha Nussbaum for appropriating third‐world women's narratives toward a “philosophical justification for universalism” (Reference KapoorKapoor 2008, 35). Rather than being open to the other, Nussbaum brings “the other into the self” (Reference SpivakSpivak 2004, 567–68). Emphasis on an ever‐expanding catalogue of rights is dangerously confused with empowerment of third‐world women. The problem of the universalization of human rights is particularly visible in discussions on sexual violence. The Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), for example, takes the Eurocentric notion of rights as per se emancipatory, while locating the source of third‐world women's oppression mainly in the domain of traditional cultural practices, thereby perpetuating stereotypes of barbaric and patriarchal African, Hindu, or Islamic traditions (Reference KapoorKapoor 2008, 35). The culturalization of women's rights shifts focus from broader questions of global structural inequality. Although gender rights are being promoted by international development organizations, many Western governments have a history of supporting authoritarian regimes in the global South. There is an inextricable link between gender‐rights violations and structural adjustment policies, which are often advocated by the same donors who promote and protect human rights (36). Thus the liberal‐universalist rights agenda serves to consolidate the institutional power of international organizations, while functioning as an alibi for military intervention, often under the pretense of “responsibility to protect” (Reference SpivakSpivak 2004).

However, despite the critique of universalism as an alibi for neocolonialism, in my view there is no “authentic” non‐Western perspective that provides an infallible corrective to Eurocentrism. For instance, the Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam, or the political ideology of Asian values, does not necessarily undo the hegemony of elite non‐European epistemic orders. One of the most significant insights offered by postcolonial theory is that there are no “uncontaminated,” “pure” non‐Western perspectives that can be easily retrieved with decolonization construed as merely rejecting everything Western. Rather, postcolonial perspectives are always already entangled with Western perspectives. Following Edward Said, I consider norms like gender justice and women's human rights as “traveling norms” that unevenly traverse spaces of postcoloniality (Reference SaidSaid 1983). Drawing on Jacques Derrida's notion of pharmakon (Reference DerridaDerrida 1981, 103), I would argue, pace Spivak, that these norms are both poison and counterpoison. Unfortunately, in the face of the failure of decolonization, what could have been medicine is at times transformed into poison.

The biggest challenge to a postimperial philosophy is how to facilitate a nonviolent relation to the Other. It has been proposed that the steady advance of globalization has posed a serious challenge to Eurocentrism, with the non‐Western world interrupting the monological privilege of Western discourse. Contesting Eurocentric definitions of philosophy, there have been efforts to establish the respectability of non‐European philosophical traditions. The inclusion of non‐European philosophy might be seen as a positive acknowledgment of the existence of systematic epistemologies in these contexts. The geographical specificity of the phrase can, however, marginalize Latin American, Asian, or African thought by focusing attention on their cultural particularity. This can then be contrasted with the apparently universal nature of European philosophy. Thus, despite the proliferation of other epistemologies, mainstream philosophy remains uncompromisingly Eurocentric.

In my view, the overcoming of Orientalism, which compresses non‐Western epistemologies into Western categorical frameworks or presents them as essentialized counterimages of the West, will not automatically decolonize philosophy. In addition to the inclusion of hitherto excluded discourses so as to expand the philosophical community, it is imperative that European philosophy reflect upon the conditions of its own possibility through a genealogy of its violent trajectory. In the next section I investigate the silences produced at the intersections of European philosophical and colonial discourses to unpack the normative violence of the European Enlightenment, in the hope that this will enable postimperial philosophizing in a global age.

II. Empire and the Universalization of Europe

The postcolonial world continues to struggle with the contradictory effects of the European Enlightenment. On the one hand are the professed Enlightenment legacies of equality, tolerance, rule of law, justice, democracy, human rights, and sovereignty. On the other hand, as has been pointed out by scholars of both postcolonial and Holocaust studies, along with the allegedly emancipatory norms, the Enlightenment brought about colonialism, slavery, genocide, and crimes against humanity.

There is an important overlap between the feminist critique of the Enlightenment and the challenges formulated by postmodernism and postcolonialism. Whereas some feminist scholars argue that the Enlightenment principles of individuality, equality, and emancipation have crucially informed the demand for women's liberation, others highlight that the exclusion and silencing of women's voices and agency is inherent to the Enlightenment. Thinkers like Kant did not consider women to be fully rational and autonomous and recommended that they be restricted to traditional roles in the domestic sphere (Reference KantKant 1798, 303).Footnote ³ Kant remarks that “It is difficult for me to believe that the fair sex is capable of principles” (Reference KantKant 1764, 232). In his view women are dependent “upon the will of others” (Reference KantKant 1797, 314) and thus should be passive citizens (314) and obedient wives (279).

Defenders of the “positive” aspects of Enlightenment principles propose that these blind spots can be easily corrected by extending rights and equality to previously excluded groups, to which critics respond that the normative violence of the Enlightenment cannot be easily purged of its androcentric ideology. Rational power denigrates and marginalizes “the feminine” as the Other of the Enlightenment, while the universal, autonomous individual devoid of gender, race, class, sexuality, and religion becomes the legitimate agent of knowledge‐production (Reference Flax, Barker, Hulme and IversenFlax 1992; Reference May Schott and SchmidtMay Schott 1996).

Drawing on the critique of Enlightenment rationality proposed by the first generation of the Frankfurt School of social theory as well as by poststructuralists, postcolonial‐queer‐feminist scholarship argues that far from ensuring equality and liberty, Enlightenment reason resulted in the barbarism of fascism and colonialism. Enlightenment philosophy was the epistemological corollary to colonial violence: It authorized Europeans to construct and contain the non‐European world and its people by defining and representing them as racially and culturally inferior. Colonization was justified on the grounds that the primitive traditions of the natives threatened the moral sanctity of European civilization. It was argued that those who wanted to qualify as “human” must adopt civilized European practices, values, and institutions. Enlightenment self‐representation as the harbinger of progress and emancipation is countered by postcolonial experiences of dispossession and disenfranchisement.

Regrettably, most of the critical scholarship on the Enlightenment either ignores colonialism or treats it as marginal. Thinkers like Adorno, Horkheimer, and Foucault disregard colonialism in their critique of the Enlightenment. For instance, the erasure of the Haitian Revolution, one of the most significant appropriations of Enlightenment principles in the colony, or the neglect of slave experiences from accounts of modernity within mainstream philosophy, indicate the unwillingness of the European intellectual tradition to recognize the agency of Others.

Against this background, an interesting development in the last decade in the scholarship on eighteenth‐century political thought has been a concerted effort to address the relation between the Enlightenment and European colonialism. Scholars in this mode attempt to provide a corrective to what they claim is a misrepresentation of the Enlightenment's epistemological investment in imperialism. They accuse critics of unfairly charging the Enlightenment with providing the intellectual infrastructure and normative legitimacy for coercive practices and institutions in the colony. Through close readings of eighteenth‐century political thought, particularly works of the German Enlightenment, the scholars present the subversive operations at work in these approaches. One of the thinkers most frequently mobilized to substantiate this argument is Kant, whose later writings, they claim, promote a more inclusive universalism fostering goodwill and hospitality toward Europe's Others. Defending against accusations of Kant being racist and imperialist, these scholars draw attention to the anti‐imperialist impulses of Kantian cosmopolitanism. They pay particular attention to Kant's appreciation of cultural diversity, which they see as counteracting imperialistic impositions of uniformity, as well as to his move away from a deterministic and hierarchical conception of race toward a critical view of colonial domination.

They repeatedly argue that Kant's racism was less central and more morally complex than portrayed by his critics (Reference Flikschuh and YpiFlikschuh and Ypi 2014). It is interesting to note that Kant received several job offers, but decided to stay in Königsberg, a bustling seaport that provided him the opportunity to interact with people traveling to and from diverse parts of the world. This major decision demonstrates the importance of the non‐European world in his life and thought. Although Kant did not have direct experience of the colonies, never having set foot outside Europe, it did not deter him from theorizing and judging other societies and the world at large. Recycling stereotypes and prejudices about non‐European peoples and cultures, Kant offered a strong philosophical justification of the hierarchy of races. Kant asserts that non‐European peoples are devoid of ethical principles and lack rational will (Reference KantKant 1913, 789, 878). He makes a direct link among skin color, climate, diet, and characteristics like morality, intelligence, and character (Reference EzeEze 1997, 116–19). In Kant's words, “humanity is at its greatest perfection in the race of the whites. The yellow Indians already have a lesser talent. The Negroes are much lower, and lowest of all is a part of the American peoples” (Reference KantKant 1802, 316). About the “gypsies,” he remarks that they come “from the scum of the earth” and despite their three‐hundred‐year stay in Europe, their origins in the “Hindustani race” of India is evident in that they are “good‐for‐nothings.” The gypsies for Kant serve as proof of the constancy of races (Reference KantKant 1785, 105).

As has been pointed out by postcolonial scholars, Kant's reflections on geography and anthropology were neither marginal to his teaching nor inconsequential for his professional philosophical career (Reference EzeEze 1997, 115). The attempt to trivialize Kant's theories of race may stem from the embarrassing difficulty of reconciling his racist and imperialist ideas with his supposedly more progressive notions of cosmopolitan right that are so central to modern political thought. It is no easy task for the Western philosophical tradition to accept that something went terribly wrong with the best of the Enlightenment.

An oft‐repeated accusation against Kant's critics is their disregard of his revised position in the 1790s on the hierarchy of races (Reference KleingeldKleingeld 2007). His defenders concede that Kant initially expressed racist beliefs, but they present textual evidence to substantiate his improved position on slavery and colonialism as manifested in his normative idea of cosmopolitan right, which emphasizes the equal moral worth of all persons (Reference Flikschuh and YpiFlikschuh and Ypi 2014). However, as postcolonial scholars argue (Reference EzeEze 1997), earlier ideas of race did not disappear, but were recalibrated in discourses of cosmopolitanism with Kant simply adapting his theory to a new phase of imperialism. It is important to note that Kant never gave up the concept of race as a biological and moral category and was emphatically against “race mixing” as a disturbance of nature (Reference KantKant 1913, 878) that would lead to humans becoming physically and psychologically similar. In his view, “half‐breeds are not much good” (598). His acceptance of cultural diversity led him to reject racial assimilation for fear of universal uniformity. Kant's rejection of polygenecism and support of monogenecism—he suggests that there are “no different species of humans” (Reference KantKant 1785, 98–100)—is not enough to verify his anti‐imperialist credentials.

Furthermore, in my view, one should read Kant's racism together with his sexism and misogynistic thoughts on women's incapacity to reason and their lack of moral character (Reference KantKant 1798, 649). Kant compares groups who allegedly have similar dispositions, such as “children, savages, women” (Reference KantKant 1913, 101) and “children, the common people, savages” (693). This indicates the interrelationship among different types of discrimination in his writings (Reference Hund, Hund, Koller and ZimmermannHund 2011, 90–91). Interestingly, neither is there textual evidence in which Kant confessed his mistake on the issue of the hierarchy of races or the inferiority of women, nor did he explain why he revised his earlier positions. As Robert Bernasconi convincingly argued, if Kant had wanted to recant his earlier racist views, he could have distanced himself from his previous writings when they were being republished in Reference Kant1797 and 1799, which he did not do (Reference Bernasconi, Elden and MendietaBernasconi 2011, 300). Bernasconi emphasizes that Kant indeed denounced the slave trade in his discussion of the cosmopolitan law of hospitality (303); however, unlike many of his contemporaries, Kant did not condemn the institution of slavery or advocate abolitionism. This ruptures the link Kant's defenders try to establish between his opposition to the slave trade and his abandonment of racial hierarchy (304). Recognizing blacks as human and granting them legal status so that they are protected by cosmopolitan right did not mean that Kant considered them equal to white Europeans (293, 301). In fact, Kant questions whether all races were capable of participating in the full development of humanity, even as he claims that Europe would someday give laws to all other parts of the world and all races would be exterminated except for the whites (Reference KantKant 1913, 878; Reference Hund, Hund, Koller and ZimmermannHund 2011, 90–91). Thus Kant's commitment to cosmopolitan right does not imply that he proclaims equality of capacities among the races or renounces a Eurocentric worldview even in his later writings. This debunks the claim that Kantian cosmopolitanism was an antidote to racism and colonialism.

Despite abundant contrary evidence, Kant's defenders present him as a theorist of resistance in domestic and global matters (Reference MuthuMuthu 2003; Reference Flikschuh and YpiFlikschuh and Ypi 2014). They claim that Kant's cosmopolitanism and his idea of Enlightenment is deeply informed by his reflections on resistance against servility. This disregards that Kant's objection to the brutality of European colonialism is offset by his firm rejection of anticolonial revolutions (Reference Pagden, Flikschuh and YpiPagden 2014, 38, 40–41). In Kant's view, colonial conquest cannot be challenged even if the territory was acquired through force (Reference KantKant 1793, 299, 306). Kant is categorically against the rectification of historical wrongs, arguing that invocation of past grievances obstructs building trust among nations (Reference KantKant 1795, 344; Reference KantKant 1797, 346). He argues that it is unacceptable to displace indigenous peoples by colonizing their land, but once this has happened the native inhabitants have no right to revolt against colonial misrule or for self‐determination (Reference KantKant 1793, 301). Following this logic, all independence movements are illegitimate in Kant's eyes, and the anticolonial political action initiated by Gandhi and Mandela unlawful. Kant critiques the act of coercing nonstate people, even as he speaks of “unjust enemies,” who exist in the futile state of nature (Reference KantKant 1797, 349). Kant suggests that these “savages” have an obligation to exit from their “wild, lawless freedom” and enter civilization (267–68).

Striking a cautionary note, postcolonial thinkers refuse to accept at face value Kant's rhetorical opposition to colonialism. Kant's defense of the colonized consolidates Europe's self‐conception as champion of cosmopolitan humanitarianism and universal rights. In the name of solidarity with the oppressed natives, Enlightenment philosophers like Kant secure the ethical validity of their theories of universal reason, individual freedom, and commercial exchange. The promise of an imaginary global solidarity serves to obscure the coercive aspects of the Enlightenment. A new discourse of imperialism emerged, which ironically derived its legitimacy from the supposed opposition to colonialism. The passionate denouncement of imperial brutalities and the recommendation of nonexploitative commercial relations that respected the plurality of human cultural values obfuscates the normative violence of Kantian racism. Kant's denunciation of colonialism is yet another instance of European philosophy's self‐congratulatory and self‐promotional stance and is instructive in understanding contemporary Western discourses of cosmopolitanism, transnational solidarity, and humanitarianism, especially in the context of the “Syrian refugee crisis.”

Dismissing postcolonial interventions, defenders of the European Enlightenment present Kant as anti‐conquest and anti‐empire; his earlier racist and imperialist views are considered irrelevant to his final anticolonialism (Reference MuthuMuthu 2003; Reference Flikschuh and YpiFlikschuh and Ypi 2014). It is argued that postcolonial critics do not know what to make of the anti‐imperialist impulses of eighteenth‐century political thought. In my view, Western philosophers are still at a loss as to how to deal with the profoundly racist and imperialist consequences of the European Enlightenment. In maintaining that Enlightenment thinkers anticipated some of the most significant contributions of postcolonial feminist thought, the agency of the non‐European world to transform Europe is discounted. One of the most pervasive repercussions of the claim that the Enlightenment was always already anti‐imperialist and self‐critical is that it renders postcolonial critique redundant and the project of decolonizing philosophy unnecessary.

In the next section I will continue to contest this line of argument that exculpates Enlightenment thinkers of racism and sexism by turning attention to the colonial continuities in contemporary migration regimes in Europe. I will outline how, despite decades of postcolonial critique, the enduring investment in the project of the Enlightenment justifies the asymmetrical relation between the European and the non‐European world. However, instead of being a polemical dismissal of the Enlightenment, my effort is to conceptually reposition its role in processes of decolonization, which could open up space for social and political transformation.

III. Rescuing the Enlightenment from the Europeans

The question of the ambivalent legacies of the European Enlightenment for the postcolonial world has gained urgency in the face of the “Syrian refugee crisis.” The condition of homelessness and exile has once more brought Enlightenment norms of hospitality and cosmopolitanism to the forefront of our attention. At issue here are the scope and scale of responsibility in the face of the suffering of Others. Cosmopolitanism, based on the normative espousal of an expansive global consciousness, opposes narrow territorial loyalties and is committed to the idea of transnational ethics.

In his discussion of Weltbürgerrecht (cosmopolitan ethics), Kant addresses the issue of the rights and duties of those who wish to cross borders and argues that all world citizens should have a right to free movement, which he grounds in humankind's common ownership of the earth (Reference KantKant 1795, 360). Kant proposes cosmopolitanism as a guiding doctrine to protect people from war and to morally embed cosmopolitan right in the principle of universal hospitality, which encompasses the rights of strangers and duties and obligations of hosts.

One can hardly imagine any right that has been so extensively violated as the right to mobility in the current global age. In this sense, the migrant is the bearer of Kant's message in favor of the cosmopolitan right to move fearlessly and freely across borders, even as the humanitarian disaster unfolding on Europe's doorstep once more signals the betrayal of Enlightenment principles. The disenchantment with the Enlightenment in the aftermath of colonialism and the Holocaust again looms large.

At an event in the summer of 2015 titled “Good Life in Germany”Footnote ⁴ a teenager named Reem Sahwil told German chancellor Angela Merkel that her family had arrived in Germany four years earlier from a Lebanese refugee camp, but now could be deported. Reem shared her hopes of being able to pursue her education and her despair that she did not have the same opportunities as German children. Merkel responded to Reem's anguish by pointing to the dilemmas of political life and having to make tough policy decisions. Europe's refusal to attend to the legacies of colonialism haunts Merkel's extremely pragmatic response to the Palestinian child refugee.

As the refugee crisis worsened, Germany suspended the Dublin regulation and opened its borders; however, its “welcome culture” was short‐lived. The disagreement within the EU regarding the extent of European responsibility in the face of the humanitarian crisis, the Brexit vote, the “dirty deals” between the EU and Turkey to prevent refugees from reaching Europe, and the demonization of refugees as undeserving of European hospitality serve as proof of the unfinished project of decolonizing Europe. A sobering example of this failure is the continuing instrumentalization of gender politics to demonize postcolonial migrants, whether it is the burkini ban or the call for the deportation of “rapefugees,” an extremely racist neologism.Footnote ⁵ The sexual assaults perpetrated by some migrant men during the 2015 New Year's Eve celebrations in Cologne are considered a turning point that contributed to the weakening of the consensus in favor of Germany accepting large numbers of refugees. Although some German feminists protestedFootnote ⁶ against the recycling of racial stereotypes about misogynistic Islamic culture, victimized Muslim women, and aggressive Arab masculinity, many Germans, both men and women, supported the deportation of miscreant male refugees and encouraged mandatory “respect for women” courses for Muslim men, thereby concealing racism under the cloak of feminism.Footnote ⁷ Unfortunately, the increasing sexist, racist, and xenophobic violence against migrant and refugee women did not receive the same degree of critical attention. Some bodies are coded as needing to be protected, but others supposedly need to be protected from. To have one's body understood as vulnerable is a privilege that is granted to a few, although it should actually be a right for all. Anti‐racist, post‐, and decolonial scholarly and activist practices seem to fall on deaf ears in these excitable times of security and securitization. Muslim immigrants are perceived to threaten liberal values, such as gender equality, that Europeans cherish. Gendered vulnerability is being mobilized as a legitimizing narrative to shame non‐Western people and cultures as misogynistic and violent, which frees European society of any suspicions of sexism and heterosexism. This presents an enormous challenge for feminist ethics on issues of transnational solidarity: how to address gendered vulnerability without reinforcing orientalist stereotypes and how to exercise solidarity without either trivializing the violence or patronizing the victims. The ethical dilemmas surrounding the debates on gender violence serve as an instructive example of the fickleness of proclamations of transnational solidarity. In order to constitute new political subjects, collectives, and strategies, it is imperative that the question of European (ir)responsibility and Europe's (in)ability to respond to the ethical demands made by its Other be addressed.

In his deconstructive reading of Kantian cosmopolitan ethics, Derrida discusses how Kantian hospitality is temporary in nature and hinges on the entrant not causing any trouble (Reference DerridaDerrida 2000, 3). Derrida traces elements of hostility intrinsic in Kantian reflections on hospitality and speaks of “hostipitality” (namely, hostile hospitality) in reference to Kant's “conditional hospitality” (1, 15). Kant proposes that hospitality is limited to the visitor not being treated with hostility upon arrival on someone else's territory, but upholds the right of the sovereign state to refuse entry, provided this does not result in the destruction of the sojourner (Reference KantKant 1795, 357–58). Thus permanent residency depends entirely on an act of beneficence on the part of a sovereign state, which always has the prerogative to deny hospitality to miscreants, like the male refugees in Germany who are accused of disrespecting their hosts by attacking “their” women. Accordingly, Kant would indeed support the deportation of those “troublemakers,” who are perceived to threaten order and security in Europe.

Derrida proposes that a truly cosmopolitan ethics entails absolute hospitality, which is unconditional and is not dependent upon the guest fulfilling certain criteria or duties to receive it (Reference DerridaDerrida 2005, 42). This restructures the relationship between the host (who may be unprepared and ill‐equipped) and the guest (who may be unexpected and uninvited). The host becomes the hostage of the guest, and only then is compassion and proximity possible (Reference DerridaDerrida 2000, 9, 17–18). It is the guest who makes the host ethical, and in playing the host, one must accept the risk of hospitality by relinquishing mastery over one's house (10–14).

The presence of postcolonial migrants has become a test for Europe's commitment to Enlightenment ideals of humanitarianism and cosmopolitanism. Contrary to the Derridean ideal, the European system of processing refugees rests on determining who is entitled to enter fortress Europe and has the right to live. The category of “deserving” refugees, who may integrate to be “good enough” citizens, raises critical questions about ethics in a postcolonial world. To counteract the pervasive disenchantment with the lofty principles of the Enlightenment necessitates rescuing norms of cosmopolitanism and humanitarianism from the cynical approach of EU migration policy. The recurring Mediterranean boat disasters are a grim reminder that not only the migrants, but also Enlightenment ideals are endangered in postcolonial Europe. The inhospitable politics of EU countries epitomize not an aberration, but an exemplification of their coercive cosmopolitanism. Ironically, in reminding Europe of its commitment to ideals of cosmopolitanism and humanitarianism, postcolonial refugees and migrants become enforcers of Enlightenment principles and agents of decolonizing Europe. By confronting Europe with its past failures and crimes, historical amnesia may be overcome, so that a new concept of politics and a radically different postimperialist ethics may emerge.

IV. Epistemic Change: Transnational Literacy and Planetary Ethics

In his book The Other Heading: Reflections on Today's Europe, Derrida observes that Europe has always considered itself the “cultural capital” (from caput, head) of the world, namely, as providing a lead for world civilization (Reference DerridaDerrida 1992, 24). The role of “norm‐producer” that Europe has historically arrogated to itself implies that Europe determines what is good for the rest of the world. As pointed out by postcolonial scholars, the fundamental impediment in decolonizing Europe is its inability to approach the non‐European world in a non‐Orientalist and nonhierarchical manner.

If our normative commitments make us who we are as individuals and societies, then postcolonial‐queer‐feminist efforts toward decolonizing philosophy seek to reconfigure the legacies of the European Enlightenment in order to chart a postimperialist politics in a global age. As Spivak remarks, despite the implicit flaws in Enlightenment ideals, we cannot not want them, even as she suggests an approach of “affirmative sabotage” of the Enlightenment, which would facilitate “epistemic change” (Reference SpivakSpivak 2004, 529) at both ends of the postcolonial divide. In order to operationalize this project of decolonization, two key concepts become relevant, namely, transnational literacy and planetary ethics. Unlike theorists of global ethics, who are programmatic in their approach to “saving” humankind, transnational literacy and planetary ethics are indeterminate practices that seek to interrupt the mobilization of epistemology and ethics as an alibi for imperialism. Spivak's effort is to imagine postimperial politics that circumvents the temptation to fetishize either the local/national or the global.

Under conditions of capitalist globalization, “monocultures of the mind” (Reference ShivaShiva 1993) result through a uniform kind of education provided in a few hegemonic languages. In Spivak's view, to be literate under globalization requires more than mastery of reading and writing in the lingua franca of finance capital; rather, transnational literacy is a form of critical practice linking literature and culture with economics (Reference SpivakSpivak 2004, 539). Spivak calls this “critical intimacy” (Reference SpivakSpivak 1999, 114), critical in the sense that it intervenes in our reading practices of decoding and interpreting the world. Transnational literacy works in different ways as a supplementary education both for metropolitan elites and for rural subalterns, thereby undoing the discontinuity between these two ends. One of the biggest challenges for critical social theory is to comprehend why dispossessed individuals and collectivities accept their disenfranchisement as inevitable. Most theories of empowerment promise that an improvement in economic and material circumstances enables desubalternization, but Spivak proposes lasting epistemic change in the oppressed through continuous pedagogical efforts (Reference SpivakSpivak 2004, 560). This would intervene in the ideological subject‐constitution of the subalterns, so that they no longer accept their subjugation as immanent. In Spivak's view, to initiate desubalternization, it is more important to develop critical intelligence by facilitating intellectual labor than to provide access to immediate material comfort (557). On the other end, metropolitan elites have to learn to unlearn being imperialist subjects, whose manifest destiny it is to save the world. Geopolitical power and privilege can be transformed by intervening in prevalent habits of reading and coding the world (Reference SpivakSpivak 1999, xii). What we think we know about the world as well as our place in it is disturbed, and this could facilitate crossing epistemic borders, wherein incommensurable practices of meaning‐making collide with and mutually interrupt each other. Both transnational literacy and planetary ethics are relational and thrive on interdependency and reciprocity between class‐divided interlocutors, who nevertheless are constitutively entangled and do not occupy fixed positions in advance. Knowledge and ethics emerge through this interaction instead of existing prior to the encounter.

In the face of global flows of ideas, theories, images, and norms, we are confronted with the question of translation from one epistemic order into another (Reference LiuLiu 1995, xv). What happens when concepts travel from one language to another? Are the borders easily crossed (21)? Is it possible to have reliable comparative categories on transhistorical grounds (xv)? Every time the question is raised, “What is the word for ‘philosophy’ in Tiwi or Tigrinya,” the supposed nonexistence of an equivalent in the vernacular language is either immediately interpreted as a “lack,” or the vernacular term is measured against its Western counterparts. The implications of language interaction between East and West are manifold; the crossing of language boundaries stops being “merely” a linguistic issue (6).

If language politics is at the heart of colonialism, then any attempt toward decolonization must take translingual practices seriously. What happens when a Western concept gets translated into a non‐European language and vice‐versa? Can the power relationship between East and West be reinvented? If so, how? It is important to note that non‐European languages do not automatically constitute sites of resistance to Eurocentrism. The vernacular is not a guaranteed mode of decolonization. Accordingly, transnational literacy involves more than just compiling and comparing different ethical concepts, for instance, like Ubuntu,Footnote ⁸pachamama,Footnote ⁹ or dhamma Footnote ¹⁰ in native languages. A concept in Bantu, Quechua, or Pali is not automatically counterhegemonic as it comes with its own ideological baggage along the lines of gender, religion, sexuality, race, and class.

Transnational literacy entails a reorientation of our normative commitments, wherein instead of familiarizing ourselves with the unfamiliar, we face up to the greater challenge of defamiliarizing the familiar. It transforms the way one thinks and the way the object of knowledge is framed, such that this supplements academic and policy discourses about globality. The goal is to overcome the lack of ethical reciprocity between the elite and the subaltern. This entails building lines of continuity between different epistemic communities to enable overlapping intelligibility, even as it counteracts neoliberal demands for exotic alterity and marketable margins for global consumption. In contrast, transnational illiteracy is ignorance about how neocolonialism reinforces the uneven distribution of intellectual labor and obstructs the epistemic agency of subalterns. Rather than viewing knowledge as a process of fact‐finding and data‐collection across the globe, Spivak proposes the notion of the planet that is inaccessible to us, despite our best methods and methodologies. This goes against digital idealism and technodazzled empowerment strategies that promise desubalternization through cyber‐literacy.

The recognition of the limits of our power to know opens up possibilities of other practices of decoding ethics, which in Spivak's view are not always easily transferable across linguistic and epistemic communities. Planetary ethics functions as a catachresis for inscribing collective responsibility (Reference SpivakSpivak 2003, 102), even as it guards against unreflective valorization of multiculturalism and radical alterity (81–84). In place of Kantian cosmopolitan agents of solidarity, who operate from a moral high ground, Spivak offers the idea of planetary beings, who take up the ethical responsibility, namely, the ability to respond to the call of the other, in the form of subversive listening. This politics of listening is a practice of extending hospitality to the unexpected voice of the other (Reference DhawanDhawan 2007, 273–83). Subaltern speech will be impossible unless suitable conditions are engendered for the subaltern to be heard. The (non)place of planetarity necessitates this alternate politics of listening not only to the unsaid, but also the unsayable (Reference SpivakSpivak 2011, 101). Pluralization and diversification of epistemic practices are necessary, but not sufficient, so that planetary ethics demands nonformulaic openness to the unthought, which is not only that which has not been thought of as yet, but also that which escapes our best efforts to think (Reference DhawanDhawan 2007, 317). This nonknowing is not a deficiency or ignorance; rather, it alludes to that which resists being a “proper” object of knowledge and thereby escapes objective knowledge.

A planetary approach to ethics, which draws on Planētes, which literally means “wanderers” in ancient Greek, facilitates multidirectional flows of epistemologies and ethical principles without reproducing hegemonic paradigms of what I call “extractive learning” for mass consumption. In contrast to theorists of global justice, who approach ethics in terms of acquiring knowledge about “alien” cultures in an effort to be more inclusive and diversity‐friendly, but end up reproducing moral imperialism, planetary ethics does not paternalistically reduce the Other to merely being native informants for Western information retrieval. Instead it seeks alternate theoretical vocabulary that does not marginalize incommensurable histories and experiences of subalternity. Planetary ethics is also an effort to overcome the nonrelation between altruistic do‐gooders and those who are on the receiving end of philanthropy and benevolence (Reference SpivakSpivak 1999, 429). Enabling a noncoercive relation between the hegemon and the subaltern requires painstaking ethical work, even as these encounters are never innocent.

Instead of postglobalization remapping the imperial world, Spivak proposes planetarity as a more ethical way of understanding the materiality of the world and our collective place and responsibility within it. Rather than being global agents, we should instead imagine ourselves as planetary subjects, inhabiting a planet that is merely “on loan” to us (Reference SpivakSpivak 2003, 30). We need to move from “rights‐based cultures” to “responsibility‐based cultures,” wherein instead of responsibility for the other, we are responsible to the other (Reference SpivakSpivak 2004, 541). It is important to note that planetary ethics is not just about organizing goods for the suffering classes, where the deprived are reduced to their needs, which are coded as transparent to the reading practices of those who extend global solidarity. Rather, it involves engaging with the imagination and desires of dispensers as well as receivers of justice, rights, and humanitarian aid. Moreover, the practice of planetary ethics demands an acknowledgment of complicity by those on the privileged side of transnationality, wherein they interrogate the historical processes that have constituted them as dispensers of justice and rights. This entails forsaking formulas and universal blueprints for solving global problems. Critical self‐questioning and self‐doubt are important aspects of ethico‐political practice and involve cognizance of the fallibility of one's convictions.

This approach poses a great challenge for transnational feminism, as it necessitates rethinking romantic longings for planetary conviviality and transnational solidarity with female subaltern subjects. For instance, in the face of political instrumentalization of sexual violence to justify withholding hospitality to vulnerable refugees, decolonizing global gender politics becomes imperative. While advocates of “global sisterhood” continue to highlight the importance of cross‐border networks, detractors argue that the rise of the global women's movement has come at the price of further entrenching the hegemony of elite feminist agendas. Thus the task of decolonizing feminist philosophy would require feminists with a transnational consciousness to acknowledge their own “agency in complicity” (Reference SpivakSpivak 1999, 399). The epistemic discontinuity between transnational feminists and gendered subaltern subjects demands that transnational feminists question their role as moral entrepreneurs. Transnational feminists are caught in a double bind as they inhabit intimately the very structures that they seek to critique. Instead of presuming to know what is good for vulnerable subjects, like refugee women, a postimperial feminist ethics would entail a move away from a politics of help that reinforces asymmetrical relations between givers and receivers of solidarity to a subversive listening, wherein global agents are hospitable to the idea of learning from those whose epistemic agency has been historically disregarded.

The process of decolonization cannot be successful only through crisis‐driven philanthropy or impatient human‐rights intervention. Without a reconfiguration of international division of intellectual labor, the unexamined reproduction of Eurocentrism would persist. To return to the opening question, “Can non‐Europeans philosophize?,” in my view, unless conditions are made conducive for subalterns to exercise epistemic agency, the project of decolonizing philosophy will remain incomplete. A critical theory and practice of decolonization necessitates a genealogy of how emancipatory norms like freedom, equality, and solidarity have emerged over time. This would counteract the temptation to employ history for self‐vindication and self‐congratulation. Instead of promoting freestanding norms or normative foundationalism, the effort would be to combine a nonrelativistic, nonuniversal approach to normativity with a focus on the context in which norms are operationalized. Commitment to the ideals of women's human rights and gender justice would be justified immanently, rather than by invoking their alleged context‐transcendent character. Such an approach would enable the epistemic agency of disenfranchised groups such that normativity would not be implemented top‐down; rather, normative legitimacy would emerge from those who negotiate these norms.

To conclude, the task of forging postimperialist philosophy requires the reconsideration of our understanding of the discipline. In addition to being trans‐ and interdisciplinary, we also need to be postdisciplinary, in that we question the framing and boundaries of what counts as philosophy. This involves transgressive work on the limits of philosophical discourse by exposing the unchallenged assumptions and exclusions implicit in its disciplinary practices (Reference DhawanDhawan 2007, 34), which would usher in a fresh beginning for philosophy, both European and non‐European. In the face of violent historical legacies, this would not be a postphilosophical celebration of the “death of a discipline” (Reference SpivakSpivak 2003); rather, it would be an experiment with its disciplinary apparatus in an effort to go beyond it. Without these reconfigurations, it is impossible for nonnormative epistemic and ethical practices and experiences to be legible and intelligible. Therein lies the risk as well as responsibility of postimperialist philosophizing, so that we can begin to think again.