With and Beyond Epistemologies from the South: Ontological Epistemology of Participation, Multi-topial Hermeneutics and the Calling of Planetary Realisations

Abstract

Our contemporary moment is a moment of crisis of epistemology as a part of the wider and deeper crisis of modernity and the human condition. The crisis of epistemology emerges from the limits of the epistemic as it is tied to epistemology of procedural certainty and closure. The crisis of epistemology also reflects the limits of epistemology closed within the Euro-American universe of discourse. It is in this context that the present essay discusses Boaventura de Sousa Santos’ Epistemologies of the South: Justice Against Epistemicide. It also discusses some of the limits of de Sousa Santos’ alternatives especially his lack of cultivation of the ontological in his exploration of epistemological alternatives beyond the Eurocentric canons. It then explores the pathways of ontological epistemology of participation which brings epistemic and ontological works and meditations together in transformative and cross-cultural ways. This helps us in going beyond both the limits of the primacy of epistemology in modernity as well as Eurocentrism. It also explores pathways of a new hermeneutics which involves walking and meditating across multiple topoi of cultures and traditions of thinking and reflections which is called multi- topial hermeneutics in this study. This involves foot-walking and foot-meditative interpretation across multiple cultures and traditions of the world which help us go beyond ethnocentrism and eurocentrism and cultivate conversations and realisations across borders what the essay calls planetary realisations.

Rethinking and transforming Area Studies and Indian Studies: A new cosmopolitanism and the challenges of planetary realisations

“…The linguistic dimension of Area Studies relates to our practices of learning the languages of the areas that we study. But here we must go beyond the pragmatic use of language and delve deeper into their symbolic, spiritual and transcendental dimensions (Giri 2019, 2021d). Building upon Wittgenstein, we can understand and realise languages in Area Studies as forms of life.…”

“…We need to do fieldwork in different regions, cultures and societies of the world. New Education Policy of India 2020 also points us in this direction (Giri 2021b).…”

“…We need to cultivate cosmopolitanism as an ontological epistemology of participation (Giri 2018). Through new ways of cosmopolitan thinking and being we can transform Area Studies and Indian Studies into such a new cosmopolitanism of being, becoming, mutual understanding and conversational learning which is part of planetary realisations (Giri 2021a, 2021d; Mohanty 2002; Sen 2021).…”