Michael Roberts, reprinting an article that appeared initially in Ethnic Studies Report, July 2001, pp. 69-98 and has also been presented in Roberts: Confrontations in Sri Lanka: Sinhalese, LTTE and Others, Colombo: Vijitha Yapa Publications, 2009
Michel Foucault
In the past two decades the writings on nationalism and ethnicity in the corridors of Western academia have been coloured by disenchantment with the excesses that have been attached to their expressions in most parts of the world. The responses are also informed by the decentred and anti-structuralist position popularised by Michel Foucault. The latter perspective encourages a view of society that highlights its disordered fragmentation. The spirit that directs such readings, nevertheless, remains within the time-honoured paradigm that has dominated Western intellectualism for centuries, that of secular rationalism. This has encouraged several writers on ethnic politics in the colonial and post-colonial eras to adopt a self-righteous position of political correctness and epistemological superiority.[1] Continue reading
