Fw: [INDOLOGY] Article about the politics surrounding Indology at the IHRC

[Dean Michael Anderson]

Dominik Wujastyk said:
>We are using the words "race" and "racist" as if they meant something.  
>But this is not the appropriate language to use in a methodologically sound 
>contemporary discussion about ethnicity or community. 

Thank you for pointing this out. I was going to mention it but was afraid my post was getting too long.
Outmoded ideas of race have created no end of trouble in our discipline, not to mention the world at large. This is perhaps fitting since many of the men responsible for the mistaken concept were our academic forebears. Thus, we should be among the leaders in correcting people's understanding. 

Of course, at the same time we should be active in addressing the real issues this imaginary concept has created. Just because the snake turned out to be a rope doesn't mean the broken leg caused in the ensuing panic is illusory.
Best,
Dr. Dean or is it Professor Anderson? I can never predict.

   

   From: Dominik Wujastyk <wujastyk at gmail.com>
 To: Indology List <indology at list.indology.info> 
 Sent: Monday, June 15, 2015 2:12 PM
 Subject: Re: [INDOLOGY] Article about the politics surrounding Indology at the IHRC
   
​I know that we all know this, but I want to just get it on the table explicitly.  There is a broad scientific agreement that essentialist and typological conceptualizations of race are untenable​.  All humans are, biologically speaking, a single race.  

We are using the words "race" and "racist" as if they meant something.  But this is not the appropriate language to use in a methodologically sound contemporary discussion about ethnicity or community.  The nearest term I can think of to what we mean is "nation" and "nationalist".  This seems an uncontroversial way of expressing the difference between, say, Moroccans and Icelanders, or Germans and Indians.  As Philipp said, it's a matter of passports.  In most places in the world, including the Americas, Europe and India, there has been so much movement of populations, accompanied by cultural and linguistic entanglement over many centuries, that it is impossible to be essentialist even about the national groupings, as has often been pointed out.  What is absolutely certain is that none of these groupings, cultural, linguistic or national, has anything to do with race.



Best,
Dr Dominik



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