Global Perspectives on Modernity and Modernism: Some Notes on Twentieth-Century Transnational Anticolonial Metaphysics

Abstract

These notes are structured around the contention that the early years of the twentieth century witnessed the emergence of a transnational heterodox metaphysics, or properly speaking, postmetaphysics, whose bearer would be the subject of a distinctly modern form of nonviolence. Did these discourses designate a coherent global ethics that we might draw upon to counter the pernicious epidemic of harmfulness in the present world? Can we identify the historical and philosophical catalysts for early twentieth-century postmetaphysics? What bearing does this “movement,” if we may call it that, have upon the question of colonialism? These are some of the questions canvassed in the discussion.