“The universal word speaks only in dialect”

Abstract

AbstractPostcolonial theories announce an “exit”: the departure from the West as the world’s centre of gravity and from Eurocentric hegemonic claims of superiority, turning away from the universal, and placing unheard voices at the centre – those who are excluded from academic, public, and political discourse. Such stories and histories of the margins do not simply represent “other” stories from the “periphery.” Rather, the stories of the margins are constitutive for the history of Europe and the invention of European modernity. Today’s manifestations of global Christianity are no exception to these dynamics. There are various models of alternative universalisms and conceptions of unity, where the crucial questions are: who defines the unity of the churches and has the monopoly over interpretation and – related to this, but a little more radically – whether such a formulation of unity must necessarily repeat Western grammar or whether there are not entirely other grammars and epistemologies of unity. Postcolonial theories and postcolonial practices in particular offer promising perspectives in dealing with these questions.