


This paper provisionally offers a way of addressing the predicament of a person who does not feel at home in her own concepts, because these concepts were once forced upon her by a colonial regime. If the goal for a person in such a circumstance is to overcome this alienation through intellectual means, then one way in which this might be accomplished would be to develop a hermeneutics that would enable her to ascertain the alienating aspects of her existing concepts. To this end, I outline a hermeneutical strategy which requires that, in reading the colonizer’s textual tradition, the colonized/ex–colonized person must heuristically presuppose that her current concepts are entirely determined by this tradition unless these concepts can be shown to resist such determination on reflective–systematic grounds.



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Apaar Kumar
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critique of ideology
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10
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2017-04-01
2023-08-01
2017-06-01
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163-183
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Apaar Kumar
2017/04/01
163
2036-542X
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critique of ideology
183
Hermeneutics from the Margins: 
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                                                       trópos • anno X • numero 1 • 2017 – ISBN 978-88-255-0482-8
                                                       DOI 10.4399/978882550482810 – pag. 163-183 (giugno 2017)




                                  Hermeneutics from the Margins
                                                                              Provisional Notes

                                                                                    Apaar Kumar⇤



   abstract: This paper provisionally oVers a way of addressing the predicament of a
      person who does not feel at home in her own concepts, because these concepts
      were once forced upon her by a colonial regime. If the goal for a person in
      such a circumstance is to overcome this alienation through intellectual means,
      then one way in which this might be accomplished would be to develop a
      hermeneutics that would enable her to ascertain the alienating aspects of her
      existing concepts. To this end, I outline a hermeneutical strategy which requires
      that, in reading the colonizer’s textual tradition, the colonized/ex–colonized
      person must heuristically presuppose that her current concepts are entirely
      determined by this tradition unless these concepts can be shown to resist such
      determination on reflective–systematic grounds.

   keywords: Hermeneutics, colonialism, intellectual self–determination, Husserl,
      social ontology, critique of ideology.

    I am concerned here with the predicament of a person unable to feel
at home in her own concepts, given that historically these concepts were
forced upon her by a colonizing power. If the goal for such a person is to
overcome her predicament through intellectual means, then one way of
doing so would involve developing, at least as propaedeutic, a hermeneutics
which would allow her to understand the extent to which her existing con-
cepts bear the alienating traces of the conceptual vocabulary wrought in the
lopsided colonial encounter. Alternatively put, the task would be to identify
those of her existing concepts, if any, that in some way cannot be subsumed
under the concepts of the colonizer. In this essay, I outline a hermeneutical
strategy — which I call “hermeneutics of residue” — that might, in part, be
suitable for accomplishing this task. This strategy requires that, in reading
the colonizer’s textual tradition, the colonized/ex–colonized person must
heuristically presuppose that her current concepts are entirely determi-
ned by this tradition unless these concepts can be shown to resist such
determination on reflective–systematic grounds. I take this hermeneutical
     ⇤
       Assistant professor of Philosophy at the Manipal Centre for Philosophy and Humanities
(apaarkumar@gmail.com).


                                                                                                           163
164      Apaar Kumar


orientation to form part of the larger endeavor to explore the possibility of a
philosophical hermeneutics from the perspective of those who suVer from
discursive marginalization; and to investigate if the resulting hermeneutics
is subsumable under the existing hermeneutical theories in the Western
philosophical discourse, or if it requires a category of its own.
    In the first section, I articulate the problem for which the hermeneutics of
residue is the solution: the victim of colonization — call her the “post–colonial
self” — unable to feel at home in her own concepts.1 In §2, I suggest a way of
resolving this difficulty. I argue that, given the particulars of the post–colonial
situation, the post–colonial person can gain insight into this situation, at least
in part, if she takes as her point of departure the general philosophical view
that the self analogically apprehends the other. I indicate that Husserl’s social
ontology provides a useful elaboration of this view (§2.1); and argue for
why this social ontology is relevant for overcoming post–colonial conceptual
alienation (§2.2). I then offer, in §2.3, a hermeneutical strategy consistent with
this social ontology, the hermeneutics of residue. In this section, I show that
residue hermeneutics does not fall squarely under the ambit of two influential
contemporary hermeneutical approaches — the hermeneutics of tradition,
and the hermeneutics of suspicion.


1. The problem

Consider the following vivid description of the state of mind of the post–colonial
self:
      Do you feel that your own people and country are somehow always positioned
      outside the mainstream? Have you ever felt that the moment you said the word ‘I’,
      that ‘I’ was someone else, not you? That in some obscure way, you were not the
      subject of your own sentence? Do you ever feel that whenever you speak, you have
      already in some sense been spoken for? Or that when you hear others speaking,
      that you are only ever going to be the object of their speech? Do you sense that
      those speaking would never think of trying to find out how things seem to you,
      from where you are? That you live in the world of others, a world that exists for
      others? (Young 2003: 1).

   This passage describes the existential, political, and discursive margi-
nality of the post–colonial subject. Such a subject is existentially marginal,

     1. Although I take the description of the general predicament of the victims of colonization from
the existing discourse of postcolonial theory (§1), I employ the term “post–colonial” (with a hyphen)
to distinguish my overall project from this existing discourse. In doing this, I am neither accepting
nor rejecting postcolonial theory. Instead, I am merely bracketing, primarily due to the constraints of
space, the question of locating the argument of this paper in relation to the sophisticated debates in
postcolonial discourse.
                                                           Hermeneutics from the Margins         165


because it matters little “how things seem to her.” She is politically insignifi-
cant, given that she must submit to the interests of others. Most importantly
for my purposes here, she is discursively marginal. For even in uttering
the subject word “I,” she does not “feel” like the “subject of [her] own
sentence.” Instead, it seems to her that she has “in some sense been spoken
for,” that the words she uses belong to someone else. If concepts are words,
as some Anglo–American philosophers have asserted, then this means that
the post–colonial self feels unable to take ownership of the concepts that
she employs in her daily life. This feeling of what one may call a “conceptual
alienation” — or not feeling at home in one’s own concepts — seems particu-
larly problematic, since it seems to require people to cast all their thoughts
and desires, which are unique to their situation, into a set of concepts that
may contain little or no link to this situation.
    It can be said that conceptual alienation remains a factor in post–colonial
societies well after these societies have achieved political independence from
the colonizer (Young 2003: 99). As the lure of cultural nationalism in many of
these societies demonstrates, the political ouster of the colonizer does not
suffice to erase the problem and trauma of colonialism. Academic discourse
in these societies also remains preoccupied with documenting the effects
of colonialism. The present essay is a provisional contribution to this highly
differentiated academic discourse in which an attempt has been made in
general to address the problem of colonialism through intellectual means.2 I
address the problem of the conceptual alienation of the post–colonial self —
the inability to take ownership of her concepts — by offering a hermeneutical
strategy that would allow us to “recognize otherness or the alien in oneself (or
one’s own)” (Dallmayr, in Michelfelder and Palmer 1989: 92). More precisely,
in what follows, I provide a way of discovering traces of colonial otherness in
the concepts which the post–colonial self might employ in her daily life.


2. Notes on the hermeneutics of residue

To accomplish the task of isolating the nature of her conceptual alienation
(§1), the post–colonial self must first decide on a social ontology. How should
the post–colonial self represent the colonizing other? It could be said here
that, roughly speaking, the choice is between two opposed social ontologies
— let us call them the “analogy view” and the “differentiation view.” Both
these views attempt to provide an adequate ontological description of the
     2. This includes the discourse of postcolonial theory, which emerged primarily in the An-
glo–American academic world, but also the many approaches to this question originating in a variety
of disciplines in the ex–colonies. I am discussing the social ontologies and hermeneutical strategies
implicit in the key “theoretical” works on this topic in the context of India in a longer work.
166     Apaar Kumar


way the existent human self represents the existent human other. In the
analogy view, the self represents the other by privileging its similarities rather
than dissimilarities with the other. Conversely, in the differentiation view,
the self privileges the dissimilarities over the similarities in representing the
other. In this section, I briefly outline Husserl’s social ontology as a version
of the analogy view, and argue that the analogy view can serve as the basis
for understanding, at least in part, the encounter between the colonizer and
the colonized (§2.1). Subsequently, in §2.2, I argue for the relevance of the
analogy view in the case of the post–colonial subject looking to overcome
her conceptual alienation via intellectual means. Finally, in §2.3, I articulate
a hermeneutical strategy — the hermeneutics of residue — that becomes
plausible if we presuppose the analogy view, and show how it can be classified
neither as hermeneutics of tradition nor as hermeneutics of suspicion.

2.1. The analogy view

I take Husserl’s social ontology to instantiate the analogy view.3 The goal of
Husserlian phenomenology is to describe the representations of the “trans-
cendental ego” by bracketing the philosophical question of whether the
subject can represent the object in its ultimate reality (Husserl 1999: §11, 26).
This forms the first step towards ultimately classifying these representations
into universal typologies (ibid., §13, 29–30). A description of how the trans-
cendental ego experiences the “alter ego” is part of this larger project. To
explicate the ego’s experience of the alter ego, Husserl reduces the transcen-
dental ego to its “sphere of ownness” by bracketing out all representations
that are “mediately or immediately” associated with another subjectivity.
The bracketed out representations include not merely the actions of all alter
egos, but also products related to them — for instance, cultural objects like
books, tools, etc. (ibid., 92). Reduced in this fashion, the transcendental ego
consists of “what is peculiarly [its] own,” and includes (a) fields of sensation
relating to its animate body (e.g. sensory bodily sensations), and (b) its
awareness of being a “ruling and governing,” i.e., an awareness of its ability
to initiate spontaneous activity (ibid., 95–97). Husserl describes the ego’s
experience of the alter ego from the perspective of this reduced ego, the
“sphere of ownness,” in the following way.
     (1) The ego experiences the alter–ego through a “mediate intentionali-
ty. . . [or] appresentation (analogical apperception)” (ibid., 108). Specifically,
the ego apprehends the body of the alter ego as animate in analogy with

    3. Since Husserl’s’ Cartesian Meditations is supposed to contain the summary statement of
Husserl’s views in the “middle period” of his work as a philosopher, I rely on this text to delineate his
view of how the human ego represents the human alter ego.
                                                             Hermeneutics from the Margins          167


its own animate body, and does so non–inferentially, i.e., “not as a thinking
act.”4 Similarly, the ego appresents the ruling–governing of the alter ego in
analogy with its own ruling–governing (ibid., 119).
    (2) The “here” of the ego does not represent the “there” of the alter ego
by reducing it to its own “here.” Instead, it can only apprehend the alter ego
in a non–originary manner, that is, through a “certain mediacy of intentio-
nality” (ibid., 109): “as if I were standing over there, where the Other’s body
is” (ibid., 123). Husserl characterizes this feature of the appresentation of the
other as a “fusion,” or an “assimilation” of a “there” to a “here” (ibid., 118).
    (3) The ego’s appresentation of the alter ego forms the basic building
block to describe the nature of intersubjectivity. The intersubjective world
has three features. First, it consists in a multiplication of alter egos such that
each ego appresents other egos, represents other egos appresenting other
egos, and is itself appresented by other egos. Second, the intersubjective
world is constituted when to each representation as it exists in the sphere of
ownness (= excluding the alter ego) is added the sphere of appresentation
(= including the alter ego). When the latter is fully superimposed upon
the former, the “world of men and culture” comes into being (ibid., 125).
Third, the ego can describe the intersubjective world as common to all
egos for the following reason. I as ego appresent all alter egos as having a
sphere of ownness. All alter egos have an awareness of the world in their
sphere of ownness. This awareness is similar to my own awareness of the
world, except that I apprehend the world of all my potential and actual
alter egos from the perspective: “as if I were seeing the world from their
perspective.” Therefore, the reduced ego apprehends an objective world
that is common to all potential egos.5 Similarly, the “zero member” or “zero
personality” representing a culture analogically apprehends via empathy
the “zero member” or “zero personality” representing every other culture
(ibid., 134–35).
    From (1)–(3), it follows that Husserl explicates the ego’s experience of the
alter ego on three diVerent levels: the primordial level on which the reduced
ego appresents the alter ego as possessing an animate body, and the capacity
for ruling–governing; the intersubjective level, or the inclusion of all actual
or potential alter egos; and the cultural level consisting of shared ideals.
This social ontology is consistent with the analogy view, because, on each

     4. “[O]nly a similarity connecting with my primordial sphere, that body over there with my
body can serve as the motivational basis for the “analogizing” apprehension of that body as another
animate organism” (Husserl 1999: 111).
      5. “[T]he multiplicity of the Other’s world is given as oriented peripherally to mine, and is thus
a world, because it becomes constituted with a common Objective world immanent in it, and the
spatiotemporal forms of the Objective world functions at the same time as a form that gives access
to it” (Husserl 1999: 134; also 130).
168   Apaar Kumar


of the three Husserlian levels, the ego represents the alter ego in analogy
with itself, i.e., by privileging continuities with the alter ego rather than
the discontinuities. This does not mean the absence of diVerence between
the ego and the alter ego, because the alter ego is always “there” to the
ego’s “here.” It also does not imply any reductive assimilation of the alter
ego by the ego. Instead, it means that similarity must be privileged if we
wish to describe in a phenomenologically accurate manner the ontological
structure of the ego’s representation of the alter ego.

2.2. Post–colonial conceptual alienation and the analogy view

I now show how the analogy view relates to the conceptual alienation of
the post–colonial self. If the post–colonial self feels alienated from her own
concepts, and if she wishes to escape this predicament, then she must start
with discovering the particular concepts that alienate her. This would require
a measure that would allow her to sift out the alien from the non–alien in
her concepts — i.e., what in her concepts can be seen as somehow belonging
to the colonizer culture. However, to undertake this task, the post–colonial
self must decide on whether to represent the colonizer’s concepts in terms
of the analogy or the diVerentiation view (or perhaps, in some way, both).
In what follows, I argue that presupposing the analogy view can clear up
a new philosophical space for thinking about the relationship between
the perpetrators and the victims of colonialism, without denying that the
diVerentiation view may also have its own strategic advantages.
    Husserl does not directly address the question of how the ego might
represent the alter ego as possessing concepts. One way of answering this
question consistent with Husserl’s approach is as follows. For Husserl,
the ego, on the primordial level, represents the animate body and the ru-
ling–governing of the alter ego by analogy with its own animate body and its
ruling–governing respectively, i.e., non–inferentially via empathy. Concepts,
Husserl says, are “primal instituting[s]” that are actively constituted for the
sake of ordering the perceptual universe (classifications, typologies, relations,
etc.) (1999: 111). Since concepts play a role in actively ordering experience,
they must belong to the ego’s capacity for ruling–governing. If we accept
Husserl’s analogy view, then the ego’s attribution of conceptuality/concepts
to the alter ego must take the form: “as if I were employing concepts (or
that particular concept) over there, where the other is employing concepts
(or that particular concept).” Further, on the intersubjective level, the ego
would presumably represent many versions of the same concept. Finally,
on the cultural level, the zero ego would represent the zero alter ego in the
form: “as if I were to hold this shared idea there where the alter ego is.”
                                                            Hermeneutics from the Margins          169


    Therefore, within a Husserl–type analogy view, the ego would attribute
conceptuality to the alter ego in analogy with its own ability to institute
concepts on each of the three Husserlian levels — primordial, intersubjecti-
ve, and cultural. However, if the ego must analogically apprehend the alter
concepts, how does it diVerentiate its own concepts from alter concepts?
The diVerence, in my view, lies in the ego’s representation of the alter ego
as the irreducible “there.” At any moment, the ego can reduce the alter ego
into a pure “there” on each of the three Husserlian levels. For instance, the
ego would represent the alter ego as radically dis–analogous from itself if
the latter were to threaten it, etc.
    Now, if the post–colonial self aims to separate the alien from the non–alien
in her concepts, would it be appropriate for her to presuppose the analogy
view, in which case the ego must analogically appresent the concepts of the
alter ego? This question can be answered in the affirmative. In what follows, I
show that if, in general, a human ego is to represent a human alter ego, and if
we desire to describe the structure of this representation in an ontologically
justifiable way, then the ego must presuppose, at least in some measure, the
analogy view, even if the ego wishes to represent the alter ego in terms of
some extreme version of the differentiation view. I justify this general claim by
analyzing two examples in which the colonizing ego represents the colonized
alter ego in terms of the differentiation view, and showing that in both of
these cases the analogy view must be presupposed in some measure. The
significance of this claim is as follows. If we are able to establish, in general,
the claim that even radical versions of the differentiation view must involve
the analogy view to some extent, then we can say that, in reading the colonial
archive, the post–colonial subject must employ the analogy view if she wishes
to describe her ontological predicament vis–à–vis her colonial heritage in an
ontologically accurate manner.6
    Consider the following example from the colonial literature in which the
colonized native is often characterized as immature, barbaric, developing,
and primitive.

    The notion of the African as minor. . . took very strong hold. Spaniards and Boers
    had questioned whether natives had souls: modern Europeans care less about
    that but doubted whether they had minds, or mind capable of adult growth. A
    theory came to be fashionable that mental growth in the African ceased early, that
    childhood was never left behind (Nandy in Gandhi 1998: 32).

   This passage consists of two instances. (a) The soul–possessing European
ego represents the African alter ego as soul–less. (b) The European ego with

     6. Since my aims are philosophical here, I am not delving into the various historical responses of
the colonizer towards the colonized, and vice versa.
170    Apaar Kumar


an “adult” mind represents the African alter ego as having a mind incapable
of “adult growth” — so not really possessing mind proper. In both (a) and (b),
it may seem that the ego is presuming the differentiation view, of privileging
difference over similarity. However, I contend that this positing of difference
can be analyzed as presupposing the analogy view in both these cases.
     Consider (b) first: the ego denying mental growth to the alter ego. The
alter ego could have had a mind, or robust conceptuality (ruling–governing)
if it had developed in the “normal” ego way. How is such a representation
possible? Making the claim that the alter ego fails to reach the “normal”
presumes that the alter ego follows the initial steps of mental growth like
the ego, but, unlike the ego, it is unable to take the final step required for
mental maturity. In other words, for the European ego, the “there” of the
African alter ego means: “as if I were employing concepts like a child there
where the African alter ego stands.” However, in making such a claim,
the ego must presuppose that the alter ego possesses the same general
pattern of physical, and, for the most part, mental growth as it itself does,
which means that it must represent the alter ego in analogy with itself. The
dis–analogy between the ego and the alter ego with regard to the extent of
mental growth, therefore, seems to presuppose that the ego analogically
appresent the alter ego. This, in turn, shows that the analogy view seems to
capture a part of the ontology of a circumstance that, on first sight, seemed
like a straightforward instantiation of the diVerentiation view. Naturally, this
does not mean that the diVerentiation view cannot also throw light on some
aspects of the situation, but it does mean that the analogy view captures
some part of the social ontology implicit in the way the ego represents the
alter ego in this example.
     Now consider (a) — the European ego’s denial that the African alter ego
has a soul. If we stipulate that the “soul” is the capacity to rule/govern, the
ego’s denial of soul to the alter ego implies a denial of the whole capacity
to rule/govern.7 This instance is more radical than the denial of mind in
(b), where the African was at least allowed the capacity to rule/govern even
if a diminished one. If the alter ego lacks a soul, then the ego cannot say
of it: “as if I were ruling/governing (= employing concepts) over there.”
Therefore, (a) seems to posit diVerence in a more radical way than (b), and
would appear to be best analyzed in terms of the diVerentiation view. But
here too I think that the positing of diVerence presupposes the analogy
view for the following reason.
     For Husserl, analogical appresentation is the special way in which hu-
mans apprehend each other, and must be distinguished from the human

    7. I am aware that the terms “mind” and “soul” have several meanings in both early modern
and modern philosophy. Here I am distinguishing these terms in a stipulative way.
                                                          Hermeneutics from the Margins        171


apprehension of inanimate objects and animals. The case of animals is
complex, because they are closer to humans. However, inanimate objects
must always be analyzed in terms of the diVerentiation view. If this is the
case, then in (a), the soul–possessing ego can deny soul to the alter ego
only if it represents the alter ego as non–human. For, given that analogical
appresentation relates to human–human representation, if the ego does
classify the alter ego as “human,” its denial of soul to the alter ego must
have its basis in the analogical appresentation of the alter ego — presumably
analogical appresentation of the body of the alter ego. In other words, even
if the ego diVerentiates itself from the alter ego by denying the latter all
ruling/governing (or conceptuality), this diVerentiation must still rest on
its analogical appresentation of the alter ego’s body if she classifies the alter
ego as “human.” On the other hand, if the ego denies humanity to the alter
ego, then it cannot analogically appresents the alter ego, in which case the
latter would be no diVerent from inanimate objects. Thus, the human ego’s
denial of conceptuality to another human alter ego must presuppose an
element of analogical appresentation (presumably, the alter ego’s body in
[a]). From this one can conclude that, as in (b), in human representations
of other humans, the ego’s representation of the alter ego must include a
dimension of analogical appresentation, even if the ego represents itself as
starkly diVerent from the alter ego. As I have said, this does not mean that
the diVerentiation view is false, but that the analogy view does capture an
aspect of the ontology of humans representing other humans.
    If the analogy view does indeed capture one dimension of humans
representing other humans, and if the post–colonial project is to sift out
the alien colonizer traces in her existing concepts, then such a self must
accept the analogy view, at least as one part of her analysis. In the case of
the post–colonial self, this would require presupposing that the colonizer
is a concept–employing human; and that, especially given the fact of colo-
nial imposition, at least some of her existing concepts must be analogous
to concepts in the textual tradition of the colonizing culture. So if the
task for the post–colonial self is to identify the alien and the non–alien in
her concepts, and if she must presume the analogy view on ontological
grounds, then one part of her larger project must consist in reading both
the textual tradition of the colonizer’s culture and the colonial archive, and
documenting the extent to which her existing concepts are similar to the
colonizer and colonial concepts on the primordial, intersubjective, and
cultural levels.8 Performing this task would account for that dimension of
the colonizer–colonized relationship that is best analyzed in terms of the

    8. I take colonizer texts to be the foundational texts of the colonizer’s culture. In contrast,
colonial texts are texts produced by the colonizer in the colonial encounter.
172      Apaar Kumar


analogy view.9 Hence, if the post–colonial self wishes to separate the alien
from the non–alien in her concepts in a holistic and rigorous manner,
it will not suffice to focus on — perhaps even emphasize — merely the
differences between herself and the colonizer. She must also accomplish
the task of reading the colonizer and colonial texts in light of the analogy
view.10
     9. One could argue that the similarities between colonizer and colonized are trivial compared
to the differences between them, that they make for very thin gruel. But this objection seems
to prejudge the issue. In the emotionally fraught post–colonial context, positing difference from
the colonizer seems to be the natural currency, and therefore similarities seem trivial. However,
clarifying the similarities between colonizer and colonized can have several advantages. First,
as I have argued in §2.1, differences only make sense in terms of the background of similarities.
Therefore, clarifying the similarities help sharpen the articulation of differences. Second, assuming
that the colonizer and colonized do influence each other, which is not an unfair assumption to make,
the borrowing of concepts on either side would seem entirely inexplicable if we take the radical
differentiation view. Consequently, the analogy view must form part of the relationship between
colonizer and colonized, and therefore must be described. Third, if one wishes to understand
the ontological structure of the post–colonial situation, ignoring similarities, even if they are thin
gruel, would only mean getting the ontology of the situation wrong: one wants to understand
one’s situation in its entirety. Fourth, the similarities between the colonizer and the colonized
may include common zero concepts like some sort of commitment to human cultivation. For
example, in the Indian case, the attitude of the British Indologists, and the 19th century Indian
curiosity/fascination with Western thought could be viewed as exemplifying, say, a common
commitment to various shared ideals and modes of doing. If complex zero concepts can be seen,
even prima facie, to be analogous across cultures in any way, then the question of similarities
between the colonizer and colonized cultures must be explored in depth, even if only to respond
to the question of whether or not they can be considered thin gruel.
    10. It may be objected that my employment of Husserl’s social ontology is suspect. Levinas
claims that Husserl remains tied to Cartesianism, because he takes self–consciousness to be the
starting point of his philosophy; takes knowledge as his goal; and speaks of ontology rather than
ethics as first philosophy (1989: 78). For Levinas, ethics construed as “responsibility for the other”
is prior to ontology. By contrasting it with Heidegger’s notion of being–toward–death, Levinas
makes responsibility for the other prior even to one’s concern with one’s own mortality. The
fact, says Levinas, that the other is mortal somehow “calls for me, begs for me, as if the invisible
death that must be faced by the Other, pure otherness, separated, in some way, from any whole,
were my business” (ibid., 83). So ethics is prior to ontology. As Levinas says in Totality and Infinity,
“If ontology — the comprehension, the embracing of Being — is impossible. . . it is because the
comprehension of Being in general cannot dominate the relationship with the Other. The latter
relationship commands the first. I cannot disentangle myself from society with the Other, even
when I consider the Being of the existent he is” (Levinas 1961: 47). Whatever the merits of Levinas’s
own view, Levinas is certainly right that Husserl takes ontology construed as descriptive phenome-
nology to be prior to ethics, although Husserl did lecture on ethics. Heidegger provides a clearer
statement of Husserl’s primacy of ontology view. He says “He who truly knows beings knows
what he wills to do in the midst of them” (1993: 92). Julien Young has interpreted this passage to
mean that, for Heidegger, a “grounding in ontology” is “necessary to a genuinely authentic ethics”
(2001: 26). More specifically, a “[p]roper knowledge of one’s ‘ontology’ is no mere ‘theoretical’
accomplishment. It is, rather, also ‘practical’. It bears in a decisive way, upon will and action” (ibid.).
That is, being able to describe accurately one’s situation brings to light how we should act in the
situation. If our problematic is the post–colonial predicament as it has been articulated in this essay,
the primacy of the ontological view ought not to be displaced by the Levinasian position for two
reasons. First, since the task for the post–colonial self is to describe the nature of her existing con-
cepts, an ontological approach is necessary, if only for the sake of descriptive completeness.
                                                             Hermeneutics from the Margins          173


   In the following section, I oVer one hermeneutical strategy that seems
appropriate for this task.

2.3. Hermeneutics of residue

If the post–colonial self feels alienated from her own concepts (§2.1), and if
she believes that one part of the larger project of overcoming this alienation
involves demarcating the alien from the non–alien in her existing concepts
by reading the colonizer/colonial archive on the basis of the analogy view
(§2.2), then this project requires articulating a general hermeneutical stra-
tegy for reading this archive. In what follows, I outline one such strategy,
which I call the hermeneutics of residue [(1)–(3)]. Subsequently, I locate this
hermeneutical orientation in relation to the contemporary debate between
the hermeneutics of tradition, and the hermeneutics of suspicion [(4)].

(1) The hermeneutics of residue takes as its point of departure, what
Gadamer calls, the “living present” (Gadamer 2003: 368). For Gadamer,
history must be written anew from the perspective of every new present
(Gadamer, in Michelfelder and Palmer 1989: 24). For my purposes here,
the “living present” is a set of discursive and institutional concepts from
which the post–colonial self finds herself alienated. Since the task for the
post–colonial subject is to demarcate the alien from the non–alien in her
concepts, this emphasis on the “living present of conversation” as opposed
to mere historicism seems justified. The reason is simply that post–colonial
alienation remains a reality in the living present, and the goal is to overcome
this alienation in the present for the sake of the future. Therefore, the
living present can be taken as the point for departure if the goal of the
post–colonial self is to discover the alien in herself. This does not mean that
historicist accounts explicating the evolution of post–colonial concepts have
no appeal. But it does mean that a historicist approach cannot be the only
way of dealing with the after eVects of the colonial encounter.

Second, given that the effects of colonialism come built in with the element of the
“unethical,” i.e., the violent and the tyrannical, it is best to include Husserlian on-
tological description as, at least, one starting point for inquiry for the following rea-
son. It is reasonable to suppose that a methodologically rigorous ontology of this
sort would manage to describe, at least, some aspects of the post–colonial situation.
Of course, it could be argued that such a description could also be made available from the
Levinasian perspective of the responsibility for the other. This is true, but even if such a description
could be provided, given the diametrically opposed way in which Levinas and Husserl proceed,
there is no reason to suppose, at least on pragmatic grounds, that the Levinasian description
would necessarily displace the Husserlian one. Prima facie, it seems better to assume that the two
descriptions would illuminate different aspects of the same reality.
174     Apaar Kumar


(2) Concepts operating at the shared culture level, what Husserl calls
“zero concepts,” and debates around these concepts in the public sphere
must form the point of departure for a post–colonial self trying to ascertain
the alien and the non–alien in her concepts. This is justified, because the
method to be employed involves taking publicly–available concepts as they
actually exist in a post–colonial culture, and then arguing for why these
concepts are alien or non–alien for someone in this culture. Since it is the
zero concepts that are taken for granted in the everyday, and given that
our analysis must be communicable on the collective level, it makes sense
to start with the existing zero concepts in a society. Zero concepts are
often complex concepts in that they possess a variety of features. Like all
complex concepts, they are, as Gadamer would say, “historically eVected”
(Wirkungsgeschichtlich), i.e., they have gained and/or lost attributes in the
course of history, and present themselves as one particular conglomerate
at an instant of time. If colonial imposition has been part of a historical
trajectory, then the zero concepts would contain, in some combination,
features from both the pre–colonial and post–independence phases of time.
For instance, one could imagine a zero concept of the self as made up of
bits from Kant and bits from, say, the Indian thinker, Sankara, at time t, and
so on — what some might call “hybrid.”
    While zero concepts make for the starting point of inquiry, the post–colonial
self attempting to identify the alien in her concepts must not remain restricted
to the zero level. A more holistic effort would require looking at zero concepts
as they manifest themselves on the intersubjective and primordial levels. The
analysis on each of these levels would include hermeneutical practices oriented
towards reading key texts of the colonizer/colonial tradition that may have
influenced the shape of zero concepts in a post–colonial culture. Which texts
from the colonizer’s tradition must be chosen for analysis would depend on
strictly pragmatic criteria given the task to be accomplished — in the present
case, that which aids the post–colonial self to demarcate the alien in her living
concepts. The specific questions, which researchers engaged in this project
would ask, would also depend on this criterion. I now specify (briefly) the main
questions that the postcolonial subject must ask on the three Husserlian levels,
as well as the textual practice corresponding to each of these.

      a) On the primordial level, the ego attributes concepts to the alter ego
         via analogical appresentation, “as if it [ego] were employing concepts
         there where the alter ego stands” (§2.1). Here, texts must be identified
         in which, historically speaking, a post–colonial self encounters a key
         text from the colonizer’s tradition, and engages with it. For instance,
         an orthodox Hindu grappling with the Millean notion of utility, or
         trying to understand the English notion of dignity, etc.
                                                            Hermeneutics from the Margins         175


    b) On the intersubjective level, the ego must engage with many ver-
       sions of the same concept in a discourse (§2.1). So the task on this
       level would be to unravel the multi–logue that may (and often does)
       characterize the historical evolution of the concepts currently exi-
       sting in a post–colonial society, but from the perspective of how these
       concepts may have emerged in the context of the colonial encoun-
       ter, and/or in the colonizer’s own textual tradition. This analysis
       would include texts embodying the textual and institutional debates
       that ensued with regard to a particular concept in the history of a
       post–colonial culture, say the concept of utility, or the concept of
       the self, etc. This constellation of texts would include originary texts
       from the colonizer’s tradition, but also texts forged in the colonial
       encounter.
    c) On the cultural level, the ego represents the zero alter ego of the co-
       lonizer culture “as if it were holding a particular zero concept there,
       where the alter ego stands” (§2.1). On this level, the aim is to ascer-
       tain the zero concepts of the colonizer/colonial culture in analogy
       with the existing (corresponding) zero concepts in the post–colonial
       culture. Further, one would also deal with the relationships between
       zero concepts taken as a whole in the post–colonial culture.

         (3) The hermeneutics of residue is implicit in the way the analytical
         structure of inquiry has been formulated in §2.3(2). I have indicated
         that the post–colonial subject must analogically appresent the co-
         lonizer/colonial concepts from the perspective of her own living
         concepts on each level. This does not, however, imply that the in-
         quirer must somehow underline the similarities between these two
         sets of concepts. Quite the contrary. Residue hermeneutics does not
         imply assimilation of one’s own concept to that of the alter ego. Nor
         does it present such assimilation as normatively preferable. While
         it is true that the residue hermeneuticist would look for similarities
         between her concepts and that of the alter ego on the primordial,
         intersubjective and cultural levels, she does so with a radical open-
         ness towards discovering diVerences between her own concepts, and
         the concepts of the alter ego. This openness towards discovering
         discontinuities is not passive. Instead, it is the active preparedness to
         mark out diVerences on purely reflective grounds.11

    11. Leela Gandhi points out that many postcolonial theorists have drawn on the Hegelian
master–slave paradigm to grapple with the post–colonial predicament. Hegelian social ontology
is not inconsistent with residue hermeneutics to the extent it remains restricted to the colonized
person’s “struggle to free himself ” from an “externally determined definition of self ” (Gendzier, in
176     Apaar Kumar


    If the ego is oriented towards systematically marking out the similari-
ties between its own concepts, and the concepts of the alter ego on the
primordial, intersubjective, and cultural levels; and if, despite this orienta-
tion, which is purely heuristic, an irreducible conceptual residue emerges
as an incommensurability; — then this residue can be seen as the pri-
mordial conceptual ownness in the living present of the ego, here the
post–colonial ego.12 The residue marks the diVerence between the “here”
of the post–colonial ego–concepts, and the “there” of the concepts of the
colonizer alter–concepts. But this diVerence is not merely presumed or as-
serted. Given that the residue hermeneuticist orients herself to emphasizing
(methodologically) similarity between her own concepts and that of the
alter ego, while remaining actively open to marking out the conceptual
diVerences on purely reflective grounds, the residual conceptual diVerence,
when and if it does appear, must be seen as reflectively achieved.13 For this
reason, residue hermeneutics can provide a rigorous foundation for gaining
knowledge about the nature of our own concepts, which can then form
the basis for creating new concepts. In the post–colonial context, such a
reflective–systematic inquiry may even reveal that concepts, perhaps whole
conceptual schemas, which are thought to be alien at particular historical
junctures may not be alien at all or turn out to be alien in surprising new
ways.
    In sum, if we assume that intellectual self–determination involves, at least
in part, reflectively understanding one’s own nature as a subject belonging
to a particular history, then residue hermeneutics could be seen as one
strategy within the discipline of philosophy consistent with this notion of
intellectual self–determination. post–colonial societies are often rife with
discursive and physical violence. In these societies, the tendency is to view
one’s concepts as unique, and somehow untouched by colonialism. Adop-
ting residue hermeneutics is one useful way of rigorously describing the
nature of post–colonial concepts, because it allows for residual conceptual

Gandhi 1998: 16). However, a residue hermeneuticist would be more sympathetic to Leela Gandhi’s
own view that postcolonial theory must not merely “reveal the colonizer and the colonized [as] a
historical incarnation of Hegel’s master and slave” (ibid., 31), but must accomplish more than that.
For Leela Gandhi, this means documenting the “slave’s refusal to concede to the master’s existential
priority” by putting the poetic/creative imagination in the service of social change (ibid.). Residue
hermeneutics also points in a direction beyond Hegelian social ontology, but instead of placing the
locus of emancipation in poetry as Leela Gandhi does, it draws a link between reflective hermeneutics
and emancipation.
    12. The term “residue” here does not mean some sort of leftover in a pejorative sense. In fact,
this residue could form the basis for answering important normative questions about what sorts of
concepts might be appropriate in the post–colonial context.
    13. I employ the term “reflective” to mean “all things considered judgments.” My employment
of this term has nothing to do with the much–debunked notion of instrumental rationality associated
with the Enlightenment.
                                                         Hermeneutics from the Margins       177


diVerence between the post–colonial and the colonizer concepts on strictly
reflective–systematic grounds. The need for this descriptive rigor can be
justified on purely pragmatic grounds. The post–colonial self cannot hope
to fulfill the goal of feeling at home in her concepts if she either does not
investigate or mis–describes the nature of her existing concepts. The reason
for this is as follows. In several post–colonial societies, the goal is to create
reflectively new concepts suited to the particular realities of these societies
— concepts which the post–colonial self can take ownership of. But this
normative aim cannot be achieved unless such a self resolves to describe
the true nature of her existing concepts, because without this knowledge
she may never be able to sift through the good and the bad in her colonial
legacy with the requisite confidence.


(4) Lastly, I locate residue hermeneutics in relation to the contemporary
debate between the hermeneutics of tradition, and the hermeneutics of
suspicion. I do this for two reasons. First, by showing that residue herme-
neutics does not fit neatly on either side of this key contemporary debate
in philosophical hermeneutics, I indicate provisionally that a hermeneutics
suited to the particularities of the post–colonial situation may require a
category of its own. Second, I take this comparison between residue herme-
neutics and other hermeneutical theories as an occasion for further spelling
out the nature of residue hermeneutics.
   In “Hermeneutics and the Critique of Ideology,” Paul Ricoeur exami-
nes the opposition between Gadamer’s “hermeneutics of tradition” and
Habermas’s critique of ideology approach (which Ricoeur describes as
“suspicious,” and which Gadamer calls the “hermeneutics of suspicion”)
(Ricoeur 1990: 312).14 Rejecting this opposition, Ricoeur argues that these
two hermeneutical theories can be reconciled with each other. He claims
that each theory speaks from a diVerent place, but “each can recognize
the other’s claim to universality in a way which marks the place of one in
the structure of the other” (ibid., 209). In what follows, I present Ricoeur’s
characterization of the opposition between the hermeneutics of tradition
and the hermeneutics of suspicion, and show that residue hermeneutics
does not belong squarely on either side of the opposition [(a)–(f )]. Subse-
quently, I will discuss Ricoeur’s reconciliation of these two approaches to
the extent it is similar to the way residue hermeneutics might reconcile
these approaches [(g)].

    14. I have chosen Ricoeur’s text in the interests of brevity. It oVers a clear summary of the
hermeneutics of tradition and hermeneutics of suspicion, apart from oVering a way of reconciling
the two.
178     Apaar Kumar


      a) Gadamer holds that “history precedes me and my reflection” (Ricoeur
         1990: 303), and therefore positively values tradition over judgment.
         Habermas views tradition negatively as “merely the systematically
         distorted expression of communication under unacknowledged con-
         ditions of violence” (ibid., 299), and so emphasizes reflection over
         institutional constraint (ibid., 317). A residue hermeneuticist would
         accept Gadamer’s view that we belong to history before we belong
         to ourselves. However, unlike Gadamer, she would not positively
         emphasize tradition over judgment. As Ricoeur points out, Gadamer
         thinks that tradition gives us not merely our problems, but also the
         solution to these problems. For a residue hermeneuticist working in
         the post–colonial context, this is not viable, because her historically
         effected consciousness has been marred by colonial imposition, and
         has left her feeling alienated from her own concepts. Therefore, con-
         tra Gadamer, she cannot accept in any straightforward way that the
         solution to her problem will come out of her tradition. But neither
         must she necessarily hold like Habermas that her tradition is merely
         a set of concepts that have been violently imposed on her, and the-
         refore must be entirely jettisoned. For there is no reason to believe,
         prima facie, that she might not feel at home in some of her colonial-
         ly–inflected “traditional” concepts. Consider, for instance, the fact
         that many people in India consider English to be their first language.
      b) For Gadamer, history is the tension between the self (the point of
         view of the reader) and the other (text of the past) (Ricoeur 1990: 310).
         Habermas works with the notion of “interest” — in whose interest
         was/is tradition? Like Gadamer, residue hermeneutics involves be-
         ginning from the living present and interpreting past texts in light of
         the present point of view. While a residue hermeneuticist will not
         deny that texts are often based on interests, she does not view texts
         merely in light of the interests they may have served historically. Un-
         like Habermas, her task includes marking the interestedness of texts
         in a systematic manner, but without making her whole interpretive
         orientation revolve around it.15

    15. It may be argued that residue hermeneutics is apolitical, but this is not the case. It is certainly
true that residue hermeneutics has little to do with political activism or politically–oriented metho-
dological partisanship. However, it is political to the extent that it is an attempt by the post–colonial
subject to recover from the colonial experience. As an intervention within the discipline of philosophy,
and so part of the larger multi–disciplinary effort of intellectual self–determination in the post–colonial
context, it is not inconsistent with more avowedly political means of overcoming the post–colonial
predicament. In fact, nothing prevents the residue hermeneuticist from identifying with certain ways
of being political in the existing discourse of postcolonialism. For instance, politics for theorists like
Leela Gandhi does not mean following the logic of “repression and retaliation” (Gandhi 1998: 124).
Nor does it mean any oppositional politics that essentializes the colonizer and the colonized, including
                                                                Hermeneutics from the Margins           179


     c) Gadamer aims at a “contemporary reinterpretation of cultural tra-
        dition” through the human sciences (ibid., 312), while Habermas
        works with the social sciences to explicate “institutional reifications”
        (ibid., 312–13). The task for the post–colonial residue hermeneuticist
        is to classify what is or is not alienating in the concepts of her living
        present, and she aims at such classification in all aspects of culture,
        including “institutional reifications.” Thus, she takes as her ambit
        the broader domain of culture rather than Habermas’ narrow insti-
        tutional domain. This makes her approach closer to that of Gadamer,
        except that she does not take the “reinterpretation” of tradition as
        her goal.
     d) For Gadamer, misunderstanding is merely an “inner obstacle to un-
        derstanding,” while Habermas articulates a notion of ideology as
        the “systematic distortion of communication by the hidden exercise
        of force” (ibid., 313). Since the residue hermeneuticist is concerned
        with the pragmatic task of isolating the extent of her alienation from
        her own concepts, misunderstanding, even misidentifying, a text is a
        practical problem for her, and requires a practical solution. Conse-
        quently, unlike Gadamer, she would be neutral on the question of
        whether misunderstanding can be resolved through the operations
        of the understanding itself. At the same time, she would recognize
        the systematic distortions and silences in colonizer/colonial texts
        without reducing all textuality to ideology.
     e) The hermeneutical task, in Gadamer’s view, is to figure out the onto-
        logy of the “dialogue which we are” (ibid., 312), and his hermeneutics
        is geared to the present understanding of ourselves. On the other
        hand, Habermas’s project is “emancipatory.” It is ‘future–directed’
        in the sense that he articulates the “regulative ideal of unrestricted
        and unconstrained communication which does not precede us but
        guides us from the future point” (ibid., 313). Here the post–colonial
        residue hermeneuticist can be seen as belonging to both sides. Her
        aim is Gadamerian to the extent she wants to understand herself
        in the present. But it is also Habermasian, because she possesses a

Edward Said’s creation of the “racist Westerner” (ibid., 79). It also means eschewing the “generalizing
tendency that all colonial texts are repressive” (ibid., 154). Instead, for Leela Gandhi, if the postcolonial
intellectual has a “political vocation,” then it is a “commitment to a dialogue between the Western
and non–Western academies” within the framework of a “democratic colloquium” (1998: 63). Further,
residue hermeneutics would also follow postcolonial thinkers in rejecting cultural nationalism, because
they find its “centralizing hegemony” problematic (Young 2003: 113). Finally, a residue hermeneuticist
would be sympathetic to the construal of politics as achievement of what Young calls “self–government,”
which involves overcoming the structures of domination in post–colonial societies. Young himself con-
ceives of postcolonial politics as a “transformational politics dedicated to the ending of inequality and
colonialism” (ibid., 114).
180      Apaar Kumar


          future–oriented regulative ideal: replacement of alienating concepts
          with a set of concepts in which she would feel at home. So her project
          is to understand her past through the perspective of the present for
          the sake of creating a particular sort of “emancipation” in the future.
      f ) According to Ricoeur’s Habermas, Gadamer mistakenly “ontolo-
          gized hermeneutics,” which means that Gadamer insists on “un-
          derstanding or accord, as if the consensus which precedes us were
          something constitutive, something given in being” (ibid., 318). For
          Habermas, self–reflection is not founded on prior consensus, for
          what is prior is “broken communication” (ibid., 320). Hermeneutics
          of residue is an “ontologized hermeneutics,” but not in the Gada-
          merian sense. It places no emphasis on consensus. The task for the
          residue hermeneuticist is to describe the alienating traces that the
          colonizer’s conceptual imposition has left on her present concepts. In
          this project, there is no presumption of consensus, but merely the as-
          sumption that such an inquiry, or reading of one’s own history from
          the perspective of one’s living present, can be undertaken. Similarly,
          unlike Habermas, the residue hermeneuticist would not begin with
          the presumption of “broken communication” between her present
          self and her textually constructed past, but would be actively prepared
          to document the breakdown in understanding wherever necessary.
          In fact, one could argue that the hermeneutics of residue sidesteps
          this antinomy between “consensus” and “breakdown” in an innovati-
          ve manner. The residue hermeneuticist combines an emphasis upon
          identifying the similarities between her own concepts in the living
          present and the colonizer/colonial concepts, but with an openness
          to positing diVerence between these two sets of concepts on reflecti-
          ve–systematic grounds (§2.2). Her emphasis on similarity makes her
          broadly Gadamerian, except that unlike Gadamer she does not de-
          fend consensus or similarity as the only correct way of reading alter
          ego texts. Instead, her stress on similarity is a methodological move,
          though rooted in the structure of the representational relationship
          between the ego and the alter ego, and must always be accompanied
          by an active openness towards the breakdown of consensus. The re-
          sidue is the breakdown of consensus. But positing this residue can be
          justified only if the residue arises on reflective–systematic grounds,
          i.e., after a concerted attempt has been made by the ego to prove the
          similarities between her concepts, and that of the alter ego.16

    16. Historically speaking, it has been said that the universalizing/colonizing grand narrative of
Western modernity saw little value in the cultures of the colonies. Many postcolonial theorists have
responded to this denigration of their cultures through a “defiant invitation to alterity or ‘civilizational
                                                             Hermeneutics from the Margins           181


     g) From (a)–(f ), one could conclude that residue hermeneutics can be
        classified neither as hermeneutics of suspicion nor as hermeneutics
        of tradition. I now discuss two ways in which Ricoeur reconciles the
        hermeneutics of tradition and the hermeneutics of suspicion.
        First, Ricoeur argues that the Habermas–type critique of false con-
        sciousness can form part of the Gadamerian framework. According
        to Ricoeur, Gadamer’s notion of the understanding requires opening
        oneself to the text. In doing so, the self is “enlarged by the appropria-
        tion of the proposed worlds in which interpretation unfolds,” and
        the self is introduced to “imaginative variations of the ego” (Ricoeur
        1990: 327). In these variations, the critique of the illusions of the self
        emerges. Therefore, Ricoeur says that the critique of false consciou-
        sness can be a part of the Gadamerian framework. Broadly speaking,
        the post–colonial practitioner of residue hermeneutics takes a similar
        approach. She opens herself up to the colonizing/colonial archive,
        and hopes in this way to acquire a set of insights that will allow her
        to recognize the alienating aspects of the concepts that she employs
        in her lifeworld.
        Second, with regard to Habermas, Ricoeur says that critique is not
        the first or last instance. Even if institutions are distorted, the her-
        meneutics of tradition can inform the hermeneutics of suspicion to
        the extent humans can “project [their] emancipation and anticipate
        an unlimited and unconstrained communication only on the basis
        of a creative reinterpretation of cultural heritage” (ibid., 329). This,
        Ricoeur says, would have to be done via a reading of the past, since
        someone who is unable to reinterpret his past “may also be incapable
        of projecting concretely his interest in emancipation” (ibid.). Further,
        Ricoeur contends that critique is also tradition, because one always
        speaks from a place in tradition. So there is no conflict between
        tradition and emancipation (ibid., 332).

   For the residue hermeneuticist, there is no conflict between tradition
and emancipation either.17 She agrees that critique always occurs from a
place in tradition. She attempts to read the past from the perspective of
the living present, which allows her to critique her present for the sake
diVerence’ [which] carried within it an accompanying refusal to admit the deficiency or lack which is,
as we have seen, the historical predicament of those who have been rendered slaves” (Gandhi 1998:
20). The residue hermeneuticist would have no trouble accepting the notion of cultural diVerence if
this emphasis on diVerence is not rooted in some sort of defensiveness engendered by the hurt of
the colonial experience, or based on any kind of oppositional politics that flirts with irrationalism. In
fact, residue hermeneutics provides a framework in which cultural diVerence could be articulated,
except that this diVerence must be achieved on reflective–systematic grounds.
    17. Also see 2.3(e) above.
182      Apaar Kumar


of a better future. This may, in part, involve, as Ricoeur says, a “creative
reinterpretation of [her] cultural heritage.” However, as opposed to the ideal
oVered by Ricoeur here, the post–colonial residue hermeneuticist does not
think that emancipation must necessarily involve such a re–interpretation
of her cultural heritage, or that such a re–interpretation is the only path
to emancipation. For her, the task is to understand, in Gadamerian vein,
the dialogue that she is, i.e., to explicate the alien and the non–alien in her
existing concepts, and she seeks to accomplish this goal by inquiring into
whether or not any residual diVerence exists between her own living con-
cepts, and that of the colonizer/colonial tradition. The residual diVerence,
if it exists, will then form the basis for a normative evaluation regarding the
sorts of concepts the post–colonial self would like to possess in the future.
This overall process may or may not involve a “re–interpretation” of her
cultural heritage.18


3. Conclusion

I have argued that if we accept that the post–colonial self suVers from con-
ceptual alienation because the origin of her concepts is imbricated with the
colonial encounter, then one way of overcoming her alienation would be to
distinguish the alien from the non–alien in her concepts. I showed that one
way of accomplishing this task would be to adopt a hermeneutical strategy
based on Husserl’s social ontology, in which the post–colonial self must
stress the similarities between her existing concepts and the corresponding
concepts as they occur in the colonizer’s textual tradition out of which her

    18. One could argue that residue hermeneutics is vulnerable to Derrida’s criticism of Gadamer
— that Gadamer’s hermeneutics ends up denying the radical otherness of the other, or, as Derrida
puts it, it is responsible for “covering up of otherness” (Derrida, in Michelfelder and Palmer 1989:
119). This criticism is similar to Levinas’s critique of Husserlian ontology as “neutralizing the other,”
and “removing it from its alterity” by “cognizing” the other (Levinas 1969: 43–44). Gadamer rejects
Derrida’s criticism by arguing that his notion of understanding is modeled on conversation. Since
conversation is the back and forth between the self and the other, it must have its own logic
which is irreducible either to the self or the other (Gadamer, in Michelfelder and Palmer 1989:
119). The post–colonial residue hermeneuticist also need not accept Derrida’s criticism for the
following reasons. First, in describing the otherness or the alien in herself, the post–colonial residue
hermeneuticist must avoid solipsism — reducing the other to oneself — for the following reason. She
must read the colonizer/colonial archive correctly if she wishes to describe the residue in an accurate
manner. However, any solipsistic subsumption of the other to the self would make this impossible,
because such a reading would be clearly partisan, and therefore lack comprehensiveness. Second,
given the ontological situation of the post–colonial residue hermeneuticist, reducing the other to
the self in a way that does violence to the other is hardly the danger, because the “other” here is
the colonizer/colonial text that has contributed to the existing post–colonial world–view. The real
danger is that the post–colonial self will not be able to demarcate the boundaries of the categories of
“self ” and “other,” and therefore not be able to make explicit the alien in her concepts.
                                                       Hermeneutics from the Margins      183


existing concepts can be said to have emerged, unless incommensurable
diVerence between these two sets of concepts can be demonstrated on
reflective–systematic grounds. In this essay, I have outlined the hermeneu-
tics of residue in a provisional manner. A fuller defense of this interpretative
strategy requires a deeper engagement with the discourse of philosophical
hermeneutics which I am undertaking elsewhere. The outcome of this
inquiry is significant for addressing normative questions relating to the
post–colonial situation19 .


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   19. A part of this essay was presented at the conference “Rethinking Svaraj” at the Manipal
Centre for Philosophy and Humanities in January 2015. I am grateful to the participants at the
conference for their questions and comments.
