Searching for Satya through Ahimsa: Gandhi's challenge to Western discourses of power

[article extract] Using Gandhi's perspective to bring to light some insufficiently thematized underpinnings of Western liberal, Marxist, and poststructuralist discourses of power, the present essay is designed as a problem-centered exercise in interpretive inquiry. Constituting the "indispensable, defining feature of political theory understood as an intellectual craft," such inquiries challenge Western political and social theorists to put to the test the adequacy of their views on political power through a cross-cultural search for new meanings. Thus, such inquiries respond to what Fred Dallmayr calls "propitious moments in the history of political philosophy," when "Western and Eastern thought for the first time can become partners in a genuine global dialogue." Finally, in an era of globalization characterized by shrinking time and space, such interpretative endeavors also appeal to the kind of phronesis that can actually be used and applied by global political activists. The reassertion of a problem-driven critical theory in the social sciences, in turn, reinvigorates the impulse to understand and address the pressing political problems of the early twenty-first century. By raising the crucial question of how political power can be conceptualized and practiced in nonviolent ways, Gandhi focused on the importance of linking political theory to the practical task of defusing the loci of violence in society. My concluding remarks will therefore touch upon the more general problem of linking critical theory to the dimension of praxis in our age of globalization.