JEAIL > Volume 4(1); 2011 > Notes & Comments
Research Paper
Published online: May 30, 2011
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.14330/jeail.2011.4.1.05

Dichotomously Stiffened Dialectics in the Entangled Modernity of the Colonized and the Colonizers: A Critical Comment on Professor Singh's Article, "Colonised's Madness, Colonisers' Modernity and International Law: Mythological Materialism in the East-West Telos"

Yun-Gi Hong
Dongguk University, Korea
26, 3 Pil-dong, Chung-gu, Seoul 100-715, Korea
Corresponding Author: hyg57@chol.com

ⓒ Copyright YIJUN Institute of International Law
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

A primary purpose of this paper is to critically evaluate Professor P. Singh's Article, "Colonised's Madness, Colonisers' Modernity and International Law: Mythological Materialism in the East-West Telos" published in Volume 3, Number 1 of the Journal of East Asia and International Law. In his article, Singh attempted to overlap various conceptions of modernity taken from a wide range of academic disciplines, and experimentally collapse them into one with a post-colonial point of view. In spite of incomplete argumentation and obscurity in the conceptual formulation, I found his original ideas on the internal connection of modernity with the operating mode of international law to be highly impressive. The most critical point against him was the firm and stereotypical dichotomy of the colonizer and the colonized without any potentiality of sublating the state of colonization, that is, disconnecting the colonizers with their colony and liberating the colonized from their colony. By such sublation (Aufheben) of the existing oppressive relation between the colonizers and the colonized, we can plan to build a new world of peaceful co-existence between the colonizers and the colonized of the past. But although Singh's conception of modernity is dangerously one-sided, I expect his further research to penetrate into the deep life-reality of the Indian subaltern, which would make a great contribution to the establishment of the new vision of international law in this global society.

Keywords : Mythological Materialism, Mythical Materialism, East-West Telos, Modernity, Classical International Law

View the Full Text