Beyond Cultural Parodies and Parodizing Cultures Shaping A Discourse

Abstract

Contrasting Epistemics
“why if a fish came to me and told me he was going on a journey, I should
say, With what porpoise?”’ “Don’t you mean burpose’?” said Alice.
“I mean what I say,” the Mock Turtle replied in an ofended tone.
(Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland)
Consider this analogy: There was a man beneath a tree. He wished to collect
his thoughts, but the sparrows disturbed him with their chirping. He would
chase them with his stick and then resume his train of thought, but the sparrows
would come back and he would have to scare them away. . . Eventually
someone told him: %is is like being a slave at the wheel going round and
round forever. Ifyou want to escape the vicious circle, you shouldfell the tree:
Imam al Ghazali,
(Ihya’ ‘Ulum al Din)
Cultural Parodies: Shaping a Discourse
Abstract
It has been the practice for the dominant paradigm to set the terms of
rational discourse and for the “Other” to defer in reverence - if it wanted to
be admitted to the circle of respectability. In this case, the tables are turned
MOM Abul-Fadl directs the Research Project on Western Thought at the International
Institute of Islamic Thought, Herndon, Virginia and is the chairperson of the Political Science
Discipline Council of the Association of Muslim Social Scientists.
and the dominant paradigm, which is secularist, is viewed critically through
the lens of a re-emerging tawhidi paradigm. The purpose is not to engage
in a test of will or vision, but to lay the ground for a discourse which can
accommodate a genuine diversity-in-dignity for all, and which would include
Self and Other in a re-formed world of inter-relatedness developed through
new categories and points of reference. In a common human heritage rich
in communicable symbols and transitive experiences, cultivating the terms
of a hermeneutic of mutuality is imminent. Its objectives would be to redefine
and assure worldly morality and rationality at higher levels of reality. Only
then can the self-imposed constraints, constrictions, and anomalies which
are inherent in the prevailing culture be transcended. The context for shaping
this discourse can be as broad and encompassing or as concrete and particular
as the response in the concurrent fields of the humanities and the social sciences
will admit ...