Beyond Reason

The knowledge that has dominated the globe for more than a century first emerged in the early modern period in Europe, and subsequently became globalized through colonialism. Despite the historical and cultural specificity of its origins, modern Western knowledge was thought to have transcended its particularities such that, unlike pre-modern and non-Western knowledges, it was "universal," or true for all times and places. Deriving its critical energies principally from postcolonial theory, Beyond Reason breaks new ground to argue that the assumed "truths" of social scientific reason are products of the specific circumstances of Western modernity, and thus that the social sciences are a parochial form of knowledge spuriously claiming universality.