Help with manuscript review related to alternative organization
Prof. George Kandathil
Jinan K B
It is strange to see an academic organization, especially one related to management and business, trying to define what is "alternative," which I believe is actually the most mainstream. When you reflect deeper on how ‘modernity’ functions, however, this is not strange at all. One realizes that this is the way modernity operates: the mainstream dictates what is considered alternative, and in fact, provides the very basis for its existence. They function within the same paradigm!
It is also interesting to note that the list of what constitutes "alternative" does not include alternative learning spaces such as homeschooling, non-schooling, and alternative schools, even though in the end, all of this becomes fodder for the mainstream.
At a core level, there is no difference between the mainstream and the alternative. It is this commonality that one must study—not the differences, because focusing on the differences completely misleads us and makes us believe that a true "alternative" to the mainstream exists.
Consider the contradiction in the statement, “bottom-up but state-instituted women’s empowerment programmes.”
Let’s decode the following paragraph to understand the underlying politics:
"Second, the above loose characterization is, at the same time, too narrow, in that it will tend to reproduce the preconceptions of those with power within our corner of the academy, who are still disproportionately based in the Global North, white, male, cisgender, etc. (Alcadipani & Hassard, 2010; Gopal, 2021; Vijay, 2023). By recognizing only those forms of alternative organizing that immediately conform to the expectations of these powerful actors, we risk overlooking important alternatives already in our midst—for instance, peasant and indigenous organizations (Guimarães & Wanderley, 2022), indigenous entrepreneurship initiatives (Peredo, 2023), anti-corporate LGBT organizing (Just, Christensen & Schwarzkopf, 2023), and bottom-up but state-instituted women’s empowerment programmes (Kandathil & Chennangodu, 2020)."
All the examples mentioned are created by so-called "alternative" people, but with a modern mindset. People miss the contradiction in the term "folk art." It is only by killing what is truly folk that one can create folk art! This is the same situation when we refer to "peasant and indigenous organizations" or state-instituted women’s empowerment programmes.
The impossibility of this exercise lies in the following facts:
The holistic paradigm of indigenous cultures is simply another fragment of the mainstream.
Anthropocentrism is not a choice, nor is bio- or nature-centrism. The context of our lives dictates whether we become anthropocentric or biocentric. So, how can the literates claim whether they are anthropocentric or not?
Literates learn the word; illiterates learn the world. Literates are taught secondhand information, while illiterates autonomously create knowledge.
This determines whether we function as biological beings or as mental beings who depend on books to live our lives, and consequently, who are anthropocentric and biocentric.
Literate individuals are completely trapped within the paradigm established by the cognitive system shaped by the written word and will find it impossible to understand what is truly holistic or nature-centric, etc.
Appropriation of meaning is embedded within this paradigm because when one reads, one is appropriating meaning or making guesses about something that is absent. This training begins in childhood within modern settings.
What is truly shocking is that a true definition of indigeneity has not been attempted, as one can only attempt this when is addressing cognition as the basis for definition. This means the so-called "indigenous scholars" who have come through the modern schooling system are not truly indigenous, as they are entirely uprooted from the essence of nature.
Understanding how understanding takes place is crucial in this. For the so-called educated, understanding occurs within the realm of language and the mind, and one does this using conscious reasoning. For the illiterate indigenous, understanding takes place within the whole being, without effort.
The KOAN for us is: hold this without making an effort to understand… Let understanding take place.
I will end this with a poem by Rilke on understanding
“I want to beg you, as much as I can, dear sir,
to be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to
love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that
are written in a very foreign tongue.
Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you
would not be able to live them.
And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now.
Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it,
live along, some distant day, into the answer”.
Rainer Maria Rilke
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