Globalization as the End and the Beginning of History:The Contradictory Implications of a New Paradigm

Arif Dirlik History DepartmentDuke UniversityDurham, NC 27708USAEmail: adirlik@acpub.duke.edu

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2Dirlik: Globalization as the End and the Beginning of History

Abstract

This paper seeks to understand globalization as a new paradigm. It recognizes that there ismuch about the discourse of globalization that is ideological, that seeks to cover up the detrimentalconsequences of globalization for the majority of the world's population. It suggests nevertheless thatthere may be much to be gained from viewing it as a new paradigm, albeit a contradictory one, thathas replaced an earlier paradigm of modernization. It makes an analytical distinction betweenglobalization as historical process, which is at least as old as the history of capitalism, if not older, andglobalization as a new way of looking at the world and its past, which is quite novel. To illustrateits argument, the paper contrasts present-day political and intellectual consequences of globalizationwith the late nineteenth-century, where several observers have identified a level of economicglobalization greater than that of the present. It argues that whereas earlier globalization producednationalism, colonialism and epistemological universalism, globalization presently is postcolonial,challenges the nation-state, and is marked by a break-down of universalism. It follows thatglobalization needs to be understood not just as global integration, as suggested by its ideologues andin economistic interpretations, but equally importantly as a new mode of fragmentation. An analyticaldistinction between globalization as process and paradigm is necessary to grasping globalization asa new mode of comprehending the world, but it is nevertheless necessary from a critical perspectiveto keep in mind the historical relationship between the two; globalization may be viewed as a newbeginning in breaking down old hegemonies, but globalization may be viewed also as the ultimatevictory of capitalist modernity. The contradictoriness may be perceived in the epistemologies of postmodernism and postcolonialism. The paper suggests that these epistemologies are best grasped

3 GHC Working Paper 00/3as symptoms of globalization, that seek to break with modern and colonial ways of knowing, and yetare stamped by those very legacies. The discussion turns, by way of conclusion, to the relationshipbetween globalization and history. While globalization is best understood historically, it also hasproduced new ways of looking at history. Three modes are selected here as products of globalization:world history writing, which is consciously motivated at the present by the idea of globalization, andseeks to understand the past in nonEurocentric ways, but may be understood also as a mode of containing the break-down of universalism; and two different perspectives on the "end of history" aswe have known it. First, a EuroAmerican perspective that sees in the end of universalism(and thecrowding of the past with incompatible and incommensurate cultural claims) also the end of history.Second, a conscious challenge to history as a modern way of knowing in the name of "alternativesto history." The paper concludes that these conflicts over history, too, point to the present as bothan end, and a possible new beginning-but only as a possibility.