Thomas Meaney: Five thousand feet above the five thousand foot folks

A grad student who knows everything? That seems to be the case with Thomas Meaney over at the Nation, who pours both illumination and condescension on mega-thinkers like Francis Fukuyama and Pankaj Mishra. I first caught up with Tom in his four-barreled review of After Empires: European Integration, Decolonization, and the Challenge From the Global South 1957–1986 (Giuliano Garavini), The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South (Vijay Prashad), From the Ruins of Empire: The Intellectuals Who Remade Asia, (Pankaj Mishra), andThe Impossible Indian: Gandhi and the Temptation of Violence (Faisal Devji)—and, yes, the world has gone colon mad.

It’s a fascinating review of four fascinating books, but Tom frequently waxes impatient with Pankaj, apparently because he talks too much about Edmund Wilson, not to mention the fact that he hasn’t figured out a way to solve all of the world’s problems.* In an earlier review, he lodges the same complaint against Francis Fukuyama, faulting Fukuyama for his neo-Hegelian embrace of liberal capitalism and the western nation-state as the end of history, while faulting Mishra for wanting something “better.”

I’ve read both Mishra and Fukuyama and I disagree with much of what they say, but I think they’re both well worth reading. It’s more than “nice” to have a non-western perspective on the west, and if the perspective isn’t perfect, well, none of them are. So catch up with Tom, Pankaj, and Francis. You’ll be glad you did.