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120: śramana, Vol 64, No. III, July-Sept. 2013 but with the perspectives of those about whom they speak. If we apply anekāntavāda to its own parable-considering this parable-- about anekāntavāda from another angle (syād)--it also asks to be read from the elephant's point of view. For even as anekāntavāda prompts us to ask Jeremy Bentham's question "does it suffer or die, how can I help," it also pushes us beyond that.' For a full implementation of anekāntavāda in this narrative, we must also ask the elephant, "what is it to be or feel the being of an ‘elephant'? How does it see me? What does it want? What is its perspective on reality and to what metaphysics does it subscribe?"" As the doctrine of many perspectives, nayavāda itself would suggest we begin ethical inquiry with what Jean Francois Lyotard might call the differend: the perspective of the elephant, whose inability to signify itself makes possible both the musings of blind men and the intellectual acumen of omniscient kings.
In a way, I want to turn anekāntavāda, nayavāda and syādvāda into more than a justification for or path toward pluralism but into an ethical hermeneutic. This turning of anekāntavāda back on it's own narrative makes it a method, or a way of reading that looks always for the perspectives of the disenfranchised, the silent, the least beheld always over or before the doctrine of the Omniscients. If “anekāntavāda is conceived as the expression of ahiṁsā in the intellectual realm,” we must consider what the consequences are of refusing the truth of certain perspectives in order to hold fast to doctrine. So, this paper is a retelling of the story of Jainism, of anekāntavāda, from the perspective of the elephant--from the perspective of what Gayatri Spivak would name the silenced subaltern figure, whoes point of view and radical singularity get covered over in the name of omniscient knowledge.
In order to create a deconstructive,'' anekāntavāda--ic hermenutic from within Jainism, I will read-together the traditions of Jainism and the poststructrualism, particularly the lineage of Emmanuel Levinas, Jacques Derrida and Gayatri Spivak. I will begin with by comparing Jainism's doctrines of jiva, nayavāda and ahiṁsā, with Levinas's concept of the alterity of the face and his refusal to reduce it to our frameworks of knowledge. I believe this reading allows us to begin priviledging the perspective of a single jīva over our own, limited frameworks and positions of knowledge. My interest in this is twofold: first, I believe this will allow for a dismantling of the hierarchy of beings found in Jainism. A more detailed analysis of the anthropocentrism in Jainism is outside the scope of this paper but I will point to one element of its deconstruction here. Secondly, I want this deconstruction to contest current restrictions regarding human nonhuman interaction in Jain literature and culture. Because these restrictions prevent Jains from dealing adequately with an increasingly complex world. In other words, this section is intended to humble us, the groping blind men.
Following this, I will compare the concepts of anekāntavāda-particularly its metaphysical and epistemological dimensions--with Jacques Derrida's concept of differand. Here I will further draw out the similarities between the jīva and the irreducible Other, about whom poststrucuralism and differand are primarily concerned. Additionally, I suggest that differand's sister concept, the messianic to come or the not yet, could provide Jainism with the lens it needs to discern the ethical and unethical views within the multiplicity of perspectives while even avoiding Jainism's
