Peter van der Veer
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691128146
- eISBN:
- 9781400848553
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691128146.003.0001
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Social and Cultural Anthropology
This introductory chapter examines India and China and the ways in which they have been transformed by Western imperial modernity. The onset of modernity is said to be located in the nineteenth ...
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This introductory chapter examines India and China and the ways in which they have been transformed by Western imperial modernity. The onset of modernity is said to be located in the nineteenth century and is characterized politically by the emergence of the nation-state, economically by industrialization, and ideologically by an emphasis on progress and liberation. The nation-form itself is a global form that cannot be understood as the product of one particular society. It is the dominant societal form today, and India and China have gradually developed into nation-states. For this reason, one can compare India and China at the level of nation-states, although these societies are internally immensely differentiated and the particular nation-form they have taken is historically contingent.Less
This introductory chapter examines India and China and the ways in which they have been transformed by Western imperial modernity. The onset of modernity is said to be located in the nineteenth century and is characterized politically by the emergence of the nation-state, economically by industrialization, and ideologically by an emphasis on progress and liberation. The nation-form itself is a global form that cannot be understood as the product of one particular society. It is the dominant societal form today, and India and China have gradually developed into nation-states. For this reason, one can compare India and China at the level of nation-states, although these societies are internally immensely differentiated and the particular nation-form they have taken is historically contingent.
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780853238881
- eISBN:
- 9781846314094
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9780853238881.003.0003
- Subject:
- Political Science, Political Theory
This chapter traces modernity as a product of the Western experience of modernity and the effects of Western views on modernity. Due to the Western influence on the concept of modernity, different ...
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This chapter traces modernity as a product of the Western experience of modernity and the effects of Western views on modernity. Due to the Western influence on the concept of modernity, different Modernities came about to offset the West, such as Japanese modernity. The different views of modernity lead to questions such as what are the differences between the various modernities, and what implications do the differences create in terms of where the rest of the world stands? The chapter takes on the challenges of Western Modernity and connects it with the historical background of Turkish modernity.Less
This chapter traces modernity as a product of the Western experience of modernity and the effects of Western views on modernity. Due to the Western influence on the concept of modernity, different Modernities came about to offset the West, such as Japanese modernity. The different views of modernity lead to questions such as what are the differences between the various modernities, and what implications do the differences create in terms of where the rest of the world stands? The chapter takes on the challenges of Western Modernity and connects it with the historical background of Turkish modernity.
Joan Wallach Scott
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780691197227
- eISBN:
- 9781400888580
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691197227.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Gender Studies
The author's acclaimed writings have been foundational for the field of gender history. In this book, the author challenges one of the central claims of the “clash of civilizations” polemic—that ...
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The author's acclaimed writings have been foundational for the field of gender history. In this book, the author challenges one of the central claims of the “clash of civilizations” polemic—that secularism guarantees gender equality. The book shows that the gender equality invoked today as an enduring principle was not originally associated with the term “secularism” when it first entered the nineteenth-century lexicon. In fact, the inequality of the sexes was fundamental to the separation of church and state that inaugurated Western modernity. The book reveals how the assertion that secularism has been synonymous with equality between the sexes has distracted our attention from difficulties related to gender difference—ones shared by Western and non-Western cultures alike.Less
The author's acclaimed writings have been foundational for the field of gender history. In this book, the author challenges one of the central claims of the “clash of civilizations” polemic—that secularism guarantees gender equality. The book shows that the gender equality invoked today as an enduring principle was not originally associated with the term “secularism” when it first entered the nineteenth-century lexicon. In fact, the inequality of the sexes was fundamental to the separation of church and state that inaugurated Western modernity. The book reveals how the assertion that secularism has been synonymous with equality between the sexes has distracted our attention from difficulties related to gender difference—ones shared by Western and non-Western cultures alike.
Sabine Dabringhaus and Jürgen Osterhammel
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780691177342
- eISBN:
- 9780691189918
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691177342.003.0015
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Early Modern History
This chapter points out how the political turbulences of the twentieth century prevented the emergence of a viable middle class. Until the late nineteenth century, China seemed to remain static, ...
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This chapter points out how the political turbulences of the twentieth century prevented the emergence of a viable middle class. Until the late nineteenth century, China seemed to remain static, while Western Europe developed a new kind of dynamic bourgeois society underpinned by industrialization and fueling imperial expansion. This situation changed after the opening of the treaty ports, which became important places for the entry of Western modernity into China. In the coastal cities, it is possible to speak of the emergence of a social group that resembled the Western middle class, at least from the second decade of the twentieth century. On the one hand, it involved an entrepreneurial elite; on the other, a new generation of Western-educated Chinese, who either joined the private economic sector, found employment as teachers in the rapidly expanding schools and universities, or tried to make a living as freelance intellectuals. This short period, however, came to an end after the Japanese invasion in 1937, and completely disappeared after 1949, when any remnants of middle-class society were ruthlessly eradicated by the Communist Party.Less
This chapter points out how the political turbulences of the twentieth century prevented the emergence of a viable middle class. Until the late nineteenth century, China seemed to remain static, while Western Europe developed a new kind of dynamic bourgeois society underpinned by industrialization and fueling imperial expansion. This situation changed after the opening of the treaty ports, which became important places for the entry of Western modernity into China. In the coastal cities, it is possible to speak of the emergence of a social group that resembled the Western middle class, at least from the second decade of the twentieth century. On the one hand, it involved an entrepreneurial elite; on the other, a new generation of Western-educated Chinese, who either joined the private economic sector, found employment as teachers in the rapidly expanding schools and universities, or tried to make a living as freelance intellectuals. This short period, however, came to an end after the Japanese invasion in 1937, and completely disappeared after 1949, when any remnants of middle-class society were ruthlessly eradicated by the Communist Party.
Lindon Barrett
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252038006
- eISBN:
- 9780252095290
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252038006.001.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Race and Ethnicity
This book is the unfinished manuscript of literary and cultural theorist Lindon Barrett, who died in 2008. The study offers a genealogy of how the development of racial blackness within the ...
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This book is the unfinished manuscript of literary and cultural theorist Lindon Barrett, who died in 2008. The study offers a genealogy of how the development of racial blackness within the mercantile capitalist system of Euro-American colonial imperialism was constitutive of Western modernity. The book explores the complex transnational systems of economic transactions and political exchanges foundational to the formation of modern subjectivities. In particular, the book traces the embodied and significatory violence involved in the development of modern nations. Masterfully connecting historical systems of racial slavery to post-Enlightenment modernity, this pathbreaking publication shows how Western modernity depended on a particular conception of racism contested by African American writers and intellectuals from the eighteenth century to the Harlem Renaissance.Less
This book is the unfinished manuscript of literary and cultural theorist Lindon Barrett, who died in 2008. The study offers a genealogy of how the development of racial blackness within the mercantile capitalist system of Euro-American colonial imperialism was constitutive of Western modernity. The book explores the complex transnational systems of economic transactions and political exchanges foundational to the formation of modern subjectivities. In particular, the book traces the embodied and significatory violence involved in the development of modern nations. Masterfully connecting historical systems of racial slavery to post-Enlightenment modernity, this pathbreaking publication shows how Western modernity depended on a particular conception of racism contested by African American writers and intellectuals from the eighteenth century to the Harlem Renaissance.
Lindon Barrett
Justin A. Joyce, Dwight A. Mcbride, and John Carlos Rowe (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252038006
- eISBN:
- 9780252095290
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252038006.003.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Race and Ethnicity
This chapter traces modern conceptions of racial blackness from the beginnings of Euro-American imperialism in the Western Hemisphere through the seventeenth-century Atlantic slave trade and the ...
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This chapter traces modern conceptions of racial blackness from the beginnings of Euro-American imperialism in the Western Hemisphere through the seventeenth-century Atlantic slave trade and the mercantilist economy dependent on slavery up to the Federalist era (1780–1800) in early U.S. national politics. It traces a historical trajectory—approximately 1500 to 1800—that links the origin of the U.S. nation (and its Constitutional avoidance of the immorality of its slave system) to European imperialism and the mercantilist economy supported by the slave trade. In so doing the chapter establishes “the fundamental, ongoing event of Western modernity” and how it revises systems of world trade and the mechanics of state powers, and revises the materiality of the body and the relations of the body to the discursive mechanisms by which it is socially apprehended and managed in the modern exclusive paradigms of personhood.Less
This chapter traces modern conceptions of racial blackness from the beginnings of Euro-American imperialism in the Western Hemisphere through the seventeenth-century Atlantic slave trade and the mercantilist economy dependent on slavery up to the Federalist era (1780–1800) in early U.S. national politics. It traces a historical trajectory—approximately 1500 to 1800—that links the origin of the U.S. nation (and its Constitutional avoidance of the immorality of its slave system) to European imperialism and the mercantilist economy supported by the slave trade. In so doing the chapter establishes “the fundamental, ongoing event of Western modernity” and how it revises systems of world trade and the mechanics of state powers, and revises the materiality of the body and the relations of the body to the discursive mechanisms by which it is socially apprehended and managed in the modern exclusive paradigms of personhood.
Jason R. Ambroise and Sabine Broeck (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781781381724
- eISBN:
- 9781781382257
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781781381724.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This book explores the central but often critically neglected role of knowledge and epistemic formations within social movements for Black ‘freedom’ and emancipation. The collection examines the ...
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This book explores the central but often critically neglected role of knowledge and epistemic formations within social movements for Black ‘freedom’ and emancipation. The collection examines the structural subjugation and condemnation of Black African and Afro-mixed descent peoples globally within the past 500 years of trans-Atlantic societies of Western modernity, doing so in connection to the population's dehumanization and/or invisibilization within various epistemic formations of the West. In turn, the collection foregrounds the extent to which the ending of this imposed subjugation/condemnation has necessarily entailed critiques of, challenges to, and counter-formulations against and beyond knowledge and epistemic formations that have worked to ‘naturalize’ this condition within the West's various socio-human formations. The chapters engage primarily with knowledge formations and practices generated from within the discourse of ‘race’, but also doing so in relation to other intersectional socio-human discourses of Western modernity. They engage as well the critiques, challenges, and counter-formulations put forth by specific individuals, schools, movements, and/or institutions — historic and contemporary — of the Black world. Through these examinations, the contributors either implicitly point towards, or explicitly take part in, the formation of a new kind of critical — but also emancipatory — epistemology.Less
This book explores the central but often critically neglected role of knowledge and epistemic formations within social movements for Black ‘freedom’ and emancipation. The collection examines the structural subjugation and condemnation of Black African and Afro-mixed descent peoples globally within the past 500 years of trans-Atlantic societies of Western modernity, doing so in connection to the population's dehumanization and/or invisibilization within various epistemic formations of the West. In turn, the collection foregrounds the extent to which the ending of this imposed subjugation/condemnation has necessarily entailed critiques of, challenges to, and counter-formulations against and beyond knowledge and epistemic formations that have worked to ‘naturalize’ this condition within the West's various socio-human formations. The chapters engage primarily with knowledge formations and practices generated from within the discourse of ‘race’, but also doing so in relation to other intersectional socio-human discourses of Western modernity. They engage as well the critiques, challenges, and counter-formulations put forth by specific individuals, schools, movements, and/or institutions — historic and contemporary — of the Black world. Through these examinations, the contributors either implicitly point towards, or explicitly take part in, the formation of a new kind of critical — but also emancipatory — epistemology.
Waiyee Loh
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816680498
- eISBN:
- 9781452948706
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816680498.003.0006
- Subject:
- Art, Visual Culture
This chapter presents a reading of Toboso Yana’s Kuroshitsuji (Black Butler), a manga series set in late Victorian England about a beautiful butler named Sebastian, who is actually a devil in ...
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This chapter presents a reading of Toboso Yana’s Kuroshitsuji (Black Butler), a manga series set in late Victorian England about a beautiful butler named Sebastian, who is actually a devil in disguise, and his young master, Count Ciel Phantomhive. With its Western European setting, its aestheticization of the demonic and the deathly, and its penchant for roses, Rococo motifs, and the color black, Kuroshitsuji exemplifies a type of “Gothic” style that has become popular in postwar Japanese shōjo culture. The chapter examines this shōjo Gothic style and its relation to Japanese national identity in the age of postmodern globalization and postcolonial reevaluations of the legacy of nineteenth-century Western imperialism. It argues that through its Gothic style, Kuroshitsuji paradoxically intervenes in its own idealization of Western modernity to celebrate contemporary Japan’s ability to hybridize different cultures and to disseminate its hybrid cultural commodities around the world as a cultural superpower in the age of postmodern globalization.Less
This chapter presents a reading of Toboso Yana’s Kuroshitsuji (Black Butler), a manga series set in late Victorian England about a beautiful butler named Sebastian, who is actually a devil in disguise, and his young master, Count Ciel Phantomhive. With its Western European setting, its aestheticization of the demonic and the deathly, and its penchant for roses, Rococo motifs, and the color black, Kuroshitsuji exemplifies a type of “Gothic” style that has become popular in postwar Japanese shōjo culture. The chapter examines this shōjo Gothic style and its relation to Japanese national identity in the age of postmodern globalization and postcolonial reevaluations of the legacy of nineteenth-century Western imperialism. It argues that through its Gothic style, Kuroshitsuji paradoxically intervenes in its own idealization of Western modernity to celebrate contemporary Japan’s ability to hybridize different cultures and to disseminate its hybrid cultural commodities around the world as a cultural superpower in the age of postmodern globalization.
Mikko Tuhkanen
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- March 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780195385342
- eISBN:
- 9780190252779
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:osobl/9780195385342.003.0032
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 19th Century Literature
This chapter examines Richard Wright's novel Native Son (1940) and its relation to the intellectual tradition of theorizing Western modernity. More specifically, it considers Native Son's ...
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This chapter examines Richard Wright's novel Native Son (1940) and its relation to the intellectual tradition of theorizing Western modernity. More specifically, it considers Native Son's contextualization of the American tragicomedy of race relations in the larger histories of industrialization, colonization, and the slave trade. It also explores Wright's use of timekeeping to tackle racism in America in terms of the social conditions imposed on African Americans by the dominant white society. Finally, the chapter explains the symbolic significance of the histories of global modernity and the African diaspora in Native Son.Less
This chapter examines Richard Wright's novel Native Son (1940) and its relation to the intellectual tradition of theorizing Western modernity. More specifically, it considers Native Son's contextualization of the American tragicomedy of race relations in the larger histories of industrialization, colonization, and the slave trade. It also explores Wright's use of timekeeping to tackle racism in America in terms of the social conditions imposed on African Americans by the dominant white society. Finally, the chapter explains the symbolic significance of the histories of global modernity and the African diaspora in Native Son.
Ivan T. Berend
- Published in print:
- 2003
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520232990
- eISBN:
- 9780520932098
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520232990.003.0006
- Subject:
- History, European Modern History
This chapter describes the social changes in Central and Eastern Europe. “Dual” and “incomplete” societies represented both the dominant traditional characteristics and the new elements of a rather ...
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This chapter describes the social changes in Central and Eastern Europe. “Dual” and “incomplete” societies represented both the dominant traditional characteristics and the new elements of a rather sluggishly modernizing society. Coexistence of the old and new elites under the unquestioned political and social leadership of the old elite was a hallmark of the dual society. The “Jewish question” arose in Austria and to some extent in Bohemia as well. The duality of the society in its upper layers was also clearly visible in the lower strata. The separation of the traditional and the modern, and the beginning of real social change, occurred first in the newly emerging, rapidly growing cities. Central and Eastern Europe might have begun social modernization but, on the eve of World War I, they stood at the beginning of a long, rough historical road toward Western European modernity.Less
This chapter describes the social changes in Central and Eastern Europe. “Dual” and “incomplete” societies represented both the dominant traditional characteristics and the new elements of a rather sluggishly modernizing society. Coexistence of the old and new elites under the unquestioned political and social leadership of the old elite was a hallmark of the dual society. The “Jewish question” arose in Austria and to some extent in Bohemia as well. The duality of the society in its upper layers was also clearly visible in the lower strata. The separation of the traditional and the modern, and the beginning of real social change, occurred first in the newly emerging, rapidly growing cities. Central and Eastern Europe might have begun social modernization but, on the eve of World War I, they stood at the beginning of a long, rough historical road toward Western European modernity.
Dwayne A. Tunstall
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- September 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780823251605
- eISBN:
- 9780823252725
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823251605.003.0004
- Subject:
- Philosophy, American Philosophy
This chapter examines four ways Marcel battles against the dehumanization of human persons in late Western modernity. First, Marcel criticizes the reduction of human persons to their functions in ...
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This chapter examines four ways Marcel battles against the dehumanization of human persons in late Western modernity. First, Marcel criticizes the reduction of human persons to their functions in twentieth century western societies. Second, he criticizes the techniques of degradation used on marginalized people in Europe during the Second World War. Third, he criticizes the dehumanizing effects of technology on human persons. His criticism of technology is then compared to Albert Borgmann’s neo-Heideggerian criticism of technology. Fourth, Marcel criticizes the impersonal political ideologies that have led to the death of millions during the first half of the twentieth century.Less
This chapter examines four ways Marcel battles against the dehumanization of human persons in late Western modernity. First, Marcel criticizes the reduction of human persons to their functions in twentieth century western societies. Second, he criticizes the techniques of degradation used on marginalized people in Europe during the Second World War. Third, he criticizes the dehumanizing effects of technology on human persons. His criticism of technology is then compared to Albert Borgmann’s neo-Heideggerian criticism of technology. Fourth, Marcel criticizes the impersonal political ideologies that have led to the death of millions during the first half of the twentieth century.
Chelsea Stieber
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- January 2021
- ISBN:
- 9781479802135
- eISBN:
- 9781479802166
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9781479802135.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This book begins where so many others conclude: 1804. Recent scholarship has begun to explore the challenges that Atlantic world powers posed to Haitian sovereignty and legitimacy during the Age of ...
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This book begins where so many others conclude: 1804. Recent scholarship has begun to explore the challenges that Atlantic world powers posed to Haitian sovereignty and legitimacy during the Age of Revolution, but there existed an equally important internal challenge to Haiti’s post-independence sovereignty: a civil war between those who envisioned a military authoritarian empire and those who wished to establish a liberal republic. This book argues that the post-independence civil war context is central to understanding Haiti’s long postcolonial nineteenth century: the foundational political, intellectual, and regional tensions that constitute Haiti’s fundamental plurality. Considerable work has been dedicated to unearthing the uneven and unequal production of historical narratives about Haiti in the wake of Michel-Rolph Trouillot’s groundbreaking Silencing the Past, but many more narratives—namely, those produced from within Haitian historiography and literary history—remain to be questioned and deconstructed. This book unearths and continually probes the conceptually generative possibilities of Haiti’s post-revolutionary divisions, something the current historiographic framework on Haiti’s long postcolonial nineteenth century fails to fully apprehend. Through close readings of original print sources (pamphlets, newspapers, literary magazines, geographies, histories, poems, and novels), it sheds light on the internal realities, tensions, and pluralities that shaped the Haitian Revolution and its aftermath to reveal the process of contestation, mutual definition, and continual (re)inscription of Haiti’s meaning throughout its long nineteenth century.Less
This book begins where so many others conclude: 1804. Recent scholarship has begun to explore the challenges that Atlantic world powers posed to Haitian sovereignty and legitimacy during the Age of Revolution, but there existed an equally important internal challenge to Haiti’s post-independence sovereignty: a civil war between those who envisioned a military authoritarian empire and those who wished to establish a liberal republic. This book argues that the post-independence civil war context is central to understanding Haiti’s long postcolonial nineteenth century: the foundational political, intellectual, and regional tensions that constitute Haiti’s fundamental plurality. Considerable work has been dedicated to unearthing the uneven and unequal production of historical narratives about Haiti in the wake of Michel-Rolph Trouillot’s groundbreaking Silencing the Past, but many more narratives—namely, those produced from within Haitian historiography and literary history—remain to be questioned and deconstructed. This book unearths and continually probes the conceptually generative possibilities of Haiti’s post-revolutionary divisions, something the current historiographic framework on Haiti’s long postcolonial nineteenth century fails to fully apprehend. Through close readings of original print sources (pamphlets, newspapers, literary magazines, geographies, histories, poems, and novels), it sheds light on the internal realities, tensions, and pluralities that shaped the Haitian Revolution and its aftermath to reveal the process of contestation, mutual definition, and continual (re)inscription of Haiti’s meaning throughout its long nineteenth century.
Tyler Roberts
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- November 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780231147521
- eISBN:
- 9780231535496
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231147521.003.0008
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Religion
This introductory chapter discusses the concept of religion, which most scholars view as a product of Western modernity. A vital aspect of its genealogy is the deep suspicion about the power of ...
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This introductory chapter discusses the concept of religion, which most scholars view as a product of Western modernity. A vital aspect of its genealogy is the deep suspicion about the power of Christian institutions that signified the thinking of Western intellectuals in the Enlightenment. This suspicion compelled social and political efforts to limit religious power, and helped shape developments in political theory that grounded human power in the natural and social, rather than the divine. Philosophical efforts also turned to conceptualize and enact the autonomy of reason against the authority of tradition and revelation. The chapter then describes how the book is divided into three parts. The first part looks at the emergence of historical-critical studies of the Bible, as well as the naturalistic investigations into the origin of religion. The second part talks about the study of religion along humanistic lines; while the final part explores the interrelationship between theological thinking and philosophy of religion.Less
This introductory chapter discusses the concept of religion, which most scholars view as a product of Western modernity. A vital aspect of its genealogy is the deep suspicion about the power of Christian institutions that signified the thinking of Western intellectuals in the Enlightenment. This suspicion compelled social and political efforts to limit religious power, and helped shape developments in political theory that grounded human power in the natural and social, rather than the divine. Philosophical efforts also turned to conceptualize and enact the autonomy of reason against the authority of tradition and revelation. The chapter then describes how the book is divided into three parts. The first part looks at the emergence of historical-critical studies of the Bible, as well as the naturalistic investigations into the origin of religion. The second part talks about the study of religion along humanistic lines; while the final part explores the interrelationship between theological thinking and philosophy of religion.
Nadia Bou Ali
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780190851279
- eISBN:
- 9780190943028
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190851279.003.0003
- Subject:
- Religion, Islam
The chapter explores the relationship between culturalism and liberalism in modern Arabic. It argues that internal contradictions from within Arabic thought haunt the attempt to define the Arabs as ...
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The chapter explores the relationship between culturalism and liberalism in modern Arabic. It argues that internal contradictions from within Arabic thought haunt the attempt to define the Arabs as an organicist community. These contradictions within particular identity are expressed in the pervasive anxiety about habits and language. Anxiety emerges when there is a crisis in imaginary identification, it is generated as a remainder of acknowledging the self in a specular image: the mirror of language, the Arab’s moustache. It emerges from a process of misrecognition, when uncanny elements within identity itself become overwhelming. Rather than read the discourse on habits as a desire for Western modernity the chapter argues against a non-dialectical pitting of culture (Arab, non-West) against liberalism (West), which forecloses the real loss that is generated from this modern antinomy: the retreat and scarcity of politics in both liberalism and culturalism.Less
The chapter explores the relationship between culturalism and liberalism in modern Arabic. It argues that internal contradictions from within Arabic thought haunt the attempt to define the Arabs as an organicist community. These contradictions within particular identity are expressed in the pervasive anxiety about habits and language. Anxiety emerges when there is a crisis in imaginary identification, it is generated as a remainder of acknowledging the self in a specular image: the mirror of language, the Arab’s moustache. It emerges from a process of misrecognition, when uncanny elements within identity itself become overwhelming. Rather than read the discourse on habits as a desire for Western modernity the chapter argues against a non-dialectical pitting of culture (Arab, non-West) against liberalism (West), which forecloses the real loss that is generated from this modern antinomy: the retreat and scarcity of politics in both liberalism and culturalism.
