OCCIDENTALISM Very good article in NY Review of Books Jan 17 issue. (I think it's very good because the authors agree with some of the things I've written here <g>).
nybooks.com
Occidentalism
By Avishai Margalit, Ian Buruma
[Snip]
If criticism of the West was influenced by half-baked ideas from Germany, more
positive views of the West were also influenced by German ideas. The Slavophiles
and the Westernizers, who offered opposing views of the West in nineteenth-century
Russia, were both equally inspired by German intellectual currents. Ideas for or
against the West are in fact to be found everywhere. The East does not begin at the
river Elbe, as Konrad Adenauer believed, nor does the West start in Prague, as Milan
Kundera once suggested. East and West are not necessarily geographical territories.
Rather, Occidentalism, which played such a large part in the attacks of September 11,
is a cluster of images and ideas of the West in the minds of its haters. Four features of
Occidentalism can be seen in most versions of it; we can call them the City, the
Bourgeois, Reason, and Feminism. Each contains a set of attributes, such as
arrogance, feebleness, greed, depravity, and decadence, which are invoked as
typically Western, or even American, characteristics.
The things Occidentalists hate about the West are not always the ones that inspire
hatred of the US. The two issues should not be conflated. A friend once asked in
astonishment: "Why does he hate me? I didn't even help him." Some people hate the
US because they were helped by the US, and some because they were not. Some
resent the way the US helped their own hateful governments gain or stay in power.
Some feel humiliated by the very existence of the US, and some by US foreign policy.
With some on the left, hatred of the US is all that remains of their leftism;
anti-Americanism is part of their identity. The same goes for right-wing cultural
Gaullists. Anti-Americanism is an important political issue, related to Occidentalism
but not quite the same thing.
[Snip]
There is no clash of civilizations. Most religions, especially monotheistic ones, have the
capacity to harbor the anti-Western poison. And varieties of secular fascism can occur
in all cultures. The current conflict, therefore, is not between East and West,
Anglo-America and the rest, or Judeo-Christianity and Islam. The death cult is a deadly
virus which now thrives, for all manner of historical and political reasons, in extreme
forms of Islam. |
