Occidentalism

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The word occidentalism has two opposite meanings in cultural studies .

  • 1. Based on and as a rejoinder to that of Edward Said coined term Orientalism is called Occidentalism an ideology of hatred against the West , against Western social structures and values. Thus, this concept can also be understood as an enemy image against modernity, which is mostly an American phenomenon. Occidentalism, however, must in no way be equated with anti-Americanism . It is with this meaning that the term was coined by Ian Buruma and Avishai Margalit . You will find this phenomenon u. a. in German Romanticism , Western conservative cultural criticism , in the Japanese Empire , in the rhetoric of the National Socialists, among Islamists and among the anti-imperialist left. A punch line of the approach is to present Occidentalism as a retroactive effect and further development of attitudes that have arisen in European society itself. In particular, the phenomenon of the European Enlightenment and the Counter-Enlightenment are important factors in this context. Occidentalism would therefore be the result of a global negotiation process. Consequently, the indication of geographical origin inherent in the term (regardless of its ambiguity) is misleading.
According to Carl W. Ernst , taking into account all differences, such as B. a power imbalance he noted between Orientalists and Occidentalists, both in the idea of ​​Occidentalism and Orientalism to criticize the tendency to a dehumanizing and alienating thinking.
  • 2. Some post-colonial theorists, on the other hand, call Occidentalism an ethnocentrism that postulates Western values ​​as universal and devalues ​​other cultures.

literature

to 1.

to 2.

  • Fernando Coronil: Beyond Occidentalism: Toward Nonimperial Geohistorical Categories in "Cultural Anthropology" 11/1 (1996);

German translation: Fernando Coronil: »Beyond Occidentalism. On the way to non-imperial geohistorical categories « . In: Sebastian Conrad and Randeria Shalini (eds.): Beyond Eurocentrism. Postcolonial Perspectives in History and Cultural Studies. Frankfurt / Main: Campus-Verl. (2002), pp. 177-218.

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ernst, Carl W .: "'The West and Islam?' Rethinking Orientalism and Occidentalism. " Ishraq: Islamic Philosophy Yearbook 1 (Moscow / Theran, 2010), pp. 28f.