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Occidentalism refers to a discipline that discusses the Western world (the Occident). In this context the West becomes the object, while the East is the subject. The West in the context of Occidentalism does not refer to the West in a geographical sense, but to culture or custom, especially covering the fields of thought, philosophy, sociology, anthropology, history, religion, colonialism, war, apartheid, and geography. It is not as popular as Orientalism in the general public and in academic settings.[1]
The term emerged as the reciprocal of the notion of Orientalism popularized by literary critic Edward Said, which refers to Western stereotypes of the Eastern world, the Orient.[2]
Different languages have different terms relating to Occidentalism and Westernization.
In Arabic
In Arabic, al-Istighraab (Arabic: الاستغراب, lit. 'Westernization') is a contemporary psychological, social, and cultural phenomenon. The individuals who embody it are characterized by their inclination toward, attachment to, and emulation of the West. It originated in non-Western societies as a result of the civilizational shock that befell it before and during colonialism.[3]
Ilm al-istighraab (Arabic: علم الاستغراب) means the 'science of Westernization' or 'Occidentalism'. It is opposite to the science of Orientalism. Dr. Hassan Hanafi said: "Occidentalism is the unraveling of the double historical knot between the self and the other... It is the elimination of the complex of greatness of the Western other, by transforming it from a subject in itself to a studied object... The task of Orientalism is to eliminate Eurocentrism and show how European consciousness has taken center stage throughout modern history, within its own civilizational environment."[4]
Al-Taghreeb (Arabic: التغريب) means 'Westernization'. It is "a cultural and political action carried out by officials in the West, most importantly Orientalists and Westernizers, aiming to obscure the features of the religious and cultural life of Islamic and other societies, and to force these societies to imitate the West and revolve in its orbit."[3]
In China, "Traditions Regarding Western Countries" became a regular part of the Twenty-Four Histories from the 5th century AD, when commentary about The West concentrated upon on an area that did not extend farther than Syria.[5] The extension of European imperialism in the 18th and 19th centuries established, represented, and defined the existence of an "Eastern world" and of a "Western world". Western stereotypes appear in works of Indian, Chinese and Japanese art of those times.[6] At the same time, Western influence in politics, culture, economics and science came to be constructed through an imaginative geography of West and East.
Occidentalism figures
- Hassan Hanafi (Cairo)
- Mukti Ali (Indonesia)
- Adian Husaini (Indonesia)
In Occidentalism: The West in the Eyes of its Enemies (2004), Ian Buruma and Avishai Margalit argue that nationalist and nativist resistance to the West replicates Eastern-world responses against the socio-economic forces of modernization, which originated in Western culture, among utopian radicals and conservative nationalists who viewed capitalism, liberalism, and secularism as forces destructive of their societies and cultures.[7] While the early responses to the West were a genuine encounter between alien cultures, many of the later manifestations of Occidentalism betray the influence of Western ideas upon Eastern intellectuals, such as the supremacy of the nation-state, the Romantic rejection of rationality, and the spiritual impoverishment of the citizenry of liberal democracies.
Buruma and Margalit trace that resistance to German Romanticism and to the debates, between the Westernisers and the Slavophiles in 19th-century Russia, and show that like arguments appear in the ideologies of Zionism, Maoism, Islamism, and Imperial Japanese nationalism. Nonetheless, Alastair Bonnett rejects the analyses of Buruma and Margalit as Eurocentric, and said that the field of Occidentalism emerged from the interconnection of Eastern and Western intellectual traditions.[8][9][10]
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