The Post-Western Turn in International Theory (original) (raw)
Exploring the New Internationalism
Critique d’art, 2001
The post-colonial and post-Cold War world reality, associated with the global expansion of the market and of information flows, have led the West, inevitably, to engage with the "Other". The world and history have entered a period where the new economic competition is mixed up with the variety of local cultures that Eurocentric discourse had excluded. The traditionally binary scheme of relations, polarised on the West and Non-West, Centre and Periphery, which were the basic structures of international power, is rapidly disintegrating, as well as its geopolitical model and way of thinking.
Beyond the West and Towards the Anglosphere?
The struggle for the West: a divided and contested …, 2009
This book is concerned with analysing the highly contested nature of the concept of the West. Without repeating arguments made elsewhere, such debates have a tendency to present the West in binary terms, with three binaries arguably standing out in contemporary debates. First, there is the enduring fascination of drawing boundaries between inside and outside; of defining who is and who is not Western and which is evident in the popular phrase, The West and the Rest, as a title for books and articles (e.g. Scruton 2003), but which, of course, often results in contradictory claims about where the boundaries lie. Second, there is a binary between those who see the West as transcendent, as having defeated its opponents, like Fukuyama (1989; Roberts 1985), and those who see it as in terminal decline and predict its imminent death (Spengler 1991; Koch and Smith 2007). Finally, there is a wealth of literature debating whether the West, triumphant or in decline, is actually breaking apart into competing subsystems. Typically this is understood in terms of a European-American divide, with the view being that an irreconcilable value-gap has become evident (Kagan 2003; Anderson et al. 2008; Lindberg 2005; Kupchan 2002). This chapter avoids such binary temptations and aims instead to highlight how clusters of ideas concerning the West have themselves been drawn in different places with different effects. This reflects our view that attempts to reify a cultural core and unity of the West are misplaced. Instead, we argue that the West is best seen as composed of a series of legacies, or narrative trajectories, which constitute the West in slightly different ways.
Preface to The Discipline of Western Supremacy
This volume concludes the trilogy in which I redefine world politics as an evolving composite of modes of foreign relations. Foreign relations are about communities occupying separate social spaces and considering each other as outsiders. Occupation, its protection, and the regulation of exchange with others are universal attributes of human communities; they date back to the dawn of anthropogenesis and have evolved with the ongoing transformation of nature. Hence, as we have seen in Volume II, all human groups, communities and societies rely on mythologies and religious imaginaries to make sense of the foreign encounter. They originate in the tribal and empire/nomad modes and continue to run through contemporary foreign relations. Indeed in our contemporary epoch, such primordial imaginaries are resurgent on a grand scale.
THE WEST AND THE REST: DISCOURSE AND POWER
The West and the Rest: Discourse and Power Hassan Gorkey Stuart Hall, in his dissertation “The West and the Rest: Discourse and Power” has described how the people living outside the “West” have been depicted by western civilization as “others” during the known history. To him, the present deportment of considering non-western people and their cultures as ‘inferior ones’ has a long past, starting from Greek civilization. This conception got a functional shape in the early fifteenth century, when the Portuguese voyagers landed on African coast in 1430. It was closely followed by Columbus’s trip to a ‘New World’, America, in 1492 exploring the first physical existence of geographical ‘otherness'. These two consecutive successes made Western European people confident of their technological ability and kindled their psyche to expedite venture for the unknown part of the world. As a result, by the eighteenth century Portugal, Spain, England, France and Holland annexed and colonized a large portion of Asia, Africa and America. It enthused them to enjoy a sense of superiority that, in course of time, turned into western hegemony and has been governing the world during last five centuries. During the mediaeval era (5th to 15th century), the main sources of knowledge were classical belief, religious dogma, mythology and travelers’ tales. Citing Edward Said, Hall (1996) shows that it is like an archive, a storehouse of knowledge, refusing any kind of counter opinion or new explanation. Long before the beginning of colonization, Europeans thought themselves to be ‘the center’ of the earth- topographically, ideologically and culturally. They believed that rest of the world is populated by substandard humans along with cannibals, pygmies, giants and fairies and thereby showing their inferiority. With the comparative enrichment of knowledge about physical world, Europeans started to come out from fancies but could not overcome their predispositions. So when the settlers conquered a new land, first thing they used to do was to capture the natives as slave. For example, within 14 years of sailing down Africa, Portuguese settlers started slave trading. This trend was followed by England, France and Spain. Later they used to clutch the natural resources through trade or simply by forceful grabbing. While doing so, the “West” depicted the “Rest” as passive, dull in intellect, and dependent on nature. Astonishingly the present world is continuing that tradition. In the following three paragraphs, I would like to focus on how the “West” presently portray the ‘Rest’, the way they were used to, in the past. Practically, nowadays, the “West” is being driven by a cluster of concepts about ‘others’ keeping the old tradition intact. Classical knowledge has been replaced by a presumption about the ‘non-western’ people. Religion and mythology have been substituted by a sense of intellectual superiority. And travelers’ tale has been swept by the findings of western researchers- who work on economic, social and political arena of the ‘Rest’. ‘West’ believes and make others believe that ‘others’ are not socially or psychologically sound. They are not capable enough to make a positive contribution to the present civilization. So they should be guided by the recommendations made by the western intelligentsia. At the end of middle age, Europe began to find some facts concerning the real topography of the world, people living beyond Europe and their culture. But Europe could not come out from its old belief about nonwestern people. They went on idealizing the ‘others’ as simple, meager, innocent and dependent on nature. Similarly in present days, the “West” depicts a picture that tells, people’s life in third world countries are mainly nature based. They have almost a primordial society with few modern goods and amenities. But this is not the real picture. Social structures of developing countries have their own uniqueness and naturally they are different from that of the “West”. This is not a matter of superiority or inferiority; rather an issue of distinctiveness. When Spanish voyagers reached in western hemisphere (1492) it was already inhabited by 16 million people surviving ably for centuries. Likewise, when Portuguese conquerors landed at Indian coast (1498), it had already been a civilization with a stable social structure and rich culture. Even there had been a civil society comprised of economists, poets, philosophers and musicians. But during last five centuries ‘West’ has been engaged in painting the same archetype picture of India: ill health unruly poor people, absence of good governance, chaotic society, hunger and above all intellectual poverty, though there are some quite opposite pictures too. So the supposition is that, a culture can never be properly comprehended by the people of other cultural sections. And if someone tries to describe the characteristics of a culture, which s/he does not belong to, possibility is that it would not be a factual one. So, to better understand and cooperate with other cultures, we can deduce the following guideline from Hall’s (1996) ideas presented in “The West and the Rest: Discourse and Power”: (1) Each culture has its own inimitable explanation about the life style, philosophy, rituals, customs, norms and beliefs of its members. So, instead of assuming or conducting research from distance, if we directly communicate people and know about their cultural sensations, we will better understand it. (2) While communicating with them, we need to create a natural and ‘others’ friendly atmosphere, so that they do not hesitate to expose themselves. (3) To be able to communicate with other cultures, we, at the very outset, need to push away our sense of ‘otherness’, if there is any in our hidden self. It is not enough to recognize the difference; rather, to make the counterparts comfortable and happy, we should make them feel that we really honor their cultures (4) Landing Caribbean shore Spaniards thought it to be India. Similarly depending on some secret service reports, the then US statesmen thought that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction followed by an unwanted war. So, knowing truth about other cultures is important not only to create a successful communication but also to avoid mishaps that might promise a safe and friendly blue planet.
This is the first in a series of papers attempting to define the ideological concept of the so-called "West". It examines the historical roots of postmodern humanism, the emergence of a socio-cultural "ressentiment" within the "Western world", and the consequences of such intra-conflictual symptoms.