Beyond the West and Towards the Anglosphere?

2004

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.

Terrorism and Political Violence, 2020

The notion that the West is in decline is not new but remains topical. It is the backdrop of disappointment in the vaunted post-Cold War "Peace Dividend," the shock of 9/11, and the trajectories of U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Western decline is also marked by the failure to absorb Russia in the Western-defined "international community" and the emergence of China as a fullthroated rival to liberal institutionalist teleology and Western economic superiority. Whistlers past the graveyard cobble together statistics and logic to defend what Thomas Kuhn 1 might identify as the normal science of the tattered Western-centered multiculturalist paradigm. Nevertheless, everything from Brexit to Trump, structural inequality and racism, and, of course, Covid-19 management problems raises the question as to whether the era of Western dominance and normative hegemony is done. Ben Ryan captures the story of norms and narratives behind the idea of the West and its laments, but his book does not tackle issues of power and exploitation. Ryan's analysis thus exhibits a limited understanding of the historical depth and implications of the diachronic tectonics of Western decline. Ryan notes that the West became "the West" in the nineteenth century (5) and cites the importance of that era's discipline of anthropology as helping to differentiate the supposedly enlightened European mind from "backwards or decadent alternatives." For Ryan, the "West" is a "purely intellectual construct" (3) or-in Benedict Anderson's famous phrase-an imagined community. He says it is defined by three connected ideas developed through a "distinctively Christian, Enlightenment, European intellectual prism." These encompass the dream of a moral endpoint and inevitable progress toward it, linked slogans of liberty, equality, and fraternity-which he calls the Republican (Ryan uses the upper case here) values of the Enlightenment, and Universalism, which he defines as the belief Western norms could be fostered in any part of the world (6-7). Ryan does well to capture the teleological bedrock of Western self-celebration, but he might have considered the overlapping programs for completing the Enlightenment offered by John Rawls (via law and legal institutions) and Jürgen Habermas (effective legal and affective engagement in the Agora)-Ryan does briefly cite Habermas on "constitutional patriotism" (244). After his conceptual introduction, Ryan identifies much of "what's been lost" in the West as involving faith and religion. He clearly feels strongly that the loss of faith and decline of Christian Democracy mark a real crisis of values. Given the stress he puts on this aspect of Western decline, it is surprising that his analysis of religiosity and secularity in the Western world does not appear to benefit from Charles Taylor's 2 much richer and historically anchored assessment of these issues. Taylor, like Habermas, merits only a passing mention in his book (256). Ryan also might have taken a look at James Turner's assessment of religious unbelief in America. 3 Ryan's focus on religiosity may be a reason he appears unaware of or uninterested in central, secular elements of Western-ness. First, the West is not just a set of republican and French revolutionary ideas. Not all the European powers then involved in developing the West were republics-and even the sortof constitutional monarchy of the United Kingdom had a fraught relationship with the Enlightenment as an idea or blueprint for governance and norm-based behavior. The anthropology Ryan cites helped rationalize what monarchical and republican Europeans believed was the superior development-or simply the superiority-of the Western subject compared to the not-Western other. This problem is deepened by Ryan's neglect of the distinction between the West as a whole and the various governments, intellectual constructs, security and economic policies, and imperial/postimperial programs of states falling under the term's conceptual umbrella.

Despite the ambition of Postcolonial Studies to place deconstruction of " the West " at the heart of contemporary social sciences and humanities, the authority of this notion has never been so strong, and the West appears today to belong to a " natural order " of thinking and speaking about our current reality. Having pointed out the limits of the postcolonial critique of the West, this study then individuates and connects several lines of research to a common epistemological basis in order to map the contours of an emerging field: " the politics of imagining the West ". From this perspective, the West is no longer conceived of as a subject of history but as a historically determined narrative articulated by individuals and social groups with strategic aims in the context of wider discourses.

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.