The deconstruction of the West: an unaccomplished task. Towards “the politics of imagining the West”

Lorenzo Casini

Abstract






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.






Keywords


Imaginal politics; Occidentalism; Arabic novel; deconstruction; the west

Full Text:

PDF

References


Ahmad A. (1992), In Theory, London, Verso.
Adamovsky Ezequiel (2006),
Euro-Orientalism. Liberal Ideology and the Image of Russia in France, Oxford, Peter Lang.
Anderson Benedict (1983),
Imagined Communities. Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, London, Verso.
Al-Aswany Alaa (2013), N
ādī al-sayyārāt, al-Qāhira, Dār al-Shurūq [English. Tr. (2015) The Automobile Club of Egypt, New York, Knopf].
Al-Azm S.J. (1981),
Orientalism and Orientalism in Reverse, Khamsin, 8, pp. 5-27.
Bavaj R. (2011),
The West: A Conceptual Exploration, European History Online. Available at : http://ieg-ego.eu/en/threads/crossroads/political-spaces/political-ideas-of-regional- order/riccardo-bavaj-the-west-a-conceptual-exploration
Bloom H. (1994),
The Western Canon, New York, Riverhead Books.
Bonnett A. (2004),
The Idea of the West. Culture, Politics and History, New York, Palgrave. Bottici C., Challand B. (2010), The Myth of the Clash of Civilisation, London, Routledge. Bottici C. (2011), Imaginal Politics, Thesis Eleven 106 (1), pp. 56-72.
Buruma I., Margalit A. (2004),
Occidentalism: The West in the Eyes of its Enemies, New York, Penguin.
Casini L. (2008),
Beyond Occidentalism. Europe and the Self in Present Day Arabic Narrative Discourse, Florence, European University Institute: http://cadmus.eui.eu/bitstream/handle/1814/9367/RSCAS_2008_30.pdf?sequence=1&isAll owed=y.
Casini L. (2011),
Occidentalism as the Political Unconscious in the Literary Construction of the Other, in Graf A., Fathi Sh., Paul L. (Ed.) Orientalism and Conspiracy. Politics and Conspiracy Theory in the Islamic World, London and New York, I.B. Tauris.
Casini L. (2011 b),
The Nation, the Narrative Subject and the European Theme in the Development of the Egyptian Novel, in Ramsay G. and Guth S. (Ed.) From New Values to New Aesthetics: Turning Points in Modern Arabic Literature Vol.1, Wiesbaden, Harrassowitz. Casini L., Paniconi M.E., Sorbera L. (2012), Modernità arabe. Nazione, narrazione e nuovi soggetti nel romanzo egiziano, Messina, Mesogea.
Castoriadis C. (1987),
The Imaginary Institution of Society, Cambridge, Polity Press.
Chen Xiaomei (1992),
Occidentalism as Counterdiscourse: “He Shang” in Post-Mao China, Critical Inquiry, 18, 4, 686-712.
Chernyshevsky N. (1989),
What Is to Be Done (1863), Ithaca, Cornell University Press.
Id. (1995),
Occidentalism. A Theory of Counterdiscourse in Post-Mao China, Oxford, Rowman & Littlefield.
Colombo E. (2006),
Decostruire il concetto di identità, Culture, 19, 11-35.
Coronil F. (1996),
Beyond Occidentalism. Toward Nonimperial Geohistorical Categories, Cultural Anthropology, 11, 1, 51-87.

Findley C.V. (1998), An Ottoman Occidentalist in Europe. Ahmed Midhat Meets Madame Gulnar, 1889, The American Historical Review, 103,1, 15-49.
Freitag U., Von Oppen A. (Ed. 2010),
Translocality. The Study of Globalising Processes from a Southern Perspective, Leiden, Brill.

Ghanim Fathi (1988), al-Sākhin wa al-bārid (The Hot and the Cold), al-Qāhira, Maktabat Rūz al-Yūsuf.
Gogwilt C. (1995),
The Invention of the West. Joseph Conrad and the Double Mapping of Europe and Empire, Stanford, Stanford University Press.

Al-Hakim Tawfiq (1984), ‘Awdat al-rūh (1933), Bayrūt, Dār al-kitāb al-lubnānī [English. Tr. (2013) Return of the Spirit, Cairo, American University in Cairo Press].
Id. (1988), ‘Usf
ūr min al-sharq (1938), al-Qāhira, Maktaba Misr.
Halliday F. (1993), “
Orientalism” and its Critics, British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, 20, 2, 145-63.

Hanafi H. (1991), Muqaddima fi-‘ilm al-istighrāb (Introduction to the Science of Occidentalism), al-Qāhira, al-Dār al-fanniyya.
Haqqi Yahya (2004), Qind
īl Umm Hāshim, al-Qāhira, Dār al-ma‘ārif. [English. Tr. (2004) The Lamp of Umm Hashim and Other Stories, Cairo, American University in Cairo Press]. Hobsbawm E., Rangers T. (1992), The Invention of Tradition, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

Huntington S. (1996), The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, New York, Simon & Schuster.
Hutchinson R. (2011), Nagai Kaf
ū’s Occidentalism. Defining the Japanese Self, Albany, Suny Press.

Husayn Taha (1962), Adīb, al-Qāhira, Dār al-ma‘ārif [English. Tr. (1994) A Man of Letters, Cairo, American University in Cairo Press].
Ketelaar J.,
Strategic Occidentalism. Meiji Buddhists at the World Parliament of Religions, Buddhist-Christian Studies, 11, 37-56.

Mina Hanna, al-Masābīh al-zurq (The Blue Lanterns, 1954), Bayrūt, Dār al-ādāb.
Moretti F. (1998),
Atlas of the European Novel 1800-1900, London, Verso.
Petersee J.N.,
Dilemmas of Development Discourse: The Crisis of Developmentalism and the Comparative Method, Development and Change, 22.1 (1991), 5-29.
Ramadan Somaya (2002), Awr
āq al-narjis, al-Qāhira, Madbūlī. [English Tr. (2002) Leaves of Narcissus, Cairo, The American University in Cairo Press].
Al-Sanousi Saud (2012), S
āq al-bāmbū, Bayrūt, al-Dār al-‘arabiyya li-l ‘ulūm (Engl. Tr. The Bamboo Stalk, Bloomsbury, London).
Selim S. (2004),
The Novel and the Rural Imaginary in Egypt, London, Routledge.
Stottard Lothrop (1922),
The Revolt against Civilization. The Menace of the Under Man, New York, Charles Scribner’s Sons.
Taher Bahaa (2006), W
āhat al-ghurūb, al-Qāhira, Dār al-hilāl [English. Tr. (2010) Sunset Oasis, London, Sceptre].

Trautsch J. (2013), The Invention of the West, Bullettin of the GHI, 53, 89-102.
Turgenev I. (2008),
Fathers and Sons (1862), Oxford, Oxford Paperbacks.
Venn Couze (2010),
Occidentalism: Modernity and Subjectivity, London, Sage.
Wendell Ch. (1972),
The Evolution of the Egyptian National Image: From its Origins to Ahmad Lutfi al-Sayyid, Berkley, University of California Press.

Woltering R. (2011), Occidentalism in the Arab World: Ideology and Images of the Self in the Egyptian Media, London, I.B. Tauris.
Young R. (1990),
White Mythologies, London, Routledge.




DOI: https://doi.org/10.7413/22818138053

Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.


Im@go. A Journal of the Social Imaginary - Biannual - Edizioni Mimesis