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الاستغراب
يشرح الكتاب تاريخ وأسباب النزعة المعادية للغرب في البلاد الشرقية: اليابان والهند وروسيا والبلاد الإسلامية
161 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2004
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1506 people want to read
About the author
Ian Buruma
89 books252 followersIan Buruma is a British-Dutch writer and academic, much of whose work focuses on the culture of Asia, particularly that of 20th-century Japan, where he lived and worked for many years.
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August 11, 2024
Ian Buruma and Avishai Margalit outline 'Occidentalism' as an attempt to understand anti-westernism during the last century. In some ways this work resembles Pankaj Mishra's 'Age of Anger', which argued the Enlightenment replaced moral certainties of medieval religion with modern angst. Buruma says the technology that led the West to global domination in the 19th century was needed by the East to compete. Japan's emulative advances during the Meiji restoration and post-WWII periods are reviewed. Hitler's hatred of mechanization and embrace of its efficiencies is noted. The rise of Islamist militants is seen as a reaction to cosmopolitan capitalism and its Muslim collaborators.
Buruma begins with a survey of Occidentalism's urban face. Through history the city had been a symbol for greed and godlessness. The Tower of Babel, Juvenal's Rome and the dark satanic mills of Blake are examples given. In the 19th century, London and Paris were criticized by anti-semites Wagner and T.S. Eliot. The metropolis swallowed rural people and was filled with "rootless money-grubbers". Fascists and communists appropriated the theme. 1930's Tokyo and Shanghai became models of commercialism, stigmatized by native critics for displacing an indigenous culture. Maoists in Shanghai, the Khmer Rouge in Phnom Penh and the Taliban in Kabul later conducted purges.
Buruma traces the backlash towards western European dominance to the German romantic and Russian slavophile movements. Nazis and Bolsheviks alike sought the purifying power of fire and steel. The rise of pan-Arabism and Baathist movements were seen by some Muslims as cultural collusion with the West. The authors compare Marxist ideas about the fetish of commodities to Islamic understandings of idolatry. The ancient idols had been replaced by capitalism in the view of Muslim religious radicals. The battle between "heroes and merchants" is continued by middle eastern suicide bombers and millenarian movements. As was reflected by an Afghan jihadi: "They love Pepsi, but we love death".
Published in 2004 after 911, the concept of 'Occidentalism' may now seem interchangeable with anti-Americanism. The book finds its roots in an earlier transformation of peasants into factory workers. A lack of spiritual reconciliation would become a toxic split between the East and West. Although it is possible to perceive this as a response to Edward Said's 'Orientalism' it is not a diametrical work. Said critiqued 19th century literary aspects of colonialism and this addresses 20th century political reactions to modernity. While not as seminal it is still a thoughtful summary. Buruma is a Dutch writer and journalist in NYC, and Margalit is an Israeli philosopher and professor in Jerusalem.
Buruma begins with a survey of Occidentalism's urban face. Through history the city had been a symbol for greed and godlessness. The Tower of Babel, Juvenal's Rome and the dark satanic mills of Blake are examples given. In the 19th century, London and Paris were criticized by anti-semites Wagner and T.S. Eliot. The metropolis swallowed rural people and was filled with "rootless money-grubbers". Fascists and communists appropriated the theme. 1930's Tokyo and Shanghai became models of commercialism, stigmatized by native critics for displacing an indigenous culture. Maoists in Shanghai, the Khmer Rouge in Phnom Penh and the Taliban in Kabul later conducted purges.
Buruma traces the backlash towards western European dominance to the German romantic and Russian slavophile movements. Nazis and Bolsheviks alike sought the purifying power of fire and steel. The rise of pan-Arabism and Baathist movements were seen by some Muslims as cultural collusion with the West. The authors compare Marxist ideas about the fetish of commodities to Islamic understandings of idolatry. The ancient idols had been replaced by capitalism in the view of Muslim religious radicals. The battle between "heroes and merchants" is continued by middle eastern suicide bombers and millenarian movements. As was reflected by an Afghan jihadi: "They love Pepsi, but we love death".
Published in 2004 after 911, the concept of 'Occidentalism' may now seem interchangeable with anti-Americanism. The book finds its roots in an earlier transformation of peasants into factory workers. A lack of spiritual reconciliation would become a toxic split between the East and West. Although it is possible to perceive this as a response to Edward Said's 'Orientalism' it is not a diametrical work. Said critiqued 19th century literary aspects of colonialism and this addresses 20th century political reactions to modernity. While not as seminal it is still a thoughtful summary. Buruma is a Dutch writer and journalist in NYC, and Margalit is an Israeli philosopher and professor in Jerusalem.
April 28, 2019
This booklet somewhat confused me. I read this immediately after Orientalism, the acclaimed and reviled book by Edward Said, that uncovered how Western culture had created a derogatory image of the East that was the source and justification for colonialism and imperialism. With a title like "Occidentalism" you expect a study of the reverse movement, and Buruma and Margalit confirm that in their introduction. And indeed: they zoom in on various historical examples of resistance against the West, that have in common an image of that West as inhuman, barbaric and soulless. Regardless of whether this image is correct, it is indeed a finding that, for example, Russian slavophiles in the 19th century, Japanese militarist nationalists in the 1930s-1940s and the current Muslim fundamentalists cherish(ed) that image and use(d) it as justification for their fight.
Paradoxically, Buruma and Margalit state that in many cases these 'Occidentalists' not only fully adopted and adopt Western technology, but were and are also ideologically inspired by Western thinkers: the Japanese by fascism and Nazism, the Muslim fundamentalists very often by Marxist-Leninist frameworks. They are certainly not the first to see that paradox. The anti-Western resistance may often be presented as a return to the own, original culture, it is clearly "contaminated" by the same West.
What really struck me and also astonished me was that Buruma and Margalit constantly indicate German Romanticism from the 18th and 19th centuries as the source of this Occidentalism. And in the same line they call Hitler and Nazism the worst exponents of it. Excuse me? That’s a bit strange. Because both Romanticism as Nazism are typical Western products, aren’t they? We are hitting a conceptual knot, here. Because it is clear that Buruma and Margalit equalize Occidentalism, hatred of the West, with anti-modernism, resistance to modernity as it first took shape in the West. Obviously there is a kinship between the two and hence the confusion; but it would be better to make a certain distinction. That would at least make clear that not only German Romanticism is the source of Occidentalism, but that there were quite a few thinkers and writers with reactionary traits in France and Great Britain also (in this respect, Buruma and Margalit seem rather anti-Germanic, a form of "Germanotalism"?). In the end both currents, modernism (Enlightenment) and anti-modernism (Romantics), are intertwined aspects of Western identity and their dynamics form the engine of the cultural evolution in the West.
This booklet is struggling with this conceptual knot, that is clear, and it is therefore not surprising that a term such as "Occidentalism" has never caught on. But of course, it does expose the particularly complex and paradoxical side of the interdependence between hatred against the West and opposition to modernity, and the adoption of modernist/Western conceptual frameworks and technology. In this interesting, yet too carelessly written book, you are not going to get a conclusive answer on this, and that’s a pity.
Paradoxically, Buruma and Margalit state that in many cases these 'Occidentalists' not only fully adopted and adopt Western technology, but were and are also ideologically inspired by Western thinkers: the Japanese by fascism and Nazism, the Muslim fundamentalists very often by Marxist-Leninist frameworks. They are certainly not the first to see that paradox. The anti-Western resistance may often be presented as a return to the own, original culture, it is clearly "contaminated" by the same West.
What really struck me and also astonished me was that Buruma and Margalit constantly indicate German Romanticism from the 18th and 19th centuries as the source of this Occidentalism. And in the same line they call Hitler and Nazism the worst exponents of it. Excuse me? That’s a bit strange. Because both Romanticism as Nazism are typical Western products, aren’t they? We are hitting a conceptual knot, here. Because it is clear that Buruma and Margalit equalize Occidentalism, hatred of the West, with anti-modernism, resistance to modernity as it first took shape in the West. Obviously there is a kinship between the two and hence the confusion; but it would be better to make a certain distinction. That would at least make clear that not only German Romanticism is the source of Occidentalism, but that there were quite a few thinkers and writers with reactionary traits in France and Great Britain also (in this respect, Buruma and Margalit seem rather anti-Germanic, a form of "Germanotalism"?). In the end both currents, modernism (Enlightenment) and anti-modernism (Romantics), are intertwined aspects of Western identity and their dynamics form the engine of the cultural evolution in the West.
This booklet is struggling with this conceptual knot, that is clear, and it is therefore not surprising that a term such as "Occidentalism" has never caught on. But of course, it does expose the particularly complex and paradoxical side of the interdependence between hatred against the West and opposition to modernity, and the adoption of modernist/Western conceptual frameworks and technology. In this interesting, yet too carelessly written book, you are not going to get a conclusive answer on this, and that’s a pity.
October 20, 2014
هذا الكتاب غربي المزاج والهوى إلى أبعد حد، وهو يتناول مفهوم الاستغراب بأنه "الحركة المعادية للغرب"، وخلاصته أن من يُعادون الغرب إنما يفعلون ذلك لأسباب خاصة بهم وليست كردود فعل على ما قد يكون الغرب اقترفه من جرائم وخطايا، يقول المؤلفان: "ما ندعوه بالاستغراب هو تلك الصورة التي رسمها للغرب أعداؤه، وقد نزعوا عنه الطابع الإنساني" وبأثر من هذه الرؤية يخلص المؤلفان إلى نتيجتين مهمتين:
الأولى: أنه لا علاقة بين جرائم الغرب وحركة العداء له، بل هذا العداء للغرب ليس إلا محاولة من الشرقيين ليبرروا بها لأنفسهم معاداة الغرب ورفضهم للعقل والحرية والمدنية واحترام المرأة، فهم في سبيلهم إلى هذا يحاولون الدفع عن أنفسهم بأنهم أفضل أخلاقا وعفة وحشمة وأحسن تضحية وفداء وبذلا لصالح المجموع على حساب الفرد وأنهم ذوو إيمان في مقابل ما لدى الغرب من إلحاد وكفر. في حين أن حقيقة التهديد الذي يمثله الغرب لغيره -كما يراها المؤلفان- "لا ينجم عن كونه يوفِّر منظومة بديلة من القيم، أو سبيلا مختلفا إلى اليوتوبيا؛ بل ينجم عن أن وعوده بالراحة المادية والحرية الفردية وكرامة الحياة غير الاستثنائية تفضح كل المزاعم الطوباوية؛ فطبيعة الليبرالية الغربية اللا بطولية واللا طوباوية هي العدو الأكبر بالنسبة للجذريين [الأصوليين] المتدينين والملوك الكهنة وجماعات الساعين وراء الطهارة والخلاص البطولي"
الثانية: أن الاستغراب -بمعنى: العداء للغرب- يشمل الغربيين الرافضين لقيم الغرب المادية، فأولئك هم من المستغربين، مثل اليساريين أو بتعبيره "المعادين الجذريين للرأسمالية"، وأحيانا وَسَّعه ليشمل كل من يعتبر النمط الغربي نمطا آليا باردا بلا روح، ولو كان هذا الشعور نابعا من اليهود الفقراء نحو اليهود الألمان، وبهذا يكون الاستغراب في أصله مذهب غربي كالماركسية والليبرالية، وهو دليل على أن "الغرب الذي كان مصدر التنوير وفروعه العلمانية، الليبرالية، غالبا ما كان مصدر سمومه أيضا"، وبهذا فإن أوائل المستغربين إنما هم أوربيون، ويرى المثال النموذجي لهؤلاء في عالم الاجتماع الألماني البارز زومبارت الذي كان يعادي قيم فرنسا وبريطانيا ويرى فيهما "تُجَّارا" -بكل ما في الكلمة من معان سلبية كالمادية والطمع والبخل- فيما يرى في بني قومه "أبطالا" بكل ما في الكلمة من معاني التضحية والنبل
على أننا لا ننسى أن أحد مؤلفي الكتاب (وهو أفيشاي مرجليت) أستاذ في الجامعة العبرية، إسرائيلي.. وعليه فهذا الكتاب في واحد من أبرز رسائله يريد أن يقول "عداء الغرب خرج من عباءة ألمانيا".. فلقد كال لألمانيا في هذا الكتاب كل وسيلة تؤدي إلى اعتبارها قطعة مخالفة للغرب، وسعى بإصرار نحو ربط التقاليد اليابانية والروسية والهندية المعادية للغرب بأصول ألمانية أو بتأثر بالفلسفة الألمانية.. كأن ألمانيا أصل الشرور.. وهو لم يستطع أن يفعل ذلك فيما يخص الإسلام.. لكن رسالة كراهية ألمانيا وفلاسفتها وهتلرها ونازيتها مسيطرة على الكتاب.
لكنه في النهاية كتاب مفيد.. وترجمته ممتعة ورائقة.. وعادة ما يُنسى المترجم في سياق تقييم الكتاب، إلا أنه الحاضر الغائب دائما، وقد كانت ترجمة ثائر ديب لذيذة وممتعة حقا
الأولى: أنه لا علاقة بين جرائم الغرب وحركة العداء له، بل هذا العداء للغرب ليس إلا محاولة من الشرقيين ليبرروا بها لأنفسهم معاداة الغرب ورفضهم للعقل والحرية والمدنية واحترام المرأة، فهم في سبيلهم إلى هذا يحاولون الدفع عن أنفسهم بأنهم أفضل أخلاقا وعفة وحشمة وأحسن تضحية وفداء وبذلا لصالح المجموع على حساب الفرد وأنهم ذوو إيمان في مقابل ما لدى الغرب من إلحاد وكفر. في حين أن حقيقة التهديد الذي يمثله الغرب لغيره -كما يراها المؤلفان- "لا ينجم عن كونه يوفِّر منظومة بديلة من القيم، أو سبيلا مختلفا إلى اليوتوبيا؛ بل ينجم عن أن وعوده بالراحة المادية والحرية الفردية وكرامة الحياة غير الاستثنائية تفضح كل المزاعم الطوباوية؛ فطبيعة الليبرالية الغربية اللا بطولية واللا طوباوية هي العدو الأكبر بالنسبة للجذريين [الأصوليين] المتدينين والملوك الكهنة وجماعات الساعين وراء الطهارة والخلاص البطولي"
الثانية: أن الاستغراب -بمعنى: العداء للغرب- يشمل الغربيين الرافضين لقيم الغرب المادية، فأولئك هم من المستغربين، مثل اليساريين أو بتعبيره "المعادين الجذريين للرأسمالية"، وأحيانا وَسَّعه ليشمل كل من يعتبر النمط الغربي نمطا آليا باردا بلا روح، ولو كان هذا الشعور نابعا من اليهود الفقراء نحو اليهود الألمان، وبهذا يكون الاستغراب في أصله مذهب غربي كالماركسية والليبرالية، وهو دليل على أن "الغرب الذي كان مصدر التنوير وفروعه العلمانية، الليبرالية، غالبا ما كان مصدر سمومه أيضا"، وبهذا فإن أوائل المستغربين إنما هم أوربيون، ويرى المثال النموذجي لهؤلاء في عالم الاجتماع الألماني البارز زومبارت الذي كان يعادي قيم فرنسا وبريطانيا ويرى فيهما "تُجَّارا" -بكل ما في الكلمة من معان سلبية كالمادية والطمع والبخل- فيما يرى في بني قومه "أبطالا" بكل ما في الكلمة من معاني التضحية والنبل
على أننا لا ننسى أن أحد مؤلفي الكتاب (وهو أفيشاي مرجليت) أستاذ في الجامعة العبرية، إسرائيلي.. وعليه فهذا الكتاب في واحد من أبرز رسائله يريد أن يقول "عداء الغرب خرج من عباءة ألمانيا".. فلقد كال لألمانيا في هذا الكتاب كل وسيلة تؤدي إلى اعتبارها قطعة مخالفة للغرب، وسعى بإصرار نحو ربط التقاليد اليابانية والروسية والهندية المعادية للغرب بأصول ألمانية أو بتأثر بالفلسفة الألمانية.. كأن ألمانيا أصل الشرور.. وهو لم يستطع أن يفعل ذلك فيما يخص الإسلام.. لكن رسالة كراهية ألمانيا وفلاسفتها وهتلرها ونازيتها مسيطرة على الكتاب.
لكنه في النهاية كتاب مفيد.. وترجمته ممتعة ورائقة.. وعادة ما يُنسى المترجم في سياق تقييم الكتاب، إلا أنه الحاضر الغائب دائما، وقد كانت ترجمة ثائر ديب لذيذة وممتعة حقا
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October 21, 2024An interesting focus on what seems the reversal of Said's Orientalism. But this book is written rather sloppy and struggles with the conceptual knot that is inherent with Western identity (the struggle between Enlightenment and Romantics). On top of that they seem to equalize Occidentalism with anti-modernism, another conceptual knot. In that respect Age of Anger: A History of the Present by Pankai Mishra is much more to the point. Can't recommend this book, I'm afraid. See my review in my general account on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show....
October 8, 2018
If “Occidentalism” never caught on as a term to describe essentialized views of the West you can blame it on this weak attempt to popularize such a neologism. The point that Western ideas have animated anti-Western movements has been much better made by Pankaj Mishra and even Paul Bergman frankly. This book, written in the years immediately after 9/11, exemplifies many of the myopias and failures of liberal intellectuals of that period. An analysis of Osama bin Laden’s actions immediately segues into a navel-gazing reflection on T.S. Eliot’s views on urban life and ancient views on the corruption of cities(??). If you want to understand al Qaeda’s motives it might be easier to just read Bin Laden’s three demands directly. They were all straightforwardly related to foreign policy and did not require some biblical exegesis to decode.
The book is well written. But given the head-10000ft-in-the-clouds content the prose just ends up giving it an air of cultivated pomposity. A huge array of thinkers are summarized over a page or two each, meaning that they are pretty much all inadequately portrayed. The issue of anti-Western chauvinism is an important one but is poorly served by this lazy book, which I hope could not be written with a straight face today.
The book is well written. But given the head-10000ft-in-the-clouds content the prose just ends up giving it an air of cultivated pomposity. A huge array of thinkers are summarized over a page or two each, meaning that they are pretty much all inadequately portrayed. The issue of anti-Western chauvinism is an important one but is poorly served by this lazy book, which I hope could not be written with a straight face today.
October 19, 2019
I think the book would have been much stronger if it were a bit longer and took time to define occidentalism because I think this is a very valuable and fundamentally true assessment. Much of the East's revolutionary politics are rooted in Western thought or reactions to Western thought. But I need more convincing to lump the Soviet revolution in with the Muslim revolutions and also a defense of why this is not just anti-imperialism instead of something rooted in the West's fundamental philosophy or reason, etc. I think I could be convinced, but I would have needed a longer and deeper exposition of the argument.
September 11, 2015
I was really worried this book, given it's emotionally and politically fraught topic, would fail in subtlety at some point and veer into xenophobia or merely lazy essentializing.
Happily, co-authors Ian Buruma and Avishai Margalit instead display a breadth of knowledge about history and political thought in many parts of the world that allow them to talk deftly about the development of anti-western sentiments over the past several centuries without reducing any of the cultures under discussion to caricatures (which is, after all, what Orientalism and Occidentalism do). The authors examine Europe and America themselves, but also look at post-WWII Japan, 18th- and 19th-century Russia, Nazi Germany and 20th-century Iran, for example. Further they chart the development of anti-western sentiments into Occidentalism, a mode of stereotyping and demonizing that goes beyond criticizing or even acting against the West, and becomes a philosophy with which to justify extreme violence and efforts at cultural genocide.
Interestingly, Buruma and Margalit find some of the roots of Occidentalism in the West itself. They highlight Marx's anti-capitalist thought, for instance, and the Nazis' anti-intellectualism; both components of Occidentalism, which fundamentally views the West as a soulless, mechanized purveyor of debauched urbanity and eradicator of traditional (read: rural) values.
As a westerner who herself sometimes thought of the West in this way, it was helpful for me to understand the authors' crucial differentiation between anti-western thought and Occidentalism proper. The former can still account for humanity, respect difference and needn't end in violence, whereas the latter is premised upon violent dreams of rooting out and destroying a corrupting, worthless, demonic force (western culture, understood as an unnuanced totality of course). It is equally crucial that the authors differentiate strongly between entire cultures or religions (e.g., Islam) who may be critical of the West and the groups within those cultures or religions who seem to really be working within an Occidentalist worldview (e.g., Al-Qaeda).
I think it is always valuable to try and see oneself (in personal and macro-cultural ways) with the eyes of others. That there are humans anywhere bent on the destruction of other humans, imagining them to in fact be inhuman, subhuman and valueless, is not news. It's hard to know what to do about it, however.
The idea that simple awareness of bad things does anything to obviate them is a neoliberal fantasy augmented by the ease of social media self-expression. Another neoliberal fantasy is that if we could all just talk it out and understand each other, we would find we are all neoliberals underneath, which of course is a crock.
There are folks who do not believe democratic processes yield good decisions, that women or poor people or whatever group of people really ought to be controlled for the good of the community, and that privileging individual expression over family or religious obligation is self-indulgent and morally retrograde. And those folks have cultivated these beliefs in lucid ways. Even as a westerner I'm sympathetic to the idea that we have elevated the individual and the material in our culture in ways that are fundamentally unhealthy for us as creatures and which create fairly demented value systems. Being embedded in the culture, however, it's easy for me not to straight up demonize it.
I'm not accusing the authors of simplistic totalizing neoliberal thought, but neither do they really discuss what - if anything - can be done to counter people who hate everything they believe you stand for and who want to kill you because of it. As intractable conflicts all over the globe attest, meeting hate and violence with more hate and violence yields two things and only two things, more hate and violence. And here the whole topic veers into philosophical depths neither broached by this book, nor within the scope of a Goodreads review. Just food for thought. Impotent, frustrating, saddening thought. Definitely worth a read.
Happily, co-authors Ian Buruma and Avishai Margalit instead display a breadth of knowledge about history and political thought in many parts of the world that allow them to talk deftly about the development of anti-western sentiments over the past several centuries without reducing any of the cultures under discussion to caricatures (which is, after all, what Orientalism and Occidentalism do). The authors examine Europe and America themselves, but also look at post-WWII Japan, 18th- and 19th-century Russia, Nazi Germany and 20th-century Iran, for example. Further they chart the development of anti-western sentiments into Occidentalism, a mode of stereotyping and demonizing that goes beyond criticizing or even acting against the West, and becomes a philosophy with which to justify extreme violence and efforts at cultural genocide.
Interestingly, Buruma and Margalit find some of the roots of Occidentalism in the West itself. They highlight Marx's anti-capitalist thought, for instance, and the Nazis' anti-intellectualism; both components of Occidentalism, which fundamentally views the West as a soulless, mechanized purveyor of debauched urbanity and eradicator of traditional (read: rural) values.
As a westerner who herself sometimes thought of the West in this way, it was helpful for me to understand the authors' crucial differentiation between anti-western thought and Occidentalism proper. The former can still account for humanity, respect difference and needn't end in violence, whereas the latter is premised upon violent dreams of rooting out and destroying a corrupting, worthless, demonic force (western culture, understood as an unnuanced totality of course). It is equally crucial that the authors differentiate strongly between entire cultures or religions (e.g., Islam) who may be critical of the West and the groups within those cultures or religions who seem to really be working within an Occidentalist worldview (e.g., Al-Qaeda).
I think it is always valuable to try and see oneself (in personal and macro-cultural ways) with the eyes of others. That there are humans anywhere bent on the destruction of other humans, imagining them to in fact be inhuman, subhuman and valueless, is not news. It's hard to know what to do about it, however.
The idea that simple awareness of bad things does anything to obviate them is a neoliberal fantasy augmented by the ease of social media self-expression. Another neoliberal fantasy is that if we could all just talk it out and understand each other, we would find we are all neoliberals underneath, which of course is a crock.
There are folks who do not believe democratic processes yield good decisions, that women or poor people or whatever group of people really ought to be controlled for the good of the community, and that privileging individual expression over family or religious obligation is self-indulgent and morally retrograde. And those folks have cultivated these beliefs in lucid ways. Even as a westerner I'm sympathetic to the idea that we have elevated the individual and the material in our culture in ways that are fundamentally unhealthy for us as creatures and which create fairly demented value systems. Being embedded in the culture, however, it's easy for me not to straight up demonize it.
I'm not accusing the authors of simplistic totalizing neoliberal thought, but neither do they really discuss what - if anything - can be done to counter people who hate everything they believe you stand for and who want to kill you because of it. As intractable conflicts all over the globe attest, meeting hate and violence with more hate and violence yields two things and only two things, more hate and violence. And here the whole topic veers into philosophical depths neither broached by this book, nor within the scope of a Goodreads review. Just food for thought. Impotent, frustrating, saddening thought. Definitely worth a read.
October 20, 2010
As the sub-title says, the point is to describe the "West in the Eyes of Its Enemies": the toxic mix of stereotypes, assumptions, and ignorance that dehumanizes its inhabitants.
The book is essentially four medium length essays, each covering different strains of Occidentalism. Although framed around illuminating the mindset of modern Islamic terrorism--how could anyone justify mass murder?--the point is that this is similar to and descended from earlier mindsets. Indeed, the book spends most of its time looking at strains of German anti-Enlightenment romantics, Russian mysticism, Japanese nationalism and so on. All of these were very much reactions to "the West", so even as they invariably stressed tradition or authenticity, they were essentially modern creations as well; for example, the Japanese military's devotion to a divine emperor was invented in the late 19th century.
Well written & showcases a wide range of knowledge. Still, I have to say it wasn't a very challenging book to read and, maybe I'm being uncharitable, but I don't think it was that challenging to write. It's not like the anti-capitalist or anti-urban or pro-warrior mindsets haven't been noticed before, and tying them together in this context is interesting but didn't seem horribly profound.
On the other hand, it is a slender book with an interesting idea it presents clearly, instead of padding it out to 300 pages with repetitive examples. Overall, worth reading.
The book is essentially four medium length essays, each covering different strains of Occidentalism. Although framed around illuminating the mindset of modern Islamic terrorism--how could anyone justify mass murder?--the point is that this is similar to and descended from earlier mindsets. Indeed, the book spends most of its time looking at strains of German anti-Enlightenment romantics, Russian mysticism, Japanese nationalism and so on. All of these were very much reactions to "the West", so even as they invariably stressed tradition or authenticity, they were essentially modern creations as well; for example, the Japanese military's devotion to a divine emperor was invented in the late 19th century.
Well written & showcases a wide range of knowledge. Still, I have to say it wasn't a very challenging book to read and, maybe I'm being uncharitable, but I don't think it was that challenging to write. It's not like the anti-capitalist or anti-urban or pro-warrior mindsets haven't been noticed before, and tying them together in this context is interesting but didn't seem horribly profound.
On the other hand, it is a slender book with an interesting idea it presents clearly, instead of padding it out to 300 pages with repetitive examples. Overall, worth reading.
August 17, 2011
There are some interesting tidbits of the history of ideas here, but they are woven into an oddly unbalanced and decontextualized story. I'm kind of mad at the authors for taking this title for a book that doesn't live up to its promise. Occidentalism ought to be a book that looks at Occidentalism as the obverse of Orientalism, showing the parallels in these stereotyped ways of seeing the other while also surveying the material and intellectual contexts in which these ways of thinking arose.
The worst part of this book is that, as this review in The Guardian notes, Buruma and Margalit give the impression that the ways of thinking they describe are almost wholly imported from Europe, thereby implicitly denying the capacity of Eastern intellectuals to think for themselves.
The best part of the book is the chapter on anti-cosmopolitanism as an intellectual trend stretching across time and geography. I also appreciate the recognition that the ways of thinking that the authors call "Occidentalism" (a misnomer, as far as I'm concerned) are currently present not only among radical Islamists in the East but also among fundamentalist Christians in the West, although I'd have liked that to be made more explicit.
The worst part of this book is that, as this review in The Guardian notes, Buruma and Margalit give the impression that the ways of thinking they describe are almost wholly imported from Europe, thereby implicitly denying the capacity of Eastern intellectuals to think for themselves.
The best part of the book is the chapter on anti-cosmopolitanism as an intellectual trend stretching across time and geography. I also appreciate the recognition that the ways of thinking that the authors call "Occidentalism" (a misnomer, as far as I'm concerned) are currently present not only among radical Islamists in the East but also among fundamentalist Christians in the West, although I'd have liked that to be made more explicit.
March 24, 2023
*** 3.5 Stars ***
I can understand the relevance of this book at the time of publication (2004). Memories of 9/11 were still smoking in our minds and the West’s so-called ‘war on terror’ was underway. There would be bombings in Madrid that year and in Bali the next. “Why do they hate us?” was a question on everyone’s mind. Occidentalism is an interesting and thoughtful attempt to answer that question. The term ‘Occidentalism’, write the authors, refers to “the dehumanising picture of the West painted by its enemies” and it is their goal “to examine this cluster of prejudices and trace their historical roots”.
In doing so, the authors cast a very wide net, discussing not only Islamic attitudes towards America and its allies, but also Shinto nationalism, Nazi ideology, and the communist revolutions in China and Vietnam. Given such a broad scope within a short book, it is less a history and more a series of themes, impressions and vignettes in which the authors claim to identify "particular strands of Occidentalism that can be seen in all periods and places where the phenomenon has occurred”. The USA stands out as the preeminent example of what the Occidentalist despises: “a rootless, cosmopolitan, superficial, trivial, materialistic, racially mixed, fashion-addicted civilization”.
The book’s central idea is that this opposition to the West originated in the West: “It is indeed one of our contentions that Occidentalism, like capitalism, Marxism, and many other modern -isms, was born in Europe, before it was transferred to other parts of the world. The West was the source of the Enlightenment and its secular, liberal offshoots, but also of its frequently poisonous antidotes”. The transference and adoption of Western ideas usually began as the attempt to enter the modern age via industrialization, secularization and democracy. But steps in this direction often led to an intellectual and cultural counterreaction from the Occidentalist, fearful that time honoured norms and spiritual values were under threat by crass American consumerism, pop-culture and sexual license.
It is at this point that the author’s central idea comes into play, that every attempt to oppose the West drew upon Western ideas to do so. For example, it is well known that many non-Western states (Egypt, Iraq, North Korea, Ethiopia, Cuba, China, Vietnam) adopted some form of socialism, seen as a way to industrialize without embracing capitalism. But state socialism, drawing on Marxist ideology, is a Western idea. A less obvious source of Western influence on the Occidental mind is that of German Romanticism which arose in the 18th and 19th centuries as a protest against the scientific, pragmatic and rationalist mindset undergirding modern urban development. The so-called ‘Slavophile’ outlook (the ‘Russian mind’) with its tragic view of life and preference for salvation over solutions is a potent example. Today's Occidentalist supposedly draws on this sentiment as well. A rather curious example of Occidentalist borrowing from Western ideas were the Japanese kamikaze pilots. Most were drawn from the humanities departments and were well read in authors such as Nietzsche, Hegel, Fichte, and Marx. So despite their fanatical opposition to Western capitalism and imperialism “their ultimate sacrifice (and idealism) was often justified and articulated through Western ideas”.
Occidentalist opposition to the West gathers around some dominant metaphors. One such metaphor is the myth of the sinful city and its destruction. While clearly part of the Judeo-Christian tradition, it continues to fire the imagination of the Occidentalist today. For all the material havoc it caused, the destruction of the Twin Towers was above all a symbolic attack on the arrogant empire building of the West. Such an idea is as old as Babel and Babylon, those paragons of human pride and godless effrontery. The City is also the great whore, the giant market place where everything and everyone is for sale. Particularly repugnant is how the City and its indiscriminate commerce dissolves all ‘natural’ differences in creed, race, culture and class. Such cosmopolitan diversity, individualism, and liberty represents a fatal loss of vitality, a contagious corruption of the soul. For a society founded on commerce can produce neither warriors nor heroes, only pallid merchants whose ceaseless trade churns out mediocrity and an addiction to creature comforts. Contrast this unheroic way of life to that of the Taliban fighter who said the Americans would never win because “they love Pepsi-Cola, but we love death”.
(Notable is that the Jews are implicated in this mercantile view of the West, and the anti-Semitic nature of Occidentalism is addressed more than once in the book.)
Religion is key to understanding the Occidentalist view, at least in the case of Islam and the West. For the Occidentalist, Max Weber’s thesis that modernization intrinsically devalues religion (the “disenchantment of the world”) is a no-brainer, reenforced by historical experiences of brutally enforced secularization (e.g., Türkiye under Kemal Ataturk). Even more, in the eyes of the Occidentalist, the West is idolatrous, for it worships money, material things, just as the pagans worshipped rocks and trees. This view should not be unfamiliar to those in the West since idolatry, as the ultimate transgression, was already well established in the Judeo-Christian tradition. In a secular vein, Karl Marx employed the metaphor of idolatry to denounce Western capitalism (and the Jews whom he regarded as the archetypal idolaters). Again, while some Occidentalists appropriated Marxist themes into their Islamist critique of the West, the more dominant path has been to channel the forces of anti-westernism into a cultural identity based around religion (hence the resurgence of Islamic states and regimes). Nevertheless, the authors contend that much of their religious rhetoric is in fact Manichaean, an ancient heresy which inflates the battle of ‘good vs evil’ to cosmic proportions. The West, of course, is no stranger to this rhetoric (think of Reagan’s “evil empire” and George W. Bush’s “axis of evil”).
Not that every devout Muslim is therefore a political Islamist. What is more likely to distinguish the average anti-westerner from the West is their support for publicly enforced morality. And for the everyday (male) Occidentalist morality centres on (female) sexual mores. The authors write that “sexual morality is largely about…regulating female behaviour….because a man’s honour is dependent on the behaviour of the women related to him. The issue of women is not marginal; it lies at the heart of Islamic Occidentalism”. As a complex interrelation of the political, moral and sexual, the veiled woman has become the antithesis to the exposed Western woman.
So, some very big topics here.
Nevertheless, despite a wealth of ideas, the book fell somewhat flat for me. Or maybe I missed something. How widespread, I wondered, is the particular brand of Occidentalism depicted by the authors? I don’t doubt that some individual (and usually intellectual) opponents of the West might be just as described (the authors do quote from some prominent Islamic figures: Sayyid Muhamad Taleqani, Sayyid Qutb, Abu-l-A’la Maududi). Still, would a typical opponent of the West recognize themselves in these pages? I'm not equipped to tell.
I also found it a bit rich to give Western ideas all the credit for contemporary anti-Westernism. Without denying the exchange of ideas between cultures, it almost sounds like indigenous factors play no part in opposition to the West. And it’s not just about ideas: what about the very real, lived experience of humiliation and oppression? (And besides, when the authors pose the question of "how to protect the idea of the West – that is to say, the world’s liberal democracies – against its enemies" this "idea" is largely assumed).
Apart from a few passing comments on Israeli and American behaviour, there is scant admission of what germ of truth may be contained in the Occidentalist critique. After all, if the critique of the West comes from the heart of the West, then perhaps we should be paying heed. This is where I found myself most engaged with the book. Despite the authors’ smug dismissal of the “Slavophile” mindset, I found myself thinking: ‘Well, I kind of feel that way myself at times’. Why, after all, do authors like Dostoyevsky continue to speak to us? There is something deeply corrupt – perhaps idolatrous - about our (neo-liberal) sinful city. Yes, it has bought many comforts and pleasures, which I love. But at what price? And at whose expense?
Anyway, if the authors meant Occidentalism to be a counterpart to Edward Said’s immensely influential work Orientalism which examines the prejudiced way the West depicts the culture of the East, this is never stated. But it does not appear that this book has risen to that level.
I can understand the relevance of this book at the time of publication (2004). Memories of 9/11 were still smoking in our minds and the West’s so-called ‘war on terror’ was underway. There would be bombings in Madrid that year and in Bali the next. “Why do they hate us?” was a question on everyone’s mind. Occidentalism is an interesting and thoughtful attempt to answer that question. The term ‘Occidentalism’, write the authors, refers to “the dehumanising picture of the West painted by its enemies” and it is their goal “to examine this cluster of prejudices and trace their historical roots”.
In doing so, the authors cast a very wide net, discussing not only Islamic attitudes towards America and its allies, but also Shinto nationalism, Nazi ideology, and the communist revolutions in China and Vietnam. Given such a broad scope within a short book, it is less a history and more a series of themes, impressions and vignettes in which the authors claim to identify "particular strands of Occidentalism that can be seen in all periods and places where the phenomenon has occurred”. The USA stands out as the preeminent example of what the Occidentalist despises: “a rootless, cosmopolitan, superficial, trivial, materialistic, racially mixed, fashion-addicted civilization”.
The book’s central idea is that this opposition to the West originated in the West: “It is indeed one of our contentions that Occidentalism, like capitalism, Marxism, and many other modern -isms, was born in Europe, before it was transferred to other parts of the world. The West was the source of the Enlightenment and its secular, liberal offshoots, but also of its frequently poisonous antidotes”. The transference and adoption of Western ideas usually began as the attempt to enter the modern age via industrialization, secularization and democracy. But steps in this direction often led to an intellectual and cultural counterreaction from the Occidentalist, fearful that time honoured norms and spiritual values were under threat by crass American consumerism, pop-culture and sexual license.
It is at this point that the author’s central idea comes into play, that every attempt to oppose the West drew upon Western ideas to do so. For example, it is well known that many non-Western states (Egypt, Iraq, North Korea, Ethiopia, Cuba, China, Vietnam) adopted some form of socialism, seen as a way to industrialize without embracing capitalism. But state socialism, drawing on Marxist ideology, is a Western idea. A less obvious source of Western influence on the Occidental mind is that of German Romanticism which arose in the 18th and 19th centuries as a protest against the scientific, pragmatic and rationalist mindset undergirding modern urban development. The so-called ‘Slavophile’ outlook (the ‘Russian mind’) with its tragic view of life and preference for salvation over solutions is a potent example. Today's Occidentalist supposedly draws on this sentiment as well. A rather curious example of Occidentalist borrowing from Western ideas were the Japanese kamikaze pilots. Most were drawn from the humanities departments and were well read in authors such as Nietzsche, Hegel, Fichte, and Marx. So despite their fanatical opposition to Western capitalism and imperialism “their ultimate sacrifice (and idealism) was often justified and articulated through Western ideas”.
Occidentalist opposition to the West gathers around some dominant metaphors. One such metaphor is the myth of the sinful city and its destruction. While clearly part of the Judeo-Christian tradition, it continues to fire the imagination of the Occidentalist today. For all the material havoc it caused, the destruction of the Twin Towers was above all a symbolic attack on the arrogant empire building of the West. Such an idea is as old as Babel and Babylon, those paragons of human pride and godless effrontery. The City is also the great whore, the giant market place where everything and everyone is for sale. Particularly repugnant is how the City and its indiscriminate commerce dissolves all ‘natural’ differences in creed, race, culture and class. Such cosmopolitan diversity, individualism, and liberty represents a fatal loss of vitality, a contagious corruption of the soul. For a society founded on commerce can produce neither warriors nor heroes, only pallid merchants whose ceaseless trade churns out mediocrity and an addiction to creature comforts. Contrast this unheroic way of life to that of the Taliban fighter who said the Americans would never win because “they love Pepsi-Cola, but we love death”.
(Notable is that the Jews are implicated in this mercantile view of the West, and the anti-Semitic nature of Occidentalism is addressed more than once in the book.)
Religion is key to understanding the Occidentalist view, at least in the case of Islam and the West. For the Occidentalist, Max Weber’s thesis that modernization intrinsically devalues religion (the “disenchantment of the world”) is a no-brainer, reenforced by historical experiences of brutally enforced secularization (e.g., Türkiye under Kemal Ataturk). Even more, in the eyes of the Occidentalist, the West is idolatrous, for it worships money, material things, just as the pagans worshipped rocks and trees. This view should not be unfamiliar to those in the West since idolatry, as the ultimate transgression, was already well established in the Judeo-Christian tradition. In a secular vein, Karl Marx employed the metaphor of idolatry to denounce Western capitalism (and the Jews whom he regarded as the archetypal idolaters). Again, while some Occidentalists appropriated Marxist themes into their Islamist critique of the West, the more dominant path has been to channel the forces of anti-westernism into a cultural identity based around religion (hence the resurgence of Islamic states and regimes). Nevertheless, the authors contend that much of their religious rhetoric is in fact Manichaean, an ancient heresy which inflates the battle of ‘good vs evil’ to cosmic proportions. The West, of course, is no stranger to this rhetoric (think of Reagan’s “evil empire” and George W. Bush’s “axis of evil”).
Not that every devout Muslim is therefore a political Islamist. What is more likely to distinguish the average anti-westerner from the West is their support for publicly enforced morality. And for the everyday (male) Occidentalist morality centres on (female) sexual mores. The authors write that “sexual morality is largely about…regulating female behaviour….because a man’s honour is dependent on the behaviour of the women related to him. The issue of women is not marginal; it lies at the heart of Islamic Occidentalism”. As a complex interrelation of the political, moral and sexual, the veiled woman has become the antithesis to the exposed Western woman.
So, some very big topics here.
Nevertheless, despite a wealth of ideas, the book fell somewhat flat for me. Or maybe I missed something. How widespread, I wondered, is the particular brand of Occidentalism depicted by the authors? I don’t doubt that some individual (and usually intellectual) opponents of the West might be just as described (the authors do quote from some prominent Islamic figures: Sayyid Muhamad Taleqani, Sayyid Qutb, Abu-l-A’la Maududi). Still, would a typical opponent of the West recognize themselves in these pages? I'm not equipped to tell.
I also found it a bit rich to give Western ideas all the credit for contemporary anti-Westernism. Without denying the exchange of ideas between cultures, it almost sounds like indigenous factors play no part in opposition to the West. And it’s not just about ideas: what about the very real, lived experience of humiliation and oppression? (And besides, when the authors pose the question of "how to protect the idea of the West – that is to say, the world’s liberal democracies – against its enemies" this "idea" is largely assumed).
Apart from a few passing comments on Israeli and American behaviour, there is scant admission of what germ of truth may be contained in the Occidentalist critique. After all, if the critique of the West comes from the heart of the West, then perhaps we should be paying heed. This is where I found myself most engaged with the book. Despite the authors’ smug dismissal of the “Slavophile” mindset, I found myself thinking: ‘Well, I kind of feel that way myself at times’. Why, after all, do authors like Dostoyevsky continue to speak to us? There is something deeply corrupt – perhaps idolatrous - about our (neo-liberal) sinful city. Yes, it has bought many comforts and pleasures, which I love. But at what price? And at whose expense?
Anyway, if the authors meant Occidentalism to be a counterpart to Edward Said’s immensely influential work Orientalism which examines the prejudiced way the West depicts the culture of the East, this is never stated. But it does not appear that this book has risen to that level.
November 13, 2017
A big fat meh. Maybe not terrible, just very forgettable.
And mistitled, as the book is more about anti-modernism than it is about anti-westernism. The sentiments it discusses are against urbanization, commercialization, secularization, globalization, materialism, and the all the destruction of traditional ways of life these forms of modernization entail. It's true that the west is often identified as the perfidious source of this toxic modernization - by Prussians, Russians, Japanese and Islamists, to name a few anti-western groups discussed in this book - but inside western societies the exact same anti-modern sentiments exist.
And they are not, at least not always, anti-western. Read, for instance, this (in my opinion) brilliant analysis of Donald Trump's election last year. You clearly cannot call these sentiments 'anti-western', for they are the opposite, but how are the sentiments described there different from the 'Occidentalism' as described in this book? If they are, I fail to see it.
Meanwhile the book mostly leaves out the topics of imperialism and racism, both historic and modern. They are briefly discussed, but only as side-issues, playing no causal role in actual anti-western sentiments. Which is odd, as these topics clearly play a central role in current anti-western moods. But more importantly, by doing this, the authors let both the West and those who hate it off the hook.
The former by portraying it as some sort of do-gooders, who are hated merely for innocently trying to improve the world, and not for its blood-soaked racist history and current policies. For instance, current anti-western sentiments in the Islamic world are here explained primarily by pointing to ideas. To thinkers like Sayyid Qutb, who thought all westerners godless pimps and whores. And not primarily as a reaction to western(-backed) bombs and dictators, shredding children to pieces for fun and profit. I'm not saying we should ignore religious or other cultural factors, just that we shouldn't ignore political realities, or diminish their importance, which is basically what the authors are trying to do. This is not just wrong as an analysis, but dangerous, as consent for fresh violence is always being manufactured by this sleight of hand.
And it the latter for paradoxically often using race as the basis for assigning responsibility for those racist crimes. Because when I try to think of one clear-cut example of actual 'occidentalism' as defined in this book, that is the "dehumanizing picture of the west painted by its enemies", I think specifically of the commonly held belief that westerners, especially those of Western European origin, are somehow responsible for the historic (and often racist) crimes committed by the people who look like them. It's a blood curse-like canard, that in principle should be held in similar disgust as other forms of racism.
This form of anti-western sentiment is unfortunately not discussed, because the book is not about 'occidentalism' as a mirror image of (Edward Said's*) orientialism, but about anti-modernism as conflated with it.
______
* who by the way is oddly not even mentioned in this book ...
And mistitled, as the book is more about anti-modernism than it is about anti-westernism. The sentiments it discusses are against urbanization, commercialization, secularization, globalization, materialism, and the all the destruction of traditional ways of life these forms of modernization entail. It's true that the west is often identified as the perfidious source of this toxic modernization - by Prussians, Russians, Japanese and Islamists, to name a few anti-western groups discussed in this book - but inside western societies the exact same anti-modern sentiments exist.
And they are not, at least not always, anti-western. Read, for instance, this (in my opinion) brilliant analysis of Donald Trump's election last year. You clearly cannot call these sentiments 'anti-western', for they are the opposite, but how are the sentiments described there different from the 'Occidentalism' as described in this book? If they are, I fail to see it.
Meanwhile the book mostly leaves out the topics of imperialism and racism, both historic and modern. They are briefly discussed, but only as side-issues, playing no causal role in actual anti-western sentiments. Which is odd, as these topics clearly play a central role in current anti-western moods. But more importantly, by doing this, the authors let both the West and those who hate it off the hook.
The former by portraying it as some sort of do-gooders, who are hated merely for innocently trying to improve the world, and not for its blood-soaked racist history and current policies. For instance, current anti-western sentiments in the Islamic world are here explained primarily by pointing to ideas. To thinkers like Sayyid Qutb, who thought all westerners godless pimps and whores. And not primarily as a reaction to western(-backed) bombs and dictators, shredding children to pieces for fun and profit. I'm not saying we should ignore religious or other cultural factors, just that we shouldn't ignore political realities, or diminish their importance, which is basically what the authors are trying to do. This is not just wrong as an analysis, but dangerous, as consent for fresh violence is always being manufactured by this sleight of hand.
And it the latter for paradoxically often using race as the basis for assigning responsibility for those racist crimes. Because when I try to think of one clear-cut example of actual 'occidentalism' as defined in this book, that is the "dehumanizing picture of the west painted by its enemies", I think specifically of the commonly held belief that westerners, especially those of Western European origin, are somehow responsible for the historic (and often racist) crimes committed by the people who look like them. It's a blood curse-like canard, that in principle should be held in similar disgust as other forms of racism.
This form of anti-western sentiment is unfortunately not discussed, because the book is not about 'occidentalism' as a mirror image of (Edward Said's*) orientialism, but about anti-modernism as conflated with it.
______
* who by the way is oddly not even mentioned in this book ...
November 18, 2014
A lot of my notes on the sides of pages throughout the book began with LOOOOOOOOOOOOL. this is a terrible book, but it has a few interesting ideas (which they use to make generalizations about all criticism of the 'west').
July 20, 2024
Sheeeeesh this thing is terrible. A lot of it is just this: https://www.reddit.com/r/Arthur/comme...
The parts that don't talk about discrimination against the glory of the West are unsurprisingly orientalist. The authors are constructing the West and liberalism against the intolerant and hypocritical East with next to no self-reflection. There's a passage where they go in-depth into how the Arab world considers the West to be evil and barbaric, and they don't seem to realize or want to acknowledge that that's how the West sees the Arab world. They get mad at the West's enemies for hating liberalism and its proponents for seemingly no reason, but they ignore the material reality of what liberalism has done to the periphery. They get mad at peasant rebellions in China going after rich people for seemingly no reason--but those guys were hoarding money and land, idiots!! And they never miss an opportunity to take a punch at Marx, Engels and Mao, no matter how misguided it is. At one point, they discuss 19th-century China and find a way to throw Mao under the bus. And you can't trust anything they say after they call Marx a self-hating Jew. Did I mention they wrote the thing in Jerusalem and were worried about Palestinian bombers? Anyway--the verdict is that this is bad for learning, good for playing Edward Said bingo.
The parts that don't talk about discrimination against the glory of the West are unsurprisingly orientalist. The authors are constructing the West and liberalism against the intolerant and hypocritical East with next to no self-reflection. There's a passage where they go in-depth into how the Arab world considers the West to be evil and barbaric, and they don't seem to realize or want to acknowledge that that's how the West sees the Arab world. They get mad at the West's enemies for hating liberalism and its proponents for seemingly no reason, but they ignore the material reality of what liberalism has done to the periphery. They get mad at peasant rebellions in China going after rich people for seemingly no reason--but those guys were hoarding money and land, idiots!! And they never miss an opportunity to take a punch at Marx, Engels and Mao, no matter how misguided it is. At one point, they discuss 19th-century China and find a way to throw Mao under the bus. And you can't trust anything they say after they call Marx a self-hating Jew. Did I mention they wrote the thing in Jerusalem and were worried about Palestinian bombers? Anyway--the verdict is that this is bad for learning, good for playing Edward Said bingo.
February 8, 2025
A historical look into the thoughts of Western hatred and dehumanization, and how it impacts ideologies that are employed against those that are considered patrons or mascots of Western values.
I think this line of thought gets significantly muddled in the middle as the authors claim that Occidentalism originates in its own homeland, before spreading to others and contaminating both religious and secular Occidentalists. I wish there were more thoughtful insight about the nature of this starting in Europe.
Towards the end, this book definitely challenged my beliefs on highlighting the West's influence on colonialism and the oppression of other cultures; however, this book does take a significant American apologist lean to me. We barely graze how Hitler's fascism, or France's revolution, all had an impact on the societies of the time, which then led to their influence in Occidentalism. All this information and history of otherness equating to the West culminated in a conclusion which basically amounted to "all hate is bad, and don't act upon it." I agree, though I'm sure most people would, so I'm still slightly unsatisfied with the takeaway I should've had from this (outside of the raw info). I think still touching upon the effects of colonialism, and how that could've contributed to the widely held reputation for the West to be cold, money-hungry, and brutal, would've been a good addition to make this a neutral assessment of detrimental ideologies.
I think this line of thought gets significantly muddled in the middle as the authors claim that Occidentalism originates in its own homeland, before spreading to others and contaminating both religious and secular Occidentalists. I wish there were more thoughtful insight about the nature of this starting in Europe.
Towards the end, this book definitely challenged my beliefs on highlighting the West's influence on colonialism and the oppression of other cultures; however, this book does take a significant American apologist lean to me. We barely graze how Hitler's fascism, or France's revolution, all had an impact on the societies of the time, which then led to their influence in Occidentalism. All this information and history of otherness equating to the West culminated in a conclusion which basically amounted to "all hate is bad, and don't act upon it." I agree, though I'm sure most people would, so I'm still slightly unsatisfied with the takeaway I should've had from this (outside of the raw info). I think still touching upon the effects of colonialism, and how that could've contributed to the widely held reputation for the West to be cold, money-hungry, and brutal, would've been a good addition to make this a neutral assessment of detrimental ideologies.
October 16, 2007
I liked this book, it makes some good points about the history of dislike of The West. However, I also think that there is a Western leaning to the book. It seemed obvious to me that "The West" is the good guy and I think a more neutral stance would have made this book a better read for me.
January 9, 2023
Extremely dumbed down criticism of everything that's critical of the West, redifined by the authors as liberal capitalism, lumping together Pol Pot, the Taliban, Marx, Tolstoy, German romantic philosophers and, of course, Nazis. Totally unworthy of one's time.
November 14, 2007
Not all anti-Capitalists are nice people... or even sane.
November 23, 2015
[Rezension bezieht sich auf die deutsche Ausgabe]
Der britische Journalist Ian Buruma und der israelische Philosoph Avishai Margalit widmen sich im vorliegenden Band der Frage, wie der Orient auf den Okzident blickt und weshalb dieser Blick häufig so voller Hass und Ablehnung ist. Wobei „Orient“ begrifflich zu eng gefasst ist, ist dieser heute doch lediglich der stärkste Vertreter des Okzidentalismus. Die Autoren gehen die Frage aber unter anderem historisch an und stellen fest, daß der Blick auf den Westen schon seit geraumer Zeit ein abschätziger, oft verachtender ist, egal ob die Perspektive die russische oder beispielweise die japanische umfasst. Denn der Westen stand – aus den verschiedensten Gründen und unter den verschiedensten religiösen und politischen Einflüssen - schon lange im Fokus außereuropäischer Mächte. Allerdings ist dies keine allzu neue oder bahnbrechende Erkenntnis. Was also Burumas und Margalits Band und vor allem ihre Schlußfolgerungen so interessant macht, ist die Conclusio, daß die meisten Angriffe gegen den Westen, der verächtliche Blick auf seine Errungenschaften vor allem kultureller/sozialer/politischer Natur und auch die Bewertung westlicher Zivilisation und Zivilgesellschaften als „schwach“ oder „schwächlich“, ebenfalls westlichem Denken und westlicher Selbstreflektion entspringen. Der ‚Okzidentalismus‘ als hassende Reaktion auf den Westen ist in weiten Teilen ebenso ein westliches Exportgut, wie es Imperialismus, Kolonialisierung, die Demokratie und die Menschenrechte, technische und technologische Neurungen und – heute wesentlich! - auch die Produkte der Unterhaltungsindustrie sind. Exportgut? Exportschlager.
‚Okzidentalismus‘ bedeutet in diesem Zusammenhang also Hass auf den Westen, allerdings nicht aus vornehmlich religiösen oder politischen, nicht einmal aus historischen Gründen, sondern vor allem aus kulturellen: Es ist die Ablehnung der Moderne als Folge der Aufklärung und der daraus resultierenden Säkularisierung, als Wurzel und Hort des Relativismus, als Zeitalter der Beschleunigung, als Ausdruck der sich immer weiter verästelnden Differenzierung in allen Bereichen des Lebens – unter anderem dem der Geschlechterbeziehungen. Der Angriff auf das World Trade Center am 9. September 2001 war so gesehen nicht nur ein Angriff auf Menschen, ein Angriff auf ein wesentliches Symbol der ökonomischer Potenz des Westens, sondern auch auf die große „Hure Babylon“, auf jenen urbanen Moloch, der die Moderne symbolisiert, wie kaum etwas anderes: die Stadt.
So beginnen die Autoren ihren fünf Kapitel und eine Einleitung umfassenden Essay mit genau diesem Moloch der Moderne und einem Blick auf die Entwicklung der Stadt als kulturelles Item und Icon. Anhand einer schnell abgerissenen Geschichte der Stadt und vor allem ihrer religiösen Bezüge (Babylon, Sodom), führen die Autoren den Leser vergleichsweise schnell zum Kern ihrer These: Es waren die großen reaktionären Bewegungen des frühen 20. Jahrhunderts, die den urbanen Geist ablehnten, dagegen die heimatliche Scholle, die ländliche Idylle, den Heimatboden als Basis eines gesunden Volkes etc. priesen. Wobei es – im Falle der Nationalsozialisten – eine seltsame Melange aus dieser Blut & Boden-Ideologie tiefer Heimatverbundenheit einerseits und einer sozialen Fortschrittsgläubigkeit andererseits war, die möglicherweise unter anderem die spezielle Anziehungskraft dessen ausmachte, was Hitler und Konsorten gern „die Bewegung“ nannten. Und diese Anziehungskraft wirkte weit über das Deutsche Reich oder gar Europa hinaus. Hier geben die Autoren ein einleuchtendes Beispiel für den exportierten Okzidentalismus, wenn sie beschreiben, wie die völkischen und pangermanischen Ideen der Nationalsozialisten gerade bei Arabern und im fernen Osten in Japan auf fruchtbaren Boden fielen und dort oft intellektuell tradierte Formen und Ansichten verdrängten. Dabei schlagen Buruma und Margalit auch den Zirkel zum europäischen, aber auch – man staune – japanischen Antisemitismus, der sich auch (Betonung: AUCH) aus einem antimodernen Reflex ergibt: Viele Menschen, auch Intellektuelle, fühlten sich durch die Industrialisierung, die damit einhergehende Ausbreitung urbaner Strukturen und die zunehmende Moderne/Modernisierung zunehmend überfordert und, was vielleicht wesentlicher ist in Bezug auf den Okzidentalismus, vor allem entwurzelt. In Europa – aber dieses Klischee wurde ebenfalls erfolgreich exportiert – stehen Juden symbolhaft für die mit diesen Entwicklungen einhergehenden Ängsten. Da sie ja seit jeher entwurzelt in der Diaspora leben, sind sie an dieses Leben angeblich viel besser gewöhnt, können sich innerhalb der neuen Strukturen und Systeme also besser zurechtfinden und selbstredend ist in solcher Betrachtung auch die Frage nicht weit, ob sie nicht sowieso ursächlich für all die Wandlungen und neuen Ansprüche sind, die sich den Zweifelnden aufdrängen und das Leben so unendlich kompliziert erscheinen lassen.
Doch auch von diesen eher spezifischen Betrachtungen abgesehen, steht „die Stadt“ für Vieles, was Reaktionäre in Europa wie von modernen Entwicklungen Überrollte weltweit eher ablehnen: Sexuelle Indifferenz, liberale Lebensentwürfe und relativistische Weltanschauungen. Die Stadt ist das Labor der Moderne, somit aber eben auch das Symbol dessen, was an der Moderne verächtlich sei.
Exemplarisch kommt hier gut zum Ausdruck, welcher kulturellen Spur die Autoren da folgen. Vieles überzeugt und wirft hoch interessante Reflexionen auf uns in unserer Zeit zurück. Sind nicht auch wir Entwurzelte in einer Welt, die sich verändert, radikal, global, in einer nie gekannten Geschwindigkeit auf eine Zukunft zu, die vollkommen unüberschaubar, gar unberechenbar erscheint? Ist „unsere“, also die Industrialisierung in unserer Zeit, nicht irgendwie die Digitalisierung? Sind deren Auswirkungen nicht offensichtlich mindestens so elementar, wie es die der Industrialisierung und Technisierung seit Mitte des 18. Jahrhunderts waren? Und stimmt es nicht, daß gerade die deutsche Geschichte auch begleitet ist von einem steten Antireflex? Es war die deutsche Romantik, die explizit Stellung gegen die Ideen der Aufklärung und des Idealismus bezogen hat, die sich politisch sogar reaktionär geben konnte. Die überhaupt eine politische Agenda entwickelte. Es ist, neben anderen, auch dieser Quell deutscher Geistesgeschichte, der durch das 19. Jahrhundert hindurch zu einem Strom teils antiaufklärerischen, teils reaktionär-nationalistischen Denkens wurde und schließlich in Untergangsphantasien wie denen eines Oswald Spengler mündete[1]. Man kann der Ausgangsthese des Textes gerade in diesen Ausführungen sehr gut folgen.
Ebenso greift sie in einem langen und aufschlußreichen Kapitel über die Auseinandersetzung jener Gesellschaften mit der Moderne, repräsentiert im Okzident, die selber nah dran sind und seiner unmittelbaren Einflußsphäre unterliegen. Rußland ist ein solches Beispiel. Anhand dieses Falls läßt sich gut nachvollziehen, wie der Okzidentalismus auch einem ‚double bind‘ entsprechen kann. Eine Gesellschaft wie die russische unter Zar Peter dem Großen – rückständig und in Gefahr von den weit enteilten Gesellschaften Westeuropas abgehängt zu werden – richtete sich zwangsläufig danach aus, wo sie die Entwicklungen abschöpfen und sich so selber anpassen konnte. Allerdings wurde sie auch ausgerichtet. Gerade Peter wollte westliche Neuerungen technischer Art schnell einführen, nahm zugleich aber wenige der fortschrittlichen Ideen mit, welche Ende des 17. Jahrhunderts in humanistischen Hochburgen entstanden. Eine Gegenbewegung, die sich müht, das Eigene, das kulturell Selbstständige nicht nur zu bewahren, sondern regelrecht zu betonen („die russische Seele“), ja, im klassischen Sinne eine Reaktion, als deren Zeugen und Vertreter die Autoren unter anderem Dostojewski aufrufen, wirkt da fast zwangsläufig. Buruma und Margalit verorten die Unterschiede und Abgrenzungsprozesse gerade hier auch in den Differenzen des römisch-katholisch geprägten Christentums zum orthodoxen Christentum. Sei das eine eine Form des Glaubens (römisch-katholisch), gehe das andere komplett im Ritus auf (orthodox).
Man muß dem nicht zustimmen, doch ist nicht von der Hand zu weisen, daß die Thesen einleuchtend erscheinen. Und manchmal auch richtiggehend treffen. Die Erkenntnis, daß wir mit all unseren (ach so atemberaubenden) technischen Errungenschaften auch eine Menge Probleme in die Welt exportiert haben, ist so neu nicht. Interessant ist allerdings die Idee, daß diese Probleme eben nicht nur materieller Natur sind und also Ökologisches, Soziales oder Ökonomisches betreffen. Wir haben bereits in unserer ersten Globalisierungswelle, die ca. 1492 einsetzte (um eine Idee des werten Peter Sloterdijk aufzugreifen), eben nicht nur die Milch der frommen Denkungsart in bestem Wissen und Gewissen mitgebracht, sondern auch schon das Rezept, sie in gärend´ Drachengift zu wandeln. Denn das subjektgewordene Individuum trägt in sich nicht nur das Rückgrat des aufrechten Gangs, sondern eben auch den schwarzen Rücken des lustvollen Untergangs. Wir fallen auf uns selbst zurück. In einer weiten – letztlich metaphysischen – Zirkelbewegung kommt die von uns ausgehende Geschichte wieder bei uns an. Gewandelt. Sie drückt sich in einem Hass auf unsere Lebensart aus, auf den Individualismus, die Freiheit, welche sich oft nur in Freizügigkeit auszudrücken versteht, auf eine Welt, die vollkommen materialistisch geworden das Diesseits über das Jenseits stellt, welcher selbst unserem Kulturkreis entstammt. Der Zweifel, die offene Kritik, das Infrage-Stellen alles Seienden ist eben auch eine zentrale Folge der Aufklärung. Daß wir so in Frage gestellt werden, wie wir dies momentan erleben, ist dem Schluß des Buches nach eben gerade eine Folge unseres eigenen exportierten Kulturpessimismus´.
Geht der Text jedoch auf den Okzidentalismus islami(stisch)er Prägung ein und stößt damit vermeintlich ins Herz des Religiösen vor, beschleicht den Rezipienten ein mulmiges Gefühl. Denn hier scheint man wirklich eine grundlegend differente Vorstellung vom Zugriff auf die Welt zu haben. Den vielbeschworenen ‚clash of the cultures‘ zwischen säkularisierten, vermeintlich modernen und auch im Alltag religiös geprägten Gesellschaften und ihren jeweils entsprechenden Gesetzen scheint es ja wahrlich zu geben, ob man das wahr haben will oder nicht, ob es einem gefällt oder nicht. Eine Religion, die das Gebot, sich kein Bildnis zu machen, nach wie vor in Ehren hält, in der ihr Gott dadurch aber auch ebenso entfernt wie allgegenwärtig ist, nie gebannt oder entrückt, wird den Individualisierungsprozeß, den eine Gesellschaft durchläuft, deren Gott bereits personalisiert ist, niemals tolerieren können. Das Christentum bleibt in seinem Symbolismus materiell. Der Islam ist seinem Wesen nach eine immaterielle Religion. An dieser Stelle klafft wirklich mal ein ernsthafter Kulturunterschied, der, brächte er nicht solch tödliche Folgen (des Fanatismus) mit sich, einer der bedenkenswertesten und interessantesten Brüche im Verhältnis der christlich und der islamisch geprägten Kultur wäre. Man wagt es kaum auszusprechen.
An diesem Punkt aber verfängt die These vom Okzidentalismus als des Westens reflektierte Ablehnung seiner selbst eben nicht mehr. Zumindest nicht mehr überzeugend. Es schließt sich hier auch ein zweiter Kritikpunkt an, der in gewisser Weise den Metatext, den dieser Band darstellt, noch einmal hinterfragt: Ist der Ausgangspunkt der zugrundeliegenden Überlegung nicht an sich schon wieder eurozentristisch? Ist es nicht eine neue, perfide Art des Kulturimperialismus, wenn wir nun anfangen, die an uns geübte Kritik – um den Begriff ‚Okzidentalismus‘ an diesem Punkt so weit zu fassen, wie irgend möglich und nicht nur an jene zu koppeln, die unsere Lebensweise, unsere liberalen, offenen Gesellschaften direkt angreifen und vernichten wollen – ebenfalls für uns zu vereinnahmen, sie als ein Produkt unseres Denkens, unserer Reflektion zu begreifen?
Ian Buruma und Avishai Margalit ist mit diesem schmalen Essayband ein höchst bedenkenswerter Beitrag zur Diskussion um die Frage gelungen, warum wir auf solch heftigen Widerstand, auf als so echt empfundenen Hass weltweit stoßen. Es gibt eine Menge Leute, die sich sicher sind, die Antworten schon lange gefunden zu haben und die meinen, die richtigen Handlungsschritte zu kennen. Einmal abgesehen von den grundsätzlichen Fragen danach, wie wir unsere Werte und die Errungenschaften unserer Zivilisation schützen und weiter entwickeln wollen, sollten wir uns vor aber allem erinnern, daß es immer eine Tugend gewesen ist, Denkprozesse niemals als abgeschlossen zu betrachten. So sollte also auch die manchmal als mühselig empfundene Suche nach Antworten auch im Detail nicht diskriminiert oder abschätzig behandelt werden. Es sind Gedanken wie die hier formulierten, die jene Umwege gehen durch holpriges Gelände, die uns auf wirklich neue, wesentliche Pfade der Erkenntnis führen.
[1]Es führt an dieser Stelle zu weit, doch liegen gerade den spezifischen deutschen Theoriegebirgen oft strukturell antimaterialistische Ideen zugrunde. Sei es das Heroisch-Tragische, sei es das Gefühlvolle, die Seele Erhebende, das ja auch und gerade in der deutschen Romantik und von ihren Nachfolgern und Epigonen wieder und wieder besungen wird. Vielleicht ist darin die Basis zu sehen, daß diese Ideen attraktiv auf Gesellschaften, Kulturen und Religionen wirkten, die selber – wie der Islam beispielsweise – immateriell, sogar anti-materiell ausgelegt sind. Vielleicht spiegelt sich hier mehr ineinander, als mancher gern wahrhaben möchte.
Der britische Journalist Ian Buruma und der israelische Philosoph Avishai Margalit widmen sich im vorliegenden Band der Frage, wie der Orient auf den Okzident blickt und weshalb dieser Blick häufig so voller Hass und Ablehnung ist. Wobei „Orient“ begrifflich zu eng gefasst ist, ist dieser heute doch lediglich der stärkste Vertreter des Okzidentalismus. Die Autoren gehen die Frage aber unter anderem historisch an und stellen fest, daß der Blick auf den Westen schon seit geraumer Zeit ein abschätziger, oft verachtender ist, egal ob die Perspektive die russische oder beispielweise die japanische umfasst. Denn der Westen stand – aus den verschiedensten Gründen und unter den verschiedensten religiösen und politischen Einflüssen - schon lange im Fokus außereuropäischer Mächte. Allerdings ist dies keine allzu neue oder bahnbrechende Erkenntnis. Was also Burumas und Margalits Band und vor allem ihre Schlußfolgerungen so interessant macht, ist die Conclusio, daß die meisten Angriffe gegen den Westen, der verächtliche Blick auf seine Errungenschaften vor allem kultureller/sozialer/politischer Natur und auch die Bewertung westlicher Zivilisation und Zivilgesellschaften als „schwach“ oder „schwächlich“, ebenfalls westlichem Denken und westlicher Selbstreflektion entspringen. Der ‚Okzidentalismus‘ als hassende Reaktion auf den Westen ist in weiten Teilen ebenso ein westliches Exportgut, wie es Imperialismus, Kolonialisierung, die Demokratie und die Menschenrechte, technische und technologische Neurungen und – heute wesentlich! - auch die Produkte der Unterhaltungsindustrie sind. Exportgut? Exportschlager.
‚Okzidentalismus‘ bedeutet in diesem Zusammenhang also Hass auf den Westen, allerdings nicht aus vornehmlich religiösen oder politischen, nicht einmal aus historischen Gründen, sondern vor allem aus kulturellen: Es ist die Ablehnung der Moderne als Folge der Aufklärung und der daraus resultierenden Säkularisierung, als Wurzel und Hort des Relativismus, als Zeitalter der Beschleunigung, als Ausdruck der sich immer weiter verästelnden Differenzierung in allen Bereichen des Lebens – unter anderem dem der Geschlechterbeziehungen. Der Angriff auf das World Trade Center am 9. September 2001 war so gesehen nicht nur ein Angriff auf Menschen, ein Angriff auf ein wesentliches Symbol der ökonomischer Potenz des Westens, sondern auch auf die große „Hure Babylon“, auf jenen urbanen Moloch, der die Moderne symbolisiert, wie kaum etwas anderes: die Stadt.
So beginnen die Autoren ihren fünf Kapitel und eine Einleitung umfassenden Essay mit genau diesem Moloch der Moderne und einem Blick auf die Entwicklung der Stadt als kulturelles Item und Icon. Anhand einer schnell abgerissenen Geschichte der Stadt und vor allem ihrer religiösen Bezüge (Babylon, Sodom), führen die Autoren den Leser vergleichsweise schnell zum Kern ihrer These: Es waren die großen reaktionären Bewegungen des frühen 20. Jahrhunderts, die den urbanen Geist ablehnten, dagegen die heimatliche Scholle, die ländliche Idylle, den Heimatboden als Basis eines gesunden Volkes etc. priesen. Wobei es – im Falle der Nationalsozialisten – eine seltsame Melange aus dieser Blut & Boden-Ideologie tiefer Heimatverbundenheit einerseits und einer sozialen Fortschrittsgläubigkeit andererseits war, die möglicherweise unter anderem die spezielle Anziehungskraft dessen ausmachte, was Hitler und Konsorten gern „die Bewegung“ nannten. Und diese Anziehungskraft wirkte weit über das Deutsche Reich oder gar Europa hinaus. Hier geben die Autoren ein einleuchtendes Beispiel für den exportierten Okzidentalismus, wenn sie beschreiben, wie die völkischen und pangermanischen Ideen der Nationalsozialisten gerade bei Arabern und im fernen Osten in Japan auf fruchtbaren Boden fielen und dort oft intellektuell tradierte Formen und Ansichten verdrängten. Dabei schlagen Buruma und Margalit auch den Zirkel zum europäischen, aber auch – man staune – japanischen Antisemitismus, der sich auch (Betonung: AUCH) aus einem antimodernen Reflex ergibt: Viele Menschen, auch Intellektuelle, fühlten sich durch die Industrialisierung, die damit einhergehende Ausbreitung urbaner Strukturen und die zunehmende Moderne/Modernisierung zunehmend überfordert und, was vielleicht wesentlicher ist in Bezug auf den Okzidentalismus, vor allem entwurzelt. In Europa – aber dieses Klischee wurde ebenfalls erfolgreich exportiert – stehen Juden symbolhaft für die mit diesen Entwicklungen einhergehenden Ängsten. Da sie ja seit jeher entwurzelt in der Diaspora leben, sind sie an dieses Leben angeblich viel besser gewöhnt, können sich innerhalb der neuen Strukturen und Systeme also besser zurechtfinden und selbstredend ist in solcher Betrachtung auch die Frage nicht weit, ob sie nicht sowieso ursächlich für all die Wandlungen und neuen Ansprüche sind, die sich den Zweifelnden aufdrängen und das Leben so unendlich kompliziert erscheinen lassen.
Doch auch von diesen eher spezifischen Betrachtungen abgesehen, steht „die Stadt“ für Vieles, was Reaktionäre in Europa wie von modernen Entwicklungen Überrollte weltweit eher ablehnen: Sexuelle Indifferenz, liberale Lebensentwürfe und relativistische Weltanschauungen. Die Stadt ist das Labor der Moderne, somit aber eben auch das Symbol dessen, was an der Moderne verächtlich sei.
Exemplarisch kommt hier gut zum Ausdruck, welcher kulturellen Spur die Autoren da folgen. Vieles überzeugt und wirft hoch interessante Reflexionen auf uns in unserer Zeit zurück. Sind nicht auch wir Entwurzelte in einer Welt, die sich verändert, radikal, global, in einer nie gekannten Geschwindigkeit auf eine Zukunft zu, die vollkommen unüberschaubar, gar unberechenbar erscheint? Ist „unsere“, also die Industrialisierung in unserer Zeit, nicht irgendwie die Digitalisierung? Sind deren Auswirkungen nicht offensichtlich mindestens so elementar, wie es die der Industrialisierung und Technisierung seit Mitte des 18. Jahrhunderts waren? Und stimmt es nicht, daß gerade die deutsche Geschichte auch begleitet ist von einem steten Antireflex? Es war die deutsche Romantik, die explizit Stellung gegen die Ideen der Aufklärung und des Idealismus bezogen hat, die sich politisch sogar reaktionär geben konnte. Die überhaupt eine politische Agenda entwickelte. Es ist, neben anderen, auch dieser Quell deutscher Geistesgeschichte, der durch das 19. Jahrhundert hindurch zu einem Strom teils antiaufklärerischen, teils reaktionär-nationalistischen Denkens wurde und schließlich in Untergangsphantasien wie denen eines Oswald Spengler mündete[1]. Man kann der Ausgangsthese des Textes gerade in diesen Ausführungen sehr gut folgen.
Ebenso greift sie in einem langen und aufschlußreichen Kapitel über die Auseinandersetzung jener Gesellschaften mit der Moderne, repräsentiert im Okzident, die selber nah dran sind und seiner unmittelbaren Einflußsphäre unterliegen. Rußland ist ein solches Beispiel. Anhand dieses Falls läßt sich gut nachvollziehen, wie der Okzidentalismus auch einem ‚double bind‘ entsprechen kann. Eine Gesellschaft wie die russische unter Zar Peter dem Großen – rückständig und in Gefahr von den weit enteilten Gesellschaften Westeuropas abgehängt zu werden – richtete sich zwangsläufig danach aus, wo sie die Entwicklungen abschöpfen und sich so selber anpassen konnte. Allerdings wurde sie auch ausgerichtet. Gerade Peter wollte westliche Neuerungen technischer Art schnell einführen, nahm zugleich aber wenige der fortschrittlichen Ideen mit, welche Ende des 17. Jahrhunderts in humanistischen Hochburgen entstanden. Eine Gegenbewegung, die sich müht, das Eigene, das kulturell Selbstständige nicht nur zu bewahren, sondern regelrecht zu betonen („die russische Seele“), ja, im klassischen Sinne eine Reaktion, als deren Zeugen und Vertreter die Autoren unter anderem Dostojewski aufrufen, wirkt da fast zwangsläufig. Buruma und Margalit verorten die Unterschiede und Abgrenzungsprozesse gerade hier auch in den Differenzen des römisch-katholisch geprägten Christentums zum orthodoxen Christentum. Sei das eine eine Form des Glaubens (römisch-katholisch), gehe das andere komplett im Ritus auf (orthodox).
Man muß dem nicht zustimmen, doch ist nicht von der Hand zu weisen, daß die Thesen einleuchtend erscheinen. Und manchmal auch richtiggehend treffen. Die Erkenntnis, daß wir mit all unseren (ach so atemberaubenden) technischen Errungenschaften auch eine Menge Probleme in die Welt exportiert haben, ist so neu nicht. Interessant ist allerdings die Idee, daß diese Probleme eben nicht nur materieller Natur sind und also Ökologisches, Soziales oder Ökonomisches betreffen. Wir haben bereits in unserer ersten Globalisierungswelle, die ca. 1492 einsetzte (um eine Idee des werten Peter Sloterdijk aufzugreifen), eben nicht nur die Milch der frommen Denkungsart in bestem Wissen und Gewissen mitgebracht, sondern auch schon das Rezept, sie in gärend´ Drachengift zu wandeln. Denn das subjektgewordene Individuum trägt in sich nicht nur das Rückgrat des aufrechten Gangs, sondern eben auch den schwarzen Rücken des lustvollen Untergangs. Wir fallen auf uns selbst zurück. In einer weiten – letztlich metaphysischen – Zirkelbewegung kommt die von uns ausgehende Geschichte wieder bei uns an. Gewandelt. Sie drückt sich in einem Hass auf unsere Lebensart aus, auf den Individualismus, die Freiheit, welche sich oft nur in Freizügigkeit auszudrücken versteht, auf eine Welt, die vollkommen materialistisch geworden das Diesseits über das Jenseits stellt, welcher selbst unserem Kulturkreis entstammt. Der Zweifel, die offene Kritik, das Infrage-Stellen alles Seienden ist eben auch eine zentrale Folge der Aufklärung. Daß wir so in Frage gestellt werden, wie wir dies momentan erleben, ist dem Schluß des Buches nach eben gerade eine Folge unseres eigenen exportierten Kulturpessimismus´.
Geht der Text jedoch auf den Okzidentalismus islami(stisch)er Prägung ein und stößt damit vermeintlich ins Herz des Religiösen vor, beschleicht den Rezipienten ein mulmiges Gefühl. Denn hier scheint man wirklich eine grundlegend differente Vorstellung vom Zugriff auf die Welt zu haben. Den vielbeschworenen ‚clash of the cultures‘ zwischen säkularisierten, vermeintlich modernen und auch im Alltag religiös geprägten Gesellschaften und ihren jeweils entsprechenden Gesetzen scheint es ja wahrlich zu geben, ob man das wahr haben will oder nicht, ob es einem gefällt oder nicht. Eine Religion, die das Gebot, sich kein Bildnis zu machen, nach wie vor in Ehren hält, in der ihr Gott dadurch aber auch ebenso entfernt wie allgegenwärtig ist, nie gebannt oder entrückt, wird den Individualisierungsprozeß, den eine Gesellschaft durchläuft, deren Gott bereits personalisiert ist, niemals tolerieren können. Das Christentum bleibt in seinem Symbolismus materiell. Der Islam ist seinem Wesen nach eine immaterielle Religion. An dieser Stelle klafft wirklich mal ein ernsthafter Kulturunterschied, der, brächte er nicht solch tödliche Folgen (des Fanatismus) mit sich, einer der bedenkenswertesten und interessantesten Brüche im Verhältnis der christlich und der islamisch geprägten Kultur wäre. Man wagt es kaum auszusprechen.
An diesem Punkt aber verfängt die These vom Okzidentalismus als des Westens reflektierte Ablehnung seiner selbst eben nicht mehr. Zumindest nicht mehr überzeugend. Es schließt sich hier auch ein zweiter Kritikpunkt an, der in gewisser Weise den Metatext, den dieser Band darstellt, noch einmal hinterfragt: Ist der Ausgangspunkt der zugrundeliegenden Überlegung nicht an sich schon wieder eurozentristisch? Ist es nicht eine neue, perfide Art des Kulturimperialismus, wenn wir nun anfangen, die an uns geübte Kritik – um den Begriff ‚Okzidentalismus‘ an diesem Punkt so weit zu fassen, wie irgend möglich und nicht nur an jene zu koppeln, die unsere Lebensweise, unsere liberalen, offenen Gesellschaften direkt angreifen und vernichten wollen – ebenfalls für uns zu vereinnahmen, sie als ein Produkt unseres Denkens, unserer Reflektion zu begreifen?
Ian Buruma und Avishai Margalit ist mit diesem schmalen Essayband ein höchst bedenkenswerter Beitrag zur Diskussion um die Frage gelungen, warum wir auf solch heftigen Widerstand, auf als so echt empfundenen Hass weltweit stoßen. Es gibt eine Menge Leute, die sich sicher sind, die Antworten schon lange gefunden zu haben und die meinen, die richtigen Handlungsschritte zu kennen. Einmal abgesehen von den grundsätzlichen Fragen danach, wie wir unsere Werte und die Errungenschaften unserer Zivilisation schützen und weiter entwickeln wollen, sollten wir uns vor aber allem erinnern, daß es immer eine Tugend gewesen ist, Denkprozesse niemals als abgeschlossen zu betrachten. So sollte also auch die manchmal als mühselig empfundene Suche nach Antworten auch im Detail nicht diskriminiert oder abschätzig behandelt werden. Es sind Gedanken wie die hier formulierten, die jene Umwege gehen durch holpriges Gelände, die uns auf wirklich neue, wesentliche Pfade der Erkenntnis führen.
[1]Es führt an dieser Stelle zu weit, doch liegen gerade den spezifischen deutschen Theoriegebirgen oft strukturell antimaterialistische Ideen zugrunde. Sei es das Heroisch-Tragische, sei es das Gefühlvolle, die Seele Erhebende, das ja auch und gerade in der deutschen Romantik und von ihren Nachfolgern und Epigonen wieder und wieder besungen wird. Vielleicht ist darin die Basis zu sehen, daß diese Ideen attraktiv auf Gesellschaften, Kulturen und Religionen wirkten, die selber – wie der Islam beispielsweise – immateriell, sogar anti-materiell ausgelegt sind. Vielleicht spiegelt sich hier mehr ineinander, als mancher gern wahrhaben möchte.
January 1, 2026
A book that captures the essence of liberal thinking around non-Western views in the Bad Old Days of the post-9/11 era: a confused mishmash of misperceptions, striking less in the confusion itself than in the utter certainty with which these misperceptions are declared to be truth.
Buruma and Margalit are on surest ground when they are diving deep into specifics: the specific ways in which Sayyid Qutb's experiences in America drove his vicious theologies and the radical Islamic fundamentalism that emerged from them, say, or the emergence of Shintoism and its manifestation in Japanese extremism leading up to and into the Second World War. Yet the book's raison d'être is not as a compendium of individual instances of anti-Western ideology, but as a unified theory of these various "Occidentalist" views. And at this it fails.
Its failure is less a consequence of poor argumentation than of the simple fact any theory attempting to tie communism (in its Marxist, Leninist, and Maoist forms), Islamic fundamentalism, Shintoism, Hindutva, and German Romanticism into a single whole is destined to fail. These are disparate, divergent worldviews with far more disparate, divergent responses to ideological competition with the West than the authors care to admit. Slapping together these views haphazardly under a single moniker smacks of the very kind of totalizing oversimplification of non-Western views that Edward Said warned of – a sick irony given the book's title.
Claiming the 1983 suicide bombing at the Beirut marine barracks was but a "reinvention" of the kamikaze tactics employed at Pearl Harbor suggests an Orientalist mode of thinking. Declaring without any evidence besides the suggestive that the anti-individualist elements of the RSS's Hindutva ideology "grafted European fascist ideas onto a modern interpretation" of Hinduism is a laughable oversimplification of millennia of Indian history. In painting with such a broad brush, Buruma and Margalit deny their subjects the grace they demand their subjects extend to the West.
One hopes the intervening two decades of colossal moral and political failure of Western escapades in foreign lands has demonstrated that this kind of thinking about anti-Western forces globally is not merely misguided but actively dangerous.
Buruma and Margalit are on surest ground when they are diving deep into specifics: the specific ways in which Sayyid Qutb's experiences in America drove his vicious theologies and the radical Islamic fundamentalism that emerged from them, say, or the emergence of Shintoism and its manifestation in Japanese extremism leading up to and into the Second World War. Yet the book's raison d'être is not as a compendium of individual instances of anti-Western ideology, but as a unified theory of these various "Occidentalist" views. And at this it fails.
Its failure is less a consequence of poor argumentation than of the simple fact any theory attempting to tie communism (in its Marxist, Leninist, and Maoist forms), Islamic fundamentalism, Shintoism, Hindutva, and German Romanticism into a single whole is destined to fail. These are disparate, divergent worldviews with far more disparate, divergent responses to ideological competition with the West than the authors care to admit. Slapping together these views haphazardly under a single moniker smacks of the very kind of totalizing oversimplification of non-Western views that Edward Said warned of – a sick irony given the book's title.
Claiming the 1983 suicide bombing at the Beirut marine barracks was but a "reinvention" of the kamikaze tactics employed at Pearl Harbor suggests an Orientalist mode of thinking. Declaring without any evidence besides the suggestive that the anti-individualist elements of the RSS's Hindutva ideology "grafted European fascist ideas onto a modern interpretation" of Hinduism is a laughable oversimplification of millennia of Indian history. In painting with such a broad brush, Buruma and Margalit deny their subjects the grace they demand their subjects extend to the West.
One hopes the intervening two decades of colossal moral and political failure of Western escapades in foreign lands has demonstrated that this kind of thinking about anti-Western forces globally is not merely misguided but actively dangerous.
January 10, 2022
This was a relatively interesting book looking at the West from the eyes of its enemies, for instance violent Islamism.
Too often in the book ideas were expressed and then not necessarily backed up.
I found it interesting the examples he used when it came to ideologies opposed to western liberalism in history such as in Japan in the late 19th and 20th century.
I also liked how it was critical both of those who blame everything on colonialism and the West, but also those who see everything as a clash of civilisations and the idea of those in the middle East not being developed enough for western liberalism.
It gives you a good idea on how fundamental to violent islamism expressed by Al Quaeda is based on hostile stereotypes of the West and what it stands for.
I found some essay in this collection of four better than others and wasn't wowed. It touched on a lot, but didn't go in to great detail or provide a profound case.
A decent book, but nothing amazing.
Too often in the book ideas were expressed and then not necessarily backed up.
I found it interesting the examples he used when it came to ideologies opposed to western liberalism in history such as in Japan in the late 19th and 20th century.
I also liked how it was critical both of those who blame everything on colonialism and the West, but also those who see everything as a clash of civilisations and the idea of those in the middle East not being developed enough for western liberalism.
It gives you a good idea on how fundamental to violent islamism expressed by Al Quaeda is based on hostile stereotypes of the West and what it stands for.
I found some essay in this collection of four better than others and wasn't wowed. It touched on a lot, but didn't go in to great detail or provide a profound case.
A decent book, but nothing amazing.
October 26, 2021
This book deals with the discomfort/revulsion felt by religious purists of the City-that is the cosmopolitan nature of urban life which tends to blur all boundaries in the search for individual wealth. It is viewed as lacking a soul and, as a result, being rootless.
In reflecting on this, I think that this distinction may be a useful way to understand urban/rural differences. Typically, at least in broad brush strokes, rural people are (or were)closer to the soil, more religious, have deeper family ties and may pursue a 'purer' life. The city-dweller, in contrast, tends to be more secular, perhaps areligious, lacking in family or community ties and has lost all connections to the 'soil'.
In some ways we see urban people trying to cope with the alienation of the city by seeking out 'natural' remedies and foods, alternative healers, etc. This yearning was reflected as well in the Romantic movement arising as it did, as a counterpoint to the European enlightenment which emphasized individualism, materialism, mercantilism and technology.
The urban view emphasizes technology, mechanism, reductionism and numeracy to the exclusion of deeper spiritual, intuitive aspects of human nature.
These divides are reflected as well in medicine with the ontologic worldview being most consistent with cosmopolitanism and the holistic/Hippocratic worldview aligning more with the rural view.
I see family practices, whether urban or rural, as a nexus of community relations that counter the alienation of modern Western culture and provide a kind of extended family for those whose agrarian past was uprooted generations ago.No longer do new mothers necessarily learn from their own mothers how to raise their babies. In the secular city, these lessons are mediated by nurses, both in public health and in family physicians' offices. Increasingly support comes from the internet in the form of new mothers' list serves and blogs. Friendships even perhaps, a type of kinship may develop that is filling the gap of the missing extended family.
p24. "Money as Voltaire saw it, dissolved differences in creed or race. In the marketplace, men are bound by common rules, contracts and laws which were not revealed to ancestral gods, but written by human beings to safeguard their properties and limit the chance of being cheated."
p27. Gottfried von Herder, a German Romantic "...believed nstions were organic communities, which had evolved like trees, rooted in native soil. Languages and cultures contained a spirit unique to each community. Embedded in these communities, in their languages, and the volksgeist that gave them life were ancient wisdoms and warm human virtues." Such concepts from the German Romantic movement have been utilized by others to animate their own nativist/local ideas.
In reflecting on this, I think that this distinction may be a useful way to understand urban/rural differences. Typically, at least in broad brush strokes, rural people are (or were)closer to the soil, more religious, have deeper family ties and may pursue a 'purer' life. The city-dweller, in contrast, tends to be more secular, perhaps areligious, lacking in family or community ties and has lost all connections to the 'soil'.
In some ways we see urban people trying to cope with the alienation of the city by seeking out 'natural' remedies and foods, alternative healers, etc. This yearning was reflected as well in the Romantic movement arising as it did, as a counterpoint to the European enlightenment which emphasized individualism, materialism, mercantilism and technology.
The urban view emphasizes technology, mechanism, reductionism and numeracy to the exclusion of deeper spiritual, intuitive aspects of human nature.
These divides are reflected as well in medicine with the ontologic worldview being most consistent with cosmopolitanism and the holistic/Hippocratic worldview aligning more with the rural view.
I see family practices, whether urban or rural, as a nexus of community relations that counter the alienation of modern Western culture and provide a kind of extended family for those whose agrarian past was uprooted generations ago.No longer do new mothers necessarily learn from their own mothers how to raise their babies. In the secular city, these lessons are mediated by nurses, both in public health and in family physicians' offices. Increasingly support comes from the internet in the form of new mothers' list serves and blogs. Friendships even perhaps, a type of kinship may develop that is filling the gap of the missing extended family.
p24. "Money as Voltaire saw it, dissolved differences in creed or race. In the marketplace, men are bound by common rules, contracts and laws which were not revealed to ancestral gods, but written by human beings to safeguard their properties and limit the chance of being cheated."
p27. Gottfried von Herder, a German Romantic "...believed nstions were organic communities, which had evolved like trees, rooted in native soil. Languages and cultures contained a spirit unique to each community. Embedded in these communities, in their languages, and the volksgeist that gave them life were ancient wisdoms and warm human virtues." Such concepts from the German Romantic movement have been utilized by others to animate their own nativist/local ideas.
November 15, 2010
Per "Occidentalismo" gli autori intendono, in maniera per noi italiani un po' controintuitiva, qualcosa che noi tenderemmo invece a chiamare "anti-occidentalismo": un'ideologia ostile a tutta una serie di aspetti visti come emblematici dello sviluppo etico, sociale ed economico dell'occidente, come per esempio l'importanza della scienza e della tecnologia, l'individualismo, il laicismo, l'egalitarismo e la democrazia, il libero mercato.
Secondo gli autori, i concetti alla base di tale ideologia gravitano attorno ad una serie di "miti" contrapposti:
- L'empia città occidentale (l'antica Babilonia della Bibbia diventata oggi New York) vista come il luogo dove trionfano l'individualismo, il consumismo e la perdita dei valori spirituali a favore di quelli materiali, contrapposta alla vita rurale, dove predominano l'autenticità, la semplicità, la comunità e vengono preservati i più autentici ed antichi valori
- L'occidentale "mercante", uomo scettico, meschino ed egoista attento solo al proprio tornaconto, contrapposto all'Eroe, uomo dotato di uno spirito superiore, che disprezza la morte ed è capace di donare la sua vita per la sua fede e i suoi ideali
- La "mente" occidentale, che attribuisce un ingiustificato primato al raziocinio e alla scienza e che rende l'uomo occidentale una specie di ridicolo "idiot savant", contrapposta allo "spirito" onnicomprensivo che attribuisce ad ogni cosa il giusto valore.
- La "venerazione della materia", contrapposta alla vera fede in Dio.
Una tesi molto importante, e molto dibattuta, degli autori è che tali idee non siano tipiche dell'Islam o di altre culture orientali, ma siano invece nate e si siano sviluppate in Europa per essere in seguito esportate ed adottate in Oriente.
Personalmente ho dei dubbi su quest'ultimo punto: non so cioè se effettivamente l'attuale ostilità verso l'Occidente dimostrata per esempio dagli estremisti islamici possa essere così facilmente ricondotta a idee europee senza cercare altre cause.
Credo piuttosto che il libro individui, con molta intelligenza, una serie di tematiche che tendono a ripresentarsi, forse in maniera autoctona, ogniqualvolta si ripresenta un conflitto fra "conservatori" e "riformatori", fra "estremisti" e "moderati".
Per questo il libro mi ha abbastanza entusiasmato: mi ha fornito una gran quantità di materiale su cui riflettere, che riguarda non tanto l'"oriente" o gli estremisti islamici, quanto il mio stesso mondo, e addirittura il mondo in generale, senza distinzioni geografiche.
Se sapete leggere questo libro con spirito critico, non può non interessarvi.
Unico appunto che ho da fare agli autori: secondo me l'esposizione è piuttosto caotica, un po' più di "metodo" non avrebbe guastato.
August 21, 2019
I absolutely adored this book as a strong defense of Orientalism! My only wish is that it could be longer, although the authors did a wonderful job of making their arguments concise and clear. Still, it would have been great to have more history and context of the Israeli occupation, for example, but Buruma & Margalit still give a fair analysis. In addition, they cover many grounds—Russia, Japan, France, Iran—with thorough research and history.
I want to share one of my favorite parts from Chapter 5 (all of which was amazing):
“The Islamist revolutionary movement that currently stalks the world, from Kabul to Java, would not have existed without the harsh secularism of Reza Shah Pahlavi or the failed experiments in state socialism in Egypt, Syria, and Algeria. This is why it was such a misfortune, in many ways, for the Middle East to have encountered the modern West for the first time through echoes of the French Revolution. Robespierre and the Jacobins were inspiring heroes for Arab radicals: progressive, egalitarian, and opposed to the Christian church. Later models for Arab progress-Mussolini's Italy, Nazi Germany, and the Soviet Union-were even more disastrous. But to see the upheavals of the twentieth century as a pendulum, swinging from Western rationalism to Oriental religious zeal, would be a mistake, for the two extremes are dangerously entangled.” (Buruma & Margalit 143).
I highly recommend giving Occidentalism a read, as it will give you an unbiased review of historic and contemporary national movements and their consequences. This will make you question normative criticism of the East!
I want to share one of my favorite parts from Chapter 5 (all of which was amazing):
“The Islamist revolutionary movement that currently stalks the world, from Kabul to Java, would not have existed without the harsh secularism of Reza Shah Pahlavi or the failed experiments in state socialism in Egypt, Syria, and Algeria. This is why it was such a misfortune, in many ways, for the Middle East to have encountered the modern West for the first time through echoes of the French Revolution. Robespierre and the Jacobins were inspiring heroes for Arab radicals: progressive, egalitarian, and opposed to the Christian church. Later models for Arab progress-Mussolini's Italy, Nazi Germany, and the Soviet Union-were even more disastrous. But to see the upheavals of the twentieth century as a pendulum, swinging from Western rationalism to Oriental religious zeal, would be a mistake, for the two extremes are dangerously entangled.” (Buruma & Margalit 143).
I highly recommend giving Occidentalism a read, as it will give you an unbiased review of historic and contemporary national movements and their consequences. This will make you question normative criticism of the East!
October 8, 2025
Tato kniha ukazuje pohled na vyhrocené vztahy mezi Západem a Východem. Autoři svá tvrzení opírají o události, jež se odehrály ve více či méně vzdálené historii. Text otevírá úvodní kapitola s názvem Střet generalizací. Následuje šest kapitol (Válka proti Západu, Západní Město, Hrdinové a obchodníci, Mysl Západu, Hněv boží a Sémě revoluce), které problém rozebírají z různých úhlů pohledů. Četba čtenáře vede k zamyšlení nad komplikovanými vztahy. Musím však poznamenat, že kniha není úplně pro každého, protože je místy až moc odborná. Mohu ji doporučit všem, kteří se chtějí něco dozvědět o vztazích Západu a Východu, ale i studentům a učitelům historie. Otevře jim to jinou perspektivu pohledu na historické události celkově.
April 9, 2018
A short and quick read, this book is an important piece in not only its appraisal of the so called clashing worldviews of the west and east, by painting the perspective of the east, but in its closing as it correctly predicts how this will play out in future events. Intertwining the historical and current manifestations of the enlightenment, capitalism, and the individual, this is placed against the historical counter movements to what it is now....largely within the Muslim and Arab world. The strength is pulled at the end as the authors, 2004, warn of the Arab Spring, and how we should not further fight intolerance woth intolerance (which we commonly can find now). Further it states that this intolerance should not be viewed as simply a reaction that 'the east' is not responsible for (orientalism), nor that organized religion is the main root of the problem (as it does not encompass the majority of Muslims nor are secular regimes exempt from historic atrocities).
My main critiques of the book, is one, it is slightly repetitive. Second, it mainly characterizes ironically how counter western movements largely have come form ideas in the west. While admitting that counter western movements do not have to originate within the west, it does not expand upon this much.
An imperative read if one wants to better understand current events in the world, and to consider other perspectives.
My main critiques of the book, is one, it is slightly repetitive. Second, it mainly characterizes ironically how counter western movements largely have come form ideas in the west. While admitting that counter western movements do not have to originate within the west, it does not expand upon this much.
An imperative read if one wants to better understand current events in the world, and to consider other perspectives.
October 5, 2008
A good thought-provoking book about anti-West sentiment from "Occidentalists" ranging from the pre-WWII Japanese, 19th century Germans, to modern Islamic terrorists.
The West has done quite a bit to pillage, destabilize, subdue other countries in colonization (and continue to do so today). But beyond these concrete actions, the authors point to a perception problem with the West that is only compounded by our imperialist actions.
We tend to blame Islam and religions for the mindset of extremists, but like pre-WWII Japan, pre-Revolution Russia, 19th century Germany, anti-West sentiment stems from the fact that our culture is perceived to be without morality. It is full of lust, greed, and lack of morality. And if you watch the news headlines (ie. Paris Hilton and Britney Spears) or if you've ever stepped foot into a NYC bar, you can see how the perception can partially be true. The root of Occidentalist ideas are no different from fundamentalist Protestants in the States who feel that America is losing their morality. The authors are actually arguing that while we may blame Islam (or other religions for inciting violence), religion is merely a bystander being manipulated by a line of thinking that has pervaded for centuries.
It was short and well-supported book.
This was a nice short
The West has done quite a bit to pillage, destabilize, subdue other countries in colonization (and continue to do so today). But beyond these concrete actions, the authors point to a perception problem with the West that is only compounded by our imperialist actions.
We tend to blame Islam and religions for the mindset of extremists, but like pre-WWII Japan, pre-Revolution Russia, 19th century Germany, anti-West sentiment stems from the fact that our culture is perceived to be without morality. It is full of lust, greed, and lack of morality. And if you watch the news headlines (ie. Paris Hilton and Britney Spears) or if you've ever stepped foot into a NYC bar, you can see how the perception can partially be true. The root of Occidentalist ideas are no different from fundamentalist Protestants in the States who feel that America is losing their morality. The authors are actually arguing that while we may blame Islam (or other religions for inciting violence), religion is merely a bystander being manipulated by a line of thinking that has pervaded for centuries.
It was short and well-supported book.
This was a nice short
November 26, 2016
A good research and interesting premises do not make Buruma less of a bigoted prick, and his bigotry less transparent to a more attentive reader. Excellent scientific content in terms of historical, economical and political outline of Occidentalism. The reading was only made unenjoyable by Buruma's not-so-witty and inaccurate remarks on the Eastern 'mind'. It seems that by trying too hard to reverse Said's seminal Orientalism (1978) Buruma fell into the very pit Said warns us against.
June 21, 2017
A small, highly readable book that carries a big, thought-provoking punch; widens perspective on global matters both historic and current.
July 15, 2019
A mishmash of irrelevant ideas in search of a thesis
This is a book that meanders and flops about looking for cohesion and a thesis. The authors, who are historians and philosophers and heady intellectuals of the sort that grace the pages of The New York Review of [Each Other's] Books with their speculations, think they have found something in their notion of "occidentalism." Occidentalism, they have decided is the way the East, or to be more accurate, primarily the Islamic Middle East, views the West. They are writing in partial reaction to Edward Said's book, Orientalism from 1978 and in more immediate reaction to Islamic terrorism.
Their idea is first to imagine that such a world view as occidentalism exists, and then to trace its roots and weigh what influence various religious, social and political ideas have had in its formation, including Marxism, German militarism and German romanticism, "State Shinto" and other aspects of Japanese nationalism, Russian nativism, and especially Islamic radicalism. The problem with this of course is that no such animal exists. Occidentalism is just a fancy term for a confusion of views opposed to Western culture.
There is no occidentalism anymore than there is an occident that can be defined. There is widespread hatred of Western culture, but it has less to do with all the ism's that the authors come up with (or their city versus country polarity), and more to do with religious animosity, remnants of colonial exploitation, poverty, jealousy, and plain ignorance. It has little to do with the intellectual notions that fascinate the authors.
Additionally, just as there is no occident anymore (people living in China, Japan, Korea, etc., when they look toward the east to see the rising sun look, as they must, across a vast ocean toward the Americas) there is also no orient as such. Indeed today is it considered politically incorrect to refer to Asians as orientals, and it has been a long time since people in the Middle East were lumped together as orientals. Such artificial distinctions reflect a categorical way of thinking that no longer has much meaning other than as history. The authors, however, like the man searching under a lighted post for his keys (which he dropped elsewhere) are shining the light of their particular learning upon something that isn't there.
Supporting such intellectual vacuousness is the style employed by the authors. Consider this statement from page 12: "Occidentalism is not the same as anti-Americanism." One would expect an explanation to follow, a distinction to be made. Instead the authors go off on a tangent about visiting Karl Marx's grave and how eastern European Jews found that Germans lacked "a spiritual dimension." They never return to support their statement. The whole book has this quality of expressing an idea and never actually demonstrating that it has anything other than rhetorical value.
Bottom line: there are many other better books to read on why the West is hated. For a focus on how the Islamic peoples of the Middle East came to hate the West, I recommend Bernard Lewis's succinct, What Went Wrong? Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response (2002) or the more detailed War without End: The Rise of Islamist Terrorism and Global Response (2002) by Dilip Hiro.
--Dennis Littrell, author of “The World Is Not as We Think It Is”
This is a book that meanders and flops about looking for cohesion and a thesis. The authors, who are historians and philosophers and heady intellectuals of the sort that grace the pages of The New York Review of [Each Other's] Books with their speculations, think they have found something in their notion of "occidentalism." Occidentalism, they have decided is the way the East, or to be more accurate, primarily the Islamic Middle East, views the West. They are writing in partial reaction to Edward Said's book, Orientalism from 1978 and in more immediate reaction to Islamic terrorism.
Their idea is first to imagine that such a world view as occidentalism exists, and then to trace its roots and weigh what influence various religious, social and political ideas have had in its formation, including Marxism, German militarism and German romanticism, "State Shinto" and other aspects of Japanese nationalism, Russian nativism, and especially Islamic radicalism. The problem with this of course is that no such animal exists. Occidentalism is just a fancy term for a confusion of views opposed to Western culture.
There is no occidentalism anymore than there is an occident that can be defined. There is widespread hatred of Western culture, but it has less to do with all the ism's that the authors come up with (or their city versus country polarity), and more to do with religious animosity, remnants of colonial exploitation, poverty, jealousy, and plain ignorance. It has little to do with the intellectual notions that fascinate the authors.
Additionally, just as there is no occident anymore (people living in China, Japan, Korea, etc., when they look toward the east to see the rising sun look, as they must, across a vast ocean toward the Americas) there is also no orient as such. Indeed today is it considered politically incorrect to refer to Asians as orientals, and it has been a long time since people in the Middle East were lumped together as orientals. Such artificial distinctions reflect a categorical way of thinking that no longer has much meaning other than as history. The authors, however, like the man searching under a lighted post for his keys (which he dropped elsewhere) are shining the light of their particular learning upon something that isn't there.
Supporting such intellectual vacuousness is the style employed by the authors. Consider this statement from page 12: "Occidentalism is not the same as anti-Americanism." One would expect an explanation to follow, a distinction to be made. Instead the authors go off on a tangent about visiting Karl Marx's grave and how eastern European Jews found that Germans lacked "a spiritual dimension." They never return to support their statement. The whole book has this quality of expressing an idea and never actually demonstrating that it has anything other than rhetorical value.
Bottom line: there are many other better books to read on why the West is hated. For a focus on how the Islamic peoples of the Middle East came to hate the West, I recommend Bernard Lewis's succinct, What Went Wrong? Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response (2002) or the more detailed War without End: The Rise of Islamist Terrorism and Global Response (2002) by Dilip Hiro.
--Dennis Littrell, author of “The World Is Not as We Think It Is”
August 1, 2019
The Enlightenment and Its Opponents
Quite a rant. Well written, interesting, but essentially a very long flowing monologue of accusations and assertions. The two authors, their voices nearly though not entirely indistinguishable, invert the term Orientalism established and weaponized by Edward Said. In an act of chiasmus, Buruma and Margalit level a fully loaded blast at ideologues who's enemy is a cardboard cutout (note the spider's web on the cover) of what others Imagine We in the West To Be.
To ourselves the west means rational discourse, free expression, liberty, equality, opportunity, if not actual fraternity, for all, and we have progressively advanced and expanded what this means. It has fostered trade, science and material progress, as well as a peculiarly Western, the authors assert “Protestant”, retreat of religion from the public to the private sphere. With these ideas we have colonized ourselves and embraced and missionized the rest of the world. The response has not always been friendly.
The authors consider in turn the reactions of Japan's Meiji Restoration, Nazi Germany's 3rd Reich, the Former Soviet Union, Mao's China, Karl Marx himself Ataturk's secular Turkey and of course the various proponents of fundamentalist Islam – Sayyid Qutb of the Muslim Brotherhood, Pakistan's Maududi, Bin Ladin and his antecedents The Assassins: A Radical Sect in Islam and the Iranian clerics Shari'ati and Sayyid Muhhamud Taleqani. Schooled by the West's experience they extract the wrong lessons of what it means to succeed. The book also digresses into Muscovy, Russia of the 14th -18th century, but here the resemblance works poorly and reflects a tendency to expound what one knows rather than sticking to a thesis. Russia in that era tended to look inward as opposed to reacting outward.
Who are we to garner such enmity? Essentially we are those who have rejected the moral superiority of God, or that of the totalitarian state, or pure ideology in favour of becoming nations of shopkeepers, worshipers of Venus and Mammon, weak, effete, corrupting and worthy of destruction. We fetishize materialism and embody the Manichean heresy of separating God from the world. Too much freedom and too little honour given both to men and especially to women.
Such decadence is pure evil and is destined to be brushed aside.
To defend ones identity against such charges would be unthinkable - but only for those who internalize the poison.
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Quite a rant. Well written, interesting, but essentially a very long flowing monologue of accusations and assertions. The two authors, their voices nearly though not entirely indistinguishable, invert the term Orientalism established and weaponized by Edward Said. In an act of chiasmus, Buruma and Margalit level a fully loaded blast at ideologues who's enemy is a cardboard cutout (note the spider's web on the cover) of what others Imagine We in the West To Be.
To ourselves the west means rational discourse, free expression, liberty, equality, opportunity, if not actual fraternity, for all, and we have progressively advanced and expanded what this means. It has fostered trade, science and material progress, as well as a peculiarly Western, the authors assert “Protestant”, retreat of religion from the public to the private sphere. With these ideas we have colonized ourselves and embraced and missionized the rest of the world. The response has not always been friendly.
The authors consider in turn the reactions of Japan's Meiji Restoration, Nazi Germany's 3rd Reich, the Former Soviet Union, Mao's China, Karl Marx himself Ataturk's secular Turkey and of course the various proponents of fundamentalist Islam – Sayyid Qutb of the Muslim Brotherhood, Pakistan's Maududi, Bin Ladin and his antecedents The Assassins: A Radical Sect in Islam and the Iranian clerics Shari'ati and Sayyid Muhhamud Taleqani. Schooled by the West's experience they extract the wrong lessons of what it means to succeed. The book also digresses into Muscovy, Russia of the 14th -18th century, but here the resemblance works poorly and reflects a tendency to expound what one knows rather than sticking to a thesis. Russia in that era tended to look inward as opposed to reacting outward.
Who are we to garner such enmity? Essentially we are those who have rejected the moral superiority of God, or that of the totalitarian state, or pure ideology in favour of becoming nations of shopkeepers, worshipers of Venus and Mammon, weak, effete, corrupting and worthy of destruction. We fetishize materialism and embody the Manichean heresy of separating God from the world. Too much freedom and too little honour given both to men and especially to women.
Such decadence is pure evil and is destined to be brushed aside.
To defend ones identity against such charges would be unthinkable - but only for those who internalize the poison.
Comment | Permalink
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