Occidentalism
Encyclopedia
The term Occidentalism is used in one of two main ways: a) stereotype
d and sometimes dehumanizing views on the Western world
, including Europe
and the English-speaking world
; and b), ideologies or visions of the West developed in either the West or non-West. The former definition stresses negative constructions of the West and is often focused on the Islamic world. The latter approach has a broader range and includes both positive and negative representations. The term was used in the latter sense by James G. Carrier in his book Occidentalism: Images of the West (1995), and subsequently by Ian Buruma
and Avishai Margalit
in their book Occidentalism: the West in the Eyes of its Enemies (2004). The term is an inversion of Orientalism
, Edward Said
’s label for stereotyped Western views of the East
. A number of earlier books had also used the term, sometimes with different meanings, such as Chen Xiaomei's Occidentalism: A Theory of Counter-Discourse in Post-Mao China (New York: Oxford, 1995).
With the spread of European trade and imperialism during the 18th and 19th centuries the modern concept of an East/West distinction came to be more clearly articulated. Stereotyped portrayals of Westerners appear in many works of Indian
, Chinese
and Japanese
art
ists during this period. At the same time Western influence in politics, culture, economics and science came to be constructed through an imaginative geography of West and East. In the late 19th century many Western cultural themes and images began appearing in Asia
n art and culture, especially in Japan
. English
words and phrases are prominent in Japan
ese advertising and popular culture, and many Japanese comics and cartoons are written around characters, settings, themes, and mythological
figures derived from various Western cultural traditions.
Another way occidentalism has been manifested is through the attempt to forge 'non-Western' identities and cultures. Notions of 'spiritual Asia' are an example, since they depend upon constructions of the 'materialist West'. These images can be read as forms of resistance but they also demonstrate the power of Western models.
, liberalism
and secularism as destructive forces. They argue that while early responses to the West represent a genuine encounter between alien cultures, many of the later manifestations of Occidentalism betray the influence on Eastern intellectuals of Western ideas, such as the supremacy of the Nation-State
, the Romantic
rejection of rationality and the alleged spiritual impoverishment of the citizens of liberal democracies. They trace this to German Romanticism and to the debates between the "Westernisers" and "Slavophiles" in 19th century Russia
, asserting that similar arguments appear under differing guises in Maoism
, Islamism
, wartime Japanese nationalism and other movements. However, Alastair Bonnett rejects this analysis as Eurocentric and makes a case for occidentalism emerging from the interconnection of non-Western and Western intellectual traditions.
In a departure from Buruma and Margalit's focus upon the non-Western deployment of Western ideas, Bonnett argues in The Idea of the West (2004) that both occidentalism and the West can be understood as non-Western inventions. Images of the West are employed and deployed, he says, sometimes with very positive connotations, to develop distinct, non-Western, traditions of modernity. Bonnett's approach stresses the importance of visions of the occident in developing pan-national and ethnic identities around the world.
Stereotype
A stereotype is a popular belief about specific social groups or types of individuals. The concepts of "stereotype" and "prejudice" are often confused with many other different meanings...
d and sometimes dehumanizing views on the Western world
Western world
The Western world, also known as the West and the Occident , is a term referring to the countries of Western Europe , the countries of the Americas, as well all countries of Northern and Central Europe, Australia and New Zealand...
, including Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
and the English-speaking world
Anglosphere
Anglosphere is a neologism which refers to those nations with English as the most common language. The term can be used more specifically to refer to those nations which share certain characteristics within their cultures based on a linguistic heritage, through being former British colonies...
; and b), ideologies or visions of the West developed in either the West or non-West. The former definition stresses negative constructions of the West and is often focused on the Islamic world. The latter approach has a broader range and includes both positive and negative representations. The term was used in the latter sense by James G. Carrier in his book Occidentalism: Images of the West (1995), and subsequently by Ian Buruma
Ian Buruma
Buruma is a nephew of the English film director John Schlesinger, a series of interviews with whom he published in book form.-Works:*The Japanese Tattoo with Donald Richie ISBN 978-0-8348-0228-5...
and Avishai Margalit
Avishai Margalit
Avishai Margalit is the George F. Kennan Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, and Professor Emeritus in Philosophy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.-Biography:Avishai Margalit grew up in Jerusalem. He was educated in Jerusalem and did his army service in the airborne...
in their book Occidentalism: the West in the Eyes of its Enemies (2004). The term is an inversion of Orientalism
Orientalism
Orientalism is a term used for the imitation or depiction of aspects of Eastern cultures in the West by writers, designers and artists, as well as having other meanings...
, Edward Said
Edward Said
Edward Wadie Saïd was a Palestinian-American literary theorist and advocate for Palestinian rights. He was University Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University and a founding figure in postcolonialism...
’s label for stereotyped Western views of the East
Eastern world
__FORCETOC__The term Eastern world refers very broadly to the various cultures or social structures and philosophical systems of Eastern Asia or geographically the Eastern Culture...
. A number of earlier books had also used the term, sometimes with different meanings, such as Chen Xiaomei's Occidentalism: A Theory of Counter-Discourse in Post-Mao China (New York: Oxford, 1995).
Eastern views of the West
In China "Traditions Regarding Western Countries" became a regular part of dynastic histories from the fifth-century CE (Bonnett, 2004).With the spread of European trade and imperialism during the 18th and 19th centuries the modern concept of an East/West distinction came to be more clearly articulated. Stereotyped portrayals of Westerners appear in many works of Indian
Indian art
Indian Art is the visual art produced on the Indian subcontinent from about the 3rd millennium BC to modern times. To viewers schooled in the Western tradition, Indian art may seem overly ornate and sensuous; appreciation of its refinement comes only gradually, as a rule. Voluptuous feeling is...
, Chinese
Chinese art
Chinese art is visual art that, whether ancient or modern, originated in or is practiced in China or by Chinese artists or performers. Early so-called "stone age art" dates back to 10,000 BC, mostly consisting of simple pottery and sculptures. This early period was followed by a series of art...
and Japanese
Japanese art
Japanese art covers a wide range of art styles and media, including ancient pottery, sculpture in wood and bronze, ink painting on silk and paper and more recently manga, cartoon, along with a myriad of other types of works of art...
art
Art
Art is the product or process of deliberately arranging items in a way that influences and affects one or more of the senses, emotions, and intellect....
ists during this period. At the same time Western influence in politics, culture, economics and science came to be constructed through an imaginative geography of West and East. In the late 19th century many Western cultural themes and images began appearing in Asia
Asia
Asia is the world's largest and most populous continent, located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres. It covers 8.7% of the Earth's total surface area and with approximately 3.879 billion people, it hosts 60% of the world's current human population...
n art and culture, especially in Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
. English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
words and phrases are prominent in Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
ese advertising and popular culture, and many Japanese comics and cartoons are written around characters, settings, themes, and mythological
Mythology
The term mythology can refer either to the study of myths, or to a body or collection of myths. As examples, comparative mythology is the study of connections between myths from different cultures, whereas Greek mythology is the body of myths from ancient Greece...
figures derived from various Western cultural traditions.
Another way occidentalism has been manifested is through the attempt to forge 'non-Western' identities and cultures. Notions of 'spiritual Asia' are an example, since they depend upon constructions of the 'materialist West'. These images can be read as forms of resistance but they also demonstrate the power of Western models.
Debates on Occidentalism
Buruma and Margalit argue that this nationalist and nativist resistance to the "West" actually replicates responses to forces of modernisation that have their roots in Western culture itself, among both utopian radicals and nationalist conservatives who saw capitalismCapitalism
Capitalism is an economic system that became dominant in the Western world following the demise of feudalism. There is no consensus on the precise definition nor on how the term should be used as a historical category...
, liberalism
Liberalism
Liberalism is the belief in the importance of liberty and equal rights. Liberals espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but generally, liberals support ideas such as constitutionalism, liberal democracy, free and fair elections, human rights,...
and secularism as destructive forces. They argue that while early responses to the West represent a genuine encounter between alien cultures, many of the later manifestations of Occidentalism betray the influence on Eastern intellectuals of Western ideas, such as the supremacy of the Nation-State
Nation-state
The nation state is a state that self-identifies as deriving its political legitimacy from serving as a sovereign entity for a nation as a sovereign territorial unit. The state is a political and geopolitical entity; the nation is a cultural and/or ethnic entity...
, the Romantic
Romanticism
Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...
rejection of rationality and the alleged spiritual impoverishment of the citizens of liberal democracies. They trace this to German Romanticism and to the debates between the "Westernisers" and "Slavophiles" in 19th century Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
, asserting that similar arguments appear under differing guises in Maoism
Maoism
Maoism, also known as the Mao Zedong Thought , is claimed by Maoists as an anti-Revisionist form of Marxist communist theory, derived from the teachings of the Chinese political leader Mao Zedong . Developed during the 1950s and 1960s, it was widely applied as the political and military guiding...
, Islamism
Islamism
Islamism also , lit., "Political Islam" is set of ideologies holding that Islam is not only a religion but also a political system. Islamism is a controversial term, and definitions of it sometimes vary...
, wartime Japanese nationalism and other movements. However, Alastair Bonnett rejects this analysis as Eurocentric and makes a case for occidentalism emerging from the interconnection of non-Western and Western intellectual traditions.
In a departure from Buruma and Margalit's focus upon the non-Western deployment of Western ideas, Bonnett argues in The Idea of the West (2004) that both occidentalism and the West can be understood as non-Western inventions. Images of the West are employed and deployed, he says, sometimes with very positive connotations, to develop distinct, non-Western, traditions of modernity. Bonnett's approach stresses the importance of visions of the occident in developing pan-national and ethnic identities around the world.
See also
- Pan-ArabismPan-ArabismPan-Arabism is an ideology espousing the unification--or, sometimes, close cooperation and solidarity against perceived enemies of the Arabs--of the countries of the Arab world, from the Atlantic Ocean to the Arabian Sea. It is closely connected to Arab nationalism, which asserts that the Arabs...
- ChinoiserieChinoiserieChinoiserie, a French term, signifying "Chinese-esque", and pronounced ) refers to a recurring theme in European artistic styles since the seventeenth century, which reflect Chinese artistic influences...
- Clash of CivilizationsClash of CivilizationsThe Clash of Civilizations is a theory, proposed by political scientist Samuel P. Huntington, that people's cultural and religious identities will be the primary source of conflict in the post-Cold War world....
- ColonialismColonialismColonialism is the establishment, maintenance, acquisition and expansion of colonies in one territory by people from another territory. It is a process whereby the metropole claims sovereignty over the colony and the social structure, government, and economics of the colony are changed by...
- JaponismJaponismJaponism, or Japonisme, the original French term, was first used in 1872 by Jules Claretie in his book L'Art Francais en 1872 and by Philippe Burty in Japanisme III. La Renaissance Literaire et Artistique in the same year...
- OrientalismOrientalismOrientalism is a term used for the imitation or depiction of aspects of Eastern cultures in the West by writers, designers and artists, as well as having other meanings...
Further reading
- Bonnett, Alastair, The Idea of the West: Culture, Politics and History, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire; New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. ISBN 1403900345, ISBN 1403900353.
- Buruma, I. and Margalit, A., Occidentalism: A Short History of Anti-Westernism, Atlantic Books, London, 2004. ISBN 1594200084.
- Carrier, James G. Occidentalism: Images of the West, Oxford, Calrendon Press, 1995. ISBN 0-19-827978-7, ISBN 0-19-827979-5.
- Chen, Xiaomei, Occidentalism: A Theory Of Counter-Discourse in Post-Mao China, second ed., rev. and expanded. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002. ISBN 0847698750.