From Orientalism to Area Studies

Bibliographic Data

ID3874246
AuthorsBiray Kolluoglu-Kirli (corresponding author)
Year2003
Volume3
Issue3
Pages93-111
Publication date2003-09-01
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueCR The New Centennial Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1532-687X • E-ISSN: 1539-6630
PublisherProject MUSE (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1353/ncr.2004.0007
OpenAlexW2006846565
LanguageEN
Citations received11
References cited10

United States President George W. Bush's 2002 State of the Union speech, following the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11 the previous year, represents the solidification of a discourse marked by naked aggression against the "un-civilized" world. In that speech, months-long hatred and frustration culminated in the delineation of the "axis of evil." Both the American president's and other government representatives' public discourse incessantly evoked images of "civilization" being under attack and being threatened and, hence, in need of saving. In the reigning understanding, civilization, without any adjective in front of it, refers to the "Western civilization" and is defined in opposition to the "non-Western," and if we carry the antithetical reasoning to its logical consequence, to the "un-civilized" world. The relationship of hierarchy and further-refined definitions of these categories were nakedly spelled out by the Italian prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, who, in late September 2001, unabashedly proclaimed the superiority of the Western civilization over the Islamic world. I am beginning this article by reiterating these well-known contemporary observations to underline one point: Berlusconi, Bush, and [End Page 93] others can invoke these categories of good/evil, civilized/uncivilized, Western/Eastern without any hesitation precisely because they represent the tip of an iceberg whose enormous body itself goes deep in the ocean of Western epistemology and the imaginary

Civilization · Hatred · Islam · Political science · Politics · Psychoanalysis · The Imaginary · Theology · Western culture · Chinese history and philosophy · History · Law · Philosophy · Psychology · Religion and Society Interactions · World Systems and Global Transformations

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