Between Aloofness and Fascination

Safavid Views of the West

Bibliographic Data

ID9979486
AuthorsRudi Matthee (0000-0003-1336-210X, University of Delaware, corresponding author)
Year1998
Volume31
Issue2
Pages219-246
Publication date1998-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueIranian Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0021-0862 • E-ISSN: 1475-4819
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1080/00210869808701906
OpenAlexW2070136704
LanguageEN
Citations received11
References cited20

Identity implies the other. As there is no self-definition without a view of the Other, the process whereby the “Self” discovers the “Other” is crucial to the formation of a self-image, for individuals as much as for groups of people claiming a collective identity. Historically, this process has never been more acute and intense than with the explosion of intercultural contact between Europe and the rest of the world following the so-called Age of Discovery. Nothing matches the radical novelty and drama of the first encounter between Europeans and the inhabitants of the New World. Though different inasmuch as it built on previous, intermittent contact and thus lacked the shock element of the utterly outlandish and bizarre, Europe's interaction with most of the major peoples of Asia in early modern times was hardly less transformative in the long run. Unprecedented in frequency and intensity, European-Asian contact as of the sixteenth century began to undermine the exotic notions and fabulous images that had formed and developed since Antiquity and that, over time, had been allowed to harden into convention

Aesthetics · Art · Drama · Element (criminal law · Epistemology · Identity (music · Literature · Nothing · Political science · Sociology · Transformative learning · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories · Historical and Linguistic Studies · History · Islamic Studies and History · Law · Philosophy

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