I have followed this discussion with some interest - and increasing
distress and unease when I understand it, having not kept up with much of
the literature on wst or whatever over the past decade or so. But it does
appear to me, in some ways, that the discussion reflects once again how
social existence and location influences thought and consciousness. In this
instance, perhaps two conjoined facts: the recent growth of East Asia/SE
Asia (both as economic fact and as political hype) and the sense of western
decay, and perhaps, for a lot of wst'ers, the collapse of the socialist
project in thought and reality.
Call it what you will, but certain facts - from the perspective of someone
living outside Europe and N America - appear undeniable, and attempts to
deny them strike me as attempts to squirm out of European and N American
responsibility for the shape of the world today and for a while to come -
for better and worse. It appears to me undeniable that something came
together in Europe and its subsequent extension in N America between 1500
and 1800 which gave Europe and N America domination of the world, and
indeed *continues* to give it domination, East Asian growth
notwithstanding.
I won't try to rehearse the facts of world history - the participants in
the discussion are much more expert than I. But allow me to take this list
as an example:
- it is located in physical (and cyber) space in N America
- it's active participants are almost wholly N American and European (or
non-Europeans resident in N America and Europe)
- it's language is English, the native language of some 250-300 million,
not, say, Chinese, the language of over 1 billion, or Malay/Indonesian, the
language of some 150-200 million, or Hindi, or Urdu, or Tamil
- it's bibliographic reference base is also largely based on European
languages, predominantly English
- it's theoretical reference base is a system of concepts that largely
emerged in post-1500 Europe
Why is this so?
Or take a closer look at East Asian growth today, and let's look at some of
the more "superficial":
- the male attire of the Asian Renaissance is the coat and tie, the female
attire is increasingly the dress (one might note that when a Hong Kong
magnate established a fashion brand, he chose an Italian name)
- the architectural symbols are the high-rises
- the musical idiom is the "pop" song built, backing supplied by bands
playing guitars, drums, saxophones...
- the "more cultured" turn to European "classical" music and sponsor
symphony orchestras
- the motor symbol of wealth and power are Mercedes and BMWs
and contrast that to the symbols, dress, architecture, and music of, say,
the Abbasid caliphate, or of Ming China, or of Malacca, or Moghul India.
One could also note that for all the importations of material and other
culture into Europe, those civilizations have not had the same impact as
has had modern Europe on the rest of us. Sure, there are cute stories about
tea and the English, coffee and the Austrians, the guitar's origins in
Muslim Spain, and so on, but what does it really amount to?
Why is this so?
Call it what you will, drop the term "capitalism" if one feels it necessary
to do so, but eurocentrism was real and survives - if not in the minds of
wst'ers, at least in the real world. I would contend that eurocentrism is
even more real today than in the days of conquest and when we were
colonies.
On a minor point, I am not altogether certain what exactly was the point of
showing that it took the Netherlands three centuries to subjugate all that
was to become Indonesia. Rome never quite subjugated England, but for all
that the dominance of Rome was not in doubt, and its stamp over Europe was
not in doubt, nor that something came together in Rome that gave it that
dominance.
At the end of the 19th century and early 20th centuries, there was little
doubt in the minds of many Asian and Arab thinkers and administrators that
something had indeed come together in Europe that gave it its dominance.
They agonized over this, and over its implications for their own cultures
and societies, and whether they could take over whatever it was that gave
Europe its power and yet retain their own cultures and civilizations. Some
tried, others threw in the towel and earned the appellation WOGs. Some are
still trying - but the emerging patterns indicate that it may well be a
lost cause.
It would appear that the best course is still to acknowledge *not* European
"exceptionalism" (that gives too much and too little credit to Europe all
at once) but that something did come together in Europe at a certain
historical period and that we are still living with its consequences, dare
I say especially those of us who are non-Europeans. There was likely no
inevitability about this - it may well have happened elsewhere, but
counter-factual history is, in the event, hardly useful. It happened in
Europe and that gave it its particular stamp.
Incidentally, a so-called "ecocentric" view is still an "anthropocentric"
one by virtue of the fact that humans think it up and in doing so assume
certain things about their place in the world. Nothing validates those
assumptions except those who think it up in the first place. Could I be so
mischievous as to suggest that a "non-eurocentric" view thought up by
Europeans would nevertheless remain a "eurocentric" view?
Khay Jin