Work · Philosophy in the Islamic World
Introduction to the Science of Occidentalism
A reversal of Orientalism: the West, which studied the rest of the world, is to become an object of study for non-Western scholars, which would end its claim to be the universal measure.
Introduction
Published in Cairo in 1991, the book is the second front of Hanafi’s project “Heritage and Renewal”, devoted to the Western heritage. Hanafi proposes a science of Occidentalism that reverses the relation of Orientalism: the West, which has long been the observer of others, should become an object of study for non-Western scholars. He traces the sources of European consciousness and its development and argues that its claim to universality should be reduced to its historical dimensions. The book has been discussed both as a contribution to the critique of Eurocentrism and as an inverted essentialism.
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