Arguments downplaying preindustrial degradation smuggle in a dogma of inevitable progress.

Evidence

But the disagreement cannot be resolved just by recourse to quantitative data. The argument insisting on preindustrial degradation stands in collusion with not only a conception of history that is predeterminative but also one that squarely rests on a dogmatic doctrine of progress. This narrative insists that any society, “civilization,” or culture would have done exactly what the West has in fact done had it stood in its place, the logic being that progress is inevitable and that it happens to have (or, alternatively, must have) a price. The question that, among others, is never raised is why such massive degradations didn’t take place elsewhere and before modern Europe came along. In this narrative, it seems that the questions pertaining to the specific conditions that made destructive modernity possible are readily universalized within a trajectory that knows nothing but predetermined progress. This is not merely a historical force, but metaphysics galore. — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 961

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Chakrabarty’s ‘The Climate of History’ and to the debate over anthropocene periodization; also resonates with the earlier chapter’s treatment of progress narratives.