Empire’s margins reappearing in imperial centers destabilizes Western centrality

Evidence

This is the context in which Stuart then situates what he calls the unraveling of the West, as the erstwhile margins of various empires reappear in the imperial centers. He describes this as the apotheosis of the West’s global universalizing mission, which perhaps also signals the moment of its own “slow, uncertain … decentring.” — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 153

Categorization

• XREF: The ‘unraveling of the West’ connects directly to the Islamophobia readings on postcolonial anxiety and the figure of the Muslim as the return of the colonial repressed.
• SEED: Potential essay: multiculturalism as the West’s self-encounter — how the ‘unraveling’ narrative undergirds contemporary anti-immigrant moral panics.