Removing the progress doctrine would rewrite even postcolonial historiography

Evidence

Once we extract the doctrine of progress out of our thinking, the history of the Orient, especially after the eighteenth century, ceases to have the normalcy and normativity that have been assigned to it, and by which it has been thoroughly clothed. Being the exception in world history, modern Europe’s hypothetical absence from the scene of life leaves us with an Orient, a world, entirely different from the legacy it has in fact bequeathed. This is not wishful thinking, but an epistemological stand of the first order … It is, in other words, to argue that our historical narratives, including the postcolonial, Subaltern, and all their likes, would necessarily be entirely different had this doctrine been nonexistent. — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 218

Categorization

• SEED: Essay angle: counterfactual history as epistemological method — what happens to postcolonial theory once the telos is removed from its own narrative architecture.