Said treated modernity’s crises as political rather than epistemic problems

Evidence

If one part of the causes was in effect nonexistent and the other the locus of utter silence, then we must conclude that for Said the crisis was at best political in nature, having to do with the fall of empires (British, French, Dutch), who were probably alone in thinking of their decline as a crisis. This interpretation of Said is consistent with all his other views about problems in modernity, including that which mattered most to him—the question of Palestine. All of them for him were political, essentially related to empire and its malevolent power. That these were sourced in the deep epistemic structures of the modernity that gave him his own secular humanism and liberal values is a question that he seems to have never entertained. — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 326 (#expands, via linked claim)

Rather than these developments taking us “beyond modernity,” they provide a fuller understanding of the reflexivity inherent in modernity itself. Modernity is not only unsettling because of the circularity of reason, but because the nature of that circularity is ultimately puzzling. How can we justify a commitment to reason in the name of reason? — Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 124 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Contemporary political crises stem from denial of systemic truths more than ignorance — bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress: Education as…, 70; Said’s anomaly claim would collapse if the problem were generalized to modernity; Said treated the modern crisis as purely political, never epistemic — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism: A Critique of…, 326 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Said treated the modern crisis as purely political, never epistemic #expands (0.95) — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 326
• Modernity’s reflexivity makes its own rational grounds ultimately puzzling #complicates (0.75) — Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 124