The Enlightenment’s self-image required the Rest as its suppressed opposite.

Evidence

I also wanted to show the cultural and ideological dimensions of the West’s expansion. For if the Rest was necessary for the political, economic, and social formation of the West, it was also essential to the West’s formation both of its own sense of itself—a “Western identity”—and of Western forms of knowledge. — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 686 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: The ignoble savage concept helped launch Enlightenment theories of social development; Studies of American Indians anchored Enlightenment social science’s model of earliest social development; Enlightenment dialogues led to cultural suppression and societal fractures. — Neil MacGregor, A History of the World in 100 Objects, 1315 (+15 more)

Related

• The West’s self-conception formed only in relation to the Rest (similarity 0.87)
• The West manufactured its own internal others (similarity 0.86)
• Rising non-Western cultures relativized the Western episteme (similarity 0.86)
• The Rest was constitutive of the West’s identity and knowledge (similarity 0.86)
• Enlightenment social science mapped all world societies onto one West-modeled progress scale (similarity 0.85)
• The idea of the West helped constitute the West itself (similarity 0.83)
• The West and the Rest is a constructed, contingent discourse (similarity 0.83)
• The West’s self-image as civilized required the constructed Other to define against (similarity 0.81)
• The West required the Rest as a conceptual opposite to define itself. (similarity 0.81)
• The West-Rest discourse persists and still shapes modern sociology (similarity 0.81)
• The West concept classifies, represents, compares, and evaluates societies (similarity 0.80)
• The noble-savage ideal served as a Western vehicle for self-critique (similarity 0.79)
• The West’s formation cannot be explained without reference to the Rest (similarity 0.79)
• The West is a historical construct defined by development traits, not geography (similarity 0.79)
• Enlightenment social science ranked all societies on one West-defined developmental scale (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• The Rest was constitutive of the West’s identity and knowledge #corroborates (1.00) — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 686
• The West required the Rest as a conceptual opposite to define itself. #expands (0.95)
• “Splitting” renders the Rest the West’s mirror-image Other #expands (0.90)
• The West and the Rest is a constructed, contingent discourse #corroborates (0.90)
• Enlightenment thought frames tradition and modernity as opposing binary cultures. #expands (0.85)
• Enlightenment dialogues led to cultural suppression and societal fractures. #expands (0.80) — Neil MacGregor, A History of the World in 100 Objects, 1315
• The West-Rest discourse persists and still shapes modern sociology #expands (0.80) — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 688
• Enlightenment thinkers retained older anti-Muslim stereotypes #exemplifies (0.70) — Green, Todd H, The Fear of Islam_ An Introduction to…, 161