The West and the Rest is a constructed, contingent discourse

Evidence

In transformed and reworked forms, this discourse continues to inflect the language of the West, its image of itself and “others,” its sense of “us” and “them,” its practices and relations of power toward the Rest. It is especially important for the languages of racial inferiority and ethnic superiority which still operate so powerfully across the globe today. So, far from being a “formation” of the past, and of only historical interest, the discourse of “the West and the Rest” is alive and well in the modern world. And one of the surprising places where its effects can still be seen is in the language, theoretical models, and hidden assumptions of modern sociology itself. — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 688 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: The Westerner’s intimate estrangement from the Orient reinforces the Orientalist discourse built on it.; The West is a historical construct defined by development traits, not geography; The West concept classifies, represents, compares, and evaluates societies — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2: Identity…, 509 (+15 more)

Related

• The West-Rest discourse persists and still shapes modern sociology (similarity 0.91)
• The West and the Rest is constituted as a discourse, not a geography (similarity 0.90)
• The West-and-Rest discourse became the dominant Western way of representing itself and others (similarity 0.89)
• The West’s self-conception formed only in relation to the Rest (similarity 0.86)
• The West is a historical construct defined by development traits, not geography (similarity 0.86)
• Twentieth-century discourse still treated the civilizing West as descended from eastern barbarians (similarity 0.85)
• The idea of the West helped constitute the West itself (similarity 0.85)
• The West concept classifies, represents, compares, and evaluates societies (similarity 0.85)
• The West and the Rest are mutable historical and linguistic constructs, not fixed entities. (similarity 0.84)
• Western modernity was constituted, from its origins, through exploitative relations with the Rest. (similarity 0.84)
• Rising non-Western cultures relativized the Western episteme (similarity 0.84)
• The Westerner’s intimate estrangement from the Orient reinforces the Orientalist discourse built on it. (similarity 0.84)
• The West required the Rest as a conceptual opposite to define itself. (similarity 0.84)
• The West is as much an idea as a geographic fact (similarity 0.83)
• The West’s formation cannot be explained without reference to the Rest (similarity 0.83)

Broader Connections

• Ideologies connect to subjects through contingent, breakable articulations rather than necessity #expands (0.86)
• The West-Rest discourse persists and still shapes modern sociology #expands (0.85) — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 688
• The Orientalist’s constructed Orient displaced the actual Orient in European discourse #exemplifies (0.85)
• Western civilization discourse was built on a constructed binary of superiority and inferiority #expands (0.82)
• Orientalism is a discourse produced in uneven exchanges with multiple kinds of power #expands (0.80)
• Orientalist discourse reduces human plurality to a few fixed collective abstractions #exemplifies (0.80)
• The Rest was constitutive of the West’s identity and knowledge #expands (0.78) — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 686
• The West’s self-conception formed only in relation to the Rest #expands (0.78)