Western theory’s self-contained account of Europe conceals its production by imperialism

Evidence

My contention below is that the relationship between First World, anti-humanist post-Marxism and the history of imperialism is not merely a question of “enlarging the range of possibilities,” as Chatterjee soberly suggests above. … Although Foucault is a brilliant thinker of power-in-spacing, the awareness of the topographic reinscription of imperialism does not inform his presuppositions. He is taken in by the restricted version of the West produced by that reinscription and thus helps to consolidate its effects. … I am suggesting that to buy a self-contained version of the West is symptomatically to ignore its production by the spacing-timing of the imperialist project. — Donna Landry and Gerald MacLean, The Spivak Reader, 1783

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s Foucault-in-lectures project — Foucault’s colonial blind spot here parallels what Spivak framed around the subject-effect elsewhere. — connects to: Imperialism masked Europe’s internal disintegration through a deceptive outward stability — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 405; Western universalism functions as imperialism from the perspective of non-Western societies — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 489; The West’s self-conception formed only in relation to the Rest (+3 more)
• QUESTION: Worth checking how far this colonial-blind-spot critique extends to other thinkers traced in the reader’s strategic-essentialism genealogy.

Broader Connections

• Western imperial particularism was disguised as universal civilization #expands (0.90) — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 372
• The West’s self-conception formed only in relation to the Rest #expands (0.85)
• Western universalism functions as imperialism from the perspective of non-Western societies #exemplifies (0.82) — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 489
• Non-Western peoples read Western universalism as imperialism and threat #exemplifies (0.78)
• Imperialism masked Europe’s internal disintegration through a deceptive outward stability #qualifies (0.75) — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 405