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What would world literature look like, if we stopped referring to
the “West”? Starting with the provocative premise that the
“‘West’ is ten percent of the planet”, World Literature
Decentered is the first book to decenter Eurocentric discourses of
global literature and global history – not just by deconstructing
or historicizing them, but by actively providing an alternative.
Looking at a series of themes across three literatures (Mexico,
Turkey and Bengal), the book examines hotels, melancholy,
orientalism, femicide and the ghost story in a series of literary
traditions outside the “West”. The non-West, the book argues,
is no fringe group or token minority in need of attention – on
the contrary, it constitutes the overwhelming majority of this
world.
What would world literature look like, if we stopped referring to
the "West"? Starting with the provocative premise that the "'West'
is ten percent of the planet", World Literature Decentered is the
first book to decenter Eurocentric discourses of global literature
and global history - not just by deconstructing or historicizing
them, but by actively providing an alternative. Looking at a series
of themes across three literatures (Mexico, Turkey and Bengal), the
book examines hotels, melancholy, orientalism, femicide and the
ghost story in a series of literary traditions outside the "West".
The non-West, the book argues, is no fringe group or token minority
in need of attention - on the contrary, it constitutes the
overwhelming majority of this world.
This concise overview of the perception of Islam in eight of the
most important German thinkers of the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries allows a new and fascinating investigation of how these
thinkers, within their own bodies of work, often espoused
contradicting ideas about Islam and their nearest Muslim neighbors.
Exploring a variety of 'neat compartmentalizations' at work in the
representations of Islam, as well as distinct vocabularies employed
by these key intellectuals (theological, political, philological,
poetic), Ian Almond parses these vocabularies to examine the
importance of Islam in the very history of German thought. Almond
further demonstrates the ways in which German philosophers such as
Hegel, Kant, and Marx repeatedly ignored information about the
Muslim world that did not harmonize with the particular landscapes
they were trying to paint ? a fact which in turn makes us reflect
on what it means when a society possesses 'knowledge' of a foreign
culture.
Examinung a series of common features in the works of Derrida and
the Sufism of Ibn 'Arabi, considered to be one of the most
influential figures in Islamic thought, the author addresses the
significant absence of attention on the relationship between Islam
and Derrida. Presenting a deconstructive perspective on Ibn 'Arabi,
the book's features include: * the opposition to systematizing
representations of God/reality/the text * a re-emphasis on the
radical unthinkability of God and the text * a common conception of
rational thought as restrictive, commodifying and ultimately
illusory - and a subsequent appraisal of confusion as leading to a
higher state of knowledge * a positive belief in the infinate
interpretability of the text * a suspicion of represention - and an
awareness of its semantic futility, along with a common,
'welcoming' affirmation of openness and errancy towards God and the
text. This book will be essential reading for advanced students and
academics of Religious studies, Arabic and Islamic studies and
those interested in the work of Derrida and Ibn 'Arabi.
This concise overview of the perception of Islam in eight of the
most important German thinkers of the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries allows a new and fascinating investigation of how these
thinkers, within their own bodies of work, often espoused
contradicting ideas about Islam and their nearest Muslim neighbors.
Exploring a variety of 'neat compartmentalizations' at work in the
representations of Islam, as well as distinct vocabularies employed
by these key intellectuals (theological, political, philological,
poetic), Ian Almond parses these vocabularies to examine the
importance of Islam in the very history of German thought. Almond
further demonstrates the ways in which German philosophers such as
Hegel, Kant, and Marx repeatedly ignored information about the
Muslim world that did not harmonize with the particular landscapes
they were trying to paint ? a fact which in turn makes us reflect
on what it means when a society possesses 'knowledge' of a foreign
culture.
This book examines a series of common features in the works of
Derrida and the Sufism of Ibn 'Arabi, considered to be one of the
most influential figures in Islamic thought. The author addresses
the significant absence of attention on the relationship between
Islam and Derrida and also provides a deconstructive perspective on
Ibn 'Arabi. The features explored include the opposition to
systematizing representations of God/reality/the text; a
re-emphasis on the radical unthinkability of God and the text; a
common conception of rational thought as restrictive, commodifying
and ultimately illusory - and a subsequent appraisal of confusion
as leading to a higher state of knowledge; a positive belief in the
infinate interpretability of the text; a suspicion of represention
- and an awareness of its semantic futility, along with a common,
'welcoming' affirmation of openness and errancy towards God and the
text. This book will be essential reading for advanced students and
academics of Religious studies, Arabic and Islamic studies and
those interested in the work of Derrida and Ibn 'Arabi.
The west's Orientalism - its construction of an Arab or Islamic
'Other' - has been exposed and examined under the critical theory
microscope and thoroughly expelled, it seems, from academic
thought. At the same time postmodern thinkers from Nietzsche
onwards have employed the motifs and symbols of the Islamic Orient
within an ongoing critique of western modernity, an appropriation
which, this hugely controversial book argues, runs every risk of
becoming a new and more insidious Orientalist strain.Ian Almond
sensitively yet rigorously examines the work of Nietzsche, Jacques
Derrida, Michel Foucault, Jean Baudrillard, Julia Kristeva and
Slavoj Zizek, as well as that of postmodern writers Jorge Luis
Borges, Salman Rushdie and Orhan Pamuk. In doing so he exposes the
implications of this 'use' of Islam for both the postmodern project
and for Islam itself. Taking apart the assumptions, omissions and
contradictions inherent in these thinkers' approaches to Islam and
to the Arab world, and drawing on the work of prominent Muslim
thinkers including Ziauddin Sardar, Aziz Al-Azmeh and Bobby S.
Sayyid, "The New Orientalists" highlights the difficulty of ever
speaking truly about the 'Other'. In light of the current Western
climate of fear and hysteria surrounding the Islamic world, this
groundbreaking project could hardly be more timely.
When Englishman and Turk fell side by side in the killing fields of
the Crimea, it was not the first time that Christian and Muslim
blood was shed, and intermingled, in the cause of battling a common
foe. It is fashionable today to talk of a 'clash of civilizations',
and of an unbridgeable chasm between the Islamic world and
Christendom. But in this bold and iconoclastic book Ian Almond
demonstrates that in Europe, the heart of the west, Muslims and
Christians were often comrades-in-arms, repeatedly forming
alliances to wage war against their own faiths and peoples. As we
read of savage battles, deadly sieges and many acts of individual
heroism, we learn of Arab troops rallying in their thousands to the
banner of a Christian emperor outside the walls of Verona. Of
Spanish Muslims standing shoulder to shoulder with their Christian
Catalan neighbours in opposition to Castilians. Of Greeks and Turks
forming a steadfast bulwark against Serbs and Bulgarians, their
mutual enemy. And of tens of thousands of Hungarian Protestants
assisting the Ottomans in their implacable and terrifying march on
Christian Vienna. As the author shows, any notion that 'Christian
Europe' has long been opposed by a 'Muslim non-Europe' grossly
misrepresents the facts of a rich, complex and - above all - shared
history. The motivations for these interfaith alliances were
dictated by shifting diplomacies, pragmatic self-interest and
realpolitik, not by jihad or religious war. This insight has
profound ramifications for our understandings of global politics
and current affairs, as well as of religious history and the future
shape of Europe.
In this critical examination of the famous South Asian thinker
Nirad C. Chaudhuri (1897-1999), a notorious Anglophile and defender
of Empire, Ian Almond analyses the factors that played a role in
the evolution of his thought. Almond explores how Empire creates
'native informants', enabling local subjects to alienate themselves
from and even abhor their own cultures. Through analysis of
Chaudhuri's views on Islam, his use of the archive, moments of
melancholy and loss in his writing, and his opinions on empire,
Almond dissects the constitution of an Indian writer and locates
the precise ways in which Chaudhuri was able to produce the kind of
discourses he did, exploring how conservative, pro-Western
intellectuals are formed in postcolonial environments. A strong
comparative element places Chaudhuri's views in the context of
conservative intellectuals from Latin America, the Middle East and
South Asia, concluding with a consideration of present-day 'native
informants' from these regions.
In this critical examination of the famous South Asian thinker
Nirad C. Chaudhuri (1897-1999), a notorious Anglophile and defender
of Empire, Ian Almond analyses the factors that played a role in
the evolution of his thought. Almond explores how Empire creates
'native informants', enabling local subjects to alienate themselves
from and even abhor their own cultures. Through analysis of
Chaudhuri's views on Islam, his use of the archive, moments of
melancholy and loss in his writing, and his opinions on empire,
Almond dissects the constitution of an Indian writer and locates
the precise ways in which Chaudhuri was able to produce the kind of
discourses he did, exploring how conservative, pro-Western
intellectuals are formed in postcolonial environments. A strong
comparative element places Chaudhuri's views in the context of
conservative intellectuals from Latin America, the Middle East and
South Asia, concluding with a consideration of present-day 'native
informants' from these regions.
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