Occidentalism

While the discussion of Occidentalism is often in juxtaposition with that of Orientalism, it can also amount to a criticism of the latter. Edward Said's critique of Orientalist writings and studies raised important questions about the Western hegemonic power in shaping the imagery of the "Orient." But like the Orientalists, as Mohamad Tavakoli-Targhi charges, Said, in presenting his thesis on the Western discursive hegemony, underestimates and overlooks the intellectual power and contribution of the people in the Orient. In his study of the Persianate writings in history and travelogue by Iranians and Indians during the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries, Tavakoli-Targhi notes that prior to the spread of European power, the Asians not only traveled to and wrote about Europe, contributing to Persianate Europology, but they also helped the early European Orientalists to acquire a knowledge of the Orient. In other words, in the exchanges between East and West, the East was not a passive, silent Other, as portrayed by the Orientalists (and also, ironically, as endorsed by Edward Said). Rather, argues Tavakoli-Targhi, the Persianate writers displayed equivalent intellectual capability to engage in cross-cultural communications with their Western counterparts. That the Orientals contributed to the gestation of Orientalism has also been noticed by Arif Dirlik in his study of South and East Asian history, although he casts this contribution in a more critical light.

Moreover, Occidentalism can be used, as Couze Venn has attempted, to describe the rise of Europe in modern times. In this usage, the term no longer refers to the construction of the image of the West only by the non-Western peoples. It now Still from Zhang Yimou's 1995 film Shanghai Triad. In the late twentieth century, Chinese filmmakers like Yimou found critical success outside of their home country for works that depicted a China customized to Western tastes and expectations. ALPHA FILMS/THE KOBAL COLLECTION also includes attempts by Europeans to turn their historical experience into a universal, hegemonic model. "Occidentalism," states Venn, "thus directs attention to the becoming-modern of the world and the becoming-West of Europe such that Western modernity gradually became established as the privileged, if not hegemonic, form of sociality, tied to a universalizing and totalizing ambition" (p. 19). Engaging in this study of how Europe rose to become the West entails careful examination of the development of capitalism and spread of colonialism, not only during the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries, but also, as Venn suggests, in today's world. The legacy of both are well reflected in such global forms of regulations and organizations as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the United Nations. All of them have accompanied the Western hegemony in academic discourses. While different from Edward Said's theory of Orientalism, Couze Venn's study of Occidentalism defined as such suggests a similar interest in revealing the repressive side of modernity. In this regard, Occidentalism extends, as does Said's work, the project of postcolonial critique of the modern world.

If the definition of Occidentalism is complex, this is because the interaction and dialogue between East and West have been a diverse experience, shaped by different forces under different circumstances. Even if we confine our discussion to the non-Western construction of the Western imagery, it still defies the simple understanding of it as a form of internalized Orientalism, in which the West is perceived as the exemplary Other, or of it as a defensive reaction against the West, in which the West is seen as a devilish Other. In addition to the various attempts to portray the West, Occidentalism has another dimension, or "double reflection" in Meltem Ahiska's analysis, that the non-Western also seeks to imagine how its image is perceived by the West. This is because the Occidentalist discourses often emerged as a result of the Western expansion to the world, which made it urgent and necessary not only for the non-Western to form its national and cultural identity, but also to do so by emulating and extending the Western model. It demands that the non-West seek identification of the West on the one hand in forming its modernity and, on the other hand, draw a line of demarcation between Self and Other in order to bolster its own contradistinctive identity.