Synopses & Reviews
The experience of colonization and the challenges of a post-colonial world have produced an explosion of new writing in English. This diverse and powerful body of literature has established a specific practice of post-colonial writing in cultures as various as India, Australia, the West Indies and Canada, and has challenged both the traditional canon and dominant ideas of literature and culture.
The Empire Writes Back was the first major theoretical account of a wide range of post-colonial texts and their relation to the larger issues of post-colonial culture, and remains one of the most significant works published in this field. The authors, three leading figures in post-colonial studies, open up debates about the interrelationships of post-colonial literatures, investigate the powerful forces acting on language in the post-colonial text, and show how these texts constitute a radical critique of Eurocentric notions of literature and language.
This book is brilliant not only for its incisive analysis, but for its accessibility for readers new to the field. Now with an additional chapter and an updated bibliography, The Empire Writes Back is essential for contemporary post-colonial studies.
Review
“For decades, Hamid Dabashi has drawn from the histories of the non-West to argue for ways of thinking deemed illegitimate by the parochial but powerful guardians of intellectual life in the West. In
Can Non-Europeans Think? he takes his subtle but vigorous polemic to another level. Anyone disheartened by the present impasse of historicism, or interested in alternatives to dysfunctional and discredited ideologies of progress, should read it.”
Review
“These essays are trenchant, witty, provocative, mischievous, and on target. Now assembled in a volume and read together, they become organically interconnected moments of one broad, powerful, and compelling meditation on what it means to think (in) our global postcolonial world.”
Review
“Dabashi's book is both a panoramic critique of, and a revolt against, dominant forms of knowledge. It is characteristically lucid and accessible. A worthwhile read.”
Review
“Drawing from his unrivalled inside knowledge of various intellectual traditions, Hamid Dabashi has written, with acuity, passion and humour, a critical synthesis of Western thought from the vantage point of the 'dark races'' distinctive epistemologies and historical references.”
Review
“Hamid Dabashi's Can Non-Europeans Think? collects his important provocations on issues ranging from post-colonialism to democracy. These are pieces to wrestle with, to think about, to discuss and debate. Reading Dabashi is like going for an extended coffee with a very smart friend.”
Review
“Can Non-Europeans Think? The simple answer is yes. The more complicated answer is also yes, but requires that the reader dismantles the very notion of 'West' and 'European'. This is a fabulous read.”
Review
“Dabashi eloquently articulates the intellectual journey of a whole generation of postcolonial thinkers: its findings must be heard.”
Review
“A much needed corrective to the complacent view that multicultural diversity reigns in US and European Universities. Hamid Dabashi's new work is a tour de force.”
Review
“With elegant irony,
Can Non-Europeans Think? reorients our reading of the world. It is a passionate rejoinder to those who are unable to see beyond European framings and rootings.”
Synopsis
Includes bibliographical references (p. [246]-269) and index.
Synopsis
What happens with thinkers who operate outside the European philosophical 'pedigree'? Why is European Philosophy 'Philosophy', but African philosophy 'ethnophilosophy'? In Japan, Kojin Karatani, in Cuba, Roberto Fernandez Retamar, or even in the United States people like Cornel West, whose thinking is not entirely in the European continental tradition - what about them? Where do they fit in? Can they think - is what they do also thinking, philosophical, pertinent, perhaps, or is that also suitable for ethnographic examinations?
In this challenging and thought provoking book Dabashi pulls together a unique constellation of historical and theoretical reflections on current affairs to argue that we need to breakdown the ethnographic gaze that is evident with intellectual thinking in the Arab world.
Synopsis
Philosophy claims to be the search for knowledge, unbound by any fetters. Yet even a cursory analysis of how it is conceived when it exists outside the European tradition reveals a troubling bias. While European philosophy, for example is simply known as philosophy,” African philosophy is all too often dubbed ethnophilosophy.” The Western philosophical tradition simply hasnt acknowledged the vast amount of innovative thought that has flourished outside the European philosophical pedigreeand that has led to awkward, and damaging, failures to properly reckon with the ideas of people like Japans Kojin Karatani, Cubas Roberto Fernandez Retamar, or even Americas Cornel West.
In Can Non-Europeans Think?, Hamid Dabashi brings together a unique group of historical and theoretical reflections on current affairs and the role of philosophy to argue that, in order to grapple with the problems of humanity today, we must eliminate the ethnographic gaze that infects philosophy and casts Arab and other non-Western thinkers as subordinates.
About the Author
Hamid Dabashi is the Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Foreword: Yes, We Can by Walter Mignolo
Introduction: Can Europeans Read?
1 Can Non-Europeans Think?
2 The Moment of Myth Edward Said, 1935-2003
3 The Middle East is Changed Forever
4 The War between the Civilized Man and the Savage
5 Postcolonial Defiance or Still the Other
Conclusion: The Continued Regime of Knowledge
Index