Los autores hacen una presentación general, forzosamente esquemática, de los debates que suscita en Rusia la filosofía como núcleo de los problemas de nuestra cultura: su naturaleza, su papel y su status académico.

Explores some steps toward non-assimilative encounters in the "global village.".

Using Durkheim as an exemplary figure, this article takes up the problem of the entanglement of Orientalism with the social sciences. Durkheim is one of the classic theorists of the sociology of religion whose work remains relevant today. He drew on data relating to non-Western cultures, including India to a certain extent, in working out his theories of the division of labour and of religion. Durkheim's work is placed against the pioneering research programme of S. N. Balagangadhara on the (...) comparative science of cultures. In doing so, the article takes up the common points of focus in their work: theory of religion; India; its religion, Hinduism; its religious law; and its caste system. Durkheim, it is argued, exemplifies the tying of Orientalism into the social sciences such that their facts and theories become problematic. Balagangadhara's research programme provides a means of understanding how this happens, and why it is a problem, and offers an alternative framework. (shrink)

Posthumanist critics such as Braidotti—informed by the antihumanisms of Foucault, Irigaray, and Deleuze—seek to respond to advanced capitalism by promoting what they take to be a radical transformation of what it means to be “human,” a way of conceiving being human that is thoroughly and consistently post-anthropocentric. Braidotti calls out advanced capitalism’s global economy as being inconsistently post-anthropocentric. In response, I first lay out ways through which posthumanists can find corroboration in Asian religious thought, such as in Zhuangzi and classical (...) Chan (Zen) Buddhism. I simply put forth, basically side by side, posthumanist positions on subjectivity and flourishing and parallels in Zhuangzi and Chan. This may strike some as sophomoric, which is in part what I hope to illustrate: just how easy it is to find corroboration in these Asian religious resources. This leads to my second issue. Given such conveniently available resources, what might this tell us about limitations in posthumanist Humanities and posthumanist critical theory as developed so far? I seek to bring out both a possible covert form of Orientalism in posthumanism and a myopic methodology in excluding Religious Studies in general as paradigmatic of posthumanist Humanities. (shrink)

My point of departure is Said’s rejection of the idea of an “Orientalist” Hellenism. What might it mean to argue that Orientalism characterizes “intra-European” cultural politics, specifically the colonial geography of western Europe vis-à-vis its “subaltern” Others? Contra Said, I argue that the function of Hellenism in constituting both the fantasy of Europe and western hegemony has an Orientalist structure. I explore the cultural underpinnings of Greece’s relation to “Europe” in Hellenistic discourses. Then, I suggest that the dominant discourse (...) surrounding the odious Greek debt has an Orientalist structure. Pairing a critique of Orientalism with a core-periphery analysis arguably enables a more nuanced understanding of the coloniality of power in today’s “age of austerity,” enabling a deconstruction of the racial logic underlying continental integration and revealing the violence inherent in the fantasy of European civilization. (shrink)

Political and popular tropes portray Muslims as monolithically, uniquely, and inherently patriarchal and misogynistic—a phenomenon of which Muslims are acutely aware. This study asks whether and how Islamophobic tropes influence Muslims’ gender ideologies. Using life history interviews with Muslim Americans, we find a diversity of gender beliefs, challenging the discourses that frame Muslims’ gender ideologies as monolithic. Four major typologies emerge in our data: Loyalist Complementarians, Patriarchal Reactionaries, Critical Egalitarians, and Reformist Egalitarians. These beliefs are multifaceted and are composed of (...) a dialogic exchange between beliefs toward gender relations, perceptions of Islamic doctrine, and negotiation with what we call the Orientalist gaze. Each group navigates how their ideas about gender fit into or challenge a broader society that is scrutinizing Muslims, and each group articulates their gender beliefs through and against Islamophobic discourse, a process akin to walking an Orientalism tightrope. (shrink)

Political and popular tropes portray Muslims as monolithically, uniquely, and inherently patriarchal and misogynistic—a phenomenon of which Muslims are acutely aware. This study asks whether and how Islamophobic tropes influence Muslims’ gender ideologies. Using life history interviews with Muslim Americans, we find a diversity of gender beliefs, challenging the discourses that frame Muslims’ gender ideologies as monolithic. Four major typologies emerge in our data: Loyalist Complementarians, Patriarchal Reactionaries, Critical Egalitarians, and Reformist Egalitarians. These beliefs are multifaceted and are composed of (...) a dialogic exchange between beliefs toward gender relations, perceptions of Islamic doctrine, and negotiation with what we call the Orientalist gaze. Each group navigates how their ideas about gender fit into or challenge a broader society that is scrutinizing Muslims, and each group articulates their gender beliefs through and against Islamophobic discourse, a process akin to walking an Orientalism tightrope. (shrink)

On January 1, 1958, in the journal Democratic Critique, Zhang Junmai, Mou Zongsan, Tang Junyi, and Xu Fuguan published the "Manifesto on Chinese Culture for the World: Our Common Understanding of Chinese Scholarship Research and of the Future of Chinese Culture and World Culture."1 This manifesto is commonly seen as the founding statement of the New Confucianism movement. Section 2 of the manifesto, "Three Motives, Approaches, and their Shortcomings in the Study of Chinese Culture in World Scholarship," claimed that Chinese (...) culture had not been understood by three kinds of people who had approached it, namely, Christian missionaries, sinologists, and students of present world history. For the New Confucians, the... (shrink)

In Orientalism, Edward Said attempts to show that all European discourse about the Orient is the same, and all European scholars of the Orient complicit in the aims of European imperialism. There may be “manifest” differences in discourse, but the underlying “latent” orientalism is “more or less constant.” This does not do justice to the marked differences in approach, attitude, presentation, and conclusions found in the works of various orientalists. I distinguish six different styles of colonial and postcolonial (...) discourse about India , and note the existence of numerous precolonial discourses. I then examine the multiple ways exponents of these styles interact with one another by focusing on the early-twentieth-century nationalist orientalist, Sri Aurobindo. Aurobindo’s thought took form in a colonial framework and has been used in various ways by postcolonial writers. An anti-British nationalist, he was by no means complicit in British imperialism. Neither can it be said, as some Saidians do, that the nationalist style of orientalism was just an imitative indigenous reversal of European discourse, using terms like “Hinduism” that had been invented by Europeans. Five problems that Aurobindo dealt with are still of interest to historians: the significance of the Vedas, the date of the vedic texts, the Aryan invasion theory, the Aryan-Dravidian distinction, and the idea that spirituality is the essence of India. His views on these topics have been criticized by Leftist and Saidian orientalists, and appropriated by reactionary “Hindutva” writers. Such critics concentrate on that portion of Aurobindo’s work which stands in opposition to or supports their own views. A more balanced approach to the nationalist orientalism of Aurobindo and others would take account of their religious and political assumptions, but view their project as an attempt to create an alternative language of discourse. Although in need of criticism in the light of modern scholarship, their work offers a way to recognize cultural particularity while keeping the channels of intercultural dialogue open. (shrink)

Research on algorithms tends to focus on American companies and on the effects their algorithms have on Western users, while such algorithms are in fact developed in various geographical locations and used in highly diverse socio-cultural contexts. That is, the spatial trajectories through which algorithms operate and the distances and differences between the people who develop such algorithms and the users their algorithms affect remain overlooked. Moreover, while the power of big data algorithms has been recently compared to colonialism (Couldry (...) and Mejias 2019), the move from the colonial gaze (Yegenoglu 1998) to the algorithmic gaze (Graham 2010) has yet to be fully discussed. This article aims to fill these gaps by exploring the attempts to algorithmically conceptualize “the Other”. Based on the case study of an Israeli user-profiling company and its attempts to sell its services to East Asian corporations, I show that the algorithmic gaze—algorithms’ ability to characterize, conceptualize, and affect users—stems from a complex combination between opposing-but-complimentary perspectives: that it is simultaneously a continuation of the colonial gaze and its complete opposite. The ways in which algorithms are being programmed to see the Other, the ways algorithmic categories are named to depict the Other, and the ways people who design such algorithms describe and understand the Other are all different but deeply interrelated factors in how algorithms “see.” I accordingly argue that the story of algorithms is an intercultural one, and that the power of algorithms perpetually flows back and forth—between East and West, South and North. (shrink)

While I find Huaping Lu-Adler’s excavation of Kant’s long-overlooked linguistic Orientalism both enlightening and thought-provoking, I disagree with her diagnosis of its theoretical and practical relevance. On the one hand, while I agree that Kant’s positionality renders all his writings and teachings presumptively impactful, there is reason to doubt that his peculiar construction of the linguistic Oriental Other had much actual impact on his disciples. On the other hand, while I agree that the Kantian ideal of public reason is (...) inapt for rectifying the linguistic-epistemic injustices of global knowledge production, I disagree on why it is so. In particular, I argue for a shift in theoretical and practical focuses, from linguistic biases and prejudices, to the structural epistemic constraints of linguistic diversity, as well as to other political-structural conditions shaping global knowledge production. (shrink)

Environmental philosophy – broadly conceived as using philosophical tools to develop ideas related to environmental issues – is conducted and practised in highly diverse ways in different contexts and traditions in Asia. ‘Asian environmental philosophy’ can be understood to include Asian traditions of thought as well as grassroots perspectives on environmental issues in Asia. Environmental issues have sensitive political facets tied to who has the legitimacy to decide about how natural resources are used. Because of this, the works, practices, and (...) researchers in Asian environmental philosophy are exposed to being (mis)used by diverse stakeholders and actors to support political ends not related to environmental sustainability. Two processes are at play at the nexus of the construction of identities in relation to conceptualisations of nature: eco-orientalism and ecological nationalisms. This paper analyzes and exemplifies these dynamics through a conceptual framework that distinguishes ideological and socio-technical explanations of environmental degradation. Finally, to minimise the risks of political misuse, five pathways are presented to carefully help curate environmental, philosophical statements: contextualise, quantify uncertainty and ‘uniqueness’, downscale, confront claims with local realities and literature, and collaborate with researchers from other disciplines. Conjointly, these pathways aim at favouring intercultural collaboration while valuing diversity, thus supporting the development and exchanges in environmental philosophy in Asia and beyond. (shrink)

This article reflects on the convergence of revolutionary anti-capitalism and moral fundamentalism in the contemporary Islamic revival. It is concerned more generally with the recurrent appeal to fundamental value — of a sexual, genealogical or economic kind — in the history of anti-imperial and anti-capitalist movements. Exploring the tradition of Islamist philosophies of finance, the article suggests that Islamic political theology is unique in its ability to separate absolute law from territory ( pace Schmitt). Transgressing the boundaries of nation-state postcolonialism, (...) it thereby relocates absolute value, and hence absolute prohibition, in the realm of the sexual and the divine. (shrink)

Abstract: I argue that Orientalism continues to construct Arabs as subjects that cannot suffer violence, particularly the violence of torture. Beginning with Edward Said’s observation that Orientalists constructed ‘Arabs’ in the nineteenth -century as inorganic, metallic, and mineralized beings, I trace these themes through various sites in and around Guantanamo Bay. One finds the tropes of Orientalism in the Bybee memo as well as in the diary of Mohamedou Ould Slahi. Through these three distinct but related moments, one (...) finds that Orientalism continues to produce Arabs as inorganic entities beyond death and thereby immune to violence and specifically the violence of torture. Insofar as imperialism has co-opted the language of non-violence by constructing its enemies as inviolable, one must recognize the Orientalized Arab as a receptor of limitless ‘non - violent’ hostilities. (shrink)

The ground plan for the present volume is unique in Indological studies.

Under such a name in Kiev on April 22-23, 1996, a colloquium on problems of Eastern religiosity was held on the basis of the Department of Religious Studies and with the assistance of the UAR. It was attended by academics from academic institutions to research centers, university lecturers and high school students, students, postgraduate students, representatives of eastern religious communities, informational agencies and public organizations. Visitors to the colloquium came from India, Donetsk, Lutsk.