Date: Fri, 6 Mar 1998 09:52:23 -0700 (MST) From: Martha Gimenez To: psn-seminars@csf.colorado.edu Subject: Eurocentrism: A Critique (fwd) I am forwarding this message on behalf of Carl Dassbach. ---------- Forwarded message ---------- In all honesty, I find the debate and discussion about eurocentrism (which periodically reappears on WSN) to be somewhat out of place here. Nonetheless, since Manjur has seen it fit to bring it up, I think there are some important points to be made. First, so-called Eurocentrism ala Bergsen and Frank is merely another example of a favorite tactic of post-modernist, i.e., creating strawmen (which, in fact, do not exist) in order to attack them. As I have repeatedly argued, it is not Eurocentric to say that something different happened in Europe in the so-called (heaven forbid) "long 16th c." and this had a profound effect on the subsequent development of the world economy. This is not to deny what came before nor to impute to Europe some type of super-historical role but to merely recognize a historical event. (BTW, The very idea that Frank begins "post-world-system theory" is bogus. Anyone who has read Wallerstein knows that for IW the modern world system is a historical system. As such, it is bounded in time which means it has a beginning and an end. Hence, the study of the modern world-system can never be (nor was it intended to be) the study of all of human history but merely a specific period.) Likewise, anyone with one-quarter of a brain would admit that the rise of Europe did not occur ex nihilo Instead, the rise of Europe was part of a larger world historical dynamic. Hence, these arguments - which are so often repeated in the Eurocentrism debate - are not simply trivial, they are insulting. Frank claims to have "so-to-speak" rediscovered the Orient. He hasn't - instead world historical development has. In other words. Frank discovery of the Orient is the result of real material developments - namely, the rise of the Orient over the last 20 years. It is from THIS present that Frank can now look backward and reconstruct a new and more inclusive global history. Similarly, what Wallerstein saw in 1970 was a "present" of European dominance. "The owl of Minerva" as Hegel tells us "only flies with the falling of dusk... only after history is cut and dried." Two other points - yes, perhaps we are seeing the rise of the Orient (although recent events might call that into question) but this rise seems to me to be rooted in institutional and social forms which developed in Europe, namely, rational (in the Weberian sense) capitalism. Unless, of course, we are ready to admit that rational capitalism is not a European development but predates the rise of Europe. (I forgot the exact phrase but Frank quoted someone to the effect that (and I admit that I may be wrong on the exact quote) without "Attila there would be no Charlemagne" but I responded "without Ford there would be no Toyota" and that, I assure you, can be verified beyond any doubt.) Second, how one sees the rise of the East or, for that matter, the historical rise of Europe has, I think, important ramifications for how one understands the process of historical development and change. What I see Frank advocating in these arguments is contrary to what I believe to be the very essence of the historical change, namely, qualitative change and discontinuity. (BTW, IW first volume was part of a series called "Studies in Social Discontinuity."). Frank seems to be suggesting that there is some long and unbroken continuity between the world of 3000 years ago and today. (IW, I would argue suggests the same but over a somewhat shorter duration - 400 years) On the one hand I say "yes" to both of these claims at one level - yes, were are dealing with human civilization on earth or with European civilization and there is some type of continuity - but I also say "no" on a more fundamental, epistemological level. To understand the essence of historical change, it is not simply enough to identify similarities and continuities between different eras of history because all this tell us is how the present is similar to the past. Instead, I believe historical knowledge, as knowledge of concrete historical periods, involves identifying the differetia specifica which sets apart different epochs or eras. The historical process is a dialectical process - it is a qualitative and not simply a quantitative process. (As Schumpeter once said "add as many mail coaches as you want but you will never get a steam engine") These qualitative transformation are what make eras historically specific - Foucault emphasize this in the Introduction to the ARCHEOLOGY OF KNOWLEDGE when he says that we must study the breaks in history and not the continuities, ; Marx makes the same point when he discuss the concrete as the historically specific or "the unity of many determinations" and Arrighi's Long 20th C. is a demonstration of distinct qualitative transformations in the development of modern capitalism. Carl Dassbach