Geographic Reductionism

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Clarissa

January 28, 2016

One stupid term is “the West.” There’s obviously no counterpoint, no “the East” that anybody ever mentions.

A better alternative is “Global North and Global South.” At least, these are two terms, so that’s already more nuanced than “the West.” But this alternative is still very imperfect because it’s emotional a lot more than it is intellectual. It’s all about hunches and vague feelings.

Plus, what about Russia, China, Australia? Global South has the emotional connotation of “pathetic and exploited”, but Australia obviously doesn’t fit in. And Russia and China just complicate everything altogether. What’s Bahrain? Do we feel sorry for it or not?

And so on.

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13 responses to “Geographic Reductionism”

J. Otto Pohl

January 28, 2016

There certainly used to be an “East” in a couple of different senses. One was geographic and cultural and basically meant Asia. Sometimes the Latin word for East, “Orient” was used as in the School of Oriental and African Studies. You still see this use of the word East in the terms Mideast, Near East, and to a lesser extent Far East.

The other use of the term “East” was political to refer to the Soviet bloc which in the 1950s incuded not only Eurasia (USSR), but China, North Korea, and North Vietnam. “Eastern Bloc” was a synomyn for “Communist Bloc” and drew on its geographical location. This use is still used historically. Although obviously many of the former “Eastern Bloc” states like Poland, Hungary, and East Germany have been reabsorbed into the “West.”

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1. Clarissa
  
  January 28, 2016
  
  People seem very scared, these days, to say the word “East”, especially as a counterpoint to “the West.”
  
  At the same time, “the West” has come to stand for “everything nasty and evil.” But using “the East” for “everything great and wonderful” would be too bizarre.
  
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  1. JaneB
    
    January 28, 2016
    
    I agree completely with Otto, that’s a good clear summary of how East-West was a shorthand dualism, just as North versus South are used these days as shorthand for poverty levels and development issues etc.
    
    In British English at least, the original dualism was at least partly about progressive modern healthy societies against indolent oppressive sick societies – Orientalism carried a sort of miasma of heat and opium dens and secretive, cruel, despotic systems – or the Imperial dualism of Adult versus Perpetual Dependent, or productive rationalism versus a lazy mysticism. So we don’t say East much because it’s now seen as racist – the sick societies attached to the work would be typified by an imaginary linked to late Ottoman Turkey or pre-Communist China, the perpectual dependent to childlike “brown natives” who can’t be trusted to not sneak off for a nap or a singsong if a westerner Adult doesn’t keep a benevolent eye on them, the mystics followers of non-Judeo-Christian religions (that one gets blurry! the Orthodox Christian church is clearly ‘east’, and many aspects and subdivisions within Islam are ‘west’. As the Imperial ideal has died and our views of ‘other’ have become at least on the surface more equal and nuanced, so East has been dropped as a term too freighted with a no-longer-acceptable level of racism, and West has come to have a more ambiguous meaning, either referring to unfettered capitalism/extreme, materialistic, spirituality-denying approaches to society and life or to America – Britian likes to imagine itself as more nuanced and conflicted and thoughtful about International Issues, it kind of imagines itself as the wise but increasingly impotent aging relative watching the antics of relatively thoughtless, feckless, endlessly energetic teenage American with a mix of affection and wincing).
    
    In fact I think it tends to get used almost more ironically, at least amongst the chattering classes – the pre-Imperial (smaller scale, inside-the-borders) connotations in Britain of the words west and north were of Ireland and Highland Scotland and Cornwall, the celtic fringes, which were characterised as feckless, over-emotional, ignorant or self-indulgently fiesty, always up for a drink and a scrap and a round of nostalgic declaiming/arty folk singing, but lacking the sense, the morals and the solid bourgois productive and practical qualities of the English/Angles/Saxons/inheritors of an imaginary Pax Romana people from the much more agriculturally productive lowlands of the east and south… and we see that, a bit, reemerging in the arguments about regionalism and devolution in Britain at the moment.
    
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    1. Sterculian Rhetoric
      
      January 28, 2016
      
      “…….Orientalism carried a sort of miasma of heat and opium dens and secretive, cruel, despotic systems………”
      
      Got that right, sister! Imagine the fun of being in the top aristocracy of one of these cruel, despotic systems – and a Matriarchal one to boot! That, my friend, is from whence I come! Myanmar independant of SLORC or that whore, Suu Kyi.
      Imagine the fear and loathing I strike deep into the hearts of The Caucasoid Patriarchy with their Noble Savage, White Messiah and White Man’s Burden doctrines.
      
      “……..in Britain of the words west and north were of Ireland and Highland Scotland and Cornwall, the celtic fringes,….”
      
      You forgot the vile Welsh!
      
      http://sterculianrhetoric.blogspot.ca/2013/06/f-y-cn-rd-ths-y-mst-b-wlsh.html
      
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      1. fluffymog
        
        January 28, 2016
        
        I didn’t want to list ALL the west/north groups, it could go on and on!!
        
        I think pretty much any system can be fun at the top… it’s us poor slobs in the middle and lower layers that notice the difference, and we don’t usually count!
        
        JaneB
        
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Ol.

January 28, 2016

With my limited scope, I see the west everywhere.

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1. Sterculian Rhetoric
  
  January 28, 2016
  
  If you stand at the North Pole, you can’t help but see south everywhere.
  
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Pen

January 28, 2016

At my first uni, there was a general education requirement called “Western Humanities.” Students have to complete two courses: Western Humanities I and II. There was a professor for Western Humanities I that taught traditionally “eastern” philosophies in addition to traditionally “western” ones. He started the class every semester he taught it by pulling out a globe and asking students to define the “east.” Apparently he then said something like “once you label one thing as east, where do you stop?”

Students quickly got the point that “east” and “west” are best left as relative geographical directions, and not absolutes.

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Sterculian Rhetoric

January 28, 2016

I just refer to the dichotomy as “Us” and “Them”.
“Us” being with whom ever I want to to be affiliated at the time and “Them”, those left out. I change the definitions on a whim, or for the sake of optimized political economy and/or bribes.

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cliff arroyo

January 28, 2016

I do find it entertaining that a literature professor is bothered by metaphors in daily usage…..

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1. Clarissa
  
  January 28, 2016
  
  You should see how I react when people use clichés or say “off of.”
  
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  1. Dreidel
    
    January 28, 2016
    
    How do you react when your students write “should of” or “could of”?
    
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    1. Clarissa
      
      January 28, 2016
      
      I get outright scary. 🙂
      
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