L'Occident décroché [French]

By Jean-Loup Amselle

Rights sold to Italy

Post-colonialist critique has primarily focused on the questioning of the Western concept of a universal reason and on the denunciation of the implicit claim to superiority exemplified by Europe's promulgation of the Enlightenment, Democracy and Human rights throughout the world. For Jean-Loup Amselle, this opposition between the West and the rest of the world is over-simplistic: it ignores connections and interrelations; it does not take into account alternative European philosophies and schools of thought, and forgets the ideas and controversies that came from Africa, Asia as well as Central and South America. Amselle launched into a major research, across continents, theories, authors and institutions. From the renewal of a Jewish school of thought inspired by Benny Levy, to the indigenisation of the Zapatista movement, to the defense of African endogenous epistemologies and the affirmation of a specific Indian temporality, Amselle analyses alternatives, and points out the dangers which systems of thought that are based on essentialists principles of cultures and races represent. In doing so, the author also goes back to the tutelary figure of Gramsci in order to show how the ritualistic homage that is paid to him in postcolonial studies is grounded in an unfaithful use of Gramsci's thought. Amselle's wide-ranging journey through contemporary thought, well-documented as well as opinionated, ultimately brings us back to today's France. Post-colonialism arrives belatedly in contemporary France, at a time where the crisis between the two models of social understanding - that of the class struggle and that of the Republic, allows for a greater ethnicisation of social relations.

Jean-Loup Amselle is an anthropologist and Director of Studies at the cole des hautes tudes en sciences sociales. He has published, amongst other books, Au coeur de l'ethnie (3rd edition, La D couverte, 2005) in collaboration with E. M'Bokolo, Branchements (2d dition, Flammarion, 2005) and L'Art de la friche (Flammarion, 2005). He is also chief editor of the Cahiers d' tudes africaines.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: French
• ISBN: 2234060427
• ISBN13: 9782234060425
• Release Date: February 2022
• Publisher: Stock
• Length: 330 Pages
• Weight: 0.81 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.3" x 8.5"