“Hyperculturization” after September 11: The Arab-Muslim World and the West

With respect to the relationship between the Arab-Muslim world and the West, little has changed in the discourse of Western and American politicians and pundits since September 11, 2001. Their vision of the “Orient” is a continuation and intensification of the representation of the Arab-Muslim in terms of an alterity that is more absolute than ever. This is a result both of the history of confrontation between the two entities and of a narcissism that can be traced to the European Enlightenment. This narcissism derives from the post-Enlightenment generalization of the Western social and political model, which amalgamates the advent of industrialization, economic development, and military domination with the West’s discourse of rationality and civilization. Indeed, positing its model as the universal norm and identifying itself with the notion of civilization per se, the West implicitly relegates other societies and alternative cultural models to a hierarchically inferior position.