| Publication |
2014.
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| Summary/Abstract |
Starting with Said's critique of Orientalism but going well beyond it, poststructuralist and postcolonial critiques of modernity have challenged not only one-dimensional visions of Western modernity-by "multiplying" or "alternating" it with different modernities-but also the binaries between the modern and the traditional/premodern/early modern, thus resulting in novel, more inclusive ways of thinking about past experiences. Yet, while scholars working on the Middle East have successfully struggled against the Orientalist perception of the Middle East as the tradition constructed in opposition to the Western modern, they often have difficulties in deconstructing the tradition within, that is, the premodern past. They have traced the alternative and multiple forms of modernities in Middle Eastern geography within the temporal borders of "modernity." However, going beyond this temporality and constructing new concepts-beyond the notion of tradition-to understand the specificities of past experiences (which are still in relationship with the present) remains underdeveloped in the social history of the Middle East.
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