Papers by Paris Tsekouras
There is a very particular historical precedent, one that, more accurately, regards a certain abs... more There is a very particular historical precedent, one that, more accurately, regards a certain absence, rather than appearance, that leads some societies to self identify as indefinitely in want. This part vague, part concrete endeavor called modernization is the one common destination which the societies that didn't give birth to are destined to attain, while incurably remaining foreign to. The part of the western civilization that articulated its concept and transplanted it in various degrees throughout its colonial itineraries is understood by the affected as the origin of this single source of light, the land where modernization was conceived and achieved, the latter not necessarily preceded by the former. The cultural space that is defined by the boundaries of 19 th century Ottoman Empire -and especially the Balkans and Anatolia, for the Arab provinces have been subject to considerably different historical tug o' wars -has witnessed similar receptions of this civilizing mission. Being a space that wasn't conventionally colonized, at least in the sense of the second wave of colonization of the second half of the 19 th century, that saw the dissemination of western rule all over the world, modernization has been implemented as an ambiguously foreign project, on the one hand a quasi-intentional self-regulatory preemptive reform, naming precisely those authentically modern powers as the threat to be countered via their own vocabulary, and on the other hand a positivist emulation of the greener grass of not too distant a neighbor, of a community where this space allegedly belongs by ancestral rights.
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Papers by Paris Tsekouras