West

is inconceivable without a metanarrative. That narrative involves the emergence, in the sixteenth century, of a concern with world capitalism, the modern state, and colonization whereby under the umbrella of a narrative about the universal legitimacy of power, order became, in that process, the answer to that question.

Colonization became a mission, and the Savage became absence and negation. The symbolic process through which the West created itself thus involved the universal legitimacy of power-and order became, in that process, the answer to the question of legitimacy. To put it otherwise, the West is inconceivable without a metanarrative. Since their common emergence in the sixteenth century, world capitalism, the modern state, and colonization posed-and continue to pose-the issue of the philosophical base of order to the West. What language can legitimate universal control' Here again the geography of imagination and the geography of management appear to be distinct yet intertwined, both empirically and analytically. (Global Transformations: Anthropology and the Modern World 2003:22)

is not the only actor on the stage of modern history, and yet, it is not the the west that has been hit by the world... it has been the world that has been hit, and hit hard, by the west.

The West has never been all of the world that matters. The West has not been the only actor on the stage of modern history even at the peak of the West's power (and this peak has perhaps now already been passed). . . It has not been the West that has been hit by the world... it has been the world that has been hit and hit hard by the West. Arnold J. Toynbee

is an entity that withers every non-Western soul that touches it.

The West withers every non-Western soul that touches it.

is a place where water has the same value as blood.

The West is where water has the same value as blood.

is given to moistening everything with meaning, like an authoritarian religion which imposes baptism on entire peoples.

The West moisrens everything with meaning, like an aurhoritarian religion which imposes baptism on emire peoples: the objects uf language (made out (Jf speech) are obviously de jure converts: the first meanlng of thc system summons, metonymically, the second meaning of discourse, and this summons has thc value of a universal obligation.

is given to trying to pierce meaning, i.e., to get into it by breaking and entering — and not to shake it.

Deciphering, normalizing, or tautologieal, the ways of interpretation, intended in the West to pierce meaning, i.e., to get into it by brcakillg and entering-and nOt to shake ir, to make it fall like the tooth of that ruminanc-of-the-absurd which the Zen apprentice must be, confronring his koan-cannot help fail­ ing the haiku; for rhe \....nrk of reading which is attached to it is to suspend language, not to provoke it: an enrerprise whüse difficulty and necessity Basho himself, the master of the haiku, seemcd to recognize:

is in existence only to bear witness to its own obsolescence.

Today the West exists only to bear witness to its own obsolescence.

west, n.All

west