Ideologiczne uwikłania rozważań nad wielokulturowością. Czy Kapuściński był orientalistą?

• Authors: Agnieszka Jarzewicz
• Languages of publication: PL

Abstracts

EN

Claiming for or against the multicultural order of societies is not ideologically neutral. Sets of believes, presumptions, and prejudices being involved in that debate should all come under the close philosophical scrutiny. One of many controversial facets of the topic emerges from the question of whether it is possible to state multiculturalism and at the same time disseminate ideas included in power discourse. The essay takes that question into account with regard to an accusation of the orientalism which have been made by some literary critics against Ryszard Kapuściński. It aims at providing philosophical and cultural analyses of the validity of that judgement. The paper is divided into three sections. In the first one, it is described the ambiguous ima-ge of ‘the Other’ being drawn by Kapuściński in his reportage literature and philosophical essays, and then it is presented Said’s definition of the orientalism. The second part of the text is comparative, outlining the differences between strong multiculturalism which embed naive version of relativism, soft multiculturalism and ethnocentrism. Location of Kapuściński’s attitude to traditional (non-modern) cultures in the context of standpoints maintained by Andrzej Szahaj and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, reveals that Polish master of reportage moderated his axiology to the form not lacking in criticism levelled at cultural background of ‘the Other’. Are we justified to interpret the criticism presented in Kapuściński’s works as a system of dogmatic biases and ideological fictions orientated on Western intellectual colonization of the East? I reject such opinion as a misinterpretation, and try to demonstrate methodological, thus theoretical, gaps and faults contained in Said’s conception of the orientalism. For that purpose, the final passage of the text contrasts Said’s methodology with theoretical notion of the occidentalism fixed by Ian Buruma and Avishai Margalit. Comparison between the orienta-lism and the occidentalism makes evident that unjustified attempt of seeking for orientalism in all kinds of cultural critique of the East might be interpreted as the orientalistic protectionism.

• Publisher: Wydawnictwo Naukowe AP
• Journal: Świat Tekstów. Rocznik Słupski
• Year: 2009
• Volume: 7
• Pages: 179-191
• Physical description: Oryginalny artykuł naukowy

Dates

published

2009-12-01

Contributors

author

Agnieszka Jarzewicz

• Akademia Pomorska w Słupsku

References

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Identifiers

ISSN

1643-4668