i like the idea of moving away from a cultural particularism (any monoculture) that is exclusionary and therefore violent and think of modernity as a global project, with all its attendant complex cultural diversity. culture (whether european or eastern) is not something that falls out of the sky. it is a multi-layered, lived, human process with infinite genetic and civilizational strands. cultural hubris is therefore, by definition, a scam.
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The strength of Amin’s theory of eurocentrism lies in his ability to demonstrate that ‘Europe’ is a culturalist construction that masquerades as universal. That is, rather than presupposing that the binary of West/East––or Europe and its Other––existed in the pre-modern world, he argues that European civilization is an ideology that developed after 1492, the epoch of modern colonialism. Since the nation-states of the European continent were the colonial masters, eventually they began to conceive of themselves as a superior and united civilization. Eurocentric thought emerged when scholars in this continent began to mine the past and construct precedents for their supposedly superior civilization. This led to the invention of ‘an eternal West, unique since its moment of origin. This arbitrary and mythic construct had as its counterpart an equally artificial construction of the Other (the Orient), likewise constructed on mythic foundations’.
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Amin further bolsters his position by examining the historical development of European capitalism and the Enlightnment break from metaphysics. Although he remains a staunch advocate for modernity, he points out that capitalist modernity is flawed by European culturalism. Rather than seeing modernity (the understanding that humans rather than supernatural forces make history) as a world project, the eurocentric position holds that European culture is the universal grounds for modernity. In fact, eurocentrism is a cultural particularism that masquerades as universal. Once again, Amin sets himself against the postcolonial position by rejecting the idea that universal values are exclusionary and violent. Rather, he asserts that the culturalisms that masquerade as universal are exclusionary in that they promote difference. The solution is to pursue a universal project free from European particularism, a ‘modernity critical of modernity’.
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Therefore, the progressive response to eurocentrism should not be based on a flight back into cultural difference, where one embraces particular ethnic identities and metaphysical notions of the world, but the pursuit of a modern project premised on universal values freed from the eurocentric vision of the world. The strength of this argument rests on Amin’s historical exposition of how European capitalism developed against the backdrop of other non-European cultures that, at that period of time, formed different centres of human civilization. Thus, although the values of modernity would eventually emerge in a European context, intrinsically connected to the birth of capitalism, the seeds of these values were evident elsewhere. The eurocentric annexation of the world, however, created the culturalist myth that modernity was a product of some Platonic European essence.
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More here.