10 - The Elephant on the Doorstep?: East European Perspectives on Eurocentrism
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 November 2020
Summary
Abstract
In this chapter I explore two interrelated questions: What is the Eurocentric nature of the discourse on Eurocentrism? and What is the relevance of (so-called) East European discourses on Europe to the study of Eurocentrism? On the one hand, any focus on ‘Europe’ from an East European source may be considered to prioritize Europe as a signifier; on the other, there are many examples of discourses within Europe that do not necessarily identify with, and in fact seek to challenge, norms of Europeanness as defined in mainstream Western Europe. This chapter attempts a preliminary gathering of relevant evidence and perspectives that complicate the study of Eurocentrism and perhaps help the field to avoid the trap of reproducing the Eurocentric terms of the debate.
Keywords: Eurocentrism, Eastern Europe, discourse, Begriffsgeschichte, symbolic geography
Is ‘Eurocentrism’ a Eurocentric Term?
The terms ‘Eurocentric’ and ‘Eurocentrism’, now widely used and discussed in history and cultural theory, are themselves of Western European origin. The question of when they were first used – and also where, and how – still requires clarification. Taking an approach from conceptual history, it is possible to trawl through reference works and online digital tools to pinpoint their birth and diffusion.
The Oxford English Dictionary, for example, identifies the first usage of the term – in the earlier form ‘Europocentric’ – in Processes of History by the Irish-born American historian and social scientist Frederick J. Teggart, published by Yale University Press in 1918. In this all-but-forgotten book, Teggart argued that ‘human history is not unitary but pluralistic; that what we are given is not one history but many and especially that the concept of “progress” is arrived at by the maintenance of a Europocentric tradition and the elimination from consideration of the activities of all peoples whose civilization does not at once appear as contributory to our own’.
That the term came to be used in a work on ‘the processes of history’ in the wake of World War I is in many ways to be expected. At this time, conceptions of European progress were coming under scrutiny in many countries both within Europe and without.
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- Eurocentrism in European History and Memory , pp. 179 - 192Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2019