Coming to Terms with the West: Intellectual Strategies of Bifurcation and Post-Westernism in Siam
Coming to Terms with the West: Intellectual Strategies of Bifurcation and Post-Westernism in Siam
This chapter attempts to establish a “post-Western” intellectual framework for dealing with the West and assesses its implications in broader cultural and intellectual contexts. It discusses two of the various intellectual strategies that have been deployed in dealing with the West. One, originating in the mid-nineteenth century, is an epistemological framework for selecting Western knowledge and influence by means of a conceptual bifurcation between the spiritual and the worldly, which remains widely used today despite, or because of, its simplicity and imprecision. Another epistemological framework for dealing with the influence of the West in the Thai academic context is illustrated by the postcolonial critique known as “post-Westernism,” which allegedly seeks to end intellectual domination by the West. In contrast to the strategy of bifurcation, post-Westernism is very recent and the durability of its influence and its broader implications remain unclear.
Keywords: intellectual framework, intellectual strategies, bifurcation, postcolonial critique, post-Westernism, intellectual domination
Hong Kong Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs , and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us .
