Cultural Schizophrenia: Islamic Societies Confronting the West [Paperback]

Darius Shayegan (Author), Daryush Shayegan (Author), John Howe (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 1997

Professor Shayegan's book is a major contribution to what is perhaps the most critical debate within the Muslim world today: the relationship between its own culture and the influence of Western modernity.

Based on examples ranging from Iran to Morocco, the author portrays a society he defines as peripheral-bound by slavish adherence to its own glorified history, its 'Tradition', yet facing an external reality that derives from the West. The meeting of these two incompatible worlds leads to a profound distortion, not only in how the Muslim world sees the West, but more importantly, in how it sees itself.

Shayegan draws on a vast range of cultural experiences (from China and Japan to India and Latin America) in analysing the type of mentality that is chained to its history. Sources as diverse as Yung and Octavio Paz widen the scope of this illuminating text.

Already published in French to great critical acclaim, this English edition of Cultural Schizophrenia will be required reading for everyone concerned with the state of the world today, whether in the Third World or in the West.

--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Editorial Reviews

Review

'The book sparkles with interesting ideas.' --Middle East International

'The work impresses on two levels: style and substance. Shayegan's vision is a persuasive one.' --International Affairs

' . . . an intelligence and a clarity that are utterly convincing.' --Le Nouvel Obserateur

'This scholarly but accessible study is an analysis-from-within of the tearing apart of a whole people . . . rigorous and courageous.' --L'Express

--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Language Notes

Text: English (translation)
Original Language: French

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 200 pages
• Publisher: Syracuse University Press (December 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0815605072
• ISBN-13: 978-0815605072
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #448,512 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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0 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Islamist schizophrenia, July 5, 2010

By 

William Garrison Jr. (Bellevue, WA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Cultural Schizophrenia: Islamic Societies Confronting the West (Paperback)

"Cultural Schizophrenia" Islamic Societies Confronting the West" by Daryush Shayegan (translated from the French by John Howe). (1997) Former professor of comparative philosophy and Indology at Tehran Univ., former director of the Institute for Ismai'li Studies in Paris. Seyyed Hossein Nasr (Prof. Islamic Studies, George Washington Univ.): "He brilliantly sheds new light on a number of issues that have been superficially glossed over in much of the current literature." Given the title of the book, I thought that the book would discuss, well, you know, schizophrenia. I don't recall seeing the word appearing after the third page. I thought that the author would analyze the works of Psychologist A and compare thoughts with those of Psychologist B, C, & D... at least. But, NO. The author provides a couple of paragraphs of thoughts from about 50 or so philosophers, and other thinkers. You know, the usual: Jung, Kant, Nietzsche, Horkheimer, strong on Michel Foucault, a German or two, a Frenchman, some Brits, Chinese, Hindu, even someone from Peru (or was it Paraguay?). The author banters about concepts like the "Hemiplegic Outlook" and "Egocentric consciousness" in trying to bring together some joint-philosophy of modernism, which is alien to the stuck-in-the-mud Islamists. The author wrote: "Other thinkers, such as the Egyptian Abduh, the Syrian al-Kawakibi and the Indian Muhammad Iqbal (1876-1938), explored the themes of backwardness (ta'akhur) and inertia (jumud), opposing them with the ideas of evolution (tatawwur) and progress (taraqqi) acquired from the West. The idea of innovation (bid'a), condemned by Islam as `the worst of things', was re-evaluated; there was even talk of reopening the long-closed door of ijtihad (individual power of decision) [p. 52]. The author concluded: "The [Iranian] mullahs are putting their most unhinged fantasies into effect, giving free rein to their unbridled imagination, whipping the cult of martyrdom from frenzy to paroxysm, reducing timeless myths to their most flatly operational allude: and they are innovating in all directions. They have given concrete form to hallucinatory possibilities that once seethed harmlessly in the formless magma of our collective unconscious" [p. 174]. I believe the author could have condensed this 188-page book down to about 30 pages of relevancy. Not amongst the first books that I would grab to investigate the concept of Islamist schizophrenia.