Historiography of "Western Civilization"

by WolfDogLizardUrchin

I'm interested in discussions, of any length & reading level, of the development of the concept of Western Civilization. Has it been a constant in Europe since the time of the Roman Empire? In which eras and locations was it most developed & revered?

Pocock writes that "When we speak of 'Western Civilization,' therefore, we mean an Ancient Greece and Rome re-imagined and re-created by a modern 'Europe' originally transalpine and barbaro-Roman." I'd love to read perspectives, & details, on that view.

(Am interested in the same question about the construction/recognition of the "ancient constitution" of England, but that's a little far afield here).

(FWIW, it was thinking about how 19th & 20th century thinkers, in particular Arendt & Kierkegaard, studied & cared deeply about classical writers that gives rise to this question right at the moment.)

AlJoHoBro

Some excellent books to read on this topic, the historiography of Western Civilisation, are:

  • Barbara Fuchs, Mimesis and Empire: The New World, Islam, and European Identities, 2004: Cambridge University Press
  • Daniel Carey and Lynn Festa (eds.), The Postcolonial Enlightenment: Eighteenth-Century Colonialism and Postcolonial Theory, 2009: Oxford University Press
  • Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincicalizing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference, 2000: Princeton University Press
  • Edgardo Lander (ed.), La colonialidad del saber: eurocentrismo y ciencias sociales. Perspectivas latinoamericanas, 2000: CLASCSO
  • Lisa Lampert-Weissig, Medieval Literature and Postcolonial Studies, 2010: Edinburgh University Press
  • Margaret R. Greer, Walter D. Mignolo, and Maureen Quilligan (eds.), Rereading the Black Legend: The Discourse of Religious and Racial Difference in the Renaissance Empires, 2007: University of Chicago Press
  • Prem Poddar, Rajeev S. Patke and Lars Jensen (eds.), A Historical Companion to Postcolonial Literatures: Continental Europe and Its Empires, 2008: Edinburgh University Press
  • Suvir Kaul, Eighteenth-Century British Literature and Postcolonial Studies, 2009: Edinburgh University Press
  • Walter D. Mignolo, The Darker Side of Western Modernity: Global Futures, Decolonial Options, 2011: Duke University Press (Latin America Otherwise: Languages Empires, Nations series)
  • Walter D. Mignolo, The Darker Side of the Renaissance: Literacy, Territoriality, and Colonization, 1995: University of Michigan Press
  • Enrique Dussel, Ethics of Liberation: In the Age of Globalization and Exclusion, 2013: Duke University Press (Latin America Otherwise: Languages Empires, Nations series). Check out the contents of the Introduction: -- 1.1 Origin of the Interregional System: Afro-Bantu Egypt and the Semites of the Middle East -- 1.2 Cultures without Direct Links to the System: The Mesoamerican and Inca Worlds -- 1.3 The "Indoeuropean" World: From the Chinese to the Roman Empire -- 1.4 The Byzantine World, Muslim Hegemony, and the East: The European Medieval Periphery -- 1.5 Unfold the World System: From "Modern" Spain of the Sixteenth Century -- 1.6 Modernity as "Management" of Planetary Centrality and Its Contemporary Crisis -- 1.7 The Liberation of Philosophy (Dussel's work, as with other decolonial the liberation thinkers is to decenter things)
  • Walter D. Mignolo, "Islamophobia/Hispanophobia: The (Re)Configuration of the Racial Imperial/Colonial Matrix", Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self-Knoweldge, Volume 5, Issue 1, Othering Islam. (Part of the Chicano Studies Commons and the Islamic World and Near East History Commons)
  • Walter D. Mignolo, "The North of the South and the West of the East: A Provocation to the Question", 2014: Ibraaz
  • Ania Loomba and Martin Orkin (eds.), Post-Colonial Shakespeares, 1998: Routledge (New Accents series)
  • Ania Loomba, Shakespeare, Race, and Colonialism, 2002: Oxford University Press
  • Alison Blunt and Cheryl McEwan, Postcolonial Geographies, 2002: Continuum
  • Ania Loomba, Colonialism/Postcolonialism, 1998: Routledge
  • Patrick Brantlinger, Victorian Literature and Postcolonial Studies, 2009: Edinburgh University Press