다양한 유럽중심의 역사와 해결책들 (Varieties of Eurocentric History and Some Remedies for the Problem)

서지정보

· 발행기관 : 이화여자대학교 이화사학연구소
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· 저자명 : 제리 벤틀리

초록

The term Eurocentrism means different things to different people. Eurocentrism is an issue to take seriously. In an effort to bring focus to the effects of Eurocentrism for the disciplined understanding of the past, I would like to explore three kinds of Eurocentric thinking that have influenced historical scholarship–simple Eurocentrism, ideological Eurocentrism, and structural Eurocentrism–and then propose some remedies for the problems that have resulted.
At one time a variety of simple Eurocentrism was almost universal in professional historical scholarship. To some extent, this approach to world history reflected the state of professional historical knowledge about the larger world before about 1950.
This kind of Eurocentric conception stands on the foundation of willful ignorance－active disinterest and refusal to engage the larger world－and it is accordingly simple to remedy by taking the world beyond Europe seriously and developing reliable knowledge about its past. Eurocentrism is not destiny. Once they have recognized Eurocentrism as a problem, scholars have been able to attack it and devise better approaches to the global past.
More complex and more difficult to address is a deeper form of Eurocentric history that draws its inspiration more from Max Weber and Karl Marx than from Hegel. Here I refer to it as ideological Eurocentrism because even though it stood on a flimsy empirical foundation, historians nevertheless took it as a persuasive framework for purposes of explaining the world they saw in front of themselves.
The founders of ideological Eurocentrism looked on a world in which Europe was supreme, and they assumed that European industrialization was the end of history. Global dominance of Europe and its offshoots, particularly in North America, lasted about two centuries, but it was by no means the end of history.
In comparison with the varieties of Eurocentrism that I have called simple and ideological, structural Eurocentrism is a deeper and more subtle problem that is accordingly trickier and more difficult to remedy. By structural Eurocentrism I mean the structures of thought and categories of analysis–all deriving from modern, capitalist, industrial, and imperial Europe–that steer historians and other scholars to understand the world from a particular perspective.
Chakrabarty’s proposed solution to this problem was to “provincialize Europe.” Chakrabarty’s approach does not entirely liquidate structural Eurocentrism, but it certainly dilutes it by decentering Europe and contextualizing European modernity. Two additional approaches complement Chakrabarty’s project of provincializing Europe: systematic reflexivity and a new cosmopolitanism.
Where Chakrabarty challenged Eurocentrism by focusing on the local, the new cosmopolitanism attacks Eurocentrism by focusing on transregional and global issues in such a way that Europe is one member in a larger constellation of alternative societies. Three approaches in particular reflect the mentality or sensibility of the new cosmopolitanism: a critical-postcolonial, a philosophical-ethical, and a fresh historical approach. My view is that historians are capable of improving their craft.
Historians successfully overcame the limitations of the simple and ideological varieties of Eurocentrism, and there is no reason to doubt that the approaches discussed here will enable them to deal effectively also with structural Eurocentrism. Historical knowledge will always be imperfect, but with care and effort on the part of its practitioners, it can certainly become a better and more sophisticated guide to the global past.

영어초록

The term Eurocentrism means different things to different people. Eurocentrism is an issue to take seriously. In an effort to bring focus to the effects of Eurocentrism for the disciplined understanding of the past, I would like to explore three kinds of Eurocentric thinking that have influenced historical scholarship–simple Eurocentrism, ideological Eurocentrism, and structural Eurocentrism–and then propose some remedies for the problems that have resulted.
At one time a variety of simple Eurocentrism was almost universal in professional historical scholarship. To some extent, this approach to world history reflected the state of professional historical knowledge about the larger world before about 1950.
This kind of Eurocentric conception stands on the foundation of willful ignorance－active disinterest and refusal to engage the larger world－and it is accordingly simple to remedy by taking the world beyond Europe seriously and developing reliable knowledge about its past. Eurocentrism is not destiny. Once they have recognized Eurocentrism as a problem, scholars have been able to attack it and devise better approaches to the global past.
More complex and more difficult to address is a deeper form of Eurocentric history that draws its inspiration more from Max Weber and Karl Marx than from Hegel. Here I refer to it as ideological Eurocentrism because even though it stood on a flimsy empirical foundation, historians nevertheless took it as a persuasive framework for purposes of explaining the world they saw in front of themselves.
The founders of ideological Eurocentrism looked on a world in which Europe was supreme, and they assumed that European industrialization was the end of history. Global dominance of Europe and its offshoots, particularly in North America, lasted about two centuries, but it was by no means the end of history.
In comparison with the varieties of Eurocentrism that I have called simple and ideological, structural Eurocentrism is a deeper and more subtle problem that is accordingly trickier and more difficult to remedy. By structural Eurocentrism I mean the structures of thought and categories of analysis–all deriving from modern, capitalist, industrial, and imperial Europe–that steer historians and other scholars to understand the world from a particular perspective.
Chakrabarty’s proposed solution to this problem was to “provincialize Europe.” Chakrabarty’s approach does not entirely liquidate structural Eurocentrism, but it certainly dilutes it by decentering Europe and contextualizing European modernity. Two additional approaches complement Chakrabarty’s project of provincializing Europe: systematic reflexivity and a new cosmopolitanism.
Where Chakrabarty challenged Eurocentrism by focusing on the local, the new cosmopolitanism attacks Eurocentrism by focusing on transregional and global issues in such a way that Europe is one member in a larger constellation of alternative societies. Three approaches in particular reflect the mentality or sensibility of the new cosmopolitanism: a critical-postcolonial, a philosophical-ethical, and a fresh historical approach. My view is that historians are capable of improving their craft.
Historians successfully overcame the limitations of the simple and ideological varieties of Eurocentrism, and there is no reason to doubt that the approaches discussed here will enable them to deal effectively also with structural Eurocentrism. Historical knowledge will always be imperfect, but with care and effort on the part of its practitioners, it can certainly become a better and more sophisticated guide to the global past.

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