Europe in the Eyes of the »Others«

It is taken for granted that Europe has been the measure of world history and world literature. It even appears as such in the narratives of non-Western countries. Any comprehensive study of Europe today would have to ground itself in the transformations of Europe’s self-representations and descriptions in the eyes of the “others” from Montesquieu’s fiction of the “Lettres persanes” up to the present day realities of border crossing globalization and migration. Key European ideas such as modernization and progress, democratic institutions, nation state regimes, political culture and human rights are viewed differently in other places. An overpowering European hegemony has waned in the wake of self-doubt and criticism, but it continues to have an effect on the consciousness and self-conception of other, nowadays perhaps less “alien” countries and cultures in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and an Eastern Europe that insists on its differences from the West. If we could avoid the usual exclusionary comparisons and hostile characterizations – orientalism versus occidentalism, despotism versus liberalism, religion versus secularization – a greater respect for mutual interests and for the very different understandings of the past and the divergent prospects of the future could be gained. Maybe a less Eurocentric and “provincialized” Europe would be more inclined to cooperate with the “others”, the non-white and non- Christian part of mankind. Thus the view of Europe in non-European narratives, analyses and visions will give us ample opportunities to revise our own beliefs and prejudices.