In this article I argue that, in spite of the apparently unshakable hegemony of the historical, philosophical and sociological arguments invoked by the canonical history of Europe and the world to demonstrate the uniqueness of the West and its superiority, there is room to think of a non-Occidentalist West. By that I mean a vast array of conceptions, theories, arguments that, though produced in the West by recognized intellectual figures, were discarded, marginalized or ignored because they did not fit the (...) political objectives of capitalism and colonialism at the roots of Western modernity. In the article I tackle specifically three topics: the conceptions of antiquity, modern science and a teleology of the future. Among many others who might be selected, I resort to three eccentric figures — Lucian of Samosata, Nicholas of Cusa and Blaise Pascal — to exemplify some of the paths that might guide us in the construction of a non-capitalist, non-colonialist inter-cultural dialogue. Such paths are here designated as those of learned ignorance, ecology of knowledge, wager on another possible world and artisanship of practices. (shrink)

It is established in the literature that touristic images of the Orient are grounded in Occidental authority and dominant global power relations. Scholars have suggested that indigenous image creators in the Middle East continue to read from an Occidental script, perpetuating oppositional perspectives of us and them, the familiar and the strange, the dynamic and the atrophied – fuelling the development of neo-Orientalist tourist sites/sights. This paper explores the extent to which such scripting continues to persist in official representations of (...) rentier states in the Arabian Peninsula. Through a critical discourse analysis of the Omani tourism promotional film Welcome to My Country, it is suggested that when Oman speaks for itself within a Western discourse of tourism promotion, what results is a form of self-Orientalism. (shrink)