The Essential Fallacy of Europe

Authors

  • Eric D Howerton UH English/Creative Writing PhD student

Keywords:

Edward Said, Friedrich Nietzsche, Orientalism, Discourse Theory

Abstract

This essay examines Post Colonial theorist Edward Said's use of Nietzschian philosophy as a starting point for the establishment of a discourse based largely on European writings about "the Orient." Along with questioning the thoroughness of Said's Nietzschian methodologies, this essay argues that continued use of the terms "Europe" and "Europeans" be reexamined in Post Colonial conversations due to these term's inaccurate representation of Europe as continent and cultural expression that is altogether removed from Asia and "the Orient."

Author Biography

Eric D Howerton, UH English/Creative Writing PhD student

Eric Howerton is currently a 5th-year PhD candidate in Fiction at the University of Houston’s Creative Writing Program, the former fiction editor of Gulf Coast: A Journal of Literature and Fine Arts, and an adjunct faculty member at Weber State University. My poetry, fiction, and journalism have appeared/are forthcoming in PANK, The Higgs Weldon, Night Train, Grey Sparrow, Duck and Herring Pocket Field Guides, Johnny America, and Haggard and Halloo, as well as several alt-weeklies in Texas and New Mexico. 

References

Ahmad, Aijaz. In Theory. London: Verso, 1994

Amin, Samir. Eurocentrism. New York: Monthly Review, 1989.

Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, and Daniel Breazeale. Philosophy and Truth: Selections from Nietzsche's Notebooks of the Early 1870's. Amherst, NY: Humanity, 1999.

Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, Raymond Geuss, and Ronald Speirs. The Birth of Tragedy and Other Writings. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge UP, 2006.

Porter, Dennis. "Orientalism and Its Problems." Colonial Discourse and Post-colonial Theory: a Reader. New York: Columbia UP, 1994.

Said, Edward W. Culture and Imperialism. New York: Knopf, 1993.

Said, Edward W. Orientalism. New York: Vintage, 1979.

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Published

2014-01-26

Issue

Section

Critical Articles