"Binary distinctions are not necessarily motivated by a desire to dominate. David Spurr (1993: 103) discusses the ways in which Rousseau, in the Essay on the Origin of Languages, attempts to validate the ‘life and warmth’ of Oriental languages such as Arabic and Persian. But in employing the ‘logic and precision’ of Western writing to do so, Rousseau effectively negates these languages because they become characterized by a primitive lack of rational order and culture. Although setting out to applaud such languages, he succeeds in confirming the binary between European science, understanding, industry and writing on the one hand, and Oriental primitivism and irrationality on the other."
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Academics from FrancePhilosophers from FranceAcademics from SwitzerlandPhilosophers from SwitzerlandBiologists from France
Original Language: English
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Sources
Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, Helen Tiffin (2000). Post-Colonial Studies: The Key Concepts, second edition, London: Routledge, p. 20, citing Spurr's The Rhetoric of Empire: Colonial Discourse in Journalism, Travel Writing and Imperial Administration, Durham and London: Duke University Press.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jean-Jacques_Rousseau
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Jean-Jacques Rousseau
1712 – 1778
französisch-schweizerischer Schriftsteller und Philosoph
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