Wherever it occurs, Occidentalism is fed by a sense of humiliation, of defeat. It is a war against a particular idea of the West - a bourgeois society addicted to money, creature comforts, sex, animal lusts, self-interest, and security - which is n
Arundhati Roy's simple-minded demonization of the American monster is pure Occidentalism, or Said in reverse, which only helps to undermine the political self-scrutiny without which a democracy cannot work.
BY Ian Buruma 3 May 2002
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