The relationship between the West and the Global South has historically supported policies, both cultural and social, that maintained pre-established power dynamics, relegating the Third World to the role of both subject of study and object of conquest.
Since the era of colonial independence, the construction of nation-states has relied on Western modern sciences, whereby intellectuals and scientists have played the role of transferring science, arts, and literature from the West to the rest of the world. This has imposed a cultural model where the West produces and the non-West consumes. There is an increasingly strong need today to reevaluate the power dynamics between subject and object, between a wealthy center that emanates cultural and political models and a marginalized periphery that absorbs them. The Third World has reached a level of maturity that allows it to emancipate itself from the constraints of Western culture, in favor of a process of equitable exchange and mutual movement.
While Orientalism has always been a discipline that expresses the deep inclinations and motivations of European consciousness, revealing the passions of the subject rather than describing the object, Occidentalism addresses the calls for renewal. It sheds new light not only on traditional cultures but especially on the creative potential of contemporary philosophers, artists, and writers.
