The Essentialist Masturbation: Can the Global East Get any Satisfaction?
The Essentialist Masturbation: Can the Global East Get any Satisfaction?

Summary/Abstract: While agreeing with Martin Müller’s intent of filling the gap in contemporary social sciences that the lack of interest in the Global East constitutes, the article engages in polemics with solution postulated by Müller. The Author argues for a conceptualization of the Global East that would not be based on its essence, but rather on its place in the global division of labor. The “strategic essentialism” postulated by Müller is refuted for three reasons: a reactionary character of identity politics as such, its capture by the Right and doubtful value of socio-cultural identity of most societies of Global East. Instead an alter-universalism is proposed that would be different from the colonial universalism of the West and focused on constructing a common front of progressive-emancipatory struggles.

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