Gharbzadegi (Persian:غربزدگی) orOccidentosis is aPersian-origin term translated among other ways[1] as 'Westernized', 'West-struck-ness',[2] 'Westoxification'.[3] The concept describes an unquestioned imitation by Eastern cultures of Western appearance, behavior (particularlyconsumerism andmaterialism), modes of reasoning and expression with an insufficient intellectual understanding thereof. This would lead to the ruling classes reasoning and behaving in a way that is inconsistent with the environment they live in, and attempting to apply Western solutions to Eastern problems.
The term implies both that Iran is "intoxicated" (zadegi) with the West (from Arabic غَرْب ḡarb), but also a victim of the West's "toxins" or disease. The "intoxication or infatuation ... impairs rational judgment" so that Iran (and sometimes also the Muslim world) is prevented from perceiving the danger of the object of its infatuation -- the toxins of the West -- "moral laxity, social injustice, secularism, devaluation of religion, and obsession with money, all of which are fueled by capitalism" and result in "cultural alienation."[4] The term is used to refer to the loss ofIranian cultural identity through the adoption and imitation ofWestern models and Western criteria in education, the arts, and culture; through the transformation of Iran into a passive market for Western goods and a pawn in Western geopolitics.[5][6]
The phrase was first coined byAhmad Fardid, a professor of philosophy at theUniversity of Tehran, in the 1940s to refer to the hegemony ofancient Greek philosophy -- a different meaning from that later popularised by Al-e Ahmad.[7]It gained common usage following the clandestine publication in 1962 of the bookOccidentosis: A Plague from the West byJalal Al-e-Ahmad.
Al-e Ahmed describes Iranian behavior in the twentieth century as being "Weststruck." The word was play on the dual meaning of "stricken" in Persian, which meant to be afflicted with a disease or to be stung by an insect, or to be infatuated and bedazzled.[8]
"I say thatgharbzadegi is likecholera [or]frostbite. But no. It's at least as bad assawflies in thewheat fields. Have you ever seen how they infest wheat? From within. There's a healthy skin in places, but it's only a skin, just like the shell of acicada on a tree."[8]
Al-e Ahmad argued that Iran must gain control overmachines and become a producer rather than a consumer, even though once having overcome Weststruckness it will face a new malady - also western - that of 'machinestruckness'.
"The soul of this devil 'the machine' [must be] bottled up and brought out at our disposal ... [The Iranian people] must not be at the service of machines, trapped by them, since the machine is a means not an end."[9]
The higher productivity of the foreign machines had devastated Iran's native handicrafts and turned Iran into an unproductive consumption economy. "These cities are just flea markets hawking European manufactured goods ... [In] no time at all instead of cities and villages we'll have heaps of dilapidated machines all over the country, all of them exactly like American 'junkyards' and every one as big asTehran."[9]
The world market and global divide between rich and poor created by the machine - "one the constructors" of machines "and the other the consumers" - had supersededMarxistclass analysis.[9]
Al-e Ahmad believed intellectuals were unable to construct an authentically Iranian modernity,[10] and that the one element of Iranian life uninfected bygharbzadegi was religion.TwelverShia Islam in Iran had authenticity and the ability to move people,[11] so to eliminate the homogenizing and alienating forces of Western modernity it was necessary to "return" to authenticIslamic culture.[10]
"Gharbzadegi" is the title of a political song by British avant-garde musicianRobert Wyatt, which appears onOld Rottenhat (Rough Trade, 1985) and can also be heard on the tribute LPSoupsongs Live: The Music of Robert Wyatt.[12]
