Neo-eurocentrism and science: implications for the historiography of islamic art and architecture

Abstract

A recently published and impressive two-volume set, A Companion to Islamic Art and Architecture, edited by Finbarr Flood and Gürlu Necipoğlu, reveals an unprecedented collaborative attempt by leading scholars to revamp the field and renegotiate its established frameworks in new terms.1 The lengthy intro-duction by Flood and Necipoğlu revisits many of the key issues that have haunted the discipline since its inception, presenting a carefully argued reset-ting of the field’s conceptual and methodological parameters. In their lucid discussions, the editors placed particular emphasis on the inter-connected issues of unity versus diversity, periodization, key thresholds of change, and dealing with the ‘modern’. With reference to S.D. Goitein, they used periodiza-tion as a ‘scientific prerequisite’ to establish a seemingly ‘neutral’ chronological structure that avoids the pitfalls of conventional dynastic, regional, or media-based taxonomies, and through this they aim to dismantle the taxonomic logic underlying the old canons found in art history surveys and art catalogues. In their preferred chronological timeframe, they considered the Mongol sacking of Baghdad in 1258 as representing the most significant threshold of change, ‘a watershed in the development of Islamic art and architecture’,2 according to which they divided their collection into two volumes: the first is titled From the Prophet to the Mongols, and the second, From the Mongols to Modernism. While their preoccupation with periodization appears as a less controversial issue of preference, their discussions of the ‘Islamic’ and unity versus diversity – the most recurrent issues of debate in the field – appear more divisive. Their discussions reveal a two-sided position: on one hand there is a clear distanc-ing from the earlier works of the field’s orientalist founders and their close followers who sought a unifying meaning of the ‘Islamic’, as well as from the works of the essentialists and/or universalists who seek an ahistorical under-standing of the ‘Islamic’; on the other hand there is a growing rift between two camps, who are united against uniformity, essentialism, and universalism, but in growing disagreement about the increasing ‘unwieldiness’ of the field as a result of its increasing diversity.3 Arguing against Blair and Bloom’s concern over unwieldy diversification, Flood and Necipoğlu saw in the field’s transition to a ‘multifocal and multivocal arena of inquiry… a mark of its coming of age’.4 In emphasizing the importance of the field’s growing diversity and richness, they compared Islamic art to western art both in the inherent ambiguity of its label and in its richly diversified historical developments, and highlighted the necessity of including the long-neglected ‘early modern’ and ‘modern’ in their newly articulated chronological model. Flood and Necipoğlu’s timely conceptual and methodological reframing raises many important questions that will no doubt stimulate healthy and vigorous debates. In this brief essay I want to dwell on the question concerning the threshold of modern change as it relates to the historiographies of Islamic civiliza-tion in general, and of Islamic art and architecture in particular. My aim is to go beyond the debate of inclusion and exclusion, and to examine its implications for periodization and the place of the ‘Islamic’ in the evolving narratives of global or world history. I argue that despite the general consensus among Islamic art historians concerning the necessity of including the modern and the contemporary in the historiographic scope of Islamic art, the various posi-tions on how to deal with the ‘modern’ have remained rather ambiguous.5 The question of modernity brings us back to Eurocentrism and orientalism, which once were hotly debated topics occupying the centre stage in the field.6 As rigorous postcolonial and post-orientalist critiques have effectively dealt with the issues of misrepresentation and marginalization, the debates of these topics among Islamic art and architecture historians have receded in recent years.7 Inclusion, equal exposure, and celebration of cultural difference are increasingly becoming acceptable mainstream strategies for dealing with the fallouts of the early (mis)conceptualization of the field by Eurocentric orien-talists. Yet as my reflections will show, Eurocentrism has not disappeared; it has morphed into a new, more robust form, neo-Eurocentrism, demanding a rethinking of the conceptual and methodological parameters of the fields on yet again new grounds.