Gharbzadegi
Gharbzadegi or Occidentosis is a Persian-origin term translated among other ways as 'Westoxification' or 'West-struck-ness'.The concept describes an unquestioned imitation by Eastern cultures of Western appearance, behavior, 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" with the West, but also a victim of the West's "toxins" or disease. The "intoxication or infatuation... impairs rational judgment" so that Iran 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." The term is used to refer to the loss of Iranian cultural identity through the adoption and imitation of Western 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.
The phrase was first coined by Ahmad Fardid, a professor of philosophy at the University of Tehran, in the 1940s to refer to the hegemony of ancient Greek philosophy -- a different meaning from that later popularised by Al-e Ahmad.
It gained common usage following the clandestine publication in 1962 of the book Occidentosis: A Plague from the West by Jalal Al-e-Ahmad.
Different translations to English
- "Westoxication", is by far the predominant translation in English references. It was used by Brad Hanson who found other renderings of gharbzadegi to be too literal. Hanson assumed Al-e Ahmad was "playing on the word senzadegi, the affliction of wheat by an aphid-like pest quite common in Iran". Hanson argued that it seeks to convey both intoxication and infection. Mehrzad Boroujerdi added, "it most closely resembles Al-e Ahmad's usage of gharbzadegi as a medical metaphor denoting a social illness".
- "Disease of Westernism"; Peter Avery used this term to refer to the topic of Al-e Ahmad's essay In 1965.
- "Occidentalization"; Al-e Ahmad himself reportedly equated gharbzadegi with this term.
- "Weststruckness"; in the early 1970s, Michael Craig Hillmann used this term.
- "Weststrucktedness"; in the late 1970s, Paul Sprachman considered this term archaic and "West-strickenness" as cacophonic and stylistically problematic.
- "Westities"; Edward Mortimer used this term in Faith and Power, attempting to render gharbzadegi while preserving the various ideas encapsulated in Persian. It was also used in Sprachman's translation to distinguish between the noun and the essay's title, a term which is often included in German references as well.
- "Occidentosis"; this appears in the title of Robert Campbell's English translation and L'occidentalité in the French.
- "Xenomania"; Hamid Algar opts for this term in his notes to the translation of Ayatollah Khomeini's government.
- "Westomania" is preferred by Reza Baraheni in The Crowned Cannibals, and was also chosen by Farzaneh Milani in Veils and Words.
- "Euromania"; Roy Motaheddeh used this term in The Mantle of the Prophet.
Al-e Ahmed's idea
Al-e Ahmad argued that Iran must gain control over machines 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 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... 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 as Tehran."
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 superseded Marxist class analysis.
Al-e Ahmad believed intellectuals were unable to construct an authentically Iranian modernity, and that the one element of Iranian life uninfected by gharbzadegi was religion. Twelver Shia Islam in Iran had authenticity and the ability to move people, so to eliminate the homogenizing and alienating forces of Western modernity it was necessary to "return" to authentic culture.