Under the Gaze of Double Critique: De-colonisation, De-sacralisation and the Orphan Book

Abstract

Instead of the orientalist reformist paradigm as frame and episteme, Khatibi proposes a theory of double critique, critical liminality that targets, in a bi-directional movement, a Eurocentric or Orientalist discourse and an ethnocentric local discourse. Three critical concepts, constitutive of the theory of double critique: decolonisation, desacralisation and the orphan book are operative in Khatibi´s analysis of Orientalism, identity, and the issue of origin. As a professional outsider, Khatibi follows conceptually and methodologically the rules of the epistemological critique in an enunciation of negotiation, not of negation; a site of hybridity.