Towards Non-Eurocentric Historiographies: Challenging Europe’s Position in the Formation of Architectural Histories

The point of departure for this paper is the idea that Europe as a concept is related to the project of thinking and accomplishing universality. It represents the potential for an enlightened resistance in a world that is progressively becoming dominated by the mono-perspectivism of globalism. In this sense, Eurocentrism is specifiable only within the context of modernity and is crucial for thinking modernity. The tendency of architectural historiographies to place Eurocentric narratives under critical scrutiny since the dissolution of colonialist models is accompanied by the questioning of the earlier Zeitgeist theories, which had served to legitimize modernism. By depicting Europe and the West as a homogeneous power of domination over the rest of the world, postcolonial criticism turns Europe into the blind spot of its own discourse. The colonialist character of dichotomies, such as western/non-western or Eurocentric/non-Eurocentric, becomes evident if we bear in mind that various societies have adopted aspects of western modernity without fully adopting them, fitting them into the indigenous culture. The tension between the scientific ethos of the historian’s task, which demands a commitment free of preconceptions and value judgments, and the political function of the project of history, which is based on a certain social order, has always existed since the emergence of the profession of the historian. The objective of the paper is to explore the place of the aforementioned tension within the framework of the efforts of architectural historians to shape models of architectural historiography that manage to challenge the western canon, it is indispensable to avoid labels such as “other” or colonial. Particular emphasis is placed on the complicity of architecture with structures of power and dominant ideological agendas in society.