The use of Western philosophical, scientific, and cultural frameworks to dismiss non-Western perspectives as inferior, primitive, or irrational. Western Sophism positions Western ways of knowing as universal, treating all others as provincial. It's sophistry with a colonial history: using the tools of Western reason to exclude the voices of those colonized by it. The sophism lies in the pretense of universality while serving particular interests.
"They dismissed indigenous knowledge as unscientific, not realizing that 'scientific' was just their word for 'Western.' Western Sophism: universalizing the particular, naturalizing the provincial. The sophistry is in the pretense: calling your perspective 'objective' while ignoring everyone else's."
by Abzugal Nammugal Enkigal March 7, 2026
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