Amman, 7 April — A lecture held last night by the Cultural Forum at the Abdul Hameed Shoman Foundation explored ways of producing new forms of knowledge rooted in self-understanding and cultural awareness. It examined how cultural identity can be reshaped through conscious translation that re-anchors knowledge in its social and cultural context, rather than transferring it literally.
The discussion also highlighted the role of cultural institutions as spaces for knowledge production, not merely platforms for consumption, and stressed the importance of developing intellectual models that contribute to human civilization.
The lecture, titled “Cultural Resistance to Western Centrality,” featured researcher Fakhri Saleh and Dr. Taysir Abu Odeh, and was moderated by Dr. Zuhair Tawfiq. It examined the dominance of Western frameworks in shaping patterns of thinking and knowledge production in the Arab world and beyond.
Fakhri Saleh explained that European or Western centrality is based on a center–periphery divide used to extend dominance over the Global South and the East, regions and civilizations that were once central to global knowledge and culture. He noted that disciplines such as anthropology, linguistics, ethnology, Orientalism, history, and geography developed in ways that reinforced this hierarchy.
He added that the world is undergoing profound transformations affecting the economy, geography, the state, laws, rights, ideas, knowledge and sciences. He stressed the need to rethink our relationship with the world and our position within it, noting that societies that recognize change early are better equipped to benefit from it.
Dr. Abu Odeh said that European centrality cannot be understood without examining Western modernity, which emerged from the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and the industrial and scientific revolutions.
He noted that Arabic-language research on the relationship between social class and the learning, teaching, and politicization of the English language remains shallow and misaligned with contemporary geopolitical momentum and the existing English-language literature. He further pointed out that many public and private universities are preoccupied with the race for global university rankings, while paying little attention to examining the anthropological, social, and educational dimensions of learning, teaching, and the spread of English, or to multilingual education that centers the mother tongue as the central source of Jordanian culture and identity. English and other languages are instead understood as vital cultural bridges between human civilizations, and as key means for deepening values of coexistence, as well as for understanding the dynamics of power, language, knowledge, language policy, and social class.
He also stressed the need to keep pace with developments in artificial intelligence by adopting new teaching methods that support linguistic and cultural immersion, activating English clubs, and strengthening partnerships with international institutions. He called for revisiting English language policies in Jordanian universities and for adopting a modern approach to English departments that integrates Arab culture, comparative and world literature, and debates in cultural studies, anthropology, sociology, and philosophy, rather than teaching English in isolation from its Arab cultural context.