Arif Dirlik

Arif Dirlik (23 November 1940 – 1 December 2017) was a Turkish-American historian who published on historiography and political ideology in modern China, as well as issues in modernity, globalization, and postcolonial criticism.

Dirlik received a BSc in Electrical Engineering at Robert College, Istanbul in 1964 and a PhD in History at the University of Rochester in 1973.

Dirlik received his undergraduate degree in engineering and came to the United States to study science at the University of Rochester, but developed an interest in Chinese history instead.

His PhD dissertation on the origins of Marxist historiography in China, published by University of California Press in 1978, led to an interest in Chinese anarchism.

When asked in 1997 to identify the main influences on his work, Dirlik cited Marx, Mao, and Dostoevsky.

After his official retirement, Dirlik lived in Eugene, Oregon.

Dirlik taught at Duke University for thirty years as Professor of History and Anthropology before moving in 2001 to the University of Oregon where he served as Knight Professor of Social Science, Professor of History and Anthropology, and Director of the Center for Critical Theory and Transnational Studies until his retirement in 2006.

He has also served as visiting professor at the University of British Columbia, University of Victoria (BC), University of California, Los Angeles, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris, the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, and Soka University of America.

He has been honored with distinguished adjunct professorships at the Center for Marxist Social Theory of Nanjing University, Beijing University of Language and Culture, and the Northwest University for Nationalities in Lanzhou.

Dirlik served on the editorial boards of boundary 2, Interventions (UK), China Review (Hong Kong), Asian Studies Review (Australia), China Information (The Netherlands), China Scholarship (Beijing), Cultural Studies (Beijing), Inter-Asia Cultural Studies (Taiwan and Singapore), Norwegian Journal of Migration Research, Asian Review of World Histories (South Korea), Research on Marxist Aesthetics (Nanjing), Register of Critical Theory of Society (Nanjing), International Critical Thought (Beijing), Pasaj (Passages in Literature) (Istanbul), and Contemporary Chinese Political Economy and Strategic Relations: An International Journal (Malaysia).

He was the editor of two-book series, "Studies in Global Modernity" (SUNY Press) as well as co-editor of a series of translations from prominent Chinese official intellectuals, published by Brill Publishers in the Netherlands.

Dirlik's works have been translated into Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Turkish, Bulgarian, French, German and Portuguese.

The interview goes on to criticize the field of postcolonial studies, which he took up in such essays as "History Without a Center? Reflections on Eurocentrism," Prasenjit Duara in 2001 replied to Dirlik's charge that diasporic scholars from the former British colonial world had used the concepts of "postcolonialism" to become embedded in Western academic "strongholds" and that they did not represent the majority of the population in their former countries.

Likewise even a sympathetic review of the field objected to Dirlik's framing of post-colonial scholars as "agents of capital."

Dirlik was also critical of the "Beijing Consensus" which presented China's economic development model as an alternative—especially for developing countries—to the Washington Consensus.

Dirlik argued that this "Silicon Valley model of development" ignores the fact that "the exploitation of China's labor force by foreign countries was a major part of the Chinese development."

Dirlik spoke on his approach to history and the theoretical issues of historiography in a 2002 interview.

As a "practicing historian" Dirlik said, "I continue to practice history not just because it is a way to make a living, which is an important consideration, but because I think that there is some value and meaning to historical understanding."

He goes on to say that "I am also appalled at the arbitrary magisterial judgments on history encountered frequently in contemporary literature; a kind of licence that postmodernism seems to legitimize: since we cannot know anything, anybody can speak about everything."

Jerry Bentley's 2005 account in the journal World History provides a cogent summary of Dirlik's critiques of the field and his own disagreement.

Dirlik, he says, has leveled a "challenging critique" of the field of world history, charging that it "naturalizes capitalist globalization by turning it into human fate" and that scholarship in the field "perpetuates Eurocentric knowledge even as it seeks alternatives to Eurocentric explanations of the global past."

Bentley continues that Dirlik has identified genuine problems, but has "harnessed his scholarship to a political agenda."

Dirlik "overstated the problems and overgeneralized his critique," falling into the "trap of an originary fallacy," in which he "confuses origin with fate," assuming that historical scholarship must inevitably follow lines established at the foundation."

In fall 2010, he served as the Liang Qichao Memorial Distinguished Visiting Professor at Tsinghua University, Beijing.

In fall 2011 he held the Rajni Kothari Chair in Democracy at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies in Delhi, India.

He held a brief appointment as Green Professor at the University of British Columbia in February 2016.