Al-e-Ahmad Jalal. Occidentosis: A Plague from the West

Berkeley: Mizan Press, 1984. — 160 p.Ale Ahmad Jalal. Occidentosis: Plague from the West (In English)Gharbzadegi (Persian: غربزدگی ) is a pejorative Persian term variously translated as "Westoxification," "West-struck-ness", "Westitis", "Euromania", or "Occidentosis". It is used to refer to the loss of Iranian cultural identity through the adoption and imitation of Western models and Western criteria in education, the arts, and culture; through the transformation of Iran into a passive market for Western goods and a pawn in Western geopolitics. The phrase was first coined by A. Fardid (University of Tehran Professor) in the 1940s, it gained common usage following the clandestine publication in 1962 of the book "Occidentosis: A Plague from the West" by Jalal Al-e Ahmad, an eminent Iranian writer.Al-e Ahmed describes Iranian behavior in the XX Cen. as being "Weststruck." The word was play on the dual meaning of "stricken" in Persian, which meant to be afflicted with a disease or to be stung by an insect, or to be infatuated and bedazzled.
Al-e Ahmad argued that Iran must gain control over machines and become a producer rather than a consumer, even though once having overcome Weststruckness it will face a new malady - also western - that of "machinestruckness."
The higher productivity of the foreign machines had devastated Iran's native handicrafts and turned Iran into an unproductive consumption economy.
The world market and global divide between rich and poor created by the machine - "one the constructors" of machines "and the other the consumers" - had superseded Marxist class analysis.
Al-e Ahmad believed the one element of Iranian life uninfected by ‘’gharbzadegi’’ was religion. Shia Islam in Iran had authenticity and the ability to move peopleDiagnosing an Illness.
Farliest Signs of the Illness.
Wellsprings of the Flood.
The First Infections.
The War of Contradictions.
How to Break the Spell.
Asses in Lions' Skins, or Lions on the Flag.
A Society in Collapse.
The Role of Education.
Mechanosis.
The Hour Draws Nigh.