Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: Oswald Spengler’s Der Untergang des Abendlandes ( The Decline of the West ) gave expression to a pervasive feeling of cultural crisis in early twentieth-century European intellectual life. Perhaps unsurprisingly given his reactionary politics and nationalist sympathies, Spengler’s work met with a muted reception in metropolitan France. More open to his message were members of imperial France’s modest colonial intelligentsia; Spengler’s French translator was Mohand Tazerout (1893–1973), an Algerian-born World War I veteran, schoolteacher, and aspiring sociologist. This article tells the story of The Decline of the West ’s initial appearance in French before exploring Tazerout’s own intellectual project, which both built on and reached beyond Spengler’s thinking. Contemporary and subsequent North African intellectuals were no less drawn to themes of cultural decline and renewal; however, the unique circumstances that pushed Tazerout to embrace Spengler’s ideas were quickly swept away in a vortex of postcolonial contention.
Source: Modern Intellectual History
Author: Dillon Savage
Institution: Pratt Institute
Language: English
Subfield: History
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $3,550
OpenAlex ID: W7162442853
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