Deconstructing West’s Historical Universalism in Siddique’s Snuffing out the Moon: A Spenglerian Analysis

Abstract

This research article employs Oswald Spengler’s critique of Western universalism to examine Osama Siddique’s Snuffing Out the Moon (2017). It seeks to uncover the novel’s repudiation of the Enlightenment universalism, which conceives historical progression as linear, homogeneous and universal. Siddique’s novel problematizes the Enlightenment conception of linear development of civilizations, which is frequently adopted to legitimize imperialism and hegemony. The research elucidates how the novel challenges the dominant Eurocentric model of history and delineates non-Western histories through their autonomous trajectories. In dismantling the West’s historic universality claim, Siddique (2017) resists the dominance of Western narratives and retrieves non-Western histories, cultures, and epistemologies through his multitemporal probing of sociological, cultural, and historical milieus. The novel disassembles Western universalist history by discounting its Eurocentric, linear accounts and foregrounding non-Western civilizations’ cyclical and multifarious trajectories. It not only undermines the hegemonic narratives but also recuperates the agency and survival of non-Western societies and presents a profound counterpoint to the presumption of Western historical universalism.