In this article we seek to describe the conditions - configured by the process of orientalization of the West - for the emergence of new health paradigms in western society. We set out an analysis of the concept of surfaces of emergence, as put forth by Michel Foucault, followed by an investigation of orientalization in the West as described by Colin Campbell. We use this to associate the growing rise of alternative medicines and the blossoming of new health practices in our midst with the historical alternation from one western theodicy to another that is characteristically oriental.
alternative medicine; paradigm; orientalization; surfaces of emergence; theodicy