Repost

Kenneth M. Gazzaway (kmg@mail.utexas.edu)
Tue, 16 Feb 1999 00:10:35 -0600

OK, I posted this a couple of weeks ago, but misentered the e-mail address.  Let's hope I got it right this time.

Kenneth M. Gazzaway
464-53-6067
1 February, 1999

Overcoming the Past: Reconciling the Future

        The world is on the verge of self-destruction.  While this statement seems melodramatic, it has indeed been espoused throughout every era of human history.  There have always been reactionaries who expounded on the impending doom facing mankind from one corner or another.  The Byzantines feared the coming end brought by the advancing Muslims; the Ottomans scrambled to oppose the Crusaders; the liberal capitalists feared the onslaught of the malevolent Communists.  And yet mankind has survived.  As a race, we have learned from our experiences and managed to come out of the strife of the past as a stronger, wiser group.  With the thousands of years of experience, combined with the ever-changing world of technology, it is somewhat surprising, however, to find a voice such as Samuel Huntington.  His prophecy of a world clashing over Western-conceived cultural boundaries ignores all that we have learned from our uproarious past.
        In his controversial treatise =93The Clash of Civilizations?=94, Huntington foretells of a future in which nation-states will be merely pawns in a greater struggle among seven or eight distinct cultural bastions:  Western, Confucian, Japanese, Islamic, Hindu, Slavic-Orthodox, Latin American and =93possibly African civilization=94.  One needs simply to analyze this categorization to see that Mr. Huntington is sadly operating by an outdated and academically misinformed paradigm: namely, that of Orientalism.
        One of Orientalism=92s most vocal critics, Edward Said, defines it as =93a way of coming to terms with the Orient that is based on the Orient=92s special place in European Western experience.=94  He explains that the error of Orientalist thought is the inequality with which it approaches study of non-Western culture.  Rather than allowing for cultural relativism, Orientalists choose to examine cultures for their intrinsic deficiencies vis-=E0-vis the West.  Their original studies were informed by the politics of imperialism of the 19th century, in whic= h the economic greed of European nations overrode any possibility of accepting other cultures as equal.  European industrial and technological superiority was parlayed into an air of cultural superiority that viewed the Orient with a m=E9lange of fascination and revulsion, but always as an object of inferiority.
        The rise of cultural relativism in the late 20th century led to a backlash against the biases of the Orientalist traditions, but it has proven to be difficult to overcome more than a century of an =93us=94 versus =93them=94 mentality.  Huntington=92s view of the world of the future, fragmented and in constant struggle along faults of culture, is a key example of the underlying themes of Orientalism prevalent even today.
        Huntington=92= s argument presents a world divided along cultural lines that are imposed by a Western mindset.  Indeed, these distinctions are not native to the cultures named.  In naming a cultural region, Huntington mistakenly assumes that there is a prevalent culture throughout the area.  It is, for example, a remarkably flawed assumption to group all of Latin America into a single cultural unit.  The tremendous variety of cultural backgrounds and heritages of this area contradicts any overarching nomenclature meant to encompass them all.  It is indicative of an Orientalist viewpoint to lump the Sub-American cultures into one since they were generally regarded as a whole in the imperialist heritage.
A recurring theme in the discourse of Orientalism is that of the melting pot.  It is presumed that as Western culture advances, it will absorb other cultures: their adherents become part of a greater whole, subsumed under the rubric of the =93melting pot=94.  In theory, the constituent cultures and heritages affect the overall mix and give it a unique =93flavor=94.  Yet this is not generally the case.  Instead, other cultures are expected to take on the characteristics of the greater culture, quite similar to a borg mentality.
In contradistinction to this, it is more appropriate to view the world as a mosaic.  Each culture and heritage has its unique characteristics.  Each has its own color and dimension and depth, yielding the overall global picture: a fantastic image incorporating different ideologies, religions, and traditions.  The advent of greater technology and communication does not hinder the harmony of the constituent pieces of the mosaic, but rather allows them to interact and share the wealth of cultural knowledge.
Huntington=92s view of Western hegemony stems largely from an outdated and impertinent paradigm of international relations.  The fact that Western culture is so predominant in global affairs is mainly by virtue of its ownership of the bulk of technology, which rules modern global interaction.  Western languages are convenient conduits for communicating through Western-originated technological advances.  American influence in particular is not in spite of its diversity as Huntington suggests, but is actually due to it.  The ability of American culture to include the heritages of a plethora of traditions allows it the greatest flexibility in interacting with other cultures.  American aptitude for understanding the =93other=94 as =93se= lf=94 gives it greater legitimacy as a global leader since it encompasses the dreams and desires of people everywhere.
In short, Samuel Huntington argues himself into a corner by applying a mode of thought that has long since been proven unable to explain the complexities of modern political interaction.  Rooted in the Euro-centric policies of imperialism, Huntington=92s neo-Orientalism attempts to escape the confines of his predecessors but in doing so falls prey to their premisesand proves himself unable to understand the dynamics of modern globalism.