Review of: Western supremacy: Triumph of an idea? (original) (raw)
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Preface to The Discipline of Western Supremacy
This volume concludes the trilogy in which I redefine world politics as an evolving composite of modes of foreign relations. Foreign relations are about communities occupying separate social spaces and considering each other as outsiders. Occupation, its protection, and the regulation of exchange with others are universal attributes of human communities; they date back to the dawn of anthropogenesis and have evolved with the ongoing transformation of nature. Hence, as we have seen in Volume II, all human groups, communities and societies rely on mythologies and religious imaginaries to make sense of the foreign encounter. They originate in the tribal and empire/nomad modes and continue to run through contemporary foreign relations. Indeed in our contemporary epoch, such primordial imaginaries are resurgent on a grand scale.
The Greater West: The limits of liberal civilization and the renewal of Western statecraft
There is a paradox at the very heart of the West. Compared with civilizational states such as contemporary China, India, or Russia, the West is the only civilizational community of nations and peoples founded upon political values of national self-determination, democracy, and free trade – as enshrined in the 1941 Atlantic Charter and embodied in the post-1945 international system. But at the same time, the West as a ‘political civilization’ and the liberal world order it underwrites erode the cultural foundations of Western civilization and thereby weaken the West’s ability to confront internal as well as external threats – economic injustice, ecological devastation, social dislocation, resurgent nationalism, and Islamic terrorism. Davos-driven cartel capitalism, identity politics, secularization, and liberal/neo-conservative interventionism are hollowing out both Western ‘common culture’ and ‘high culture’ in favor of a globally exported ‘popular culture.’ As a liberal civilization, the Western political community – especially since 1989 – undermines both the common cultural customs, beliefs, and practices of its nations and peoples, and the intellectual, literary, and artistic achievements, which make the West a distinct, unique civilization. In this sense the West is its own first enemy. Before returning to the liberal erosion of Western civilization, I will discuss recent critics and defenders of the West as they draw on liberalism to make their case. Underpinning their accounts is a conception of civilization that rests on three presuppositions. First, that civilizational identity is either fragmented and in constant flux, or else fixed and immutable. Second, that civilizations are either the product of other civilizations to which they owe most of their supposed achievement, or else self-contained and untouched by others. Third, that civilizations are either arbitrary arrangements of fact and fiction that mask a lack of coherence or purpose except the pursuit of power and wealth, or else that at their heart there is a single cultural code, which connects its essential identity to social norms. These seemingly opposed assumptions are but two sides of the same coin that separates the modern era from what preceded it. In reality, surviving civilizations combine historical continuity with discontinuity. They are resilient insofar as they develop. They go through multiple transmutations, changing shape precisely because they have a certain shape to begin with. Therefore civilizational identities evolve over time, and civilizations tend to flourish when they interact with one other and when each has a unifying language, which can translate principles into practices that mobilize the cultural resources of its members. To speak of a distinct, unique Western civilization is thus not to imply any exceptionalism. Rather, recent discoveries in archaeology and anthropology – coupled with insights from global history – indicate that the West is something like an organic entity born of the interactions between the ancient civilizations of Rome, Greece, Babylon, Persia, and India, as well as the emergence of Christianity with its roots in Hellenic Judaism. The West grew out of the Roman encounter with Greco-Babylonian culture and its Persian and Indian influences and then the fusion of Greco-Roman culture with the biblical legacy. That in turn gave rise to the Europe of Christendom from late Antiquity all the way to the nineteenth century before morphing into the Concert of Europe following the 1815 Vienna Congress and then the Euro-Atlantic community after 1945. Far from being a linear history of progress or a series of absolute breaks, Western civilization is more like a collection of ‘family resemblances’ – all kinds of similarities without a single essence. The liberal civilization that became hegemonic in the wake of 1989 and is now in crisis contained from the outset the seeds of its own destruction precisely because it posits liberalism as the West’s defining character. The liberal idea of a single civilization based on universal values not only inspired the ‘end of history’ thesis but also led to hubris, notably the ‘Washington consensus’ of global capitalism and identity liberalism that are weakening Western cultures. At the same time, the Western-dominated liberal world order shows signs of unraveling due to divergent interests and values within the Euro-Atlantic community on questions of free trade, immigration, and democracy promotion. Whereas the EU is primarily worried by a resurgent and revanchist Russia, the USA under Trump fears most of all China and Islamic fundamentalism. Unlike 1945 and 1989, contemporary liberalism is dividing the West and undermining the civilizational community on which the Western alliance rests. To avoid a further slide into disintegration, Europe and North America need to recover exiled traditions of diplomacy and statecraft that can renew strategic thinking and political action, beginning with a shared sense of purpose based on a common identity rooted in an inherited history and culture. Rather than going their separate ways or merely reforming an increasingly divided transatlantic partnership, the task is to forge a Greater West that reconnects the Euro-Atlantic community to old and new partners in the wider European orbit, Asia and Oceania – notably Russia, Japan, India, and Australia. If the West wants to recover its global leadership position, it needs to renew the cultural association of Western nations and peoples and to build a partnership from Vancouver via Vilnius to Vladivostok.
Despite the ambition of Postcolonial Studies to place deconstruction of " the West " at the heart of contemporary social sciences and humanities, the authority of this notion has never been so strong, and the West appears today to belong to a " natural order " of thinking and speaking about our current reality. Having pointed out the limits of the postcolonial critique of the West, this study then individuates and connects several lines of research to a common epistemological basis in order to map the contours of an emerging field: " the politics of imagining the West ". From this perspective, the West is no longer conceived of as a subject of history but as a historically determined narrative articulated by individuals and social groups with strategic aims in the context of wider discourses.
Focusing chiefly on the period from the 18th Century to the present, this course analyzes the most significant political, social, intellectual and economic trends that have shaped contemporary societies. HH216 examines the global impact of European and American cultures over the past three centuries and explores the most important reactions to modernity in both Western and non-Western societies. In doing so, the course situates the West in a global context and prepares students to think critically and comparatively about a changing world.
The West's Classical Values, and the Clash of Civilizations - Dr. Muhammad Shamsaddin Megalommatis
It is essential to state beforehand that throughout the present article the term ‘West’ is used only conventionally. The polarizations around Prof. Huntington’s notorious book have brought to surface the inadequate and inconsistent way cultural differences, civilizations’ variants, and religious confrontations are approached, perceived, and dealt with by the world’s academia, intellectuals, social elites, and political classes. The erroneous concept of ‘Clash of Civilizations’, which is a profane coverage of the correct term ‘Clash of Political - Religious Ideologies’, invaded the minds of millions of people in despair and agony after the September 11th events that have been mistakenly interpreted as corroboration of Prof. Huntington’s theory. In fact, the Mankind’s worst enemy can hardly be identified with religious extremism, fanaticism, irredentism, and overt terrorism; these threats are certainly very real, but far worse than all of them combined is the provenly reduced ability of the Mankind to see clearly, understand correctly, and perceive accurately. Confusion not Terrorism is the really worst Enemy Despite the West’s undisputed academic, intellectual, and scientific superiority, great confusion prevails among all elites and masses, originating from the mixture of personal, collective and national interests with the searched and explored data and info. First published in AfroArticles, American Chronicle, and Buzzle on 10th July 2007 Republished by the Islamic Research Foundation International, Inc. here: http://www.irfi.org/articles/articles\_1301\_1350/west's\_classical\_values\_and\_the\_clash\_of\_civilizations.htm