A Metahistory of the Clash of Civilisations: Us and Them Beyond Orientalism, by Arshin Adib-Moghaddam

Year 2012, Volume: 3 Issue: 1, 131 - 135, 29.09.2012

Coeli Fitzpatrick

https://doi.org/10.12730/13091719.2012.31.54

Abstract

First paragraph: Since the publication of Samuel Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations in 1993, the idea of a “clash regime” or “clash mentality” – that is, the idea that civilizations (which Huntington understands as defined and unproblematically fixed) are engaged in inevitable ideological clashes – has been either taken seriously in circles of foreign policy or, alternately, critiqued vehemently. Fully appreciating his predecessors Foucault and Edward Said’s idea that discourse precedes his-tory, Arshin Adib-Moghaddam’s (School of Oriental and African Stu-dies, University of London) book A Metahistory of the Clash of Civilisations: Us and Them Beyond Orientalism steps back from the debate itself to offer a metahistorical critique of the clash regime and how it has come to have such a central place in twentieth-century discour-se. Adib-Moghaddam notes how the idea of the clash regime is so central to our thinking that even some critics of Huntington’s theory find themselves wrapped up in its binary oppositions and reinforcing its very foundations. In other words, for some readers, Huntington is taken as wrong not because he postulates the existence of distinct “civilizations,” but because he claims that they are “clashing.” It is precisely the history of these postulated divisions between civilizations – either viewed as Manichean or not – that Adib-Moghaddam aims to examine. His method is to proceed more or less chronologically, but also through multiple disciplines where the clash regime has found its most fertile ground, namely history, religion, and philosophy. In this sense, his study takes us far beyond a mere description of the history of the clash regime to an examination of the ideological positions that have allowed its production in the first place.

A Metahistory of the Clash of Civilisations: Us and Them Beyond Orientalism, by Arshin Adib-Moghaddam

Abstract

First paragraph:
Since the publication of Samuel Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations in 1993, the idea of a “clash regime” or “clash mentality” – that is, the idea that civilizations (which Huntington understands as defined and unproblematically fixed) are engaged in inevitable ideological clashes – has been either taken seriously in circles of foreign policy or, alternately, critiqued vehemently. Fully appreciating his predecessors Foucault and Edward Said’s idea that discourse precedes his-tory, Arshin Adib-Moghaddam’s (School of Oriental and African Stu-dies, University of London) book A Metahistory of the Clash of Civilisations: Us and Them Beyond Orientalism steps back from the debate itself to offer a metahistorical critique of the clash regime and how it has come to have such a central place in twentieth-century discour-se. Adib-Moghaddam notes how the idea of the clash regime is so central to our thinking that even some critics of Huntington’s theory find themselves wrapped up in its binary oppositions and reinforcing its very foundations. In other words, for some readers, Huntington is taken as wrong not because he postulates the existence of distinct “civilizations,” but because he claims that they are “clashing.” It is precisely the history of these postulated divisions between civilizations – either viewed as Manichean or not – that Adib-Moghaddam aims to examine. His method is to proceed more or less chronologically, but also through multiple disciplines where the clash regime has found its most fertile ground, namely history, religion, and philosophy. In this sense, his study takes us far beyond a mere description of the history of the clash regime to an examination of the ideological positions that have allowed its production in the first place.

Keywords

Orientalism, Arshin Adib-Moghaddam, Metahistory