The cultural battle

Good morning, everyone!
I feel happy and honored to have the opportunity to share my immature views with all of you.


PART I
----My understanding of the article and my concern of the trend worldwide

The title of the article I’ve carelessly chosen is “the cultural battle”. Much to my surprise, the author offered me a vivid picture of boxing. Despite of my father’s craze for boxing and the author’s ironic account of the battle, I still have not any interest in the cruel and thrilling sport.
Though the article was named “cultural battle”, it doesn’t demonstrate the persuasive arguments over the reason for taking this title. As far as I’m concerned, the only clue to the reason is this sentence which is on page 422, in the middle of the lines, “……as a battle between the democratic promise of the United States and the repressive of forces of Nazi Germany”. In this sentence, the author and the compiler maybe suggest to us that the battle between two boxers from different countries symbolizes a battle between two countries that held distinct values under the specific and ambiguous context. But I wonder if such kind of battle can be called “the cultural battle”. I haven’t seen any relatedness to culture. It’s a pity that I didn’t find any answer to my confusion. Therefore, I don’t intent to elaborate my points of view based on this article, for the reason I’ve mentioned above.

As a matter of fact, it’s purely the title that attracted my attention. The cultural battle, it can easily arouse our thinking and imagination of the worldwide chaos in the contemporary circumstances. As for me, the three phenomena are especially impressive. First of them is the tragedy on 9.11. This event was so profound that some scholar even described it as a turning point of human history. Huntington’s masterpiece “the clash of civilizations and the remaking of world order” regained its discourse shortly after the event and possibly republished into a new version on world scale. It’s no doubt that the immediate impact of 911 is the reconsideration of the United State’s strategic priority and the diversion of the central concern of int’l affairs and int’l relationships on the part of general public. Apart from its immediate impact, what implication and further profound influence does the event convey to us? It’s complicated and subtle. The second thing impressed me was the Iraq war that lasted till now and it seems the end of the war is out of our sight. The war, in accordance with official USA, was aimed at opposition of Saddam’s dictatorial ruling and Saddam’s refusal or non-cooperation of examining on so-called lethal weapons. However the war gradually changed into increasingly sensational campaigns on a large scale merely against the United States. The conflict and the hostility between USA and Islam appear intensified and aggravated. Then, the tension will be upgraded or be lessened? What messages are behind the superficial situation? They’re also complicated and subtle. The last phenomenon I want to say doesn’t solely exist; instead, it’s more likely a surging trend in the outside world of China ever since the building of People’s Republic of China. That’s the voice of China threat. With the deepening of globalization and the stable growth of China’s economy, the discourse of China threat prevails all over the world, from elites to populace. To respond to the dangerous voice, China, actively or passively, put forward its theory of “peaceful rising ”. This theory is so imperative that Chinese leaders had to keep emphasizing China’s “peaceful rising ” during the period of “Boao forum” which closed recently. How can we read the stubborn “China threat” and the fresh “peaceful rising”? Again, they’re complicated and subtle.

My intuition inspired me that all above is related to “the cultural battle ”. Although I’m not capable to answer those questions in a more logic way, I guess my introduction of the following books will be beneficial to accomplish the goal. The first book is the one I’ve mentioned earlier, “the clash of civilization and the remaking of world order” written by renowned Huntington. The other one is called “culture and imperialism ” written by Edward Said who was born in Jerusalem of Palestine and worked in USA as a professor. He passed away last year and left his brilliant works to our humans.


PART II
----My introduction of the books by Huntington and Said

Firstly, let’s talk about the familiar one by Huntington.

Based on the author's original article in Foreign Affairs, an American quarterly, Samuel P. Huntington's The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order is a provocative and prescient analysis of the state of world politics after the disintegration of Soviet Union. In this incisive work, Huntington explains how "civilizations" have replaced nations and ideologies as the driving force in global politics today and offers a brilliant analysis of the current climate and future possibilities of our world's volatile political culture.

The central theme of this book is that culture and cultural identities, which at the broadest level are civilization identities, are shaping the patterns of cohesion, disintegration, and conflict in the post-Cold War world.

“It is my hypothesis ” Huntington said, ”that the fundamental source of conflict in this new world will not be primarily ideological or primarily economic. The great divisions among human kind and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural. Nation states will remain the most powerful actors in world affairs, but the principal conflicts of global politics will occur between nations and groups of different civilizations. The clash of civilizations will be the battle lines of the future.”

“Why civilizations will clash civilization identity “ the author continues, “will be increasingly important in the future, and the world will be shaped in large measure by the interactions among seven or eight major civilizations. These include Western, Confucian, Japanese, Islamic, Hindu, Slavic-Orthodox, Latin American and possibly African civilization. The most important conflicts of the future will occur along the cultural fault lines separating these civilizations from one another.”

Huntington then further expounds his arguments from various dimensions.

First, differences among civilizations are not only real; they are basic. Civilizations are differentiated from each other by history, language, culture, tradition and, most important, religion. The people of different civilizations have different views on the relations between God and man, the individual and the group, the citizen and the state, parents and children, husband and wife, as well as differing views of the relative importance of rights and responsibilities, liberty and authority, equality and hierarchy. These differences are the product of centuries. They will not soon disappear. They are far more fundamental than differences among political ideologies and political regimes. Differences do not necessarily mean conflict, and conflict does not necessarily mean violence. Over the centuries, however, differences among civilizations have generated the most prolonged and the most violent conflicts.

Second, the world is becoming a smaller place. The interactions between peoples of different civilizations are increasing; these increasing interactions intensify civilization consciousness and awareness of differences between civilizations and commonalities within civilizations.

Third, the processes of economic modernization and social change throughout the world are separating people from longstanding local identities. They also weaken the nation state as a source of identity.

Fourth, the growth of civilization-consciousness is enhanced by the dual role of the West. On the one hand, the West is at a peak of power. At the same time, however, and perhaps as a result, a return to the roots phenomenon is occurring among non-Western civilizations.……A West at the peak of its power confronts non-West that increasingly have the desire, the will and the resources to shape the world in non-Western ways.

Fifth, cultural characteristics and differences are less mutable and hence less easily compromised and resolved than political and economic ones.……In class and ideological conflicts, the key question was "Which side are you on?" And people could and did choose sides and change sides. In conflicts between civilizations, the question is "What are you?" That is a given that cannot be changed.

Finally, economic regionalism is increasing.……The importance of regional economic blocs is likely to continue to increase in the future. On the one hand, successful economic regionalism will reinforce civilization-consciousness. On the other hand, economic regionalism may succeed only when it is rooted in a common civilization.

Huntington added, ”Non-Western civilizations have attempted to become modern without becoming Western. They will continue to attempt to acquire the wealth, technology, skills, machines and weapons that are part of being modern. They will also attempt to reconcile this modernity with their traditional culture and values.”
I guess that’s why we must learn the course “development politics” by Professor Chen.

At the end of his first thesis issued by “foreign affairs”, Huntington offered us a reminder,
He said, “For the relevant future, there will be no universal civilization, but instead a world of different civilizations, each of which will have to learn to coexist with the others.”

(Civilizations are nonetheless meaningful entities, and while the lines between them are seldom sharp, they are real. Civilizations are dynamic; they rise and fall; they divide and merge. And, as any student of history knows, civilizations disappear and are buried in the sands of time.)

Next one is the book by Said, “Culture and imperialism”

In this book, Said examines the interrelationship of Occidental literature and imperialism from the 17th century to the Gulf war. Culture and Imperialism demonstrates that Western imperialism's most effective tools for dominating other cultures have been literary in nature as much as political and economic. He traces the themes of 19th- and 20th-century Western fiction and contemporary mass media as weapons of conquest. Said also brilliantly analyzes the rise of oppositional indigenous voices in the literatures of the "colonies."
Take Yeats as an example, Said examines Yeats’ works in the context of Irelands national struggle for independence. In the lines of Yeats, he explored Irelands past and integrated its particularly Irish mythology into his poems. By doing so he reconnected Ireland to its own past and a sense of its own identity.
Thereby, Said explained why imperialism is an idea as well as the physical appropriation and economic exploitation of foreign territories. He also answered what such an idea precisely entails, how it is propagated and how it informs culture?


(A contextual reading of the sort Said unearths occluded insights, perspectives, and interpretations, thereby greatly enriching our appreciation of the novel in the end.)

And then I’ll extract some passages from the book hoping we will get a more direct and strong impression out of those worlds.

The first passage is on the endpapers of the book. It was written by Conrad Joseph. His work of “darkness of the heart ” triggered the discussion on imperialism on a large scale in the literacy field for the first time.
"The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much. What redeems it is the idea only. An idea at the back of it; not a sentimental pretence but an idea; and an unselfish belief in the idea - something you can set up, and bow down before, and offer a sacrifice to."

The second one, in my eyes, is a valuable suggestion or even warning for USA’s hegemony and also for our Chinese’s occasional undue nationalism or patriotism.
“So we must try to look carefully and integrally at the culture that nurtured the sentiment, the rationale, and above all the imagination of empire. And we need also to understand the hegemony of imperial ideology, which by the end of the nineteenth century had become completely embedded in the affairs of cultures whose less regrettable features we still celebrate.”
The last piece is the last paragraph of this book. In it, Said provided us bright prospects for the future living way of diverse civilization and homogenous humans.

“No one today is purely one thing. Labels like Indian or Canadian or woman or Muslim or American are no more than starting points, which, if followed into actual experience for only a moment, are completely left behind. Imperialism consolidated the mixture of cultures and identities on a world scale. But its worst and most paradoxical gift was to allow people to believe that they were only, mainly, exclusively white or black or Western or Oriental. Just as human beings make their own history, they also make their cultures and ethnic identities. No one can deny the persisting continuities of long traditions, sustained habitations, national languages and cultural geographies. But there seems no reason except fear and prejudice to keep insisting on their separation and distinctiveness, as if that was all human life was about. Survival, in fact, is about the connections between things. In Eliot's phrase, reality cannot be deprived of the "other echoes that inhabit the garden." It is more rewarding and more difficult to think concretely and sympathetically about others than only about "us." But this also means not trying to rule others, not trying to classify them or put them in hierarchies, above all, not constantly to reiterate how our culture or country is number one, or not number one, for that matter.”

In my opinion, if we say that Huntington gives us a practical and far-sighted framework or paradigm to better understand the order and the variation of the world, there is no question that Said ranks among the great figures of the humanist tradition.


PART III
----My questions (or puzzles)

Finally, I wanna put forward another 2 questions.

Who are we? (Who am I?)
&
How will we be like?