Civilization as a political disposition

Abstract

This paper outlines a number of changes in social and political thought following the momentous events of 1989: the rise of postmodernism, identitarian politics and the transformation of notions of race into culture. It indicates origins for this drift in ideas to be found in the heritage of anti-Enlightenment polemics associated with political romanticism, in Europe as well as globally, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It then concentrates on the theme of civilization, and of the use of this term in international relations.

Keywords:

• civilization
• culturalism
• the Middle East
• Islam
• romanticism
• Huntington
• postmodernism
• Enlightenment and its adversaries

Notes

1. It has now become possible to go beyond the Sturm und Drang of discourses on orientalism to better considered studies, exemplified most recently by Marchand (2009); see pp. xviii ff. for comment on the legacy of Edward Said.

2. On such transfigurations, in the case of National Socialism, see Safranski (2010, ch. 7).

3. See Al-Azmeh (2009a, ch. 10).

4. For an impression of the complexity attendant upon using such large-scale historical categories, see, exemplarily, Fehrenbach (1972).

5. For a reflection on this theme, usually declaimed rather than reflected upon, see especially Kaviraj (2005).