Essay Sample: Huntington's and Said's Arguments Considering Clash of Civilizations

Huntington placed his basic argument upon emphasizing that the cultural fault lines would cause future conflicts resulting to the separation of civilizations. He uses broad concepts such as religion, language, history and customs to elaborate and classify these civilizations and particularly the religion are the most crucial differentiator in between the civil people. Huntington puts emphasis that these cultural faults would be problematic, therefore; he defines these problems in detailing his arguments in his article as logically subjective and inherent problems. He continues to depict that cultural definitions do not acquire merits on the world of politics or within the global interactions. In addition, he generalizes and makes assumptions on the new phase of the political world based on anecdotal evidence. However, criticism is made based on subjective interpretation grounds (Holton, 2000).

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Said centers his argument under one fundamental idea of orientalism whereby it suggests that the Western information about the East is not entirely retrieved from facts or real experiences. However, they are generated from the rigid archetype that foresees all the Eastern communities as basically similar to each other and fundamentally not similar to the Western communities (Said, 2003). Thus the information outlined here establishes East people as antithetical to the Western people. Said thus explains that such knowledge from the Eastern community is constructed fictional texts and historical information that is frequently limited to enable the growth of their understanding of the facts of existence in the Middle East.

Having understood Saids central idea on preconceived information, he puts n emphasize on the connection between power and knowledge in elites and the popular thinking. For instance, he particularly analyzed the European opinions of the Islamic Arab society. He argued that Orient and Occident operated as oppositional aspects whereby Orient was placed as the negative inversion of the Western culture. Thus it can be denoted that Saids argument base may have been influenced by Gramscis idea of hegemony in comprehending the extensiveness of Orientalist constructs and the representation in Western community and reporting and their link to the practice of power over Orient.

Said asserts the facts that Orient significantly contributed to the construction of European culture as being powerful. In that, Orient played a crucial role in defining Europe as its conflicting notion, reputation, personality, and experience. By use of the aspect Orientalism, he helps the people to understand a collective demonstration of the Orient in the Western culture and politics (Said, 2001). Further Orient transforms a society into a powerful political tool of domination, reconstruction, and acquiring authority.

Said based his argument on the controversies outlined by Huntington in the speech of international relations. Said disagrees with the Huntington notion about making civilizations and identities important in theorizing how different countries should interact by drawing the fault lines and splitting the international village into clashing tribes. Therefore, Said responded by stating that Huntington simply wants the civilization to reach the stage of international politics particularly by identifying people as blacks and white. He continues to explain that in reality that the world without the people is nothing but a shade of gray. He strongly disagrees with the aspects of cultural fault lines and promotes the aspect of orientalism.

Said agrees that it is essential to include the aspects of culture and identity within the global community required to construct the foundation for evaluating the nature of globalization and relations in the new world. However, he disagrees with Huntington because he over-emphasizes the aspect of identity to point that it touches the gray area of the new world and brings out the current issues of black and white. Said argues that cultural civilization cannot lead global conflicts, especially among states or groups civilians as Huntington claims to view the future. He proceeds by claiming that Huntington ignores the aspect of cultural sphere whereby it means that the political and ideological opinions will reach a stage whereby they will be allowed to interact. For instance, he gives an illustration of how actors are allowed to interact on the global stage, the world is in fact preparing and ready to form a world of generalization. Further, Said disagrees with the view of Huntington on the global village when talking about civilization; Said responds by stating that Huntington is ignorant and blind to see the fact that runs across civilization and the people.

Another notable aspect is the one where Huntington argues, the world is growing smaller and the differences in the civilizations are now noticeable where they lead to an inevitable clash as they are viewed from a negative perspective. Said, on the other hand, is fast to state that Huntington ignores the fact the two cultural groups and the individuals identify the differences and can get to a reasonable understanding and creating respect. Said continues to state that Huntington assumes completely that there is no concern for humans to go past the cultural tensions, these according to Said cannot only be considered as fault lines but as hastily drawn conclusions that are dark and wrongly placed. For instance, Said makes an observation that power of Huntington has massively exaggerated the aspect of the traditionalist by dubbing Islamic Fundamentalism as less sign of resurgence than that of panic, guilt and bewilderment. Simply, Huntington applies excessive exaggeration in his basic concepts in order to deliver his point (Allen, Said & Viswanathan, 2002).

Said Edward finds that Huntington establishes a problem in the identification of the appropriate labels, for instance, the West and Islam. There is an issue of confusion and a misled perspective in the attempt to make sense of the disorganized reality. A good example provided is the instance where Huntington used the Kin Country Syndrome where he embraced explanation of the Gulf War by Saddam. The fight was just a bid for an imperial expedition and the and nothing as close to Saddams claims. The argument shows the Islam divide consistently to further sub-divisions, and again Huntington engaged in the erratic tendency as per Said where Said says that Huntington rushed too fast to draw conclusions between the civilizations and failed to pay close attention to the facts underlying.

However, Said agrees with Huntington on the matter of the Western values being mistaken sometimes for being universal (Said & Barsamian, 1994). Another aspect in which Saids ideas rhyme with Huntingtons is that the Western Culture played a dominant role in ensuring that their values became universal; the rapid globalization led to the values initially deemed as the Western values being presumed to be the best and enforced to the rest of the world. However, Said came across another contrasting matter where he argued that the values were far different from the Huntingtons perceived superpower aspect of the United States and neither the fact that it was because of the Western Military dominance. Said contested with the idea that the emergence of the universal values was something vested in an aspect of overlapping historical events that turns out some more defining characteristics and identities.

The most appropriate conclusion is one based on a subject of prescriptions. Edward Said would not find a common ground with Huntington on the notion of his visions of the Wests short-term interest. Huntingtons idea and the notion of what is the interest of the West in short term only reinforces an aspect of the Western Imperialism. There is a need to note the world should concentrate on the manner in which the worlds histories have been intertwined and that the recurrent cultural division is not valid. It has been through globalization that the world has come to be termed as Westernized, but the fact is that it was always and has always been the superior culture and absorbed other cultures becoming even more superior and shared. Huntington further adds that the goal of people should be directed towards the cultivation of vestiges of an imperial culture that are still entrenched in the American culture (Huntington, 1997). This would be an aspect with which Said would agree since the argument is that these aspects should be placed under analysis instead of laying the blame on them.

References

Said, E. (2003). The clash of definitions. The new crusades: Constructing the Muslim enemy, 68-87.

Said, E. W. (2001). Globalizing literary study. Publications of the Modern Language Association of America, 64-68.

Holton, R. (2000). Globalization's cultural consequences. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 570(1), 140-152.

Allen, R., Said, E., & Viswanathan, G. (2002). Power, Politics, and Culture: Interviews withWorld Literature Today, 76(1), 235. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/40157244Huntington, S. P. (1997). The clash of civilizations and the remaking of world order. PenguinBooks India.

Said, E. W., & Barsamian, D. (1994). The pen and the sword: Conversations with DavidBarsamian. Common Courage Pr.