Wednesday, March 13, 2002

The next clash of civilisations? 16 January 2002 To travel through the ‘developing’ lands during the current war is to encounter a level of anger and protest against the West that reveals a core fissure in global politics. Not the terrorist challenge to the civilised world, but rising opposition from communities across the globe to the stifling embrace of materialist consumerism. "I have seen and heard intelligent people driven by some hatred of the West and of America, symbol of its power, lauding, defending or justifying the actions of a mass murdering Saudi millionaire who they had probably never heard of last August, and still know next to nothing about. . . . Perhaps those pictures of . . . Islamic people apparently celebrating on 11 September have made it clear to you that the anger at America and its allies runs deeper than imagined." "Perhaps too, though, this undercurrent of resentment and hatred which people all over the world continue to feel for the West and all that it represents is something more than that. Something deeper. Something that showers of neither money nor bombs can solve. If so, what? . . . it may be, still, that this has something to do with an aspect of globalisation, and the opposition to it, which is rarely mentioned, but which may even be the key to the whole puzzle: something called culture. Something which is mostly unseen, taken for granted, ill-defined, until it is threatened, and which then has the power to create more discord, rebellion and opposition than mere economics ever could." " . . . we have talked about a clash of world views – of cultures – that has been sparked by the new wave of corporate capitalism unleashed over the last two decades. This clash is between two distinct forces. One is a fundamentally materialistic world view, driven by multinational companies, politicians and their handmaidens in multinational agencies like the World Bank, WTO and IMF. It sees people as consumers, nations as markets, the natural environment as a bundle of resources ripe for profitable extraction and unique, ancient cultures as demographics. The other is a vast, massing, often confused but potentially hugely powerful collection of opponents, numbering tens of millions around the world, who see life in quite different terms. This may represent a real clash of civilisations; a clash between the destructive, homogenising force of the West’s capitalist economic model, and the diverse, varied, hectic alternatives that every day are destroyed by it. . . . the West and its increasingly smug politicians had better start realising what they are up against, before their whole edifice comes tumbling down." " . . . centres of resistance to the global economy all over the world. . . . What ties them all together, though, is that idea of culture. Partly a defence of their traditional cultural values which are so alien to the West; close communities, shared land, utterly different conceptions of nature, work, family, time, which the global economy must destroy in order to expand its markets and thrive. But also, more broadly than this, a collection of values which might be called a global culture of resistance . . . " "What might these values – this alternative culture – be? . . . some themes are clear. Opponents of the neoliberal machine believe in diversity – cultural, individual, ecological, economic – over homogeneity. They believe that one global model can never fit all, and talk . . . of 'a world in which many worlds can fit'; the precise opposite of the McWorld that globalisation is imposing. They believe in certain common aspects of life which cannot and should not ever be commodified or privatised by global economic interests; water, agriculture, the airwaves, the atmosphere, traditional knowledge, biological diversity, gene lines and more; a concept some call the “global commons”. They believe in communities exercising their own form of democracy and gaining genuine control over their land and resources. They reject centralisation and tend to be suspicious of both big government and big corporations, and of traditional ideologies, left or right. All this they sum up in their most well-worn slogan: 'Our world is not for sale.'" " . . . the growing opposition to an economic model which is eating them alive. It represents a frustration felt by millions, and may provide an alternative to celebrating mass murder as the only outlet for kicking back at the West. This looks increasingly like a new culture in the making; a global culture, formed of many, many older ones, which is heading straight towards the culture of neoliberalism at breathtaking speed." "When – if – they collide, we could see what a clash of civilisations really means. . . . no-one involved really knows how it will be resolved. But it will have to be, and with real change, for the tens of millions of dissenters are not going away anytime soon; indeed, their numbers are growing all the time. And whatever the powerful try or say, they will not be shut up or shut out. They have far, far too much at stake." ... [more] 4:40:12 PM  Google It!  comment  []

Letters Exchanged between KENZABURO OE and EDWARD W. SAID March 6, 2002 From Oe to Said Japan's youth should avoid assimilation into cultural imperialism " . . . I was reading your ``Culture and Imperialism.'' I was reading it partly to intensify my criticism against myself for not sufficiently confronting history and reality." "The Japanese are now willingly accepting the rule by cultural imperialism or unification of the cultural and national identity . . . Japan's envisagement of her identity with the world other than Islamic countries. . . . I am not certain-perhaps nobody is-whether humankind can surmount the current crisis without being integrated into the imperialism (not only cultural but overall imperialism) of one great nation." From Said to Oe Indiscriminate hostility makes Muslims enemies of the state "As one of the world's great writers, you are also a sensitive witness to the travails of our time, particular those that concern Japan, an extraordinary country that seems to embody more intractably than most, the contradictions, the ups and downs of modernity and tradition, war and peace, dependence and audacity, empire and its loss." "'What does it feel like to be the enemy?' which is something that every Arab or Muslim American that I know feels: We are the officially designated enemies of a nation whose president committed himself publicly to a war against evil, on an apocalyptic level and scale unknown to previous history. . . . [It is] a noteworthy fact that two of the officially designated members of the 'axis of evil' are Muslim states, one of them Arab, and that the only countries since the Vietnam War that the U.S. has waged all-out war against are Muslim countries, Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, whose complete destruction was desired, if not totally achieved." "Who can forget Herman Melville's character Captain Ahab in Moby Dick, the greatest American novel, in relentless, crazy pursuit of the white whale that has become his monomaniacal obsession as the personification of evil?" "My impression is that what has overtaken America is a wave of triumphal patriotism . . . Yes, it is completely understandable for the United States to have responded to the attacks, but that response has been overlain with a kind of metaphysical language justifying unilateralism abroad while preventing discussion and criticism at home. . . . what we are talking about . . . is American power on such an unprecedented scale as to grind down the rest of the world and say . . . you're either with us or you're for terrorism." " . . . used without qualification as a concept merely to identify what one doesn't like, or something evil that has been done, or an official enemy, the word 'terrorism' can also obscure what may be an act of resistance, or of desperation caused by a preponderance of power that is both heedless and destructive. . . . To every Arab and Muslim, what Israel has been doing is state terrorism, and what Palestinians do most of the time is to resist that violence, sometimes using desperate terrorist means." " . . . human knowledge is essentially tragic and always somehow inadequate to the terrible immediacy of human experience. That doesn't stop one, however, from thinking and trying everlastingly to elaborate the situation that presents itself so urgently for consideration, analysis, judgment. And this is one reason, whether we live in Japan or the United States, the engulfing power of enormous military enterprises and huge corporate endeavors prompts us to deal with them carefully and stubbornly, analyzing and demystifying them, without falling into the kind of assent to authority that so many of our compatriots have succumbed to. Never unquestioning solidarity without criticism, is my motto. And I think yours, too. Doubtless we are now in a new phase of history, of which the regulation of political discourse by central authority is an intimidating reality for individuals everywhere." ... [more] 3:34:55 PM  Google It!  comment  []