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ID:
052103
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| Publication |
Summer 2004.
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| Summary/Abstract |
This article examines Samuel Huntington's claims that his civilisational theory rises to the level of paradigm and is not merely social science theory. This claim is examined in light of Huntington's focus on Islamic civilisation and its relationship to the ongoing war on terror. The specific manifestations of Islam that have been relevant to this war are placed within the context of what Jeffrey Herf refers to as reactionary modernism, which views violent reactions to modernity as alternative expressions of modernity. While Islam has civilisational characteristics, as Huntington suggests, the violence that gives rise to terror is a result of time- and region-specific reactionary modern variables, and is not inherent in Islam itself. Second, though civilisation-as-social science might shed light on policy options to deal with the problem of terror, civilisational theory is not equipped to supersede the interest-orientation of realism.
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| 2 |
ID:
190951
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| Summary/Abstract |
In the intellectual history of modern Japan, the late 1880s epitomized the Meiji government’s effort to ‘civilize’ through Westernization, driven by the social Darwinian vision of the survival of the fittest. During this period in the United States, the ideas of civilization theory, informed by the very antithesis of the Meiji state’s understanding, surfaced in the life and work of the aspiring young naturalist-botanist Minakata Kumagusu. He imagined a ‘different kind of civilization’ as he re-examined the nature of social evolution in microbes by turning to Indian-and-Chinese-derived knowledge of his home region of Kii, Japan. Buddhism, persecuted by the Meiji regime, most notably enabled his scientific enquiry, while the encyclopedic work of Wakan Sansai Zue (The Illustrated Three Knowledge of Sino-Japan) became another key inspiration. Chinese historiography and Confucian thoughts additionally facilitated his reasoning.
What interconnected all of these strands was what the author refers to as ‘queer nature’: the basis for truths whose ontological and experiential qualities resembled the microbe slime mould. Similar to this microbe that captured Kumagusu’s imagination, with queer nature the process of knowing defied the epistemological dichotomies and hierarchies that were fundamental to the social Darwinian theory of evolution. Experientially, it attracted the knower’s attention, induced their desire for intimacy with strange and curious others, and propelled greater intellectual enquiries. The article thus demonstrates a queer theory of intellectual history rooted in modern Japan, whose intellectual lineage derived from India and China instead of the West.
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