The Clash of Ignorance

"The Clash of Ignorance" is an essay by Edward Said that first appeared in the October 22, 2001 edition of The Nation, published shortly after the September 11 attacks.

"The Clash of Ignorance"

"The Clash of Ignorance" was presented as a rebuttal to Samuel P. Huntington’s theory of “The Clash of Civilizations”, which argues that after the Cold War, the dominant source of conflict for mankind would be cultural. Huntington’s theory principally revolves around the civilizations of “the West” and “Islam”: the author famously states that “the fault lines between civilizations will be the battle lines of the future."^[1]

“The Clash of Ignorance” provides a critical response to Huntington’s thesis, in which Said asserts that the uses of labels such as “the West” and “Islam” are dangerous and serve to confuse about a disorderly reality.^[2] Said argues that through “The Clash of Civilizations?” Huntington recklessly affirms the personification of enormous and complex entities such as “the West” and “Islam.” “The Clash of Ignorance” is also critical of Huntington’s thesis on the grounds that complicated matters like identity and culture are presented in a “cartoonlike fashion,” with the West always appearing more virtuous compared to the Islam adversary.^[3]

In “The Clash of Ignorance,” Said is critical of Huntington for presenting the concepts of civilizations and identities as closed, shut-down, and sealed off entities that are unchanging and homogeneous in the global community. Said argues that these concepts have in fact been open to “exchange, cross-fertilization and sharing.” According to Said:

Huntington is an ideologist, someone who wants to make "civilizations" and "identities" into what they are not: shut-down, sealed-off entities that have been purged of the myriad currents and countercurrents that animate human history, and that over centuries have made it possible for that history not only to contain wars of religion and imperial conquest but also to be one of exchange, cross-fertilization and sharing. This far less visible history is ignored in the rush to highlight the ludicrously compressed and constricted warfare that "the clash of civilizations" argues is the reality.^[4]

In the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Said argues that the vocabulary employed by major American and European newspapers served to intensify passionate associations with “the West” and further established the notion of Us vs. Them, or the West versus Islam. "The Clash of Ignorance" states that the problem with these labels are that they “mislead and confuse the mind, which is trying to make sense of a disorderly reality..."^[5]

In the conclusion of “The Clash of Ignorance,” Said reiterates the problems and dangers of conforming to labels such as “the West” and “Islam.” According to Said:

These are tense times, but it is better to think in terms of powerful and powerless communities, the secular politics of reason and ignorance, and universal principles of justice and injustice, than to wander off in search of vast abstractions that may give momentary satisfaction but little self-knowledge or informed analysis. "The Clash of Civilizations" thesis is a gimmick like "The War of the Worlds," better for reinforcing defensive self-pride than for critical understanding of the bewildering interdependence of our time.^[6]

Other work

Apparently coined in the Edward Said essay, the concept of a “clash of ignorance” has been used as a framework by some academics. In their 2012 article titled “Clash of Ignorance” published in the Global Media Journal - - Canadian Edition, Karim and Eid support and advance the "clash of ignorance" framework by highlighting its contribution to the understanding of intercultural and international communication. According to Karim and Eid (2012) the concept of ignorance is of particular importance because it not only represents the accidental absence of knowledge, but it has also been culturally constructed over generations and used politically in the pursuit of power and interests.^[7]

References

1. Huntington, Samuel P. (Summer 1993). "The Clash of Civilizations?". Foreign Affairs 73 (3): 22.
2. Said, Edward W. (October 22, 2001). "The Clash of Ignorance". The Nation: 1–5.
3. Said, Edward W. (October 22, 2001). "The Clash of Ignorance". The Nation: 1.
4. Said, Edward W. (October 22, 2001). "The Clash of Ignorance". The Nation: 1.
5. Said, Edward W. (October 22, 2001). "The Clash of Ignorance". The Nation: 1.
6. Said, Edward W. (October 22, 2001). "The Clash of Ignorance". The Nation: 3.
7. Karim, Karim; Mahmoud Eid (2012). "Clash of Ignorance" (PDF). Global Media Journal - - Canadian Edition 5 (1): 7–27.