Contemporary Dangers of Huntington's travesty of "History": A Postcolonial Deconstructionist Response and Proposed Solution

Abstract

Samuel Huntington's The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order is a seminal text in postcolonial theory and contemporary wartime cultural studies. The Washington Post has recently described him as "a prophet for the Trump era". This paper is a response to the dangers of two practices in politics and the academy worldwide: (1) adopting such a view by high rank policy makers; and (2) the Library of Congress' classification of Huntington's book as textbook of "history” that is being taught to students of history, postcolonialism, and cultural studies around the world. Drawing from some postcolonial and literary theorists, including Depish Chakrabarty and Gayatri Spivak, the paper deconstructs Huntington's notion of "history" which has been found to be based on secondary sources, selective, ignorant, and marginalizing non-Western histories, including five hundred years of philosophical and scientific contribution of Islamic civilization to the sleeping Europe and the West. The paper calls for the combat of such a dangerous theory and its abolition from the syllabus of the departments of English and history as well as from the usage by high rank political decision makers. After establishing the similarities between Huntington and the nihilist philosopher, Frederick Nietzsche, the researcher concludes with a possible solution to the problem of adopting Huntington's view of the inevitable future clash between civilizations: the belief of the contemporary philosopher of phenomenology and hermeneutics, Paul Ricouer that the reality of the existence of the Self cannot be attained without embracing the Other into the Self, becoming one with it, which ultimately eliminates any conflict or violence between individuals, communities and civilizations. This principle is one of theprinciples of Islam which calls a Muslim Self to be one with the other.