Said Lecture on Clash of Civilisations

In this lecture delivered at the University of Massachusetts, Said speaks regarding the problems in the way the West presents and enforces their foreign policies and the continuing conflicts between different and clashing civilizations including Western, Islamic and Confucian. He examines how this is shown in the modern world as opposed to the traditional.

In the opening section Said asks "the real question is whether in the end we want to work for civilizations that are separate, or whether we should be taking the more integrative, but perhaps more difficult path, which is to see them as making one vast whole, whose exact contours are impossible for any person to grasp, but whose certain existence we can intuit and feel and study."

He is looking at the current times and what is happening in the world is not the clash of civilisations but the clash of how these civilisation are defined and by whom. He states the the people who really know how a culture operates is a huge conflict for that group and it is never solved.

He goes on to state cultures are not the same. There is an official culture, a culture of priests, academics, and the state. They also provide a definitions of patriotism, loyalty, boundaries and what Said calls belonging. Said said that it is this official defined culture that speaks in the name of the whole.

The lecture presents a distorted view of what is described as Islam is a western view and not how they are viewed form within. Said claims that the current state of the world is a modern type of Orientalism. It is a constructed description meant to arouse a sense of hostility and hatred for an area where these groups reside is an area of strategic importance. Whether that importance is for the wealth of minerals located there or because it threatens a Christian base this location has had a long history with the West.