'The death of the west': Samuel Huntington, Oriana Fallaci and a new 'moral' geopolitics of births and bodies

Geopolitics

Volumn 11, Issue 4, 2006, Pages 701-724

  Bialasiewicz, Luiza ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF LONDON   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

GEOPOLITICS; MORALITY; POLICY STRATEGY; POLITICAL IDEOLOGY;

EURASIA; EUROPE;

EID: 33749169802     PISSN: 14650045     EISSN: 15573028     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/14650040600890859     Document Type: Article

References (144)

1. See, among others, S. Dalby, 'Calling 911: Geopolitics, Security and America's New War', Geopolitics 8/3 (2003) pp. 61-86
2. D. Gregory, The Colonial Present (Oxford, UK: Blackwell 2004)
3. C. Lutz, 'Making War at Home in the United States: Militarization and the Current Crisis', American Anthropologist 104 (2002) pp. 733-735.
4. S. Huntington, Who Are We? America's Great Debate (New York: Free Press 2004).
5. O. Fallaci, La Rabbia e l'Orgoglio (Milano: Rizzoli 2001; translated as The Rage and The Pride, New York: Rizzoli International 2002)
6. also, La Forza Della Ragione (Milano: Rizzoli 2004; translated as The Force of Reason, New York: Rizzoli International [forthcoming] 2006).
7. S. Dalby, 'Geopolitics, Knowledge and Power at the End of the Century', in G. O'Tuathail, S. Dalby and P. Routledge (eds.), The Geopolitics Reader (London: Routledge 1998) p. 307.
8. S. Dalby, 'The Environment as Geopolitical Threat: Reading Robert Kaplan's 'Coming Anarchy', Ecumene 3/4 (1996) pp. 472-496
9. see also D. Sibley, Geographies of Exclusion (London: Routledge 1995).
10. G. O'Tuathail, 'Introduction: Part III', in O'Tuathail, Dalby and Routledge (note 4) p. 110
11. see also M. J. Shapiro, 'Samuel Huntington's Moral Geography', Theory & Event 2/4 (1999), available at http://Muse.jhu.edu/theory_and_event/v002/2.4shapiro.html
12. W. E. Connolly, 'The New Cult of Civilizational Superiority', Theory & Event 2/4 (1999), available http://Muse.jhu.edu/theory_and_event/v002/2.4connolly.html (both accessed 12 January 2006).
13. S. Huntington, 'The Clash of Civilisations?', Foreign Affairs 72/Summer (1993) pp. 22-49
14. and the book, The Clash of Civilisations and the Remaking of World Order (New York: Simon and Schuster 1996).
15. G. O'Tuathail, Critical Geopolitics: The Politics of Writing Global Space (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press 1996) p. 247.
16. Feminist international relations theorists such as Cynthia Enloe have commented at length on the semantic threat posed by the (perceived) inability to set boundaries and contain meaning in the post-Cold War era - see Enloe's Bananas, Beaches and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics (London: Pandora 1989)
17. also her The Morning After: Sexual Politics and the End of the Cold War (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press 1993),
18. and the more recent Manoeuvres: The International Politics of Militarizing Women's Lives (Berkeley, CA.: University of California Press 2000).
19. The question of 'domestic economic renewal' was also part of the arguments advanced in those years by Edward Luttwak in his specification of the 'geo-economics' that would purportedly structure international relations after the Cold War, but also present in the pronouncements of more sanguine US commentators such as Pat Buchanan; see Luttwak's The Endangered American Dream (New York: Simon & Schuster 1993),
20. and his Turbo Capitalism: Winners and Losers in the Global Economy (New York: Weidenfeld and Nicholson 1998)
21. also, P. J. Buchanan, Right from the Beginning (Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing 1988).
22. Huntington's accusations against multiculturalism were most explicitly made in his 'If Not Civilisations, What? Paradigms of the Post-Cold War World', Foreign Affairs 72 (November-December 1993)
23. see also the analysis in O'Tuathail (note 8).
24. O'Tuathail (note 8) p. 248.
25. For a discussion of this shift see E. Berselli, Post-Italiani: Cronache di un paese provvisorio (Milano: Mondadori 2004)
26. L. Bialasiewicz, 'Geographies of Production and the Contexts of Politics: Dislocation and New Ecologies of Fear in the Veneto citta diffusa', Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 24/1 (2006) pp. 41-67
27. and P. Rumiz, La secessione leggera (Roma: Editori Riuniti 1997), as well as his È Oriente (Milano: Feltrinelli 2003).
28. A 'globalism' envisioned both in political-economic terms as the threat of a new colonization of Poland, this time by European (read: German) capital, but also as a cultural-political 'brainwashing' of Polish youth into values 'alien' to the Polish nation: The 'cults' of multiculturalism, feminism, and the promotion of sexual and reproductive rights. See, for example, the arguments made in F. Adwent, Dlaczego Unia Europejska Jest Zguba dla Polski (Warszawa: Antyk 2002)
29. P. Bryksa, Wstapienie do UE? Zagrozenie polityczne dla Polski (Warszawa: Antyk 2002)
30. M. Dybowski, Szkic o globalizmie, rewolucji psychopedagogicznej i technikach manipulacji (Warszawa: Antyk 2003).
31. For a discussion of the role of population policies in sustaining what he terms the "myth of security" of the nation-state, see A. Cavalletti, La Citta Biopolitica (Milano: Bruno Mondadori 2005),
32. but also G. Agamben, La Potenza del Pensiero (Vicenza: Neri Pozza 2005).
33. Huntington, (note 2) pp. 221-278.
34. Fallaci, La Forza Della Ragione (note 3) pp. 53-55.
35. G. Grass, Kopfgeburten, oder Die Deutschen sterben aus (Frankfurt: Luchterhand Literatur Verlag 1980).
36. N. Yuval-Davis, Gender and Nation (London: Sage 1997) p. 2.
37. J. Sharp, 'Gendering Nationhood: A Feminist Engagement with National Identity', in N. Duncan (ed.), Body/Space. Destabilising Geographies of Gender and Sexuality (London: Routledge 1996) p. 100.
38. For an overview, see Sharp (note 19).
39. See also A. McClintock, Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Context (London: Routledge 1994)
40. and her edited volume (with A. Mufti and E. Shohat), Dangerous Liaisons: Gender, Nation and Postcolonial Perspectives (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press 1997).
41. Cynthia Enloe, for one, has argued how prevention of the foreign penetration of the motherland - and women's bodies as symbols of it - has long been at the heart of national-state security - see Enloe, Bananas, Beaches and Bases
42. also her The Morning After (note 9).
43. Yuval-Davis (note 18) p. 22.
44. See C. Koonz, Mothers in the Fatherland: Women, the Family and Nazi Politics (London: Cape 1986),
45. as well as L. Pine, Nazi Family Policy, 1933-1945 (London: Berg 1997).
46. On the regulation of marriage and reproductive practices by the national state, see J. Stevens, Reproducing the State (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press 1999).
47. S. Drakulic, 'Women and the New Democracy in the Former Yugoslavia', in N. Funk and M. Mueller (eds.), Gender Politics and Post-Communism: Reflections from Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union (London: Routledge 1993) p. 125,
48. as well as her They Would Never Hurt a Fly (London: Abacus 2004).
49. See the description in B. Allen, Rape Warfare: Hidden Genocide in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press 1996).
50. See also Drakulic, They Would Never Hurt a Fly (note 24),
51. and her As If I Am Not There: A Novel about the Balkans (London: Abacus 1999).
52. See, among others, J. N. Pieterse, White on Black: Images of Africa and Blacks in Western Popular Culture (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press 1995)
53. for a discussion of the intersections of imperialism, racial policies and gender politics see also A. L. Stoler, Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power: Race and the Intimate in Imperial Rule (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press 2002)
54. as well as her Race and the Education of Desire: Foucault's History of Sexuality and the Colonial Order of Things (Durham, NC: Duke University Press 1995).
55. See, among others, L. Back, 'The 'White Negro' Revisited: Race and Masculinities in South London', in A. Cornwall and N. Lindisfarne (eds.), Dislocating Masculinity: Comparative Ethnographies (London: Routledge 1994) pp. 172-183
56. and J. Jacobs, 'Tourist Places and Negotiating Modernity: European Women and Romance Tourism in the Sinai', in C. Minca and T. Oakes (eds.), Travels in Paradox (Boulder, CO: Rowman and Littlefield 2006).
57. K. Anderson, Vancouver's Chinatown: Racial Discourses in Canada, 1875-1980 (Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press 1991)
58. see also her 'Engendering Race Research: Unsettling the Self-Other Dichotomy', in N. Duncan (note 19) pp. 197-211.
59. See the overview in P. A. Taguieff, L'illusion populiste (Paris: Berg International Editeurs 2002)
60. as well as P.-A. Taguieff and G. Delannoi (eds.), Nationalismes en perspective (Paris: Berg International Editeurs 2001).
61. For a discussion of the geographical imaginations that mark contemporary racisms in Europe, see A. Pred's excellent Even in Sweden: Racisms, Racialized Spaces, and the Popular Geographical Imagination (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press 2000).
62. See the analysis in N. Canetti, 'Immigrati, ecco la legge xenofoba', L'Unità (1 March 2002) p. 13
63. G. Casadio, 'Immigrati, impronte schedate', La Repubblica (30 May 2002) p. 2
64. P. Colaprico 'Immigrati, patto Bossi-Fini. 'Resta solo chi ha un lavoro'', La Repubblica (7 August 2001) p. 8.
65. In Britain, fears about the higher birth rate in minority communities have been translated into rhetorical images of floods and swamps not only by ultra-nationalist leaders like Enoch Powell but also by 'respectable' politicians like Margaret Thatcher - see the comments in L. McDowell, Gender, Identity and Place. Understanding Feminist Geographies (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press 1999) p. 189.
66. Anderson, 'Engendering Race Research: Unsettling the Self-Other Dichotomy' (note 28) p. 201.
67. P. J. Buchanan, The Death of the West: How Dying Populations and Immigrant Invasions Imperil Our Country and Civilisation (New York: St. Martin's Press 2002).
68. Ibid., pp. 3, 9.
69. Ibid., p. 129.
70. Huntington (note 2) p. 226.
71. Ibid., pp. 224-227.
72. Ibid., p. 219.
73. Ibid., p. 241.
74. Ibid., p. 246.
75. See also M. Janowitz, The Reconstruction of Patriotism: Education for Civic Consciousness (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1983).
76. Huntington (note 2) p. 253.
77. Ibid., p. 246.
78. Ibid., pp. 180-181.
79. See also O. Waever et al., Identity, Migration, and the New Security Agenda in Europe (London: Pinter 1993).
80. Fallaci, La Rabbia e l'Orgoglio/The Rage and The Pride (note 3) p. 21 (all English citations from La Rabbia e l'Orgoglio come from Fallaci's own English-language translation of the book published in 2002. The translations of citations from Fallaci's subsequent volume - La Forza della Ragione - are my own).
81. Ibid., p. 27.
82. Ibid., pp. 28-29.
83. The Gazeta greeted Fallaci's latest oeuvre with a front-page editorial entitled 'Reason obscured by Rage' (a play on the titles of Fallaci's two books), noting how the author's arguments "can make your hair stand on end - and that is Fallaci's aim. But what makes this book so dangerous, is that to this end the author shamelessly distorts both historical facts as well as recent events" - see M. Jedrysik, 'Rozum w Cieniu Furii', Gazeta Wyborcza (11 June 2004) p. 1.
84. For reactions in Britain, see P. Willan, 'Writer Ignites Italian Pride and Prejudice', The Guardian (3 October 2001)
85. as well as T. Garton Ash, 'I nuovi fantasmi dell'Europa', La Repubblica (1 December 2001) p. 45.
86. The Berlusconi-owned weekly glossy newsmagazine Panorama dedicated its cover to Fallaci's 2004 book, declaring her "Italy's greatest living writer".
87. Most prominently, the then-president of the Italian Senate, Marcello Pera (see the interview in L. Contu, 'Pera: 'Attaccano la nostra civilta, fermiamo i fondamentalismi'', La Repubblica (30 August 2004) p. 2). Fallaci's attacks against immigrants and, especially, against the 'cultural relativism' and 'permissiveness' of the Italian Left have also been advanced, in even more extreme fashion, by Forza Italia's online political weekly Ragionpolitica (http://www.ragionpolitica.it, particularly by the publication's director, Father Gianni Baget Bozzo, also a popular TV commentator).
88. Fallaci, La Rabbia e l'Orgoglio/The Rage and The Pride (note 3) p. 137.
89. Ibid., pp. 137-138.
90. Fallaci, La Forza Della Ragione (note 3) pp. 55-56.
91. On the rhetorical success of Fallaci's simple prose see, among others, F. Cardini writing in the Catholic daily L'Avvenire: 'La Fallaci Bis e gia un classico (a modo suo)', L'Avvenire (3 April 2004).
92. Fallaci, La Rabbia e l'Orgoglio/The Rage and The Pride (note 3) p. 84.
93. Ibid., p. 38.
94. Ibid., p. 99.
95. Ibid., p. 128
96. Fallaci, La Forza Della Ragione (note 3) p. 37.
97. Fallaci, La Rabbia e l'Orgoglio/The Rage and The Pride (note 3) pp. 36, 135.
98. Much could be said about Fallaci's representation of cities as the sites of (identitary but not only) pollution and decay, especially the ways in which such understandings draw upon broader anti-urban ideologies that abhor the city as the site of hybridity and 'rootless cosmopolitanism', that imagine the 'metropolis as a whore', as a den of vice and iniquity - paradoxically enough, representations also present in many of the fundamentalist Islamic ideologies that Fallaci attacks (for a discussion of such understandings, see I. Buruma a nd A. Margalit, Occidentalism: A Short History of Anti-Westernism (London: Atlantic Books 2004)
99. on the urban as a site of danger post 9/11 see, among others, S. Graham, 'Introduction: Cities, Warfare, and States of Emergency' in S. Graham (ed.), Cities, War and Terrorism (Oxford, UK: Blackwell 2004) pp. 1-25,
100. as well as J. Johnson Jr., 'U.S. Immigration Reform, Homeland Defense and Metropolitan Economies in the Post 9-11 environment', Urban Geography 23 (2002) pp. 201-212.
101. Fallaci, La Forza Della Ragione (note 3) p. 142.
102. Huntington (note 2) p. xvi.
103. Ibid., pp. 17-19.
104. Ibid., pp. 141-144.
105. Ibid., p. 143.
106. Ibid., pp. 173-175.
107. Ibid., p. 175.
108. Ibid., pp. 264, 269.
109. Ibid., p. 310.
110. Ibid., p. 264.
111. Ibid., pp. 269-270.
112. Ibid., p. 171.
113. Ibid., pp. 20, xvii.
114. Ibid., pp. 343-344.
115. It is curious to note that both Huntington and Buchanan make recourse to (now) largely forgotten French author Julien Benda and his book La Trahison des Clercs to describe the 'cultural traitors' of the American nation.
116. Buchanan (note 32) p. 5.
117. Ibid., p. 9.
118. Ibid., p. 23.
119. Ibid., p. 24.
120. Ibid., p. 34.
121. Ibid., p. 118.
122. Fallaci, La Rabbia e l'Orgoglio/The Rage and The Pride (note 3) p. 182.
123. Ibid., p. 33.
124. Ibid., pp. 177-178.
125. This comment refers to a conference organised by the EU under the auspices of the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership; ibid., pp. 182-183, 185.
126. Ibid., p. 22.
127. A not-so-veiled allusion to the G-8 protesters whom Fallaci has viciously attacked in a number of articles; ibid., pp. 176-177.
128. Ibid., p. 173.
129. Ibid., pp. 81-83.
130. See the discussion in Buruma and Margalit (note 57) pp. 52-54.
131. J. Kurth, 'The American Way of Victory', National Interest (Summer 2000) p. 5,
132. cited in Buchanan (note 32) p. 243.
133. Connolly (note 6) p. 4.
134. For a discussion of the ways in which hybridity is presented as 'monstrous' in contemporary understandings of terror and terrorism, see A. Rai, 'Of Monsters: Biopower, Terrorism and Excess in Genealogies of Monstrosity', Cultural Studies 18/4 (2004) pp. 538-570. Rai (evoking Jacques Derrida) notes that a 'monster' is precisely "the result of a process of hybridization (even miscegenation) that disrupts proper boundaries, blurring identities through the experience of a certain liminality".
135. For a consideration of some of the historical genealogies of such understandings, see also Buruma and Margalit (note 57).
136. Most prominently, E. Balibar, L'Europe, L'Amerique, La Guerre (Paris: Editions La Découverte 2003)
137. J. Habermas, Der gespaltene Westen (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag 2004)
138. J. Habermas and J. Derrida, 'L'Europa alla ricerca dell'identità perduta', La Repubblica (4 June 2003) pp. 44-45
139. T. Todorov, Le Nouveau désordre mondial (Paris: Editions Robert Laffont 2003).
140. See Habermas (note 91)
141. also, L. Bialasiewicz and S. Elden, 'The New Geopolitics of Division and the Problem of a Kantian Europe', Review of International Studies 32/4 (2006, forthcoming)
142. L. Bialasiewicz and C. Minca, 'Old Europe, New Europe: For a Geopolitics of Translation', Area 37/4 (2005) pp. 365-372
143. P. Joenniemi, 'Europe 'New' and 'Old': On the US Power of Altercasting', paper presented at the Pan-European International Relations Conference, The Hague, 9-11 September 2004.
144. Connolly (note 6) p. 3, emphasis in original.