Fault lines Take Home Exam

FAULTLINES EUS 1003

Coordinator:

M Georgieva

Name: Jip van Vulpen

Idnumber: I6023510

Date: 05-04-‘11

Pigeonhole number: 923

Introduction

Since the beginning of times there have been domestic and foreign
tensions. Many intellectuals have their vision on the tensions within
domestic cultures, and a new marginalization of the Eastern Europe and
the Balkans (Swanson 2000) The clash of civilization is one example of
the many which advocates about conflicts between civilizations, as
Huntington states: “This is not to advocate the desirability of conflicts
between civilizations. It is to set forth descriptive hypothesis as to what
the future may be like.” This regards to the main theme of the paper, in
“is Blood Thicker than Water”, a lecture given by Rene Gabriëls, it shows
the shift and tools achieved to a new world order. Fault lines within this
paper will be given at hand of the lecture mentioned above and the lecture
form Natalia timuş about the changes and tension in central and Eastern
Europe, “hope or nightmare”. This all Substantiated by Samuel P
Huntington in contrast to Ignatieff, moreover, in the respect to central
Europe, Kundera will be mainly used. This paper will thus focus on fault
lines in Central and Eastern Europe.

Fault lines

In the post-Cold War central and eastern Europe was divided in: Central
Europe; Visegrad countries (Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, and
Hungary), Eastern Europe; former Soviet Union (European side) and the
Balkans; former Yugoslavia. (Natalia Timuş, 2011, lecture 4) world flags
count and so do other symbols of cultural identity, because culture counts,
and cultural identity is what is most meaningful to most people. People are
discovering new but often old identities and marching under new but often
old flags which lead to wars with new but often old enemies. For peoples
seeking identity and reinventing ethnicity, enemies are essential, and the
potentially most dangerous enmities occur across the fault lines between
the world’s major civilizations. (Natalia Timuş, 2011, lecture 4)
In the post-Cold War world, for the first time in history, global politics has
become multipolar and multi-civilizational. (Mannin 1999) The most
important distinctions among peoples are no longer ideological, political,
or economic. They are cultural. People use politics not just to advance
their interests but also to define their identity. We know who we are only
when we know who we are not and often only when we know whom we
are against. Nation states remain the principal actors in world affairs. Their
behaviour is shaped as in the past by the pursuit of power and wealth, but
it is also shaped by cultural preferences, commonalities, and differences.
The most important groupings of states are no longer the three blocks of
the Cold War but rather the world’s seven or eight major civilizations.

The rivalry of the superpowers is replaced by the clash of civilizations. In

this new world the most pervasive, important, and dangerous conflicts will
not be between social classes, rich and poor, or other economically
defined groups, but between peoples belong to different cultural entities.
The most important countries in the world come overwhelmingly from
different civilizations. The local conflicts most likely to escalate into
broader wars are those between groups and states from different
civilizations.

Civilizations are the ultimate human tribes, and the clash of civilizations is
tribal conflict on a global scale. Relations between groups from different
civilizations will be almost never close, usually cool, and often hostile.
Inter-civilizational conflict takes two forms: At the local or micro level, fault
line conflicts occur. At the global or macro level, core state conflicts occur.
(Rene Gabriels, 2011, lecture 1) Huntington argues that the issues in
these conflicts are the classic ones of international politics, including:
relative influence in shaping global developments and the actions of global
international organizations; relative military power; economic power and
welfare; people; values and culture; territory. Huntington sees cultural
differences sharpening the conflict, and using paradigms to predict future
conflicts. Huntington argues that core states are unlikely to go to war
directly against one another, except under two circumstances: They could
develop from the escalation of fault line conflicts. Further on, Core state
war could result from changes in the global balance of power among
civilizations. (Rene Gabriels, 2011, lecture 1)

Ignatieff wants to understand how neighbours in a small Yugoslavian town

are turned into enemies, how people who once had a lot in common end
up having nothing in common but war. He says that he’s never accepted
the idea that nationalist war is an eruption of tribal hatreds and ancient
enmities. At worm’s-eye level Ignatieff does not see civilizational fault
lines, geological templates that have split apart. Ignatieff is interested in
how former neighbours start thinking in this way. Ignatieff argues that
people think on two planes of consciousness—the political (acceptance of
civilizational fault lines) and the personal (experience that they’re really
not that different from their enemy)—they coexist but do not confront
each other. Nationalism does not simply “express” a pre-existent identity:
it “constitutes” a new one. Nationalism is a fiction: it requires the willing
suspension of disbelief. To believe the nationalist fictions is to forget
certain realities. But how does nationalism “constitute”/create identity?
Disintegration of the state comes first, nationalist paranoia comes next.
One nation under God: the exclusionary drives of nationalism seem to
derive from this idea that only one people can be chosen. Further on, it is
also, at the simplest level, about the paradox that relatives can hate each
other more passionately than strangers can; that the emotions stirred up
within commonality are more violent than those aroused by pure and
radical difference.

Sigmund Freud argued that “it is precisely the minor differences in people
who are otherwise alike that form the basis of feelings of strangeness and
hostility between them.” He went on that “it would be tempting to pursue
this idea and to derive from this ‘narcissism of minor differences’ the
hostility which in every human relation we see fighting against feelings of
fellowship and overpowering the commandment that all men should love
one another.” The closer the relation between human groups, the more
hostile they were likely to be toward each other. Ignatieff argues that no
human difference matters much until it becomes a privilege, until it
becomes the basis for oppression. Power is the vector that turns minor
into major. What Freud’s distinction, for all its imprecision, helps us to see
is that the level of hostility and intolerance between groups bears no
relation to the size of their cultural, historical, or physical differences as
measured by a dispassionate outside observer. The less substantial the
differences between two groups, the more they both struggle to portray
those differences as absolute. A nationalist takes “minor differences”—
indifferent in themselves—and transforms them into major differences.
Viewing nationalism as a kind of narcissism reveals the projective and self-
regarding quality of the nationalistic discourse. Nationalism is a distorting
mirror in which believers see their simple ethnic, religious, or territorial
attributes transformed into glorious attributes and qualities. The particular
property of the narcissist gaze is that it glances up at the other only to
confirm its difference. Then it looks down again and turns its gaze upon
itself.

It is not a sense of radical difference that least to conflict with others, but
a refusal to admit a moment of recognition. Violence must be done to the
self before it can be done to others (the violence required to identify with
the aspects of the group that are counter to personal experience). Ignatieff
argues Huntington is wrong because civilizational differences were not so
major until the conflict started and they were emphasized. The narcissism
of minor difference may not explain why communities of fear begin to
loathe each other. Its virtue is that it doesn’t take ethnic antagonism as a
given; it doesn’t accept differing histories or origins as a fate that dictates
bloody outcomes. It draws our attention to the projective and fantastic
quality of ethnic identities, to their particular inauthenticity. As less and
less distinguishes you from anybody else, the more important it becomes
to wear the differentiating mask of ethnicity. Nationalism on this reading is
not what Huntington would wish us to see: an eruption of ancient historical
rivalries and antagonisms. It is a modern language game, invented to
respond, as Ernest Gellner once said, to the uprooting’s of modernity. It
meets these challenges to old identities by transforming identity into
narcissism. If tolerance and narcissism are connected, one immediate and
practical conclusion might be this: We are likely to be more tolerant
toward other identities only if we learn to like our own a little less. The
narcissism of minor difference is a leap into collective fantasy that enables
threatened or anxious individuals to avoid the burden of thinking for
themselves or even of thinking of themselves as individuals. To return to
my starting point: Intolerance is a form of divided consciousness in which
abstract, conceptual, ideological hatred vanquishes concrete, real, and
individual moments of identification.
The tragedy of central Europe is set out by Milan Kundera. Kundera argues
that people in Eastern Europe see the word “Europe” not as representing a
phenomenon of geography, but a spiritual notion synonymous with the
word “West”. Many of the countries dominated by the Soviet Union were
geographically in the center—culturally in the West and politically in the
East. Kundera sees the reason for the revolts that have occurred in Central
Europe as having its roots there. Central Europe is seen as kidnapped
West. (Natalia Timuş, 2011, lecture 4) Kundera sees communism as being
the problem that deprives nations of their essence. He argues that in
Central Europe, the eastern border of the West, everyone has always been
particularly sensitive to the dangers of Russian might. Moreover, Kundera
sees Central Europe as wanting to be a reduced model of Europe made up
of nations conceived according to one rule: the greatest variety within the
smallest space. Russia, in this respect, is seen as the complete opposite of
Central Europe. Moreover, Kundera recognizes that there was once a
connection between the two Europes, but this has been ruined by
communism. On the eastern border of the West—more than anywhere
else—“Russia is seen not just as one more European power but as a
singular civilization, another civilization. The changes in Central Europe
after 1945 are experienced as an attack against their civilization. The
Central European countries have vanished from the map of the West.”
(Kundera, 1983)) They have never been able to establish strong states due
to their struggle to survive and to preserve their languages. The Central
European countries have been grouped together as being ‘Slavic’ and this
has given the Russians and excuse to dominate. Kundera sees Central
Europe as having shared traditions, culture, as well as a past. (Rene
Gabriels, 2011, lecture 1) He argues that it cannot be defined and
determined by political frontiers, but by great common situations that
reassemble peoples, regroup them in ever new ways along the imaginary
and ever-changing boundaries that mark a realm inhabited by the same
memories, the same problems and conflicts, the same common tradition.
Kundera argues the Russians tried to destroy Czech culture for three
reasons: Remove centre of opposition, Undermine identity, put a violent
end to the modern era.
Kundera argues that Western Europe has already lost culture. Central
Europe still exists in its creativity and its revolts, which suggest it has not
yet perished. But since Europe itself is in the process of losing its own
cultural identity, it perceives in Central Europe nothing but a political
regime. Central Europe revolts to restore the past of culture. The real
tragedy for Central Europe is not Russia but Europe which is losing its
cultural identity.

Conclusion

The setting states that there are fault lines between civilizations in
general, Huntington states of the presence of 6 civilizations en predicts
the major conflicts on which they clash society. However Ignatieff argues
that conflicts are scaled out of minor differences, he substantiates this
with Freud’s ‘narcissism of minor differences’, to for example explain the
conflict at the Balkan. Milan Kundera assets in the fault line and tensions
and current political inequalities, he starts with reformations of Bismarck
and Central Europe, he states that the old great culture died in times of
communism. Russia is seen not just as one more European power but as a
singular civilization, another civilization. The changes in Central Europe
after 1945 are experienced as an attack against their civilization. The
Central European countries have vanished from the map of the West.
Central Europe wants reorientation, to receive their old status once again.
This due to the fact that they are been seen as the subordinated Eastern
European nations. Tumuş substantiates this during her lecture, in addition
Lewis states about the Balkan: “…has been pervasive and so strong that it
is virtually impossible to disentangle it from the fundamental processes of
democratization.” (Lewis 2005, 5). Further investigation in respect to this
paper can be done, by treating each country differently and look to
relations between them. Is the European situation a nightmare or is there
hope, Developments in the Balkans and Eastern Europe since 1990s:
Economic backwardness, Political instability, unconsolidated democracies,
authoritarian tendencies which means the ‘end’ of ‘colour revolutions’
reforms, violent ethnic conflicts, separatist conflicts and state
fragmentation are at hand. The developments in Central Europe:
Consolidating democracies and market economies including economic
prosperity, EU membership, Ethnic and cultural tolerance decline in social
inequalities, peaceful settlement of geographic borderlines between the
neighbors.

Reference list:

Blokker, P. (2008). ‘Europe `United in Diversity'. From a Central European

Identity
to Post-Nationality?’ European Journal of Social Theory, Vol. 11, No. 2,
pp.257-274.

Gabriels R. (2011) lecture 1; CONCEIVING OF DIFFERENCE: IS BLOOD

THICKER THAN WATER?

Holmes, L. (1998). ‘Europe’s Changing Boundaries and the ‘Clash of

Civilizations’
thesis, pp.19-42, chapter 2 in Holmes, L. & Murray, P. Europe: Rethinking
the
Boundaries, London: Ashgate

Huntington, Samuel P. (1993), Official copy (free preview): The Clash of

Civilizations?, Foreign Affairs

Huntington, Samuel P. (2002) [1997]. "Chapter 9: The Global Politics of

Civilizations". The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World
Order (The Free Press ed.). London: Simon $ Schuster.

Huntington, S. (1993). ‘The Clash of Civilizations?’ Foreign Affairs, Volume

72, No.3,
pp.22-49 (E-journal)

Ignatieff, M. (1999). ‘The Narcissism of Minor Difference’, pp.34-71 in:

idem, The
Warrior’s Honor – Ethnic War and the Modern Conscience, New York:
Metropolitan Books
Partial critiques of Huntington and Ignatieff:

Kundera, M. (1983) The Stolen West or The Tragedy of Central Europe

Lewis (2005), in; Timuş N. (2011) lecture 4; The Changing Face of Central
and Eastern Europe: Hope or Nightmare?
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chapter 3,
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Governance in a Post-Hegemonic Era, Aldershot: Ashgate

Rothschild, Joseph and Wingfield, Nancy M. (2008). ‘The Postcommunist

Decade’,
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East Central Europe Since World War II., Fourth Edition

Sigmund Freud, (1930) Civilization and Its Discontents

Timuş N. (2011) lecture 4; The Changing Face of Central and Eastern

Europe: Hope or Nightmare?

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socialist
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