Cultures are hybrid and interdependent, making civilizational essences an ideological fiction.

Evidence

This is preposterous, since one of the great advances in modern cultural theory is the realization, almost universally acknowledged, that cultures are hybrid and heterogenous and, as I argued in Culture and Imperialism, that cultures and civilizations are so interrelated and interdependent as to beggar any unitary or simply delineated description of their individuality. How can one today speak of “Western civilization” except as in large measure an ideological fiction, implying a sort of detached superiority for a handful of values and ideas, none of which has much meaning outside the history of conquest, immigration, travel, and the mingling of peoples that gave the Western nations their present mixed identities? This is especially true of the United States, which today cannot seriously be described except as an enormous palimpsest of different races and cultures sharing a problematic history of conquests, exterminations, and of course major cultural and political achievements. And this was one of the implied messages of Orientalism, that any attempt to force cultures and peoples into separate and distinct breeds or essences exposes not only the misrepresentations and falsifications that ensue, but also the way in which understanding is complicit with the power to produce such things as the “Orient” or the “West.” — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 872

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the core anti-essentialist premise of the field: ‘Western civilization’ as ideological fiction, culture as palimpsest.
• XREF: Directly scaffolds the later Islamophobia readings that assume the constructed ‘Orient’/‘West’ binary; connects to Said’s own Culture and Imperialism.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 872