Materialism structurally prevents comprehension of other civilizations regardless of intent

Evidence

The world is not as simple as Lewis and Huntington want it to be. They desperately want to hold onto a world in which the difference between “us” and “them” is clear. What they ignore, argues Said, is that civilizational identity is not fixed but fluid. All civilizations and cultures, including so-called Western civilization, have intense, often contentious internal debates about how to define themselves. Civilizations are also shaped and transformed by all sorts of migrations and movements between peoples of different cultures. Finally, it is hard to imagine a culture today that, in the past or the present, has walled itself off from other cultures. In fact, every culture has been and continues to be involved in transformative exchanges, contacts, and conversations with other cultures. — Green, Todd H, The Fear of Islam_ An Introduction to…, 232 (#complicates, via linked claim)

By way of provisional conclusion, it may be appropriate to re-emphasize the limited and specific thrust of the argument so far. It is intended less to explain the socio-economic bases of anti-metropolitan resistance in the Western hemisphere between say, 1760 and 1830, than why the resistance was conceived in plural, ‘national’ forms – rather than in others. The economic interests at stake are well-known and obviously of fundamental importance. Liberalism and the Enlightenment clearly had a powerful impact, above all in providing an arsenal of ideological criticisms of imperial and anciens régimes. What I am proposing is that neither economic interest, Liberalism, nor Enlightenment could, or did, create in themselves the kind, or shape, of imagined community to be defended from these regimes’ depredations; to put it another way, none provided the framework of a new consciousness – the scarcely-seen periphery of its vision – as opposed to centre-field objects of its admiration or disgust. In accomplishing this specific task, pilgrim creole functionaries and provincial creole printmen played the decisive historic role. — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 242 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Contextualist political theory denies any culture-free standpoint for judgment — Chantal Mouffe, The Democratic Paradox, 291; Historical materialism requires retaining economic determination without economic reductionism; Historical materialism is fundamentally historicist, not metaphysical (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Historical materialism is fundamentally historicist, not metaphysical #complicates (0.74)
• Civilizational identity is fluid, not fixed or walled off #complicates (0.73) — Green, Todd H, The Fear of Islam_ An Introduction to…, 232
• Material interests and ideologies cannot by themselves shape imagined communities #complicates (0.72) — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 242
• Historical materialism superseded subjectivist philosophy by posing its questions historicist terms #complicates (0.71) — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1570