Toward an Inoperative Civilization

The unapologetic re-emergence in recent years of the term “civilization” in American foreign policy circles and best-selling books merits closer scrutiny. This essay examines two different views of civilization that have attracted recent critical attention. The first is a rather militant defense of civilization. In this view, civilized nations see themselves as exempt from the very laws and principles on which they are founded, thereby enabling them, in the name of the civilizing (or pro-democracy) mission, to exert force or violence on those others who threaten civilization (also known as “barbarians,” “savages,” “terrorists,” or “enemies of democracy”) and who also happen to be, conveniently, in a state of exception from civilization and can therefore be subjected to violence. The second model of civilization reflects a certain liberal optimism. Rather than precipitating “clashes,” civilization, in this view, does not confer exceptionality on a nation or allow for the exploitation of vulnerable others; instead, a civilization should concern itself with the expansion and fusion of horizons and the need to engage in a dialogue with other cultures and societies without exception or exclusion. In describing these two views, I note the violence inherent in the model of civilization as an exception and the difficulties that confront the dialogical model. Drawing on the work of Jean-Luc Nancy and Giorgio Agamben, as well as J. M. Coetzee’s novel Waiting for the Barbarians, I conclude with some reflections on the need to revise our current views of civilization by sketching an alternative possibility of an inoperative civilization.