Edward Said 'The Clash Of Ignorance'

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Recommended: What does culture mean to you

This weeks reading focused on the topic of culture and as well as cultural differences and what this means in terms of education and teaching.

Erickson’s article reflected on the different concepts of Culture in society and within educational practice. His readings emphasized the notion of “multicultural education,” by reflecting on the ways in which culture has been thought of and how those varying definitions of culture have relevance for education in general and for multicultural education in particular. According to Erickson “everything in education relates to culture—to its acquisition, its transmission, and its invention (Erickson, 2004, pg. 31).” However, he notes how culture is still a difficult concept to grasp by outlying the difference …show more content…

(2001). The Clash of Ignorance. The Nation. pp. 1-5.
Edward Said’s article, “The Clash of Ignorance,” begins with a critique of Samuel Huntington’s essay “The Clash of Civilizations?” According to Huntington, “nation states will remain the most powerful actors in world affairs, but the principal conflicts of global politics will occur between nations and groups of different civilizations.” Therefore, this belief is based on the assumption that cultural differences is the ultimate cause of conflict and places the Western culture as superior to the “other”

In response to Huntington’s essay, Said rejects orientalist thought that use simple generalizations on Islam and the West. Rather he urges examining a multiplicity of “Islams,” with all their many diverse features if we hope to make sense of Muslims. According to Said (2001), “Labels like "Islam" and "the West" serve only to confuse us about a disorderly reality. (Said, 2001, pg. 1).” He believes that there lies a great problem in unedifying labels like Islam and the West. These kinds of labels places cultural differences in opposing potions such as “Us vs. Them, or the West versus Islam.” According to Said (2001), this kind of ignorance is the fundamental cause of conflict. Furthermore, labels such as the “West versus Islam/the Other” can be traced by to the colonial era where the unequal relationships between the colonial power and the colonized led to the assumption that the colonized were “savages, uncivilized, and barbaric.” Such labels justified the colonial mission to “civilized” the so-called other leading to what Abdi explains as the processes of de-philosophizing and in the process, de-epistemologizing Africa and other colonial

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