The Fear of Barbarians: Beyond the Clash of Civilizations
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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"If women really request it, why not set apart non-mixed times in local swimming pools? The promiscuity of the naked bodies of both sexes is admittedly a characteristic of contemporary Western culture, but it is not an intangible consequence of democratic principles."--The Fear of Barbarians: Beyond the Clash of Civilizations (2010) by Tzvetan Todorov, page 167 "Pim Fortuyn", a politician who had been assassinated two years previously, and whose programme came down, essentially, to expressing his xenophobia and his desire to see Muslims leaving the country (his book was called Against the Islamization of Our Culture)." --The Fear of Barbarians: Beyond the Clash of Civilizations (2010) by Tzvetan Todorov, page 128 |
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The Fear of Barbarians: Beyond the Clash of Civilizations (2010) is a book by Tzvetan Todorov translated by Andrew Brown. It is a reaction to the Clash of Civilizations thesis.
Blurb:
The relationship between Western democracies and Islam, rarely entirely comfortable, has in recent years become increasingly tense. A growing immigrant population and worries about cultural and political assimilation—exacerbated by terrorist attacks in the United States, Europe, and around the world—have provoked reams of commentary from all parts of the political spectrum, a frustrating majority of it hyperbolic or even hysterical.
In The Fear of Barbarians, the celebrated intellectual Tzvetan Todorov offers a corrective: a reasoned and often highly personal analysis of the problem, rooted in Enlightenment values yet open to the claims of cultural difference. Drawing on history, anthropology, and politics, and bringing to bear examples ranging from the murder of Theo van Gogh to the French ban on headscarves, Todorov argues that the West must overcome its fear of Islam if it is to avoid betraying the values it claims to protect. True freedom, Todorov explains, requires us to strike a delicate balance between protecting and imposing cultural values, acknowledging the primacy of the law, and yet strenuously protecting minority views that do not interfere with its aims. Adding force to Todorov’s arguments is his own experience as a native of communist Bulgaria: his admiration of French civic identity—and Western freedom—is vigorous but non-nativist, an inclusive vision whose very flexibility is its core strength.
The record of a penetrating mind grappling with a complicated, multifaceted problem, The Fear of Barbarians is a powerful, important book—a call, not to arms, but to thought.
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