Civilizational Conflict as Race War

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the development of the notion of the “clash of civilizations” as the reformulation of a racialized discourse of international politics and its political salience during the so-called global war on terror. Huntington’s work provides, in a sense, a revitalization and reformulation of the global racial imaginary and its capacity to actualize enmity and violence. Specifically, the chapter examines the processes of racialization of Islam and a new form of enmity, which takes on increasingly important political effects during the 1990s and after September 11, 2001, global politics. The chapter concludes by situating the wider American global war on terror within this frame of civilization versus barbarism.