Khatami and the Empancipatory Project of Dialogue among
Civilizations
By Kaveh L. Afrasiabi*
“World-historical men the heroes of our epoch must therefore
be recognized as its clear-sighted ones: their deeds, their words
are the best of their time.
Friedrich Hegel
Lectures on the Philosophy of History
Introduction
In historical
retrospective, the Iranian President Khatami’s inauguration of a
global discourse on “Dialogue among Civilizations” may well turn
out to qualify him as a Hegelian “world historical” visionary
leader. In today’s world wrought with sever challenges of peace
and prosperity, wherein the integrationist forces of
globalizations, e.g., internet, coexist with the polarizing forces
of global poverty, ethnic cleansing and other forms of
intolerance, Khatami’s idea of dialogue among civilizations
presents a timely antidote to the discursive violence of its
antinomy, the clash of civilizations thesis; a content analysis of
the latter makes clear that it denotes the following themes:
Western superiority, domineering, arrogance and cultural
hostility.
Notwithstanding
its widespread appeal as a feasible paradigm for the new world
order, the clash of civilizations thesis is but a low-level vision
cementing the global fragmentations, But, for a world already
reeling from half a century of Cold War rivalry, Khatami’s
imaginative antithesis represents a high-level vision addressing
our global need to rebound intellectually and otherwise. The
dialogue among civilizations counter thesis is best defined along
the lines of Vico’s notions of imaginative universals and
recollective fantasia or Kant’s productive imagination, and
Khatami himself as the Owl of Minerva of Iranian renaissance
culture he is likely to claim a place in the history of political
thought.
The Question of Motivation
What motivated
Khatami to spell out the idea of dialogue among civilizations?
This is a complex issue that requires kneading together
individual-psychological and state-political motivations,
encompassing far more than the vicissitudes of a political
discourse arising as a skeptical reaction to another discourse.
Rather, we must take into consideration the context of a
post-revolutionary state and identity formations in Iran. The
historic revolution, which the French philosopher Foucault viewed
as a great refusal, showed a sign of its maturity in Khatami’s
positive discourse, the fact that we need not remain locked in
refusal.
Khatami’s idea
is, first and foremost, a world constructing philosophical idea,
living up to John Searle’s claim, in his book, The Construction of
Social Reality, that philosophical theories make a tremendous
difference to every aspect of our lives. At the heart of this idea
is an ethics of global community that starts with an interacting
sense of self, as situated in a web of interactions with others,
leading to a recognition of difference, not as deviance or deficit
that threatens but as otherness to connect with, cherish, and
celebrate.
Second, in light
of Khatami’s religious credential, the idea of dialogue among
civilizations invokes the notions of interfaith dialogue and
religious hope, thus setting a unique precedent for the
re-enchanting of the United Nations, which had previously ejected
religion and spirituality outside its policy domains, a trend
somewhat reversed by the recent religious summit at the UN. Third,
Khatami’s proposal to the United Nations to make 2001 the year of
Dialogue Among Civilizations represents an act of discursive
power, not withstanding Michel Foucaut’s insight that meanings are
determined by power relations and to bring meaning into the world
is ultimately an act of power. Khatami’s initiative is in tandem
with the Husserlian world-disclosing operation of Iranian power,
and the need to glory the republic.
Fourth, a
plethora of other needs/desires come into picture in a
motivational analysis of dialogue among civilizations initiated by
Khatami, including such variables as leadership, status, peace,
transformation, interdependence, and emancipation. Sifting through
the cognitive, political, behavioral, and other motivational
variables discernible behind the dialogue among civilizations
initiative, yields a total of twenty four factors, which are as
follows:
1. Deconstruction (the desire to deconstruct
the clash of civilizations thesis)
2. Re-interpretation (the desire to present
an alternative interpretation)
3. Idealism (the desire to make a
philosophical contribution)
4. Peace (the desire to contribute to global
peace)
5. Initiative (the desire to make a global
initiative)
6. Assertiveness (the desire to assert
oneself in the global community)
7. Acceptance (the desire to gain
acceptability by the world community)
8. Identity (the desire to foster a new
identity)
9. Acceptance (the desire to win
acceptability for the political system)
10. Coping (the desire to cope with the
international system)
11. Mobility (the desire to enhance position
in the world community)
12. Glory (the desire to bring glory to the
political system)
13. Power (the desire to enhance Iran’s
international power)
14. Change norms/system (the desire to induce
change in the international system)
15. Leadership (the desire to exert
moral-political leadership)
16. Spirituality (the desire to promote
spirituality in the world)
17. Credibility (the desire to earn
moral-political credibility)
18. Reference (the desire to act as reference
for others)
19. Order (the desire to bring order in the
anarchic world)
20. Progress (the desire to contribute to the
esprit of historical progress)
21. Interconnectedness (the desire to promote
the idea of cultural interaction)
22. Interdependence (the desire to promote
the notion of global interdependence)
23. Interfaith (the desire to deepen the
ongoing interfaith dialogue)
24. Emancipation (the desire to freedom from
all forms of oppression)
In conclusion,
while it remains to be seen what the practical accomplishments of
2001, Year of Dialogue among Civilizations will be, we need not
relegate to posterity any balance sheet of Khatami’s initiative:
It has already become the world’s most active creative illusion
thus sealing Khatami’s stature as an authentic world-historical
leader.
* Kaveh L. Afrasiabi is a Ph.D research
scholar, University of California at Berkeley
