WE ARE all familiar with the history of western civilization. The Greeks invented democracy, and possibly reason itself. Standing on Greek shoulders, the Enlightenment thinkers contributed civil rights principles and the foundations of capitalism. America institutionalized these ideals in Constitutional government. Because we place ourselves within this historical lineage, we are unable to analyze it from without. Moreover, because by definition the western tradition is morally right, current societal problems we encounter can not be problems with the system but rather threats to the system. Thus, we are unable to understand the systemic nature of racism in our community or U.S. torture in the Middle East.
Historian and anthropologist Dan Segal of Pitzer College gave a series of three lectures last week that deconstructed our perceptions of "western civilization" and world history. Based principally on his analysis of dozens of western civilization textbooks as well as recent scholarly publications, Prof. Segal concluded that we have created an arbitrary and exclusionary historical lineage. In this "social evolutionary" conception of history, all historical developments lead to our American/western European civilization in the present. We believe that the evolution of our civilization has occurred because of contributions by westerners, and westerners only, who utilized their intellectual ancestry to make societal contributions of universal human significance. Non western societies can only make local contributions.
Western civilization textbooks pick historical moments to measure our ascent, while placing less comfortable histories in the realm of the savage or premodern. Jefferson's creation of the Declaration is a typical landmark in the social evolutionary view of history. On the other hand, Hitler's gas chambers are not a logical extension of modern nationalism plus the Taylor system of production, but rather a barbaric concoction of prejudices that have no place in modern western civilization.
In addition to constructing a whitewashed path of historical development, the textbooks arbitrarily define the current end of history. It is post industrial capitalism. It is not subsistence communities. As Segal pointed out, the choice of ourselves over an Amazonian people, for instance, as the definition of modernity is arbitrary. Likewise, the selection of a historical lineage is exclusionary and inaccurate. It excludes the contributions of non-western societies to "civilization" while ignoring the non-western characteristics of western civilization.
This myopic historical viewpoint prevents us from understanding current societal problems. When confronted with systemic racism at the University, we react by imagining that we can frighten the mulleted, pickup-driving villain from Grounds with speeches and demonstrations. Because the social evolutionary perspective of history tells us that our western civilization is humanistic, we find it impossible to imagine that systemic racism could be part of our societal fabric.
Indeed, the utility of the social evolutionary perspective is that it categorizes all injustices as exceptional. Racism in the University community must be the work of a few backward individuals, we tell ourselves. It is not connected to University policies that deny the disproportionately minority workforce a living wage. It is not connected to the token presence of black faculty. More broadly, it is not connected to racist legal statutes pertaining to drug use, to the prison industrial complex, or to the de facto segregated public school system.
Similarly, torture is the work of Lynndie England or some West Virginia redneck. It is not connected to the administration's authorization of "stress techniques" that violate the Geneva Conventions. It is not connected with Bush's proclamation in 2002 that prisoners of the "War on Terror" are not protected by the Geneva Conventions. The consistency of torture in Kandahar, Abu Ghraib, Gautanaumo and elsewhere is irrelevant if we denizens of "western civilization" are monopolistic proprietors of rational, humanistic, "western" values.
If we wish to apply these vaunted values to anyone beyond the western elite, we must analyze our own society's structural flaws. Understanding structural injustices begins with uncensored historical study and includes acknowledgement current inequities such as racism in Charlottesville. That analysis of our own society is impossible as long as we imagine our "western civilization" to be the pinnacle of historical achievement.
Zack Fields' column appears Wednesdays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at zfields@cavalierdaily.com.
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