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d'Archéologie et de Sciences Sociales de Sanaa
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The Dialogue of Cultures : the Reach and Limit of a Concept.
(War in Times of Peace, Sanaa, 2nd and 3d November 2002)


François Burgat

Abstract

The analysis of international tensions and conflicts from the bias of a culturalist, or religious, or a fortiori civilisational perspective, often masks a refusal or an inability to understand these conflicts or these acts of resistance as in their essence mundanely political. Furthermore, however necessary these efforts towards cultural or religious 'rapprochement' may be, the world is in need today of mechanisms capable of guaranteeing a better redistribution of political resources…that is to say a higher degree of international justice. This equilibrium appears as the necessary precursor of a cultural rapprochement, without doubt also contributing to the resolution of conflicts, but not as a substitute for it.

Within these strict limits, the role of this 'dialogue of cultures' remains nonetheless important. Still it is necessary to delimit the field of action: first of all, one should not confuse oneself with an inter-religious dialogue whose recent history has shown its narrow limits. A wish to reduce the gap between dogmas makes in fact little of the strong identity coefficient that overlays a religious belonging, and little of the difficulty in a 'believer' making, without renouncing his faith, concessions other than formal to another 'believer'.

The intercultural dialogue may in contrast be brought into play more usefully to reveal the ideological character of the claim of 'specificity' that, in the matter of values this time, the representatives of different civilizations, be they oriental or occidental, still frequently persist in enunciating. We defend here the idea that cultural diversity limits itself in reality to the world of material symbols (references, historical or mythical, profane or religious, of the group) that the cultures employ to legitimise their values, but which do not embody these values itself. This symbolic diversity of practices, rites and references is however regularly extrapolated, wrongly, to establish the existence of more substantial differences which serve to identify and segregate the civilizations as distinct, not simply in their practices, but also in their values.

This confusion is not recent and its consequences are multiple. From this mistaking of Kamal Ataturk making access to modernity conditional on the wearing of a certain kind of European cap to the current reticence of certain western environments towards the wearing of the Hijab in European schools; or the frequent tendency among believers to deny the existence of a humanistic common denominator transcending religious belongings, the blockages, analytical and political, through which emerge this confusion between 'the substance of the values' and the 'symbolic references used to legitimize these values' are numerous. It is to this very ambitious task of unveiling them and denouncing them, in identifying the countless ways in which dogmas and doctrines have to deny the culture of the other the ability to express a universal reference, that an effective dialogue of cultures should be able to couple itself.


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