Civilization and Individual Identities: Ye Shengji`s Quest for Colonial Self in Two Cultures

Abstract

Based on an overseas Taiwanese student`s wartime diary written in Japan, this paper critiques Samuel Huntington`s ”clash of civilizations” thesis. Huntington proposes that some seven plus civilizations survive in the post-Cold War world, each possessing unique, long-lasting core values. With booming interactions between civilizations, people everywhere distinctively recognize their own civilization identity based on the differences between civilizational core values. He argues that the clashes between civilizational identities or values will most likely result in World War III. This atuhor criticizes these views on the grounds that Huntington overlooks consideration of the mediating role of language, that he assumes a hierarchical rather than multiple view of levels of identity, and that to say core values make a unique civilization identity is to commit the fallacy of essentialism.