Rethinking political myth: the clash of civilizations as a self-fulfilling prophecy
License
Access Rights
Cadmus Permanent Link
Full-text via DOI
ISBN
ISSN
1368-4310
Issue Date
Type of Publication
LC Subject Heading
Other Topic(s)
EUI Research Cluster(s)
Initial version
Published version
Succeeding version
Preceding version
Published version part
Earlier different version
Initial format
Author(s)
Citation
European journal of social theory, 2006, 9, 3, 315-336
Cite
BOTTICI, Chiara, CHALLAND, Benoît, Rethinking political myth: the clash of civilizations as a self-fulfilling prophecy, European journal of social theory, 2006, 9, 3, 315-336 - https://hdl.handle.net/1814/17458
Abstract
This article argues for the need to recover the concept of political myth in order to understand the crucial phenomena of our epoch. By drawing on Blumenberg's philosophical reflections on myth, it proposes to understand political myth as the continual process of work on a common narrative by which the members of a social group can provide significance to their political conditions and experience. In order to show how this understanding of political myth can throw light on important aspects of contemporary politics, the article analyses the work on one of the most conspicuous political myths of our time: the clash of civilizations. By reconstructing the mechanisms through which this myth works, the article shows how a paradigm that has been strongly criticized as too simplistic and scientifically inadequate could have turned into a successful political myth, i.e. into a self-fulfilling prophecy.