‘You Can’t Hide from the Things that You’ve Done Anymore’: Battlestar Galactica and the Clash of Civilizations Debate

Eric Repphun

doi:10.16997/wpcc.187

Abstract

This article examines the science fiction television series Battlestar Galactica<em> </em>(2003–9) as a complex allegorical exploration of the ways in which Islam is understood and misunderstood in the West. While it never refers directly to Islam, by trading on the metaphoric distance offered by the genre conventions of science fiction, the series radically questions the binary logic of the influential ‘clash of civilizations’ thesis, which presents ‘the West’ and ‘Islam’ as distinct entities at war with one another. With its constantly shifting perspective on two fictional warring civilizations, Battlestar Galactica<em> </em>undermines such simplistic understandings of contemporary religious and political violence. More radically, the series seriously attempts to answer the question posed by a key character representing the West: ‘Why are we as a people worth saving?’

Highlights

The Clash of CivilizationsThe language of the ‘clash of civilizations’ is perhaps most familiar from the work  of Harvard political scientist and former US National Security Advisor Samuel  Huntington; , the idea pre‐dates Huntington’s highly influential 1993  Foreign Affairs article, ‘The Clash of Civilizations?’ Three years earlier, as  theorists grappled with the ever more visible end of the Cold War, Bernard Lewis  wrote in The Atlantic of a growing conflict between the West and Islam: It should by  be clear that we are facing a mood and a movement far  transcending the level of issues and policies and the governments that  pursue them.
Though Huntington tempered Lewis’s work slightly by  presenting the clash of civilizations as a thesis, there is little doubt that he and  Lewis were very much in agreement about the causes of international conflict.
One of the most pointed of these voices  of criticism – if, admittedly, not the most visible – to which we  turn,  articulates its critique by clothing the matter in fictional garb

Summary

The Clash of Civilizations

The language of the ‘clash of civilizations’ is perhaps most familiar from the work  of Harvard political scientist and former US National Security Advisor Samuel  Huntington; , the idea pre‐dates Huntington’s highly influential 1993  Foreign Affairs article, ‘The Clash of Civilizations?’ Three years earlier, as  theorists grappled with the ever more visible end of the Cold War, Bernard Lewis  wrote in The Atlantic of a growing conflict between the West and Islam: It should by  be clear that we are facing a mood and a movement far  transcending the level of issues and policies and the governments that  pursue them. Though Huntington tempered Lewis’s work slightly by  presenting the clash of civilizations as a thesis, there is little doubt that he and  Lewis were very much in agreement about the causes of international conflict. One of the most pointed of these voices  of criticism – if, admittedly, not the most visible – to which we  turn,  articulates its critique by clothing the matter in fictional garb

The Transformations of Battlestar Galactica

Battlestar Galactica as Religious and Political Allegory

Battlestar Galactica as Religious and Political Subversion