While I was reading in Edward Said's Orientalism, I passed by what he calls "territoriality reductive polarizations" refering to the relation between the east and west. He goes on saying:
"My idea in Orientalism is to use humanistic critique to open up the fields of struggle, to introduce a longer sequence of thought and analysis to replace the short bursts of polemical, thought-stopping fury that so imprison us in labels and antagonistic debate whose goal is a belligerent collective identity rather than understanding and intellectual exchange. I have called what I try to do "humanism," a word I continue to use stubbornly despite the scornful dismissal of the term by sophisticated post-modern critics....More-over, humanism is sustained by a sense of community with other interpreters and other societies and periods: strictly speaking, there-fore, there is no such thing as an isolated humanist.This is to say that every domain is linked to every other one, and that nothing that goes on in our world has ever been isolated and pure of any outside influence. The disheartening part is that the more the critical study of culture shows us that this is the case, the less influence such a view seems to have, and the more territorially reductive polarizations like "Islam vs. the West" seem to conquer."
This term reminded me of Abdel Wahab El-Messiri's comment (in the clip below) on the state of polarization that has been socially, economically and politically intensifying in Egypt decades ago. This state of polarization that is manifested through the urban seclusion of gated communities and its golf courses.