Speaker: DR. DELPHINE ALLES, Vice President, the Institut National des Langues et Cultures Orientales, INALCO; Professor of Political science
Lecture time: November 4, 2025 14:00 (Tuesday),
Lecture Location: Room 206, Graduate Institute of National Development
Reported by Agnes Pestman-Mackintosh,
Research assistant, Graduate Institute of National Development
Exchange student, Department of Political Science
Vice President of INALCO University and principal investigator of the DECRIPT program, Delphine Alles delivered a presentation “From Clash to Framings: Addressing Civilizational Narratives in World Politics.” The talk explored how civilizational narratives shape our view on global politics.
Professor Alles introduced the DECRIPT program, a collaboration among French universities and government ministries that examines how information is processed and how collective worldviews impact political behavior. She highlighted that while recent debates emphasize “information wars,” less attention has been given to the interpretive frames through which people understand information.
Alles draws attention to Samuel Huntington’s The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. Although Huntington’s theory has been widely criticized for its lack of clear definition and for homogenizing diverse societies into civilization groups, its influence persists and has arguably become self-fulfilling, shaping how regions such as Southeast Asia view Western values.
Alles noted that “civilization” has become a floating signifier, used flexibly in politics: from China’s “Global Civilization Initiative” to Russia’s rhetoric of defending Orthodox civilization. She contrasted historical and sociological understandings of civilization with contemporary political uses, arguing that the term’s vagueness gives it strategic potential.
Civilizational narratives, she explained, act as frames through which complex events are understood, competing with geopolitical or legal interpretations. These narratives are performative, shaping norms and actions by defining what counts as legitimate or threatening. The lecture concluded that examining these evolving civilizational framings is crucial for understanding current global power struggles and the contest over how the world is defined and organized.
Photo credit: 王曉珩、陳佳穎