Toward the Turning: Rethinking the Meaning of 9/11, the Clash of Civilizations, and a Postmodern World

Gibbs, Scott (Author)

ISBN 10: 3838217667 / ISBN 13: 9783838217666

Published by ibidem Press, 2026

About this Item

450 pages. 5.83x0.93x8.27 inches. In Stock.

Seller Inventory # x-3838217667

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Toward the Turning: Rethinking the Meaning of 9/11, the Clash of Civilizations, and a Postmodern World
• Publisher: ibidem Press
• Publication Date: 2026
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 3838217667
• ISBN 13: 9783838217666
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: Brand New
• Weight: 0.55 kilograms

About this title

Synopsis

The ultimate source of group inhumanity is an apparition, spectacularly unrecognized and ignored. While we scapegoat tribalism and fanaticism, those impulses are merely derivatives of a deeper engine of recruitment: our unwitting loyalty to inherited identities. Toward the Turning exposes this engine, revealing how it fractures and inflames human relations. Using 9/11 and the “War on Terror” collision of Islamic, Zionist, and Western identities as its touchstone, the book reframes global division not as good-versus-evil, but as a theater of the absurd defined by “deadly dances” fueled by identity-in-difference. These identity systems function as tacit, communal compacts through which we navigate existential groundlessness. They constitute us, but they also destroy us. At their core lies an ontological misapprehension: We see the self as a discrete “thing” and the world as an external, given backdrop, blind to their contingency and co-constituting processes. This error underwrites the naturalization of identity, making it susceptible to the tribal fanaticism that haunts history. Scott Gibbs’ fascinating monograph culminates in a call for a “turning”―not toward a new ideology, but a corrective understanding that can move us beyond violent, reactive patterns. When groundlessness becomes habitable, the grip of identity loosens, difference becomes negotiable, and the compulsion to control subsides.

About the Author

Scott Gibbs is a California-licensed psychotherapist in private practice. A board member of the Existential-Humanistic Institute, he draws on clinical experience and longstanding independent scholarship to inform his writing on the roots of conflict in everyday relationships, in intimate partnerships, and across groups. His peer-reviewed work has appeared in the Journal of Humanistic Psychology. He holds degrees from Princeton University and Northwestern University.