From: Enrico Piccinini
List Editor: Shira Robinson
Editor's Subject: The Crisis of Middle Eastern Studies [Piccinini]
Author's Subject: The Crisis of Middle Eastern Studies [Piccinini]
Date Written: Tuesday, November 04, 2003 10:03 AM
Date Posted: Tue, 4 Nov 2003 10:09:05 -0500
I find the latest discussions here (re the Advisory Board et al) troubling. To me, they are symptomatic of the basic problem at the heart of Middle Eastern studies in America today, which is that our discipline, in response to current foreign policy, has more or less embraced a bunker mentality that is obscuring our grasp of contemporary political realities. We are deluding ourselves - perhaps deliberately so - if we continue to pretend that nothing is amiss in our field, and that we have merely become the hapless victims of an insidious neoconservative cabal intent on suppressing political-intellectual dissent in the country. Tell me: How is it that these ‘neoconservatives' - whom we so confidently deride as intellectual amateurs and political hacks - have been able to seize the initiative in the debate on Middle Eastern studies? How is it that our discipline, for all its intellectual 'expertise', now finds itself under siege as never before, and yet seems utterly incapable of forming a coherent response? It is merely the 'lamentable after-effects of 11 September', or is it (as I believe) something deeper? Should we not be able to meet this challenge with something more than paranoid invocations of 'Likudnik conspiracies' etc? Do we not share some responsibility for this lamentable state of affairs?
To take the question further: Has our discipline really advanced since the watershed days surrounding the 'Orientalism' debate of the late 1970s? Or have we merely reversed the old status quo, with equally deleterious consequences? Sweeping generalisations, perhaps, but I cannot help thinking that the old Orientalist 'guild' mentality which Edward Said described has merely been supplanted by a new guild mentality, which combines a self-righteous Occidentalism with a subtler, but no less potent, Orientalist subtext. I am thinking here of the powerful strand of postcolonial thought that indulges in 'vicarious revolutionism', that has co-opted the symbolism and rhetoric of a simplified Arab nationalism as part of its own revolt against Orientalist scholarship in the West, and that has derogated to itself the role of determining who, or what, constitutes an 'authentic' Arab, an 'authentic' Muslim, etc. There is, to my mind, something comically absurd about the spectacle of Western or Westernised intellectuals condemning - as many did - the 'treachery' of the Iraqi people who did not fight the Americans to the last man in the streets of Baghdad...or viewing a region of three hundred million people, with all its political complexities, solely through the lens of the Palestinian struggle. No one will deny that the Palestinian cause has a central role in Middle Eastern politics; do we also have the courage to admit what the crude distortions of this cause have done to nations and peoples throughout the region?
And then there is the other side of the problem, which is that our discipline - like so many others - has refused to come to terms with contemporary American political realities. By this I of course do not mean that we should subscribe to the Bush administration's construction of international politics and put ourselves at the government's disposal. Our first responsibility is, as always, to speak truth to power. But we cannot continue to pretend, through ideological stubbornness, that momentous changes are not at work in American society, and that they will not be felt long after this administration has departed. This is not some anomalous phase of American history. New political forces are in the ascendant, and they cannot easily be explained via traditional understandings of 'liberalism', ‘conservatism', etc; even less can they be explained through such lazy constructs as 'neocon fundamentalism'. To view American politics through this simplistic lens is to commit the same type of egregious error that we condemned the Orientalists for two decades ago.
In conclusion, yes, by all means, we must and will fight for academic freedom. To do otherwise would be to betray ourselves and our profession. But we cannot carry on this fight by adopting a bunker mentality and taking refuge in escapist pseudo-conspiracism, or by pretentiously appointing ourselves the defenders of Arab nationalism, or Islamic integralism, or what have you. We must meet the challenges of our day with our minds – open minds - and with the force of our arguments. It is precisely our failure to do this that has left the field open to 'neocon fundamentalists', or whatever other name you wish to give them. Time will tell if we are able to meet this test.
Best wishes,
Enrico Piccinini