the reporter's orientalist library
(or: Edward Said was right, dammit)
I'm fuming about this NY Times essay by Robert F. Worth: "The Reporter's Arab Library." Wilfrid Thesiger's books are surely interesting (and his photographs of Iraq, which were on display at the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford all summer, are stunning) but the idea that a book about the Marsh Arabs written half a century ago would be the best way to "understand the human roots of the Arab world's political violence" because it "conveyed the pitilessness of the Arab tribesmen he traveled with, their fierce familial pride, their wild generosity" is ludicrous.
And then, of course, he says Bernard Lewis
and I don't know whether to cry or scream. David Fromkin's book is a good work of political/IR history; I'm not familiar with Yitzhak Nakash's work on the Shi'a, so will refrain from commenting. Ajami and Makiya's works are worth reading, but their perspectives on politics in the Arab world are very much contested, and Worth's reading list doesn't really include the other facets of the debate. Indeed, that's the really frustrating thing about this list--that so much good (often, better) stuff is missing.
Where is Charles Tripp's seminal A History of Iraq, or Toby Dodge's Inventing Iraq: The Failure of Nation-Building and a History Denied--which examines the political fallout of British imperialism (i.e., nation-building, take one) in the region? What about Juan Cole (who I am hoping will write something scathing about this) and his work on the Shi'a? And for understanding the complex nature of political Islam, please please forget Bernard Lewis and go read James Piscatori, Sami Zubaida, Mahmood Mamdani, John Esposito, or one of the many other scholars not repeating Lewis's tired tropes.
This disconnect between popular (and hence, influential) writings like Lewis's, and more complex and nuanced (but inaccessible) academic work on the Middle East is deeply worrying to me. I think the consequences are potentially very damaging (think about this guy's reading list, and how the conclusions drawn from it will shape the way he reports the news from Baghdad). It's one of the reasons that I'm convinced many academics need to start writing more accessible work and more aggressively taking part in public discussion of such issues, via whatever means we can--blogs, op-eds, "popular" books, public lectures, media appearances, and so forth. Otherwise, we cede the debate to Lewis and his ilk, and where does that leave us?
I'm fuming about this NY Times essay by Robert F. Worth: "The Reporter's Arab Library." Wilfrid Thesiger's books are surely interesting (and his photographs of Iraq, which were on display at the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford all summer, are stunning) but the idea that a book about the Marsh Arabs written half a century ago would be the best way to "understand the human roots of the Arab world's political violence" because it "conveyed the pitilessness of the Arab tribesmen he traveled with, their fierce familial pride, their wild generosity" is ludicrous.
And then, of course, he says Bernard Lewis
explains more cogently than any writer I know how Islam's refusal to separate mosque and state has complicated its relations with the West
and I don't know whether to cry or scream. David Fromkin's book is a good work of political/IR history; I'm not familiar with Yitzhak Nakash's work on the Shi'a, so will refrain from commenting. Ajami and Makiya's works are worth reading, but their perspectives on politics in the Arab world are very much contested, and Worth's reading list doesn't really include the other facets of the debate. Indeed, that's the really frustrating thing about this list--that so much good (often, better) stuff is missing.
Where is Charles Tripp's seminal A History of Iraq, or Toby Dodge's Inventing Iraq: The Failure of Nation-Building and a History Denied--which examines the political fallout of British imperialism (i.e., nation-building, take one) in the region? What about Juan Cole (who I am hoping will write something scathing about this) and his work on the Shi'a? And for understanding the complex nature of political Islam, please please forget Bernard Lewis and go read James Piscatori, Sami Zubaida, Mahmood Mamdani, John Esposito, or one of the many other scholars not repeating Lewis's tired tropes.
This disconnect between popular (and hence, influential) writings like Lewis's, and more complex and nuanced (but inaccessible) academic work on the Middle East is deeply worrying to me. I think the consequences are potentially very damaging (think about this guy's reading list, and how the conclusions drawn from it will shape the way he reports the news from Baghdad). It's one of the reasons that I'm convinced many academics need to start writing more accessible work and more aggressively taking part in public discussion of such issues, via whatever means we can--blogs, op-eds, "popular" books, public lectures, media appearances, and so forth. Otherwise, we cede the debate to Lewis and his ilk, and where does that leave us?
posted by kitabet at 4:11 AM
2 Comments:
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
I think you make some very significant points here, though I don't think Piscatori's inaccessible; however, I guess the very fact that it's an academic text makes it relatively inaccessible, when, as you say, these perspectives need to be prominent in the public domain and in public debate.
This is what I hope to work towards, in some small way, with my blog, http://human-rights-archaeology.blogspot.com/, on human rights archaeology and resolving conflicts over cultural heritage.
Best wishes.
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