September 15, 2011
Hamid Dabashi on his new book: Brown Skin, White Masks
From Jadaliyya:
JADALIYYA: What made you write this book?
HAMID DABASHI: This book is very much a product of the Bush era (2000-2008) — a record of my fears and trembling at the sight of a criminally delusional man at the helm of an imperial killing machine and lacking any moral conception of what it was he was doing when he ordered the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, two catastrophic decisions that Afghans and Iraqis continue to pay for with their lives. I was aghast at the sight of the mass frenzy that accompanied those invasions, the barefaced banality of those who supported it (even some of the most progressive American intellectuals considered the Afghan invasion as a case of “just war,” as in fact later some leading Arab intellectuals were duped into supporting the US/NATO invasion of Libya), and above all the criminally complicitous comprador intellectuals like Fouad Ajami, Kanan Makiya, Ibn Warraq, Azar Nafisi, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, ad nauseum who were aiding and abetting in manufacturing consent for those wars. They were doing so in the name of criticizing militant Islamism, or misogynist patriarchy, or undemocratic practices and human rights abuses that their American and European employers — and by “employers” I mean the lucrative market that was receptive to their treacheries and made them bestsellers in Bush’s America — were in fact partially instrumental in causing, conditioning, and sustaining.
I recall reading about a panel in Washington DC in which Azar Nafisi had come together with one neocon illiterate or another to discuss one thing or another about “Islam” that set my antennae up and got me thinking about the duet they were singing. This was before the events of 9/11, or the US-led invasion of Afghanistan (2001) and Iraq (2003), and before she wrote and published the now infamous Reading Lolita in Tehran (2003), which prompted my al-Ahram essay on it, “Native Informers and the Making of American Empire” (2006) a couple of years later, which then became the basis of Brown Skin, White Masks.
More here.
Posted by S. Abbas Raza at 11:08 AM | Permalink
Comments
"This book is very much a product of the Bush era (2000-2008) — a record of my fears and trembling at the sight of a criminally delusional man at the helm of an imperial killing machine and lacking any moral conception of what it was he was doing"
The Morning Joe show on MSNBC today featured Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski who made statements that conform to the thrust of the statement of Hamid Damashion.
Posted by: Dredd | Sep 15, 2011 11:15:05 AM
There is no defense for the invasion of Iraq. This was the wrong war for the wrong reasons.
In contrast, the war in Afghanistan was the right war. The United States was attacked by people harbored by the Taliban. There was no other option but invasion. The war and its aftermath were poorly pursued, there's no question about the invasion. What do you expect the US to do in the face of an attack?
Posted by: Noman | Sep 15, 2011 2:35:32 PM
Dabashi wields a very broad brush as a dyed-in-wool apologist. Hirsi Ali, Ibn Warraq, Manji and Rushdie live in fear for their lives because of their critiques, unlike Dabashi who follows the three monkey's code of Omerta. As for invoking Stephen Colbert in his one-sided spin of events; while Colbert mocks and demolishes the ignorance of a Peter King or Glenn Beck, he is far closer in affinity to Rushdie and the "criminally complicitous comprador intellectuals" than Dabashi would ever care to admit.
Posted by: Sam | Sep 15, 2011 3:15:11 PM
Norman,
"the war in Afghanistan was the right war"
With due respect, even though that is the common talking point, it is not without valid criticism.
Take, for example, the argument based upon the poison tree / poison fruit doctrine, plus the growing argument that Saudi Arabia has questions to answer.
Posted by: Dredd | Sep 15, 2011 4:15:46 PM
As I noted, there are many valid criticisms regarding the way the Afghan war was (is) pursued and how the initial invasion was carried out (on a shoestring, allowing Bin Laden to escape). But if you don't like the talking point then you have to state what other response the US should have followed in the face of an attack on US soil.
That we should have (or should hold) Saudi Arabia responsible for their part in the attack is another issue.
Posted by: Noman | Sep 15, 2011 5:13:41 PM
Why is "Reading Lolita in Tehran" now 'infamous'?
I've read it, and am ignorant regarding controversy.
Posted by: odysseus14 | Sep 15, 2011 5:16:16 PM
The interview is a good example of aggressive and very wordy propaganda. No rhetorical trick is spared. There are surely right wing propagandists who are equally good with wielding the machete, but I couldnt think of a good example of a mirror image neocon of the top of my head. Impressive. Very impressive.
The book is probably the same, but I wouldnt know, since I have not read it (plodding through the highly over-rated "orientalism" was enough).
I am sure my lack of deference to the memory of that saintly and well-meaning propagandist, Edward Bhai of New York, will be answered soon enough in this comment section.
And before someone accuses me of supporting Israeli occupation, I would like to add that i dont support it at all. ...what I have some trouble with is the indiscriminate assault on truth and context that is carried out in service of that cause by Edward Bhai...I wish we could fight Israeli occupation without having to invent vast worldwide histories of orientalism and so on...doesnt that in fact detract from the particular sufferings of the Palestinian people? Is it really necessary to connect that occupation so completely with categories like "European colonialism" and racism?...not to speak of all the poco pomo mumbo-jumbo?
/ducks for cover/
Posted by: omar | Sep 15, 2011 5:20:40 PM
Edward Bhai ?
Posted by: Jesse | Sep 15, 2011 6:15:56 PM
Sorry, I lost track of the fact that I was not on brownpundits, which is a more "desi" blog. I meant Edward Said (may peace be upon him)..
Posted by: omar | Sep 15, 2011 7:32:47 PM
I am probably too late to the point here, but Norman your justification would logically extend to the occupation of part or all of Pakistan.
Posted by: Erich | Sep 15, 2011 8:34:52 PM
Allegedly the US told Pakistan that if they didn't cooperate with the US they would face military action. So it could be argued that in a way the US did invade part of Pakistan.
As to military occupation and clearing out Waziristan and the "tribal areas", I don't think that this is something the US could reasonably do at a cost that the US is willing to pay.
There has to be an end to war (one can hope) and such an end is slowly approaching with Afghanistan. One reason to invade is to simply show that you can't harbor people who attack the US with impunity (unless you have lots of oil). That's been done.
If the Bush administration had concentrated on Afghanistan and not attacked Iraq there would have been some chance of building the country up and stabilizing it. Perhaps the Taliban would not have arisen again. Unfortunately this didn't happen. And then the Pakistanis might have made sure that no matter what the US did, the Taliban would rise again.
Posted by: Noman | Sep 15, 2011 8:51:08 PM
Norman,
"That we should have (or should hold) Saudi Arabia responsible for their part in the attack is another issue"
In your first post you cite no authority or back-up, you simply express opinion ... yours.
I let that slide in my first response to your opinion, but I linked to authority (head of Senate Intelligence Committee etc.) noting that 80% of the alleged hijackers were Saudi Arabians who had a full blown network within the U.S. and in Saudi Arabia supporting them.
Some of whom fled the US with gov help about the time of 9/11.
The issue is who was involved, not simply who was accused by the Bush II "truth squad".
Thus, your opinion of what is "another issue" is nothing but another opinion, albeit baseless.
Posted by: Dredd | Sep 16, 2011 12:41:04 AM
Dear Omar,
You were right to anticipate that someone would take up your attack on Said as a "saintly and well-meaning propagandist" here. It might as well be me.
I think that more than 30 years after its publication, it is easy to start dismissing the achievements of that book (Orientalism) precisely because its influence has been so huge that its thesis is now almost taken for granted, at least in some circles. But it wasn't always so.
In an essay a few years ago, Akeel Bilgrami rather nicely laid out the five main points of Said's book in a single paragraph:
Which of these, do you think unimportant? And I am genuinely interested in what, in your opinion, constitutes "the indiscriminate assault on truth" by Said. Pray tell.
Posted by: Abbas Raza | Sep 17, 2011 4:43:00 AM
Dear Abbas,
Akeel's list sounds very reasonable, but I think a lot of these things are not exactly new discoveries. Said Bhai just put them into more flowery language and repeated them until they became unfair. The particular examples are sometimes true, but the overall effect is misleading and lacks context.
What is sauce for the goose is never sauce for the gander in his book. Giving rise to the suspicion that saint Said (may peace be upon him) was less saintly than we think.
A gang of robbers (morally no different from all the other robbers who have robbed houses in all the other cities of the world since the hole in the wall gang robbed Jericho, but better organized and equipped than many past robbers) walked into a house and stole some treasure. Saint Edward spends hours complaining about the fact that they not only robbed the house, they SMIRKED while they did so, and he unfairly libels almost ALL their compatriots and family members, and he never puts events into historical context.. .
His focus is on the intellectual who supposedly supported and sustained this robbery. But I dont think the intellectuals were as critical to the enterprise as intellectuals may wish to think. They are (an expected and routine) part of effort, not its cause or its most important component. Racism, for example, follows from glaringly obvious superiority in arms, organization and science (and is probably part of our biology in some weak sense), its not the cause of that superiority (some feedback can be granted though). LATER, it can and does have a life of its own, but isnt that true of all human groups and individuals adn their shared delusions?
I am sorry, I was not impressed.
So what? obviously it doesnt matter much that I was not impressed. Many highly intelligent people are thoroughly impressed. And likely to point out how insignificant and flea-like I am in comparison to the great man. True enough. But I am still not impressed.
For a while I was willing to give him credit for striking a blow against "the empire" by undermining its intellectual foundations with his tendentious book. Lets imagine that while someone fights Israelis with rocks or bullets, Said Bhai works to destroy the American University system from within ...but I have changed my mind. In my cynical old age, I think the robbers on Wall Street did more to undermine the "empire" than the fluff emanating from departments of modern English whatever.
In fact, given the fact that Palestinians and South Asians can read him more than say, the Chinese, his theology may have undermined the intellectual elite of the very people he set out to help (by shifting the balance between fluff and accurate mapping of reality towards fluff, so to speak)...It would be different if these countries had a stronger living intellectual tradition and were not so heavily dependent on importing their ideas from Western Universities. Then they could use this material without losing their way?
Picture legions of South Asian intellectuals setting off on a wild goose chase, generating high-sounding bullshit much admired within their own circle but of little practical relevance in the world at large and in fact, at a tangent to actual events.....
Just to confuse matters, I will add that I think some more humane, more civilized civilization is slowly being born (I am Whiggish about progress on at least three days of the week) ..and this civilization will continue to admire Edward Bhai, but not necessarily his less subtle admirers.
So there.
Posted by: omar | Sep 17, 2011 11:33:36 AM
Well written, Omar, except the last para.
Posted by: onm | Sep 17, 2011 12:28:15 PM
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