March 04, 2012
The Left and the People: Extending Hamid Dabashi's Critique
Vijay Prashad in Jadaliyya:
“The overall anti-imperialist sentiment remains strong among the Syrian population and the attempts by parts of the Left to smear the entire uprising as a stand-in for imperialism belies a Manichean worldview that badly misunderstands the country’s history. I don’t see any contradiction in opposing intervention and simultaneously being against the Assad regime—which, we need to remember, has embraced neoliberalism and consistently used a rhetoric of ‘anti-imperialism’ to obfuscate a practice of accommodation with both the US and Israel.” Adam Hanieh, author, Capital and Class in the Gulf Arab States, 2011.
One of Hamid Dabashi’s most acidic critiques of Azar Nafisi’s Reading Lolita in Tehran is that she indulged in the “systematic denigration of an entire culture of revolutionary resistance.” A simple index for the Left is to protect itself from this kind of amnesia. The Syrian people threw off the violent regime of imperial France in their Great Revolt from 1925 to 1927. The revolt inaugurated a trek into Arab nationalism, whose most eloquent energies were absorbed and distorted by the Ba’athist party that has ruled Syria since 1963. Nonetheless the Syrian people incubate a thirst for freedom from their suffocation by the Ba’ath regime. The problem has been that the power of the Syrian state and the enchained geopolitics of the region have denied them, for now.
More here.
Posted by S. Abbas Raza at 09:57 AM | Permalink
Comments
The propaganda wars show up before, during, and after every "shooting" war.
That is the way disease "works."
Posted by: Dredd | Mar 4, 2012 4:50:46 PM
Another bucketload of gormless Marxist verbiage around a central anti-semitic core: forget the mountains of corpses and the decades of torture and oppression - Assad's main crime is defined as "neoliberalism ... and a practice of accommodation with both the US and Israel.”
Posted by: aguy109 | Mar 5, 2012 10:57:21 AM
The real problem with neomarxist verbiage is not double standards or selective outrage, its the unbridgeable gap between being a professor and being an actor on the ground in a civil war in a faraway country.
Vijay Prashad as a professor in a first world University may eventually contribute to changing the way X or Y issue is framed and that will eventually have some impact somewhere but those are big "eventually-s". Some professors are OK with that and focus on doing their research and writing their books and teaching their students in the hope that it will eventually "trickle down". But that (for obvious reasons) is not very satisfying for most of us. Hence the need to suggest courses of action in today's clash, pick sides, "organize a relief column". Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your estimate of said professor's wisdom and insight) this aspect of the professor's work has near-zero real world relevance.
I dont know how to fix this problem, but it does seem to be a real problem. Most right wingers are almost by definition closer to the ruling elites so maybe they dont feel the pain as much, but left wing professors are in a painful bind here..to have no opinion on proximate politics and wars seems silly, to have an opinion that arises logically from their theoretical framework is frequently sillier and any honest and good man may end up in Professor Prashad's position. Its a real dilemma.
Posted by: omar | Mar 5, 2012 1:59:46 PM
I am trying to hijack this topic in a different direction at http://www.brownpundits.com/marxist-political-advice-and-its-discontents/
Feel free to contribute. My comments there includes this: In an attempt to pre-empt misunderstandings, let me add:
1. My question is not about the details of his analysis.
2. Its about this scenario. Lets say Vijay is Vladimir Lenin. Well, in that case he is not only a theoretician (though he would like to believe that his superior understanding of theory informs his practice), he is an organizer, a rebel, a leader, a politician with day to day decision to make. Very fine nuances and very involved calculations will come into play. Many of those calculations will be very cynical. All of them will be locally bound by existing circumstances. Theory will have to give way again and again. But Vijay (probably not even in his own mind, but I dont know him personally, so I cannot say for sure) is not Lenin. He is a professor. He does research, he writes books. He has theories. And he is part of a broader left wing academic current that has its own internal dynamics very far from the ground in Syria. I am saying I dont expect him to say things that are too useful as guides to action.
3. What do you think?
Posted by: omar | Mar 5, 2012 9:42:40 PM
Omar, if you mean that the Professor is trying to manipulate current events to fit into his socio-political theories, then I agree. Because the Syrian Baath Party (like its arch enemy, the Iraqi Baath Party) has certain socialist traits and has been on the side of the USSR/Russia and against US interests, he asks us not to forget its revolutionary role( presumably in the historically unfolding international class struggle etc etc)whereas I would say that its humanitarian/socialistic lipservice is entirely marginal to a ruthless dynastic dictatorship that has bolstered the position of a religious /ethnic elite ( the Alawis) for 50+years. By labelling it as "neoliberal" he is simply showing his predeliction for historical re- labeling that Marxists are fond of whenever some individual or group falls out of favor and must be cast aside in order to keep the theory looking good.
Now the Syrian "people" (in latin America it would be "piple") are his new standard bearers, but i'm sure the Prof will be quick to label those Syrians who support the Sunni MB as "reactionary elements" (not really "people" at all).
The best description for the Syrian situation and the rest of the Arab Spring is "chaos". Not a subject for neat analysis, but a big mess, with dozens of factions fighting it out.
Posted by: aguy109 | Mar 6, 2012 3:45:49 PM
I meant in a more general sense that ANY left wing academci professor in the US who opts to comment about every country and every war using the same highly theoretical eurocentric left wing template is likely to be "not even wrong" and is going to have zero practical impact one way or the other.
Other than the impact such things have in terms of status, cocktail chatter and mating possibilities within the community of left wing Americans... and an extended penumbra of liberals who do not agree with full-frontal Marxism but who like to get their international "analysis" from one-size-fits-all "experts" like Tariq Ali...experts whose opinions may have little relationship with actual events, but that do fit with vaguely held Western liberal prejudices and do not disturb any politically correct notions that western liberals feel most comfortable with..
That sort of thing..
I am, of course, being unfairly harsh. And i certainly do not mean to suggest that right wing analysis is superior or morally sound (though it may sometimes have more significant practical consequences and in any case may be a guide to what some powerful people are about to do).
maybe I am harsh because of residual frustration with the fact that my friends and acquaintances (mostly left wing like myself) have such little impact on the world at large....then I look at how frequently our frame of reference is out of synch with actual events and I think we deserve our irrelevance.
that sort of thing.
Posted by: omar | Mar 6, 2012 5:54:58 PM
I must say that I am more impressed by your willingless so say that you're frame of reference might be out of synch than I am by the good Prof's insistence in fitting every issue into the Procrustean bed of his historical model. Admitting you don't know something is a step on the pathway of wisdom. There is definitely too much useless analysis spewed out on every issue.
Posted by: aguy109 | Mar 7, 2012 10:46:42 AM
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