http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1975-9522
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ABSTRACT
This paper explores specific forms that neoliberal discourse and culture in academia today take in the field of Israeli Middle Eastern and Islamic studies. The article applies various textual and contextual interrogation strategies to the language, narratives and the unsaid in interviews with leading scholars in the field, in order to construe what Fredric Jameson calls the ‘political unconscious,’ particularly that arising from the use of market as a conceptual metaphor. Contextualising this field of discourse within neoliberal academia, I deconstruct the work ‘demand’ and ‘interest’ do, and highlight the dialectical dynamics of experts’ dependence on audience. I argue that, in this field, the economic discourse shelters Zionist logics, presuppositions and praxis, such as recruitment logics and fundraising practices that effectively address Jewish and Zionist students and donors.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes on contributor
Eyal Clyne is a transdisciplinary discourse and ideology analyst, studying higher education and Israeli discourse and praxis. He holds a PhD from the University of Manchester, an MA in sociology and anthropology from Tel Aviv University, and a double major BA in the Middle East and Islam studies and communications and media from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Eyal has taught sociology, anthropology, culture, politics and discourse analysis in the University of Manchester, Manchester Metropolitan University, Tel Aviv University and Tel Aviv Yafo Academic College. His book Orientalism, Zionism and academic practice is forthcoming in Routledge.
ORCID
Eyal Clyne http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1975-9522
Notes
1 For a critique of speed in academia today, see Berg and Seeber (Citation2016).
2 Due to the nature and modifications of translation and the changes to syntax, polysemy and contexts that it impelled, the use of conversation analysis’ transliteration conventions became misleading, unclear and unhelpful. Hence, I opted for some comments in italics in square brackets instead.
3 Originally: ʾeyn. Literally: there is none. Short for the slang: ‘nothing to [even] talk/compare/consider,’ meaning ‘undoubtedly.’
4 This significant and unique exclusion merits a separate discussion.
5 The separation between regional history and Arabic seizes an opportunity to expand the expertise by turning sub-fields into new fields, yet, noting what the demand is for, and where the demarcation lines are being drawn, remains significant and telling.
6 The duality also exists in the Hebrew word ʿinyan (and its conjugations); yet, in Hebrew a third common meaning is issue, matter (and in slang: problem) (Chaueka, Citation1997, p. 1412c). Interestingly, in Arabic a different homonymy exists between interesting (i.e. something that draws attention) and important. In English, interest (as desire, involvement, benefit) extends further to describe a (monetary) percentage/share of profit/loan.
7 Literally: build.
8 Originally: rishuma.
9 I return to the tropes of resonance/echo and the Jewish world later.
10 Borrowed from the semantic field of fashion, ‘chic’ is supposed to denote high-culture style (which may be the reason for travelling with its French scent into English and Hebrew). Yet, here it indicates the opposite: popularity; an inversion made through the shared notions of desirability and trend.
11 Like in English, to attract (limshokh) means both to draw or pull resisting bodies (including gravity in Hebrew), as well as to be appealing.
12 Like duo-interest, desire binds together an already-doubled concept of passion/lust and other wants, putting it at the heart of philosophical, theological and psychoanalytical concerns. Hence, desire can also roof the semantic fields I discuss next: commerce, subjectivity, and ego.
13 Literally: orientalism. Mizraḥanut usually refers to the Jewish-Israeli expertise of Middle East, Arabic, and Islam (excluding other parts of the East), and is not limited to academia.
14 Originally: ʿoskim ba-miktsoʿa ha-ze. Also: deal with/in, work/engage/involved in, employ, and rarely: are occupied by.
15 Originally: ve-la-maʿarekhet ze [ʾomer].
16 Due to considerations of space, I leave the term itself unanalysed on this occasion.
17 Cf. Baker, Citation2014. Parenthetically, saying that ‘not-everybody takes advantage of [touring Palestinian areas]’ (line 8) is a euphemistic understatement. With few exceptions, Israeli ME(I)S are the opposite of border crossing, as studies are directed in a way which is overall mediated and distanced by choices of time, space, language, and method, and are not experiencing or involved.
18 Additionally, as I argued earlier, (and as is perhaps the case in m/any (academic) expertise), specialising in any of the expertise's domains of knowledge grants access to authority over all of them.
19 Importantly, this interviewee used ‘you know’ often in his speech, both to invite empathy, and as gap-fillers (i.e. as discourse markers: morphemes and phrases that carry no meaning but fill in gaps in speech, facilitate formulations, reformulations, and other functions). At the same time, however, I read this appearance as working together with his other efforts to struggle with or clue the vagueness of meaning, an obscurity to which this phrase is contributing.
20 Palestinian-Israeli Arabs, whom are about 20% of the Israeli population, comprise 2% of Israel's senior academic staff, and have no representation in the national academia (IASH) (Scoop, Citation2013; cf. Scoop & Kashti, Citation2014; Scoop, Citation2015). Based on a 2014 name-based count of Israel MEIS Association members, which includes not only senior staff, I estimated that Palestinians make about 7% of Israeli ME(I)S, a smaller underrepresentation, but which is made worse by the significance of high proficiency in Arabic that is seen as crucial to the profession.
21 Even if, as a few confided me, dishonestly, cf. Academics anonymous Citation2017.
22 Literally: ‘what can be done!?’ (rhetorical).
23 Originally: la-roḥav v’la-ʿomek (literally: to the width and to the depth), a distortion of: la-roḥav v’la-orekh (to the width and to the length).
24 Also: cranes.
25 Space considerations compel me to leave on this occasion the significant metaphor of home untreated, as well as the metaphor behind: direction, sweeping, impetus and orientation.
26 The use of ‘impression’ is meaningful too. It does not make claims about expertise, but about the phenomenological and performative effect (and affect) that one needs to have on a given crowd to become an expert.
27 Regardless of the extent to which some non-Israeli Jews act in a manner that reinforces this image.
28 I elaborate on publicity and public image in this field in Clyne, Citationforthcoming.
29 A possible corollary of this is that the pluralistic inclusivity of academia is a manifestation of knowledges as capital, so academic pluralism is limited by the interests of being ‘interesting.’