The Thingified Subject's Resistance in the Middle East

Abstract

Colonization, I postulate, has a far more profound effect on the colonized than conceptualized in Aimé Césaire's postcolonial equation, colonization  =  thingification. Rather, here I put forward a new postcolonial equation for tracing the infinite and insidious effects of colonialism: Colonization  =  thingification + re-appropriation of subjectivity. I argue that Western imperial narratives and what Edward Said calls its ‘evaluative judgment’ and ‘implicit program of action’ also subjectify the thingified subject's Weltanschauung, cultural practices and more importantly, subjectivity. I present this equation through theorizing what I call Counter-Revolutionary Discourse (CRD). This discourse is an historicized, Eurocentric-Orientalist implicit program of action and an analytical tool, which functions as a manual that assists the colonial apparatus in surveillance, gauging, ranking and subjectifying Middle Eastern subjectivity and resistance according to imperial exigencies. Through tracking the matrix of Western statements, ideas and practices, this genealogical exploration demonstrates that imperial enthusiasts, from Napoleon, Renan, Le Bon and Stoddard to Winston Churchill and David Petraeus, in encountering Middle Eastern revolutions—from the Mahdi, Urabi, Zaghloul, Mossadegh, the PLO and the PKK to the ‘Arab Spring’—draw on four Counter-Revolutionary Discourse systems of thought, which, I argue, are responsible for interpellating Oriental subjectivity and resistance, and which I denominate as: Recrudescence of Fanaticism, Progress Fetishism, Outsourcing of Agency, and the bipolar cognitive device Revolutionary Narcissism-Red Peril.

Keywords::

• Counter-Revolutionary Discourse
• colonialism
• Islam
• Middle East, Muslims
• Orientalism
• resistance
• revolutions
• subjectivity

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Professor Rashid Khalidi at Columbia University, Professor Jonathan Wyrtzen at Yale, the late Professor Ernesto Laclau at Essex, Professor Gideon Baker at Griffith University and Dr Noah Bassil at Macquarie University for their input and support in the theorization of CRD.

Notes

¹ For Césaire, thingification was the manner by which colonialism as an institution of power and its systems of knowledge obliterated the Other's subjectivity and agency. Colonialism, as a process, Césaire asserted, represented the colonized subject as an empty signifier, one which Eurocentrism consequently refills according to its imperial interests. See Aimé Césaire (1972) Discourse on Colonialism (London: Monthly Review Press), p. 42.

² Here, I am not adopting a fixed definition of subjectivity. I am leaning toward a rather loose conceptualization of subjectivity that refers somewhat to the incipient stages of agency: That moment before action where the subject's conscious experience of an event, its perspective and cognitive approach to it, is freer from the influences of diverse modes of power.

³ M. Foucault (1984a) What is Enlightenment?, in: Paul Rabinow (ed.) The Foucault Reader (New York: Penguin Books), p. 48.

⁴ A. Abdel-Malek (1963) Orientalism in Crisis, Diogenes, 11 (December), pp. 107–108.

⁵ E. Said (1978) Orientalism: Western Concepts of the Orient (Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin), p. 207.

⁶ G. Khalid Azeez (2014) Western Notions of Middle Eastern Revolutions: Counter-Revolutionary Discourse from Mahdi to the Arab Spring, in: B. Clark, A. Ghafar & J. Mortiz (eds) The Contemporary Middle East: Revolution or Reform (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press), pp. 64–86.

⁷ M. Foucault (1984b) Nietzsche, Genealogy, History, in: P. Rabinow (ed.) The Foucault Reader (London: Penguin Books), p. 77.

⁸ For Nietzsche, ‘being is an empty fiction.’ Man is not a static, rigid subject with essential unchanging features. Rather, man is forever entrapped within the chaotic processes of transformation and development, or becoming. See F. Nietzsche (1896) Twilight of the Idols, or, How to Philosophize with a Hammer (Mineola: Dover Publications Inc.).

⁹ Said, Orientalism, p. 208.

¹⁰ G. Lebon (1980) The Psychology of Revolution (New York: Putnam), p. 43.

¹¹ This platonic idea posits that behind things, there is a timeless and essential secret, an origin or a form.

¹² Leopold von Ranke, influenced by Thucydides, theorized that historians should be scientifically objective and should only be concerned with strict presentation of the facts. That is, in approaching history positivistically they should simply ‘wie es eigentlich gewsen’ [show how it (the historical event) really was]; see Ranke in E. H. Carr (1990) What is History? (London: Penguin), p. 8.

¹³ K. M. Faull (1995) Anthropology and the German Enlightenment: Perspectives on Humanity (London: Associated University Press), p. 182.

¹⁴ Foucault (1984b) Nietzsche, Genealogy, History, p. 86.

¹⁵ L. Althusser (1971) Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses, in: L. Althusser (ed.) Lenin and Philosophy and other Essays (New York: Monthly Review Press).

¹⁶ For Bourdieu, ideas and practices are structuring structured structures or, a habitus. The habitus is a structure because it is not arbitrary but is pounded and kneaded intentionally into form by a certain form of power, it is structured because it is an internalized historicized systematic phenomenon and it is structuring because it continues to shape and influence the way the subject behaves and speaks. See P. Bourdieu (1990) The Logic of Practice (Cambridge: Polity Press), pp. 52–53.

¹⁷ H. de Paynes (1070–1136) was the founder and Grand Master of the Knights of Templars and wrote the Latin Rule, the manifesto for the Order. Comte de Volney (1757–1820) was a highly influential French philosopher, historian, Orientalist and politician.

¹⁸ E. Dicey (1907) The Egypt of the Future (London: William Heinemann), p. 131.

¹⁹ Z. ad-Din Tughetkin (1104–1128) was a military leader and the Atabeg of Damascus. Nuraddin Zangi (1118–1174) was a member of the Zangi dynasty that ruled Syria. Salahuddin Yusef ibn Ayyub (1138–1193) was a Kurdish Muslim general whose famous campaigns recaptured Jerusalem from the Crusaders. Al Afdal Ayyub (1169–1225) was the son of Salahuddin, who became ruler of Damascus after his father's death.

²⁰ G. Le Bon (2005) The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind (London: Digireads Publishing), p. 67.

²¹ E. Said (1988) Introduction, in: E. Said & C. Hitchens (eds) Blaming the Victims: Spurious Scholarship and the PalestinianQuestion (New York: Verso), p. 3.

²² Said, Orientalism, p. 287.

²³ M. Rodinson (2002) Europe and the Mystique of Islam (London: I. B. Tauris), p. 60.

²⁴ E. Hennebert (1884) The English in Egypt: England and the Mahdi, Arabi and the Suez Canal (London: W. H. Allen), p. 18.

²⁵ T. Archer (1886) The War in Egypt and the Soudan: An Episode in the History of the British Empire, vol. II (London: Blackie & Son), pp. 35, 126, 228.

²⁶ G. A. Henty (1892) The Dash to Khartoum: A Tale of the Nile Expedition (London: Blackie & Sons), p. 134.

²⁷ L. Provect (2001) Colonel Gordon and the Mahdi. Available at http://www.columbia.edu/ ∼ inp3/mydocs/fascism_and_war/mahdism.htm; accessed January 14, 2011.

²⁸ H. Vogt (1883) The Egyptian War (London: Kegan Paul Trench & Co.), p. 141.

²⁹ Ibid, pp. 8–9.

³⁰ C. F. Goodrich (1885) British Naval and Military Operations in Egypt 1882, US Office of Naval Intelligence, War Series No. III (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office), pp. 8–9.

³¹ Curzon of Kedleston (1920) Report of the Special Mission to Egypt, Records of the Cabinet Office, War Cabinet and Cabinet: Memoranda GT, CP and G War Series (London: British National Archives), p. 11.

³² Ibid, p. 14.

³³ Ibid, p. 17.

³⁴ S. Zaghloul (1919) Egyptian Delegation to the Peace Conference: Collection of Official Correspondence from November 11, 1918 to July 14, 1919, (Paris: Delegation), pp. 7–8.

³⁵ M. Clark (1951) Mossadegh of Iran in Messianic Role: Premier Mixes Own Destiny with Local Fanaticism on the Oil Question, The New York Times, July 8, 1951.

³⁶ US House of Representatives (2007) Support for Dr. Haleh Esfandieri (Washington, DC: Congressional Record, pp. 13807–13808.

³⁷ National Security Council (1957a) Operational Guidance with Respect to Lebanon in Implementation of NSC 524 (Washington, DC: National Digital Archives), p.1.

³⁸ National Security Council (1957b) Operations Plan for Lebanon (Washington, DC: Foreign Relations of the United States), p. 4.

³⁹ L. Randolph Higgs (1958) The Roots of the Lebanese Revolution: A Speech by Sheikh Nadim el Jisr. US Department of State, Beirut (Washington, DC: National Digital Archives), p. 1.

⁴⁰ J. H. Scheuer (1976) What is the PLO Really Trying to Liberate? (Washington, DC: US Senate), pp. S1233–S1234.

⁴¹ Z. Kashmeri (1986) The PLO's Burgeoning Islamic Fervor, Los Angeles Times, May 11, 1986.

⁴² S. Amin (1988) Eurocentrism (New York: New York Monthly Review Press), p. 141.

⁴³ I. Wallerstein (1997) Eurocentrism and its Avatars: The Dilemmas of Social Science, New Left Review, 1(226), p. 95.

⁴⁴ Ibid, p. 97.

⁴⁵ Jacques Derrida, analyzing Western discourses around Chinese writing, comes to the conclusion that the Europeans constructed a representation of the language that fluctuated between ‘hyperbolic admiration’ or ‘ethnocentric scorn.’ In any case, for Derrida, the representations were a ‘European hallucination’, completely divorced from reality. See J. Derrida (1976) Of Grammatology (London: Johns Hopkins University Press).

⁴⁶ Winston Spencer Churchill (1899) The River War: An Historical Account of the Reconquest of the Soudan (London: Longmans, Green and Co.), pp. 14, 17.

⁴⁷ Ibid, p. 14.

⁴⁸ Ibid, p. 250.

⁴⁹ Ibid.

⁵⁰ Ibid, p. 214.

⁵¹ Ibid, p. 217.

⁵² A. Milner (1902) England in Egypt (London: Edward Arnold), p. 314.

⁵³ M. Provence (2005) The Great Syrian Revolt and the Rise of Arab Nationalism (Austin: University of Texas Press), p. 1.

⁵⁴ R. Bleiker (2003) Discourse and Human Agency, Contemporary Political Theory, 2, p. 26.

⁵⁵ L. Stoddard (1922) The New World of Islam (London: Chapman and Hall, Ltd), p. 84.

⁵⁶ Ibid, p. 80.

⁵⁷ Foreign Office (1919) British Empire Report No. 1. Records of the Cabinet Office,War Cabinet and Cabinet: Memoranda GT,CP and G War Series (London: British National Archives), p. 5.

⁵⁸ Stoddard, The New World of Islam, p. 175.

⁵⁹ E. Burke, III (1998) Collective Action, Discursive Shifts: A Comparative Historical Perspective, American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences, 24(4), p. 89.

⁶⁰ D. Little (2002) American Orientalism: The United States and the Middle East Since 1945 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina), p. 163.

⁶¹ Senator Charles F. Dougherty (1979) Negotiations with the PLO, Presentation to United States Senate (Washington, DC: Congressional Record), pp. S27958–27959.

⁶² S. Gay Stolberg (2011) Shy U.S. Intellectual Created Playbook Used in a Revolution, New York Times, February 17, 2011. Available at http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/17/world/middleeast/17sharp.html?pagewanted = all.

⁶³ T. L. Friedman (2011) This is Just the Start, TheNew York Times, March 1, 2011.

⁶⁴ D. D. Kirkpatrick & D. E. Sanger (2011) A Tunisian-Egyptian Link that Shook Arab History, TheNew York Times, February 13, 2011.

⁶⁵ F. Jackson Turner (1996) The Frontier in American History (New York: Dover Publications), p. 3.

⁶⁶ M. V. Nayak & C. Malone (2009) American Orientalism and American Exceptionalism: A Critical Rethinking of US Hegemony, International Studies Review, 11, p. 260.

⁶⁷ J. Cant (2008) Cormac McCarthy and the Myth of American Exceptionalism (New York: Routledge), p. 32.

⁶⁸ T. Paine (2009) Common Sense (Alexandria: Capital Net), p. 24.

⁶⁹ The Saussurean principle of binary opposition postulates that due to the binary structure of the sign (composed of signified-signifier or the physical and the conceptual) cognitive conceptualization and inter-subjective relations take place via a process where things come into existence in relation and opposition to the Other. In other words, each half of the structure only can exist because of the other and only in opposition to the other. See F. de Saussure (1983) Course in General Linguistics (London: Duckworth).

⁷⁰ H. Melville (1876) Clarel: A Poem and Pilgrimage to the Holy Land (New York: G. P. Putnam & Son).

⁷¹ S. Freud (1933) New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis (London: Penguin Freud Library), p. 163.

⁷² S. Jhally (1998) Edward Said on Orientalism. Available at http://www.mediaed.org/assets/products/404/transcript_404.pdf

⁷³ K. A. McDonough (2009) Wee Willie Winkie Goes West: The Influence of the British Empire Genre on Ford's Calvary Trilogy, in: P. Rollin (ed.) Hollywood's West: The American Frontier in Film, Television, and History (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky), p. 105

⁷⁴ P. Hamalainen (2008) The Commanche Empire (New Haven: Yale University Press), p. 103.

⁷⁵ Said (1988) Introduction, p. 3.

⁷⁶ A. Ross (1952) Mossadegh: Prophet or Buffoon?, The New York Times, September 28, 1952.

⁷⁷ Ibid.

⁷⁸ Ibid.

⁷⁹ T. H. Vail Motter, quoted by Cyrus Schayegh (2004) Orientalism Enters the Cold War: The New York Times, in JUSUR: The UCLA Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, 20, p. 9.

⁸⁰ US Senate Foreign Relations Committee & Senate Armed Services Committee (1957) Executive Sessions of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Together with Joint Sessions with The Senate Armed Services Committee: Nomination of Raymond A. Hare, To be Ambassador to Egypt (Washington, DC: Congressional Record), pp. 41–42.

⁸¹ C. Morris, P. William, J. Calvert & L. Johnston (1998) Kurdish Prince of Terror Gives up his War: Death Squad Harem's Commander Flies to Italy in Search of Asylum, The Observer, November 15, 1998.

⁸² J. William Fulbright (1966) The Arrogance of Power (New York: Random House Inc.), p. 63.

⁸³ F. Fanon (1968) Towards the African Revolution (New York: Grove Press), p. 18.

⁸⁴ R. Young (2004) White Mythologies: Writing History and the West (New York: Routledge).

⁸⁵ J. Butler (1997) The Psychic Life of Power: Theories in Subjection (Stanford: Stanford University Press), p. 93.