This paper is an attempt to trace the absence of the West in the cultural creative modes of knowledge productions that emerged post the Arab social movements in Tunisia and Egypt.
Whenever we discuss or approach the subject of the construction of identities in post-colonial studies: the West- who I represent here as the "other"- is largely but not entirely perceived as consolidating against or formulating the identities of the East or the identities of the "Rest". This is evident in not only the revered works of prominent theorists like Edward Said, Homi Bhabha, and Gayatri Spivak, but also in the works of other post-colonial theorists and writers that emerged afterward. However, during the Arab Spring – one of the most solidaristic and transcultural Arab movements that searched for more stable governing models at crossroads of global, regional, and national challenges- creative new forms of formulating identities beyond post-colonial theory emerged, such as; the Arab Spring poetic slogans as creative modes of knowledge production, which moved away from the previous discourse of the post-colonial Arab intellectuals built on a bifurcation identity, and also in tandem revolting the internal regimes of knowledge production.
The new forms of cultural productions not only represented moments of self-emergency, social solidarity, and construction of the "self'"during traumatic moments, but also in tandem absented and muted the West and East binaries and antithesis of representation.
Contents
Abstract
Introduction
Post-colonial identities and formations
Beyond Post-Colonial Identities. Slogans as new modes of knowledge production and agency.A fraction of the Egyptian Poetic slogans of the Arab spring
A fraction of the Tunisian poetic slogans of the Arab Spring
Conclusion
References
Introduction
My reflections in this paper delve primarily on the relationship between the people and the cultural productions in post-2010/ 2011Arab uprisings, particularly on the cultural productions from Egypt and Tunisia. Part of what the paper looks at is the encounter of the collective imaginary with the literary experience, or the meeting point of the people, the literature, and the cultural productions, which sporadically manifested during the people’s call for regime change in 2011/2011. The paper revisits and examines how this historical encounter led to not only a quest for an empowered sense of the ‘self’ that involved/ searched for new modes of collective resonance amidst and, beyond systems of exploitation, but also, at the same time, this encounter and this is what is relevant here, resulted into a “cultural revolution” that saw creative forms of knowledge production like the Arab Spring poetic slogans, arguably, transcending post-colonial discourses of the West , and the Arab Intellectuals which was prevalent prior to the 2010-2011 uprisings. In the Arab Spring: The End of Post colonialism (2012), Hamid Dabashi vividly articulates the ‘shift away’ from such ideological formations of decentering the West as the central point of knowledge. He states.
“In the blossoming of the Arab Spring we are all liberated from […] the ideological formations of subservient knowledge that sustained the falsifying phantom of ‘the West’ in order to subjugate the liberating imagination of ‘the Rest,’ [and] we are finally witnessing the epistemic end of that violent autonormativity whereby ‘the West’ kept reinventing itself and all its inferior others” (15).
What Dabashi alludes to by the ‘End’ in this context, is the end of the orientalist discourse that had concocted a disparity in representation of the East vis-à-vis the West and, secondly, the post-colonial discourse which the Arab dictatorial regimes wanted the people to focus on rather than the internal issues affecting the people’s everyday life. As such, the ‘End’ signifies an end to the disparity in representation within that discourse. The discourse as Dabashi states has “delivered its promises, conjugated its paradigm and yielded, willy-nilly, to the unfolding of history.”1
Now we are witnessing in the region, arguably- the emergency of new episteme in schools, universities, on the streets that subvert the ‘violent autormativity’ of not only the ‘West’ but also the previous existing ideologies within the internal asymmetries of representation in the region.
Post-colonial identities and formations
One of the main features of postcolonial studies lays in the continual focus on not only the economic and political influences of colonialism but also, and this is what is relevant here, its focus on the construction and representation of identity, the balance of global cultural and power relations, and how these elements workout in relations to colonial hegemony and discourse. According to Stuart Hall, cultural identities can be looked at from two underlying perspectives, and that is; a collectively shared mode of ‘‘one people”, ‘‘oneness” and codes of a culture of people with a shared history, homeland, etc. This form of identity assumes that there is an essentialist authentic core element to any identity, which is defined by the common heritage or a common structure of collective experience, or even both. In this model of identity, “the self (primarily the cultural collective self) are set and fixed outside [the movement of] history, constituting a solid image of the self….with no rooms for people’s actions, choices, and responsibilities.”2
The second related but different form of cultural identity manifests in a sense of ‘becoming’ as well as of ‘being’. That is to say, “it belongs to the future as much as to the past. It is something which already exists, transcending time, place, history and culture.”3 This model negates the existence of a fully constituted, separate, and distinct identity. It denies the idea of an authentic identity based on universally shared origin or experience, given that, identities are relational, incomplete, and in constant transformation and interaction with the other.
Generally speaking, any identity depends upon its difference from and its negation of another identity. Hall states “identity is a structured representation which only achieves its positive through the narrow eye of the negative.”4 What this proposition entails is that for any given identity to stand out, it has to insinuate a negative connotation and representation about the other identity. Identity as Hall urges has to go through the “narrow eye of the needle of the other” before constructing and asserting itself.5 To “[re]construct itself”, entails deconstructing the identity of the other: a process that inherently depends on who has the power to structure, shape, and represent.
Obliviously, one of the ways through which power (i.e. the power to construct identity) prevails in post-colonial studies is through discourse. - According to Foucault in Discourse and Power: there are deep-seated regulations, which structure and limit the creation and the circulation of discourse in any society, among which are the political, cultural, and educational institutions. Thus, the kind of discourse that is prevalent in any society largely depends on the institutions, which regulate the production and ratification of knowledge.6 The institutions that get to regulate knowledge and its discursive manifestations on identity, race, and culture are those institutions, which are powerful. As such, in any situation characterized by the imbalance of power, it is the discourse of the powerful, which is circulated as true knowledge.7
Evidently, it was the discourse of the colonizers (West) characterized with its, borrowing Hall’s word “narrow eye of the negative”, that largely offered a matrix for the binary conceptualization and the configuration of the identity of the ‘Rest’. - Colonizers and colonized, the East vs West, Orient vs occident, and other different binaries and antithesis. As a sequel of the military conquests and economic power Europe enjoyed during the heydays of colonialism, it (Europe) enacted policies that transformed the occupied territories under its domain into objects of research, inquiry and representation. This hegemonic status in representation made it enjoy special relevance and privileges against the ‘Rest’ within the academic disciplines and institutions of Europe and within its colonies. In that discourse, whatever Europe stood for, the colonized stood for the exact opposite- intellect verses barbaric, superior versus inferior, modern versus backward, etc. - Also, this type of discourse was used not only as contrasting conceptual categories denoting geographical spaces, but also denoting certain cultural values. Whatever was expressed and represented by the colonizer in contrast a concocted disparity was represented for the colonized; particularly, in moral conducts, dress code, food, and habits. This type of colonial representation, Spivak contends, “the ‘West’ representing and defining the ‘East’ on its behalf was to constitute the colonial subject as the other”8 in order to justify the domination of the West over the East. Edward Said gives us a detailed account of the discourse of the colonialism and its representation of the ‘Other’ in his 1979 book titled Orientalism.
Interestingly, and as mentioned above, it is this type of discourse with its discursive manifestations on identity, culture, modernity, heritage, that preoccupied the concerns of Arab intellectuals in the region prior to 2010/2011 revolutions. Questions of a civilization decline, the quest for modernity, renewal of classical language, and the nation-state after independence have been the major preoccupations in their writings and debates in addition to tackling the manufactured antithesis of identities- and this is what is relevant in this chapter.
Prevalently, the Arab intellectuals prior to 2010 -2011 were so concerned with revolting and critiquing against the colonial discourse that had negatively represented, divided, and fragmented their authentic Arab identity, the idea of identification with each other beyond local boundaries. Central to that issue was also, the growing influence of Western modernity and the desire to emulate, compare, and at times free themselves from the growing modern Western influence within their localities dominated their writing trajectory. For example, the 1940s and 1950s the writings, remedies and the analysis were largely political in regards to the post-independence state. “In the 1950s and ‘60s, Marxist ideas and organizations were the most popular in the Arab, and that Marxist parties attracted in Sudan, Iraq, Syria, and Egypt attracted large numbers of Arabs invested their beliefs and commitments into the causes.”9 The 1970s-1980s debates and writings were mostly concerned with aspects of tradition and authenticity by revisiting and examining the classical heritage of the Arabs after the defeat of the 1967 defeat. All these ideologies in writings were moving along and either accompanied by new or existing ideologies like Pan Arabism, Marxism or Nationalism, etc. This preoccupation of the elites - not only alienated them from paying attention to the internal obligations of the post-independence states vis-à-vis the needs of local citizens on the ground, i.e. poverty and exploitation but also alienated them from paying attention to the local narratives of the people on the streets yearning for justice, dignity, freedom, social and political empowerment.
The 2010/2011 moment was a ‘critical turn’ that exposed the gap embedded in the discourse of the intellectuals and subsequently pushed the masses to revolt against the misleading that had been heaped in the colonial discourse that had preoccupied many Arab intellectuals. It was the moment that people realized that the suffering, injustice, poverty and unemployment were internal issues that needed urgent attention and solutions. The people discovered that the problems of the region were not with the West, and certainly not with the colonizers, nor the so- called Zionists. The stressing issues of the region were not related to- the external ‘other’ on whom the people had been fixated, rather the issues were within the internal policies of the current regimes. Perhaps also, the people discovered that their issues with the West and Zionism won’t be solved through the current regimes and the kind of discourse based on post-colonial approaches in the region.
Accordingly, people collectively looked for suitable means for agency and change. As such, the 2011 moment uncovered so many misleading and diversion in the post-colonial discourse about the realities of the Arab world, and in doing that it silenced and muted the presence and the idea of the ‘West’ as a central idea in the internal sufferings of the ‘Rest’. In ‘ The End of Post colonialism’, Dabashi informs us that, the Arab spring slogan that was constantly uttered among the enthusiastic masses on the streets, “the People want to topple the regime”, signified both a political and cultural desire. According to Dabashi, “to topple the regime”, the masses not only meant toppling the political regimes of exploitation, but also the regimes of knowledge. As stated earlier, the regimes of knowledge in this context signify the post-colonial discourse with all its discursive manifestations like censorship, oppression, exile, state interference, and state- sponsored narratives. In Egypt, the censorship and the oppression from the regimes of knowledge were prevalent in the leading literary associations like, National theater of Egypt, or the Union of Egyptian writers, which were under the control of the state. In Tunisia, as I mentioned earlier, the repression was evident in the empty shelves in the bookstores and on the streets. In Libya during Gaddafi’s rule, in a state-organized literary festival, the state ‘arrested’ writers and put them in “prison where a whole generation of ….writers in their twenties and thirties spent a decade.”10
Beyond Post-Colonial Identities. Slogans as new modes of knowledge production and agency.A fraction of the Egyptian Poetic slogans of the Arab spring.
“Tagyir, hurīya, ‘adālah Ijtimā ‘iyah”- Change, freedom, social justice
“‘īsh, hurīya, karāma insāniyah”- Life, Freedom, Dignity
“Irhal ya’ini imshi, ya’ al mābitafḥmish”- Leave means walk away,
“Yaa Jamal Qul li’ abuka, almaṣiriyun mush biyiḥibuka”-
Jamal tell your father, Egyptian do not like you
“Yaa Jamal Qul li’ abuka, alsha’abu almaṣiri, biyakrahuka”-
Jamal tell your father, Egyptian hate you
“ا alsha’abu al maṣiri qarara, maṣr lāzim tataḥarar”
Egyptians have decided. Egypt must be liberated.
A fraction of the Tunisian poetic slogans of the Arab Spring.
“alsha’abu yurīd isqatu anizāmu”- People want to topple the regime “Hurīya, adālah Ijtiā ‘iyah, karāma watanīyah”- Freedom, social justice, human, dignity “Khubuz, Hurīya, adālah Ijtimā ‘iyah”- Bread, freedom, social justice “Shughul, Hurīya, karāma watanīyah wa musāwāh”- Employment, freedom, Dignity The slogans above represent only a small fraction of the creative modes of knowledge production that emanated, disseminated and performed on the streets by both the Egyptians and the Tunisians protestors during the 2010-2011 moments. As a process of constant repetition and performance of the slogans, they represented the most powerful repertoire of the Arab uprisings emanating from revolutionary streets, and as such, they not only inculcate self-emergent modes of representation but also transcend or mute the West in the discussions of the East, as I shall be showing in the following pages.
Drawing on Charles Till’s English social movement of the eighteenth and the nineteenth century, Asef Bayat in his book, ‘Life as Politics: how ordinary people change the Middle East’, observes that “What came to be known as social movements combined three elements: an organized and sustained claim making on target authorities; a repertoire of performance, including associations, public meetings, media statements and street marches; and public representations of the causes worthiness, unity, numbers and commitment.”11 Whereas all these three aspects largely associate with the Tunisian and the Egyptian uprisings, it is the repertoire that is most illuminating in thinking and analyzing the muting of the west in the Arab spring slogans. For Tilly “contentious gatherings” like assemblies, demonstrations, marches, and strikes are the primary actions that form a social movement. In each of these actions, the people attempt to build upon and learn from the success and failures of the previous actions. Tilly calls this process of learning, revising, and improvising a “repertoire” and stresses that this repertoire plays a role in standardizing and limiting the nature of what he calls the contentious performance.12
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1. Hamid Dabashi, ‘Post Orientalism Knowledge and power in time of Terror’, (Translation publishers: New Brunswick, New Jersey, 2015), x.
2. Elizabeth Suzanne Kassab, “The Arab Quest for Freedom and Dignity”: Have Arab Thinkers. (New York: Colombia University press, 2010), 30.
3. Hall, Stuart. (1990). ‘Cultural Identity and Diaspora’ in Jonathan Rutherford, Identity: Community, Culture, Difference, and London: Lawrence and Wishart. P.225.
4. Lawrence Grossberg, ‘Identity and Cultural Studies: Is That All There Is?, edit, Questions of Cultural Identity, STUART HALL and PAUL DU GAY, (SAGE Publications Ltd : London, 1996),90.
5. Ibid.
6. Miller, Seumas. ‘Foucault on Discourse and Power.’ Theoria: A Journal of Social and Political Theory, no. 76 (1990): 115-25.
7.Ibid.
8. Spivak, Gayatri, ‘Can the Subaltern speak’, (Macmillan Education: Basingstok 1988), 76.
9. Elizabeth Suzanne Kassab, The Arab Quest for Freedom and Dignity: Have Arab Thinkers. (New York: Colombia University press, 2010), 30.
10. Ibid.
11. Asef, Bayat, ‘Life As Politics’. How ordinary People change the Middle East, (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2010), 04.
12. Colla, Elliott. "The People Want."Middle East Report, no. 263 (2012): 8-13. Accessed February 22, 2021.