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Colonialism, Postcolonialism, Globalization, and Arab Culture
Abstract
This article will address two major related issues regarding Arab culture as an integral part of the globalization ethos. In order to expand the conceptual parameters of globalization and cultural studies, the exclusivity of political and economic globalization will be interrogated in favor of a more diverse, humanitarian definition of the term. At the heart of this argument, inflected by interdisciplinarity and the literature and theory of postcolonial studies, is tolerance, respect, and recognition of difference and for the marginalized voices of the “other.” The theoretical framework challenges the stereotyping, homogenization, and misrepresentation of Arabs, colonialist ideas that have been carried over into the practice of globalism and the marginalization of Arab history and culture within world heritage. It is my hope to correct the negative perceptions about the Arab people, mainstream misperceptions of politicians, the media, and public discourse. The article will underscore the diversity and complexity of the identity and history of people in the Middle East and North Africa. Although in the West Arabs are usually synonymous with Muslims, a discussion of Islam and/or Islamophobia will not be addressed in this article. The first part will elaborate on the historical context of the creation of the modern Arab world. Next, various definitions of the main domains of globalism and their correlation to the contemporary Arab world will be summarized. Integrated into both sections are two major issues: the creative resistance that has accompanied the founding of the modern Arab world and the impact of globalization on Arab society, concepts that have played out in the containment of this region.
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Notes
Albert Hourani, Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age, 1798–1939, 12th reprint (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
See Jens Hanssen and Max Weiss, eds., Arabic Thought Beyond the Liberal Age: Towards an Intellectual History of the Nahda (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016).
James L. Gelvin, The Modern Middle East, 4th ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 225.
George Antonius, The Arab Awakening (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1938); Republished under the title The Arab Awakening: The Story of the Arab National Movement (Philadelphia, PA: J. B. Lippincott, 1939).
Roger Owen, State, Power and Politics in the Making of the Modern Middle East, 3rd ed. (London: Routledge, 2007), 6.
For details of the correspondence between Sharif Husayne ibn ‘Ali of Mecca and the British High Commissioner in Egypt, see Eugene Rogan, The Arabs: A History (New York: Basic Books, 2009), 150–153.
Qtd. in Joel Peters and David Newman, eds., The Routledge Handbook on the Israeli–Palestinian Conflict (London: Routledge, 2015), 379; italics added.
Joel Beinin and Lisa Hajjar, “Primer on Palestine, Israel and the Arab–Israeli Conflict,” Middle East Research and Information Project (February 2014), 2.
Sahar Huneidi, A Broken Trust: Herbert Samuel, Zionism and the Palestinians (London: I.B. Tauris, 2001), ix.
Qtd. In Huneidi, 12–13.
Edward W. Said, Culture and Imperialism (New York: Vintage, 1993), 300.
Qtd. in Robert J. C. Young, Postcolonialism: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 32.
Manfred B. Steger, Globalization: A Very Short Introduction, 3rd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 31. This source will be henceforth cited as Short Introduction within the text.
Joseph Stiglitz, “The Promise of Global Institutions,” in Globalization: The Greatest Hits, ed., Manfred B. Steger (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 141. All citations from this source will be indicated in the text.
Globalization, 16–32.
Globalization, 48–57.
Globalization, 33–47.
For a full discussion of neoliberalism and globalization, see Jamie Peck, Constructions of Neoliberal Reason, reprinted (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014).
See, for example, Larbi Sadiki, ed., Routledge Handbook of the Arab Spring (London and New York: Routledge, 2015).
Safwan M. Masri, Tunisia: An Arab Anomaly (New York: Columbia University Press, 2017), 30.
Maha Abdelrahman, Egypt's Long Revolution: Protest Movements and Uprisings (London: Routledge, 2015), 4.
Kilian Balz and Anja Schoeller-Schletter, “The Quest for a New Economic Order in Egypt's Constitutional Transformation,” in Constitutionalism, Human Rights, and Islam after the Arab Spring, ed., Rainer Grote and Tilmann J. Roder (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 514.
Stuart Hall, “New Ethnicities,” in The Post-colonial Studies Reader, ed., Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin (London: Routledge, 1995), 223–227; italics in the original.
Linda K. Jacobs, Strangers in the West: The Syrian Colony of New York City 1880–1900 (New York: Kalimah Press, 2015).
“Coming to America,” Arab American Museum, Gallery 1.
Philippe Fargues and Alessandra Venturini, eds., Migration from North Africa and the Middle East (London: I.B. Tauris, 2015).
“Palestine Refugees.”
See, for example, Benny Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947–1949 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989); Eugene L. Rogan and Avi Shlaim, eds., The War for Palestine: Rewriting the History of 1948 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001); Ilan Pappé, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (Oxford: Oneworld, 2006); and Joel Beinin and Lisa Hajjar, “Primer on Palestine, Israel and the Arab–Israeli Conflict.”
See “Transnational Palestine,” Middle East Research and Information Project 282, online (Spring 2017); for a comparison between Palestine and South Africa and the use of cultural production as resistance, see Anna Bernard, “Cultural Activism as Resource: Pedagogies of Resistance and Solidarity.”
NII Yamotei, “The African Dawn,” Album Jacket, 1989.
“Transnational Palestine.”
John Collins, Global Palestine (London: Hurst and Company, 2011).
Haifa Zangana, ed., Party for Thaera: Palestinian Women Writing Life (London: E-Kutub Ltd., 2017); all translations are mine.
Edward W. Said, “Permission to Narrate,” in The Politics of Dispossession (New York: Vintage Books, 1995), 254.
Philip N. Howard et al., “Opening Closed Regimes.”
Ilan Pappé, The Modern Middle East: A Social and Cultural History, 3rd ed. (London: Routledge, 2014), 300–307.
Najat Rahman, In the Wake of the Poetic: Palestinian Artists after Darwish (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2015).
For an insight on the failure of the USA in the peace process, see Rashid Khalidi, Brokers of Deceit: How the US Has Undermined Peace in the Middle East (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2013).
For an elaboration of Hammad's poetic creativity, see Rahman, 31–43.
Fredric Jameson's terms, qtd. in Globalization, 37.
Farid Farid, “An Iraqi Novelist Living in Continuous Mourning,” The Guardian, 3 March 2015, access date 25 January 2018.
Sinan Antoon, “Summary,” About Baghdad, 2004, IMDB.
“'Million’ March against Iraq War,” BBC World News World Edition, February 16, 2003.
“UN Inspectors Found No Evidence of Prohibited Weapons Programs as of 18 March Withdrawal, Hans Blix Tells Security Council,” June 5, 2003.
“Evaluation Report: Evaluation of UNICEF Preparedness and Early Response in Iraq (September 2001–June 2003),” UNICEF, October 2004.
Andrew Roche, “Iraq Conflict Has Killed a Million Iraqis: Survey,” Global Policy Forum, January 30, 2008.
Nadje Sadig Al-Ali, Iraqi Women: Untold Stories from 1948 to the Present (London: Zed Books, 2007).
Ibid., 221.
“After Abu Ghraib,” The Guardian, September 20, 2004.
Sophia Hoffmann, Iraqi Migrants in Syria: The Crisis before the Storm (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2016), 19.
In “5 Things You Need to Know About the U.S.–Israel Relationship Under President Obama,” Bernadette Meeham lists the following, to demonstrate the US commitment to Israel: “Israel remains the leading recipient of U.S. foreign military financing (FMF), receiving over $20.5 billion since 2009”; “The United States in Fiscal Year 2014 provided Israel with more security assistance funding than ever before. In Fiscal Year 2016, which marks the eighth year of a 10-year, $30 billion Memorandum of Understanding between the U.S. and Israel, we have asked Congress for $3.1 billion in FMF funds for Israel”; “The President has provided $2.9 billion in funding for missile defense programs and systems. Since 2011, the United States has provided Israel with over $1.3 billion for the Iron Dome system alone, including $225 million in short-fuse funding last summer”; and “The U.S. and Israel regularly conduct joint exercises to improve our military capabilities and strengthen our bilateral security,” The White House Web Page (1) March 2015.
Please see “How Big Is the Impact Subsidy for Banks Considered Too Important to Fail?” in Global Financial Stability Report: Moving from Liquidity- to Growth-Driven Markets (March 2014), IMF, April 2014, 101–132.
Rita Süssmuth, “On the Need for Teaching Intercultural Skills: Challenges for Education in a Globalizing World,” Learning in the Global Era, ed. Marcelo M. Suárez-Orozco (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007), 195–212.
Steger, Globalization, xiii; emphasis in the original.