SHP summer book challenge book 1: Amerikanli
It is nice to finally be able to have both my very own copy, to have the linguistic competence, and the bookworm fortitude to finish one of SonAllah Ibrahim's books. He is a great first author to read in Arabic because his narrative is predictable, his language sparse and direct, and his cultural references are cosmopolitan enough to connect. I can say this from experience as the first book I actually finished in Arabic was, to my great misfortune (and a good lesson in doing anything braggartly), Twilight by Stephanie Mayer. Anyways, I finally finished Amerikanli and have lots of different reactions.
1) Exoticizing the other- My first experience in being a little sniveling ex-pat was in Egypt where every little thing an Egyptian did became a aggravating cliche acted as the plaintive adhesive of our Cairo Kabal. It took on fetishized dimensions. If a car-door handle didn't work, it was Egyptian incompetence materialized. I'm sure, just like everything I once thought was unique about me as a student of Arabic, there have been hundreds of study abroad students who have passed through AUC and bonded through mysoarabia. (In Amerikanli, there is a footnote about Maqrizi and with what contempt he held the native population of Egypt that I thought was funny, and would have probably loved to have found when I was there.)
In the book the author comes to San Francisco which is painted as a Sodom or Gomorrah and spends a large part of his narration listing figures and anecdotes about the drug culture, crime, rape and sexual harassment, racism, gutless hippy protestors, and anti-anti-semitic academic mccarthyism. At First I was like "Oh Come on, give me a break", but then had a little feeling of "serves me right". (maybe I'm only the 187 ME studies major to have that eureka while reading this book. I can no longer believe that anything I have ever done or learned dealing with Arabic or Arabs has not already been done, learn, or felt, by learned by an entire generation of myopically self-aggrandizing orientalist scouts) It is fun to read as the Egyptian history teacher goes around asking people their ethnicity ('I asked the Japanese looking girl what country she was from and she looked at me strangely and said "American"') and conflating American racism with immigrant identity (sometimes people here in Turkey ask me my ethnicity and I have that same strange reaction). I don't think this book has been translated into English yet but it should be, and then distributed to cross-cultural communication classes around the country to show Americans how annoying it is to be essentialized.
2) politics and academia: In the book Shukri (the Egyptian history professor) has several uncomfortable conversations with American academics who exhibit a curtain call of political eccentricities, from vegetarianism, to pro-palestinianism (eccentric in this case because it comes with its special brand of narcissistic/paranoiac martyrdom) , to anything else that reminds you of that movie PCU. Ever since reading Social Justice and the City I've reveled in my Marxist self-righteousness of being beyond the horizon of liberal leftism for yeaaaaars now
If, today, one follows a direct call to act, this act will not be performed in an empty space — it will be an act WITHIN the hegemonic ideological coordinates: those who “really want to do something to help people” get involved in (undoubtedly honorable) exploits like Medecins sans frontiere, Greenpeace, feminist and anti-racist campaigns, which are all not only tolerated, but even supported by the media, even if they seemingly enter the economic territory (say, denouncing and boycotting companies which do not respect ecological conditions or which use child labor) — they are tolerated and supported as long as they do not get too close to a certain limit. This kind of activity provides the perfect example of interpassivity2: of doing things not to achieve something, but to PREVENT from something really happening, really changing. All the frenetic humanitarian, politically correct, etc., activity fits the formula of “Let’s go on changing something all the time so that, globally, things will remain the same!” (x)
and so reading the book from this smug angle was fun. It was also a little time-capsule to read a book that takes place in 1998 before Bush and climate change, and it's amazing to see both how historical amnesia (of a graduate in 2010 has trouble relating to the innocence of characters in a book 12 years ago and their naivity, nay luxury, of having pet causes in the ideology-free lichtung of the 90's) and blinding speed of modernity (they don't use cellphones, e-mail for them is an academic doodah, people put leaflets in their mailboxes, iwww, I mean like, come on, that is so ancient!) that makes a book from 1998 historical fiction.
3) sexuality of the other -The American for erotic is erratic, says Abdal Hakim Murad, and this book shares that same prudish queasiness. Someone is sending Shukri erotic secret admirer letters, his students tempt him with their supple breasts and exposed legs, gays kiss in the streets. It's like Sayed Qutb at a sock-hop! In another article by Murad we are told that not only is Islam gender-neutral (in fact beyond gender) but a staunch social-religious force for monogamy, an exaltation of coupling! It's interesting in this book to see the East looking Westward at the rampant sexual licentiousness and to talk to K about Islamic views of marriage, and feel sort of screwed by the false choice between Western, elementary particles, sexuality and Islamic rigidity. Let's just pretend there's a Marxist theory of marital bliss based on the condemnation of the commodification of desire and a materialist view of the historical foundation of marriage which validates its continuation. Sike, I'll get married out of pure will, theory is for bachelors.
1) Exoticizing the other- My first experience in being a little sniveling ex-pat was in Egypt where every little thing an Egyptian did became a aggravating cliche acted as the plaintive adhesive of our Cairo Kabal. It took on fetishized dimensions. If a car-door handle didn't work, it was Egyptian incompetence materialized. I'm sure, just like everything I once thought was unique about me as a student of Arabic, there have been hundreds of study abroad students who have passed through AUC and bonded through mysoarabia. (In Amerikanli, there is a footnote about Maqrizi and with what contempt he held the native population of Egypt that I thought was funny, and would have probably loved to have found when I was there.)
In the book the author comes to San Francisco which is painted as a Sodom or Gomorrah and spends a large part of his narration listing figures and anecdotes about the drug culture, crime, rape and sexual harassment, racism, gutless hippy protestors, and anti-anti-semitic academic mccarthyism. At First I was like "Oh Come on, give me a break", but then had a little feeling of "serves me right". (maybe I'm only the 187 ME studies major to have that eureka while reading this book. I can no longer believe that anything I have ever done or learned dealing with Arabic or Arabs has not already been done, learn, or felt, by learned by an entire generation of myopically self-aggrandizing orientalist scouts) It is fun to read as the Egyptian history teacher goes around asking people their ethnicity ('I asked the Japanese looking girl what country she was from and she looked at me strangely and said "American"') and conflating American racism with immigrant identity (sometimes people here in Turkey ask me my ethnicity and I have that same strange reaction). I don't think this book has been translated into English yet but it should be, and then distributed to cross-cultural communication classes around the country to show Americans how annoying it is to be essentialized.
2) politics and academia: In the book Shukri (the Egyptian history professor) has several uncomfortable conversations with American academics who exhibit a curtain call of political eccentricities, from vegetarianism, to pro-palestinianism (eccentric in this case because it comes with its special brand of narcissistic/paranoiac martyrdom) , to anything else that reminds you of that movie PCU. Ever since reading Social Justice and the City I've reveled in my Marxist self-righteousness of being beyond the horizon of liberal leftism for yeaaaaars now
If, today, one follows a direct call to act, this act will not be performed in an empty space — it will be an act WITHIN the hegemonic ideological coordinates: those who “really want to do something to help people” get involved in (undoubtedly honorable) exploits like Medecins sans frontiere, Greenpeace, feminist and anti-racist campaigns, which are all not only tolerated, but even supported by the media, even if they seemingly enter the economic territory (say, denouncing and boycotting companies which do not respect ecological conditions or which use child labor) — they are tolerated and supported as long as they do not get too close to a certain limit. This kind of activity provides the perfect example of interpassivity2: of doing things not to achieve something, but to PREVENT from something really happening, really changing. All the frenetic humanitarian, politically correct, etc., activity fits the formula of “Let’s go on changing something all the time so that, globally, things will remain the same!” (x)
and so reading the book from this smug angle was fun. It was also a little time-capsule to read a book that takes place in 1998 before Bush and climate change, and it's amazing to see both how historical amnesia (of a graduate in 2010 has trouble relating to the innocence of characters in a book 12 years ago and their naivity, nay luxury, of having pet causes in the ideology-free lichtung of the 90's) and blinding speed of modernity (they don't use cellphones, e-mail for them is an academic doodah, people put leaflets in their mailboxes, iwww, I mean like, come on, that is so ancient!) that makes a book from 1998 historical fiction.
3) sexuality of the other -The American for erotic is erratic, says Abdal Hakim Murad, and this book shares that same prudish queasiness. Someone is sending Shukri erotic secret admirer letters, his students tempt him with their supple breasts and exposed legs, gays kiss in the streets. It's like Sayed Qutb at a sock-hop! In another article by Murad we are told that not only is Islam gender-neutral (in fact beyond gender) but a staunch social-religious force for monogamy, an exaltation of coupling! It's interesting in this book to see the East looking Westward at the rampant sexual licentiousness and to talk to K about Islamic views of marriage, and feel sort of screwed by the false choice between Western, elementary particles, sexuality and Islamic rigidity. Let's just pretend there's a Marxist theory of marital bliss based on the condemnation of the commodification of desire and a materialist view of the historical foundation of marriage which validates its continuation. Sike, I'll get married out of pure will, theory is for bachelors.
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