Hamid Dabashi on the Difference between Foucault/Zizek and Said

I am about half way done with Dabashi's book (which I will post on shortly). However, I also stumbled on his careful, critique of an abstract essay Zizek wrote about the Iranian uprising. I believe Dabshi is right in his critique of the way figures like Badiou and Zizek and many other Western thinkers will create abstract ideas divorced from the historical situation. The creative tension between solid historical/contextual work along with good philosophical/theological reasoning is a necessary must; err on one side too much and you become so contextual you have no standing to speak to a large audience and become too abstract and you speak in speculative generalities. Here is a great quote from his essay:

The problem with the European Left is that they care a little bit about just about everything, and yet there is nothing in particular about which they care deeply. This is very similar my old teacher Philip Rieff used to call “the Monroe Doctrine”—not the famous President James Monroe doctrine of warning Europeans to keep their hands off the Americas, but the little known Marilyn Monroe doctrine, named after the famous actress for having once said, “I believe in everything,”and then pausing for a moment before saucily adding, “a little bit.” The difference between European and colonial intellectuals is summed up in the difference between Sartre and Fanon, or between Foucault and Said. Sartre and Foucault cared widely about the entirety of the colonial and colonizing world, while Fanon and Said cared deeply about Algeria and Palestine, and from these two sites of contestation they extrapolated their politics and ethics of responsibility towards the rest of the world.

A Little Orientalism going on..

There are some wacky news stories that abound right now especially with regards toward Islam, but nothing seems to be as disconcerting as the way President Obama is seen in poll after poll as either a "closet" Muslim or at the very least a Muslim sympathizer. Again, this is ideology at its purest. Obama can firmly state time after time that he is a Christian, yet this is just another proof in the insanity that is in some perceptions of people who just frankly dislike him that he is a closet Muslim.

I noticed the same trend in those Muslim reformist (like Ramadan) working in the West who openly criticize radical, fundamentalist Islam. They are still often criticized by their foes in the West for being covert or closet radicals just waiting to push Sharia law upon their unsuspecting victims! How does anyone win when no matter what you say you are painted as a radical!?

Again, I refer to Edward Said and his work on Orientalism. There are plenty of generalizations that Said forces in his book that one can disagree with, yet I think Said is correct that we see the Orientalist view in the way certain Muslims are perceived by the West especially in the media. The above example works best. The argument goes that Arabs/Muslims are duplicitous and sneaky, so they may say you are their friend but they are just waiting for the opportunity to stab you in the back! Following this line of reasoning then how can you have an open debate or discourse with Muslims, Palestinians, or any other group seen as "Eastern"? Now the proper response is to sarcastically note that of course those in the West are always people of their word. A long history of broken treaties and useless wars beg to differ. This is ironic because one point that Ramadan makes in his works is that a good Muslim always honors contracts.

The main point again that Said is correct on is to actually get away from binary thought (there is really no such entity as an East or a West, or a Christianity or an Islam). We need to use the best of public reason to see the multiplicities that make up certain identities and join up with those that are good and attack those that are in fact bad. This can only happen when the best tools that modernity gave us is used in a critical way on all traditions whether they are political, social or religious...

Said: Seeing from Engaged Eyes

It took me a while to finally finish Edward Said's classic Orientalism. His claim is that Western philologist's/historian's writings depict the people of the Middle East in a way that makes them a mythical Other. In other words, the Orient becomes an enchanted place to the Western viewer. A good example is the Aladdin story of genies and magic carpets.

Anyway, as I have begun to read current strands of philosophy and theology of the engaged follower of the Event, I am left wondering, with Said, that perhaps there is a time to suspend engagement and to try to open oneself to a universal, rational public world where the East/West views will no longer become clouded by engaged eyes. This view is obviously a little naive in light of the postmodern turn in the academic world or the multicultural turn to the celebration of a plurality of narratives. However, perhaps we should double the attempts to temper our engagement with a little indifference. Blind engagement for the sake of a cause is the ultimate betrayal of justice to a good cause.