Edward Said

[Jester]

Yesterday, September 25, Edward Said finally died.

In him, we lost the Arab Orwell, a man who never once let up in his fight for justice and truth, who never let the popular lies pass unnoticed.

He devoted his life to a scholarly yet personal fight against injustice, hypocrisy and corruption. Here was someone who tolerated neither the opressions of the Israelis nor the corruption of the PLO. Here was a man who never let up in his criticism of Arafat's incompetence and autocracy, of his army of feeble yes-men who have so shamed the cause of Palestinian nationalism, of Hamas and their insane, random violence. Yet here was also a man who never broke solidarity with the Palestinian people, who would never accept less than an independent state for an independent people, free of oppression, racism and united with a democratic sense of purpose.

Here was someone who understood that violence is not justice, that nobody will ever win anything with explosives.

I can only hope his memory inspires a new generation of Palestinians to take up his struggle for total, non-violent independence for their people. Edward Said, not Yassir Arafat, should be the greatest symbol of the Palestinian cause.

Jester

[Occhidiangela]

Has he written any works, or monographs, that you would recommend?

[Occhidiangela]

For a man whose harangue against stereotyping against Arabs, in Orientalism, I find his careless stereotyping pretty hypocritical.

The sheer number of people in the southwestern United States who think like Delay is an imposing 60-70 million and, it should be noted, included among them is none other than George W Bush who is also an inspired born-again Christian for whom everything in the Bible is meant to be taken literally.

But they represent a language of power that is not easily opposed in America, where so many citizens believe themselves to be guided directly by God in what they see and believe and sometimes do.

Right. As a resident of that Southwest, I find his stereotype offensive -- I am not a big Rep Delay fan, nor do I accept his pronouncements on foreigh policy to be anything I'd write into stone -- and I find Said's assertion of what a born again Christian is to be no deeper than a soundbyte. He makes the same mistake that he accuses of Delay of within the first two paragraphs of his article.

Nice open mind, Ed: not.

http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2003/652/op1.htm

On the other hand, I generally agree with his critique of rhetoric Rep Delay presented. The assumption that a Palestinian state will be de facto a terrorist state strikes me as Chomsky-esque hypberbole, without any of Chomsky's wit.

Would a Palestinian state established, presumably on the West Bank, be just another place in the Arab world, or, and this is what some Israeli's suspect, would it become an enclave that harbored terorrists as every other Arab state does? And if so, would a Palestinian state adopt as policy part of the rhetoric and amis of _some_ Arabs: Israel, all of it, must go? That is an unknown, and any protestation of innocence must be balanced against both present efforts and the black marks of history since 1948, indeed, since about 1919.

Delay makes an assumption, Said disagrees, and in general, I'd have to say, for slightly different reasoning, that I agree with Mr Said on that score. The fact that a prominent U.S official makes such an utterance strikes me as bad form, and quite possibly at odds with what the State Department is trying to achieve. Last I checked, the Executive Branch set policy, in the office of the Secretary of State, and is of course subject to question by the House and Senate Foreign relations committes.

So what's with this rhetoric? It strikes me as being akin to the "Axis of Evil" bit from a year ago: rhetoric that was counterproductive, but "played well in Peoria."

Anyone who is as passionate on a particular subject as Mr Said was will be bound to fall into the demonization trap, as he does vis a vis the United States and Americans who don't see things his way. That's OK: it's human, but not admirable. Looking at his CV, I see an interesting fusion of the Ivory Tower and some real life experiences, which make some of the articles he wrote, that I read on the net, very compelling, and certainly worth reading.

He was not one to go softly into that dark night, so a tip of the cap to Mr Said on that score. :)

RIP.

[Jester]

I would say that the Born Again Christian ™, much like the Islamist ™ represents a deliberate, excessive attempt to simplify a complex reality by filtering it through an abstract and reactionary moral code.

Mr. Said is on record countless times as being against both groups for the same reason: his argument in Orientalism that reducing reality (and real people) to stereotypes will only lead to terrible things.

What is true is that these people self-identify as Born Agains, and their opinions, in large majority, reflect the same simplifications common to their particular brand of Christianity. He hasn't said "all Americans" or "all Westerners" or "all Christians", since none of those groups hold even common opinions, let alone uniform ones. He has isolated one (barely) manageable group, whose beliefs, while not uniform, are generally held in common. Fundamentalism does that to people, which is, I think, his point.

I suppose you'd find yourself in a cyclical trap if you tried to condemn groups who simplify excessively, which is in itself simplifying excessively. You would require an impossible degree of specificity.

You're right, it's a human trap. I think Said falls into it far less than most, and is careful to minimize it when he does. However, I also think that avoiding it entirely would pull you completely out of the realm of public discourse; even individuals are deeply contradictory beings, and rendering every generalization unto specificity would take lifetimes.

Jester

P.S: www.edwardsaid.org has a list of his recent articles, plus obituaries and whatnot.

[kandrathe]

He has isolated one (barely) manageable group, whose beliefs, while not uniform, are generally held in common. Fundamentalism does that to people, which is, I think, his point.

Well. Our country has a broad history with religious fundamentalism and various splinter religious groups since they started landing at Plymouth rock.

My only experience with the bible belt has been from what I see when I visit my mother in Arkansas. She moved there to find a nice cheaper place to retire (The place where I live is a high tax, high service State and well frankly the elderly are frequently driven into the welfare roles and then have little choice as to what happens to them. I digress. ) She has become a deacon of her church in the short time she has been there.

From what I see the churches form one of the backbones of the community. There are various denominations, with mostly Baptist (multiple flavors), Methodist, and Catholic. People are very nice, and help one another out when there is a need. Some of the towns seem to be Rockwellesque and ripped right from pages of the Saturday Evening Post. She lives within a short drive to Subiaco, where there is a Benedictine Monastery which seems to be transplanted straight from Germany.

I guess I object labels like "Born Again" since they tend to describe all and none. It is used by people as a slur against Christians in general. Then again there are many charged labels like, "Religious Right", "Bleeding Heart Liberal", or "Pinko Commie" that people toss around to denigrate their political opponents.

So anyway, which kind of Fundamentalist Christian is he refering to? Quakers? Mormons? Shakers? Mennonites? Or, just any church that is strongly Bible based. I know I have met many Christians whose literal translation of the bible is maddening, and maybe that is the ludicrous example being used to whip them all with. Anyway, IMHO, myopia and narrow-mindedness are personal choices not championed by many creeds.

[Jester]

While not to generalize too badly, Mormons are generally Northwest, not Southwest. Quakers are too small in number to be the 60-70 million he's describing. Shakers are now even more insignificantly small in number. Mennonites are also relatively few, and tend not to be the most politically outreaching people.

I think the Baptists, Methodists and Pentecostals make up the largest chunk of the groups he is referring to. Catholics and Anglicans represent well too, I'm sure. "Bible literalists" would probably be the best label for them.

The crucial difference between "Born Again Christian" and most of those other labels you mentioned is self-identification. I've been called a commie and a bleeding heart; the question is whether I believe those things of myself, or if I would voluntarily associate myself with them. Maybe yes, maybe no. But when Said says "born again", he's talking about people who admit to this, and to Bible literalism. This is not an obscure demographic. This is a group who stand up tall and profess their belief (a fairly extreme belief) in the Bible.

"Born again" is just a best attempt to find a neutral title. "Fundamentalist wacko" would probably be the charged version.

Again, all titles are generalizations. All generalizations (except this one, of course) are, to some extent, unfair, otherwise they would be like Borges' map of the world which is the size of the world : Utterly useless.

Jester

[kandrathe]

But when Said says "born again", he's talking about people who admit to this, and to Bible literalism. This is not an obscure demographic. This is a group who stand up tall and profess their belief (a fairly extreme belief) in the Bible.

I dunno. It seems to me that when Christians refer to "Born Again" they are speaking of a time in their lives when they were more capable of understanding the complexity of Christ's message, and this time really believed. In a way, a spiritual rebirth. Many Catholics make the observation of being Catholic and being a practicing Catholic, or some of my Jewish friends make that same distinction within their faith. Some people are classified as something, when their only claim to it is by being born into that tradition. So, to my mind the only true Christians are the "born again" ones. Because they have embraced the theology, and not just the label.

"Born again" is just a best attempt to find a neutral title. "Fundamentalist wacko" would probably be the charged version.

I guess I see it as a loaded generality. Why not just say "some strict or hard line Christians"? I guess to me like "Nerd" or "Geek", if I would refer to myself by those labels it might be alright. But, to be labeled by others as a "Nerd" or a "Geek" would not feel right. (I think if you add "wacko" to any other noun it would become the charged version, eg. "Game Playing Wacko").

Again, all titles are generalizations. All generalizations (except this one, of course) are, to some extent, unfair, otherwise they would be like Borges' map of the world which is the size of the world : Utterly useless.

Well, I don't think it is an all or nothing proposition. Using demographics and more proper population statistics would clarify which groups he might be talking about. 60-70 million is actually a large number of people in the US (about the same number that voted for Bush in the last election).

Again, using my mother as my window into that culture (right or wrong) -- I think their response to Said would be; "What is so wrong about wanting to live, work and raise your children in a morally positive environment?" They don't neccesarily place the same level of importance in tolerating all social vices and aberrations as people do in an urban core, but that does not mean that they are intolerant. I mean I grew up in a small town and if you are determined to be the only spike mohawked orange haired iggy pop punk in the town of 200 people, you might expect just a little puzzlement and a bit of isolation. My experiences in small town America are closer to "Northern Exposure" than "Dukes of Hazzard", yet strange that both seem to apply. I think from what I've seen from that segment of the population is that they would like to have the choice to be tolerant, rather than have political correctness forced upon them as legislation. Their social fabrics are a weave of each individuals relationships within their community, and no one gets a free pass. Everyone needs to earn their respect, even the minister.

I think some of the conflicts we have seen and will continue to see are in how social mores are established and social harmony achieved if some social viewpoints are treated as ignorant or bourgeois. Its easy to generalize them as the "religious right" or those "bible belt born again's" when it is actually a much more complicated demographically diverse population. I mean demographically, I see beyond the regional differences, the denomination, race, age and urbanization, as just a few factors that cannot all describe the same kind of "born again" Christian.

Anyway, my point is that just as there is not one flavor of Islamic Fundamentalist, "born again" does not in my mind describe Fundamentalist Christians.

[Occhidiangela]

But I am not going to argue much about this today.

The Islamist approach, the reactionary approach, is not universal, but like the reactionary Christian approach, it comes from a very loud minority who seem to wield influence out of proportion to their numbers, possibly due to adroit handling of both the media and of politics. I have always thought it humorous how much the reactionary moralist Muslim and the reactionary moralist Christian have in common. :) Both find the modern, urbanized, secular society very distasteful, for some of the same and some different reasons, and both want to change the world to something less distasteful. I even suggest that they both want to put a genii back into a bottle, but that may be an oversimplification, since both of those groups have a better chance to make some change than anyone has to put the genii of, for example nuclear arms, back into the bottle.

One thing Said and I agree on, fundamentally. Were it not for the presence of an enormously useful commodity under the sand, oi,l U.S. policy in the Mid East would be immensely different, or should I say, indifferent? True since 1933, and true to today. Why? We really have very little in common, culturally, with the garden variety Muslim Arab, our base cultures spent ten centuries at odds with each other, yet at the same time, we probably have a great deal in common from a purely human, man on the street, point of view. Politics do not get driven by the latter, it gets driven by paths of power and influence.

So, when someone says that our 1991 and 2003 battles with Iraq are all about oil, the answer is "well, no fooling," but it is not a stovepipe interest, and it is not as simple as the soundbyte "blood for oil" tries to depict it. Every bit of policy of the U.S., and for that matter, much European Mid East policy, was built on that oil and trade from the get go.

That oil makes Arabs, or some Arabs, filthy rich. It made the Shah of Iran filthy rich. It gives "them what has it" a power and a voice in global issues that they woule not otherwise have. Without the addiction to oil that the ENTIRE INDUSTRIALIZED WORLD has, the pushers in Arabia, many of them from elsewhere, would not make as much money, and the Arab voice would most likely not be heard as often, or as loudly.

It is not just the price of gas at the pump that makes American and other Industrialized nations' policy makers care about the GLOBAL oil supply. It is oil's insidious influence on the economies of every one of our mutual major trading partners. The industrialized world lives and dies by trade.

In 1973, the King of Saudi Arabia answered Ayn Rands infamous question in the novel "Atlas Shrugged" :

Who is John Gault? He sain, in effect, "I am."

The Saudis, and other Arab and non arab Oil Producing states (OPEC) then proceeded to lay down a heavy bit of econominc power on the US. But the Persians did not. :o

In 1991, Saddam Hussein, no idiot, tried to annex the Kuwait oil fields so that he could, after a fashion, be the next John Gault. He failed, but had he succeeded at the political level in making the annexation of his Sudetenland stick, he would have been in a position vis a vis the entire industrialized world, and particularly America had he decided that we were on his sh** list, that OPEC was in vis a vis the U.S. in 1973.

It should come as no surprise to anyone that a policy maker in an industrialized nation will pursue policies that ensure their economy does not grind to a halt. Did WJ CLinton not get elected on the "It's the economy, stupid" campaign? That is part of the job of the national leader of ANY nation.

I already found a whole bunch of Said's articles via a web search, and some of his Al Ahram commentary is most interesting.

In any case, thanks Jester, I always appreciate interesting view points, and your post here got me reading some very insightful stuff that Said has written in the past two years. :)