A Glimpse Into Arab Studies Journal’s Newly Released Issue: Spring 2016

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Jun 1, 2016
A Glimpse Into Arab Studies Journal’s Newly Released Issue: Spring 2016

A Glimpse Into Arab Studies Journal’s Newly Released Issue: Spring 2016

By : ASJ Editors

Arab Studies Journal
Vol. XXIV, No. 1

In this issue, we are proud to feature a collection of innovative and rigorous contributions. Two exceptional articles tackle archives as a historical and conceptual space. In “The Moroccan Equity and Reconciliation Commission: The Promises of a Human Rights Archive,” Susan Slymovics explores how memory is instrumentalized and how victim memories revise and confront national historiography. In “The Paper Trail of a Liberation Movement,” Hana Sleiman conducts an inquiry into the curious fate of the PLO Research Center’s archive, reconstructing how the archive was lost and telling the story of why it was never repatriated.

In a third article titled “Trial of the Status Quo: The Politics of Mediated Justice in the Special Tribunal for Lebanon,” Sari Hanafi, Are Knudsen, and Robert Flahive analyzes the structure and form of differences between Lebanese newspaper in covering the Special Tribunal for Lebanon.

Arab Studies Journal is pleased to feature two special sections in this issue. The first is on “The Arab Left in Egypt and Lebanon.” Sune Haugbolle and Manfred Sing provide the framework for this special section as well as the contours of new approaches to Arab left histories. In “A Tale of Two Communists: The Revolutionary Projects of the Lebanese Communists Husayn Muruwwa and Mahdi ‘Amil,” Miriam Younes explores the intellectual and social development of two prominent figures in “revolutionary times.” Hanan Hammad plots an intimate history of the Egyptian left by examining the legacy of an Egyptian Marxist in “Arwa Salih’s The Premature: Gendering the History of the Egyptian Left.” In the “Anatomy of a Crisis: On Mahdi ‘Amil’s Naqd al-Fikr al-Yawmi,” Samer Frangie provides a reading of the “crisis of Marxism” and how different critical strands of Arab leftist thought coalesced around the rejection of this ideology. Sune Haugbolle interrogates the spaces between ideological traditions by analyzing the work and significance of the Lebanese singer Ziad Rahbani in “The Leftist, the Liberal, and the Space in Between: Ziad Rahbani and Everyday Ideology.” Finally, in “Lebanon’s al-Akhbar and Radical Press Culture: Toward and Intellectual History of the Contemporary Arab Left,” Jens Hanssen and Hicham Safieddine offers an assessment of a leading leftist newspaper between its fast-paced rise after the 2006 Israeli war on Lebanon and its speedy decline in 2011.

Our second special section, “New Paradigms Factory” continues Arab Studies Journal’s collaborative work with the Arab Council for Social Science and Research (ACSS) in its fostering and nurturing of scholarship on and of the Arab world. In “Inviolable Sheiks and Radical Subjects: Bahrain’s Cyclical Sovereignty Crisis” Ala’a Shehabi traces Bahrain’s history of uprising through alternative models of protest, revealing the dependent and neocolonial character of royal sovereignty. Finally, Imen Yacoubi proposes a model of women’s rights in Tunisia that transcends the law-focused state sovereignty paradigm that many gender scholars associate with state feminism in “Sovereignty from Below: State Feminism and Politics of Women against Women in Tunisia.”

Our book review section offers a rich collection of works from across disciplinary and temporal divides. These include the history of literacy in the eighteenth century Ottoman Levant; Islamic law on peasant usufruct in Ottoman Syrian in the seventeenth to the early nineteenth century; the history of the animal in Ottoman Egypt; disability in the Ottoman Arab world; and revolution in the late Ottoman Empire.

The section additionally features a review of a recent translation of the works of Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq. It also includes reviews of works on literature, gender and nationalism in nineteenth century Egypt; literary subterfuge in contemporary Persian fiction; and technology and temporality in modern Egypt. 

Finally, the review section includes an engagement with scholarship on the contemporary moment including works on the politics of water in Egypt; food security in the Middle East; religion, class, and elections in Egypt; group conflict and political mobilization in Bahrain; and urbicide in Palestine; and US-PLO relations in the making of the post-Cold War order.  For our table of contents, click here and the Editor’s Note, click here.

 

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ARAB STUDIES JOURNAL
VOL. XXIV, NO. 1

Editor`s Note 

Articles

The Moroccan Equity and Reconciliation Commission: The Promises of a Human Rights Archive
Susan Slyomovics

The Paper Trail of a Liberation Movement
Hana Sleiman

Trial of the Status Quo: The Politics of Mediated Justice in the Special Tribunal for Lebanon
Sari Hanafi, Are Knudsen, and Robert Flahive

Special Section: The Arab Left in Egypt and Lebanon

New Approaches to Arab Left Histories
Sune Haugbolle and Manfred Sing

A Tale of Two Communists: The Revolutionary Projects of the Lebanese Communists Husayn Muruwwa and Mahdi ‘Amil
Miriam Younes

Arwa Salih’s The Premature: Gendering the History of the Egyptian Left
Hanan Hammad

The Anatomy of a Crisis: On Mahdi ‘Amil’s Naqd al-Fikr al-Yawmi
Samer Frangie

The Leftist, the Liberal, and the Space in Between: Ziad Rahbani and Everyday Ideology
Sune Haugbolle

Lebanon’s al-Akhbar and Radical Press Culture: Toward an Intellectual History of the Contemporary Arab Lef
Jens Hanssen and Hicham Safieddine

Special Section: New Paradigms Factory

Inviolable Sheikhs and Radical Subjects: Bahrain’s Cyclical Sovereignty Crisis
Ala’a Shehabi

Sovereignty from Below: State Feminism and Politics of Women against Women in Tunisia
Imen Yacoubi

Reviews

The Barber of Damascus: Nouveau Literacy in the Eighteenth-Century Ottoman Levant
by Dana Sajdi
Reviewed by Sara Scalenghe

Islamic Law on Peasant Usufruct in Ottoman Syria: 17th to Early 19th Century
by Sabrina Joseph
Reviewed by Steve Tamari

Leg over Leg, or The Turtle in the Tree, concerning the Fariyaq, What Manner of Creature Might He Be
by Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq
edited and translated by Humphrey Davies
Reviewed by Tarek El-Ariss

Literature, Gender, and Nation-Building in Nineteenth-Century Egypt: The Life and Works of ‘A’isha Taymur
by Mervat Hatem
Reviewed by Alya El Hosseiny

Literary Subterfuge and Contemporary Persian Fiction: Who Writes Iran?
by Mohammad Mehdi Khorrami
Reviewed by M. R. Ghanoonparvar

Shattered Dreams of Revolution: From Liberty to Violence in the Late Ottoman Empire
by Bedross Der Matossian
Reviewed by Chris Gratien

The Animal in Ottoman Egypt
by Alan Mikhail
Reviewed by Nora Barakat

Disability in the Ottoman Arab World, 1500–1800
by Sara Scalenghe
Reviewed by Beverly Tsacoyianis

Leisurely Islam: Negotiating Geography and Morality in Shi‘ite South Beirut
by Lara Deeb and Mona Harb
Reviewed by Ali Hamdan

On Time: Technology and Temporality in Modern Egypt
by On Barak
Reviewed by Fredrik Meiton

Cultivating the Nile: The Everyday Politics of Water in Egypt
by Jessica Barnes
Reviewed by Tamer Elshayal

Food Security in the Middle East
edited by Zahra Babar and Suzi Mirgani
Reviewed by Max Ajl

Counting Islam: Religion, Class, and Elections in Egypt
by Tarek Masoud
Reviewed by Rana B. Khoury

Group Conflict and Political Mobilization in Bahrain and the Arab Gulf: Rethinking the Rentier State
by Justin Gengler
Reviewed by Kylie Moore-Gilbert

Urbicide in Palestine: Spaces of Oppression and Resilienceby
by Nurhan Abujidi
Reviewed by Lisa Taraki

Global Offensive: The United States, the Palestine Liberation Organization, and the Making of the Post–Cold War Order
by Paul Thomas Chamberlin
Reviewed by Sara Awartani

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Feb 16, 2011 Lebanon
Jadaliyya Reports By :
Jadaliyya Reports

Past is Present: Settler Colonialism Matters!

On 5-6 March 2011, the Palestine Society at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London will hold its seventh annual conference, "Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine." This year`s conference aims to understand Zionism as a settler colonial project which has, for more than a century, subjected Palestine and Palestinians to a structural and violent form of destruction, dispossession, land appropriation and erasure in the pursuit of a new Jewish Israeli society. By organizing this conference, we hope to reclaim and revive the settler colonial paradigm and to outline its potential to inform and guide political strategy and mobilization.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is often described as unique and exceptional with little resemblance to other historical or ongoing colonial conflicts. Yet, for Zionism, like other settler colonial projects such as the British colonization of Ireland or European settlement of North America, South Africa or Australia, the imperative is to control the land and its resources -- and to displace the original inhabitants. Indeed, as conference keynote speaker Patrick Wolfe, one of the foremost scholars on settler colonialism and professor at La Trobe University in Victoria, Australia, argues, "the logic of this project, a sustained institutional tendency to eliminate the Indigenous population, informs a range of historical practices that might otherwise appear distinct--invasion is a structure not an event."[i]

Therefore, the classification of the Zionist movement as a settler colonial project, and the Israeli state as its manifestation, is not merely intended as a statement on the historical origins of Israel, nor as a rhetorical or polemical device. Rather, the aim is to highlight Zionism`s structural continuities and the ideology which informs Israeli policies and practices in Palestine and toward Palestinians everywhere. Thus, the Nakba -- whether viewed as a spontaneous, violent episode in war, or the implementation of a preconceived master plan -- should be understood as both the precondition for the creation of Israel and the logical outcome of Zionist settlement in Palestine.

Moreover, it is this same logic that sustains the continuation of the Nakba today. As remarked by Benny Morris, “had he [David Ben Gurion] carried out full expulsion--rather than partial--he would have stabilised the State of Israel for generations.”[ii] Yet, plagued by an “instability”--defined by the very existence of the Palestinian nation--Israel continues its daily state practices in its quest to fulfill Zionism’s logic to maximize the amount of land under its control with the minimum number of Palestinians on it. These practices take a painful array of manifestations: aerial and maritime bombardment, massacre and invasion, house demolitions, land theft, identity card confiscation, racist laws and loyalty tests, the wall, the siege on Gaza, cultural appropriation, and the dependence on willing (or unwilling) native collaboration and security arrangements, all with the continued support and backing of imperial power. 

Despite these enduring practices however, the settler colonial paradigm has largely fallen into disuse. As a paradigm, it once served as a primary ideological and political framework for all Palestinian political factions and trends, and informed the intellectual work of committed academics and revolutionary scholars, both Palestinians and Jews.

The conference thus asks where and why the settler colonial paradigm was lost, both in scholarship on Palestine and in politics; how do current analyses and theoretical trends that have arisen in its place address present and historical realities? While acknowledging the creativity of these new interpretations, we must nonetheless ask: when exactly did Palestinian natives find themselves in a "post-colonial" condition? When did the ongoing struggle over land become a "post-conflict" situation? When did Israel become a "post-Zionist" society? And when did the fortification of Palestinian ghettos and reservations become "state-building"?

In outlining settler colonialism as a central paradigm from which to understand Palestine, this conference re-invigorates it as a tool by which to analyze the present situation. In doing so, it contests solutions which accommodate Zionism, and more significantly, builds settler colonialism as a political analysis that can embolden and inform a strategy of active, mutual, and principled Palestinian alignment with the Arab struggle for self-determination, and indigenous struggles in the US, Latin America, Oceania, and elsewhere.

Such an alignment would expand the tools available to Palestinians and their solidarity movement, and reconnect the struggle to its own history of anti-colonial internationalism. At its core, this internationalism asserts that the Palestinian struggle against Zionist settler colonialism can only be won when it is embedded within, and empowered by, the broader Arab movement for emancipation and the indigenous, anti-racist and anti-colonial movement--from Arizona to Auckland.

SOAS Palestine Society invites everyone to join us at what promises to be a significant intervention in Palestine activism and scholarship.

For over 30 years, SOAS Palestine Society has heightened awareness and understanding of the Palestinian people, their rights, culture, and struggle for self-determination, amongst students, faculty, staff, and the broader public. SOAS Palestine society aims to continuously push the frontiers of discourse in an effort to make provocative arguments and to stimulate debate and organizing for justice in Palestine through relevant conferences, and events ranging from the intellectual and political impact of Edward Said`s life and work (2004), international law and the Palestine question (2005), the economy of Palestine and its occupation (2006), the one state (2007), 60 Years of Nakba, 60 Years of Resistance (2009), and most recently, the Left in Palestine (2010).

For more information on the SOAS Palestine Society 7th annual conference, Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine: www.soaspalsoc.org

SOAS Palestine Society Organizing Collective is a group of committed students that has undertaken to organize annual academic conferences on Palestine since 2003.

 

[i] Patrick Wolfe, Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology: The Politics and Poetics of an Ethnographic Event, Cassell, London, p. 163

[ii] Interview with Benny Morris, Survival of the Fittest, Haaretz, 9. January 2004, http://cosmos.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/php/art.php?aid=5412