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The Imagination as Transitive Act: an Interview with Sonallah Ibrahim
![[Sonallah Ibrahim, Cairo, Spring 2011, Image from Elliott Colla]](/content_images/3/sm_IMG_0774_2.jpg "[Sonallah Ibrahim, Cairo, Spring 2011, Image from Elliott Colla]")
Last month, the Egyptian novelist Sonallah Ibrahim sat down with Jadaliyya to talk about revolution, literature and the imagination. As always, the author was generous -- presenting a broad view of literature politics, and life. (Recorded in Cairo, May 14, 2011; the Arabic text can be found here. A Spanish translation can be found here.) Elliott Colla: Was what happened in January and February a revolution? Sonallah Ibrahim: It certainly was not a revolution. A revolution has a program and goal—a complete change of reality or the removal of one class by another. What happened was a popular uprising against a standing regime. Its primary demand was “regime change,” ...
Keep Reading »نحو نهاية إزدواجية الدولة في المغرب؟
![[مظاهرة نظمتها حركة 20 فبراير. المصدر غير معروف]](/content_images/3/sm_mar.jpg "[مظاهرة نظمتها حركة 20 فبراير. المصدر غير معروف]")
يعيش المغرب حاليا دينامية تغيير تتعدد تجلياتها. هناك حركة احتجاج، وحركة تفاوض، ونقاش عمومي ينتشر عبر فضاءات متعددة. والواقع أننا أمام مستويات لا ينفصل بعضها عن بعض، إذ أن الاحتجاج هو في حد ذاته عملية تفاوضية، والتفاوض يمر عبر تطوير وتعميق أشكال النقاش العمومي. وتوجد مسألة بنية الدولة وطبيعتها في صلب كل هذا الحراك الذي لم يسبق له مثيل منذ حصول المغرب على استقلاله. رفعت حركة 20 فبراير شعارات تحمل أكثر من دلالة، مثل "كرامة، حرية، لا مخزن لا رعية"، و"لا لدولة السلطان، نعم لسلطان الدولة". هناك إذن، في مقابل الدولة الديمقراطية المنشودة، موروث سياسي يتلخص في مصطلحي السلطان والمخزن، ومطلب التحديث والدمقرطة الذي يتلخص في الانتقال من دولة ...
Keep Reading »Three Powerfully Wrong--and Wrongly Powerful--American Narratives about the Arab Spring
![[Egyptian carrying sign in Tahrir. Image from Politirature.]](/content_images/3/sm_EgyptSupportsWisconsin.jpg "[Egyptian carrying sign in Tahrir. Image from Politirature.]")
The “Arab Spring” that actually began in the dead of winter has spread from Tunisia to Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Bahrain, and Syria…and the year only half over. As the media, policymakers, and global audiences struggle to make sense of changes that have inspired hundreds of millions to “just say no” to decades of dictatorship, a number of narratives have taken hold in the US—evident in remarks on cable news talk shows, at academic and policy symposia, and on Twitter—about precisely what is happening and what these massive crowds want. While elements of these narratives have some foundation in truth, they also present such a simplified view as to obscure ...
Keep Reading »وما نيل المطالب بالتمني: ربيع العرب في زمن اختلاف المواسم
لقد بدا العمل العام والسياسي تحديداً في العقود الأخيرة فعلاً عبثياً. الأسباب عديدة. أولها هو هذا الطوفان المتواصل من الأخبار من وإلى كل مكان بفعل ما يسمى ثورة المعلومات. وثانيها هو الشعور بالعجز عن استيعاب او التأثير بما يجري في ظل السرعة الهائلة لانتقال وتغير الخبر والمعلومة. وثالثها هو تراجع الايديولوجيات العالمية التي كانت سائدة من قبل والتي كانت تعزز من غائية الحياة عن طريق توفير أطر نظرية وقيمية مستقرة نسبياً تعين في استيعاب ما يستجد من تطورات. ورابعها هو ما ظهر في مكان تلك الأيديولوجيات واطلق عليه العولمة والتي ساهمت وكشفت عن انهيار البنى السابقة. ان ضبابية هذه الظاهرة الأخيرة ثم انكشافها عن حقيقة تفرد الولايات المتحدة الأمريكية بمصير العالم قد عزز ...
Keep Reading »Revisiting Arna's Children
![[Image from Google Images]](/content_images/3/sm_arnajule.jpg "[Image from Google Images]")
Arna’s Children. Directed by Juliano Mer Khamis and Danniel Danniel. Israel-Palestine, 2004. It has now been two months since the murder of Juliano Mer Khamis. I have not yet found the words to follow that statement. For me, as for many, the horror of this assasination has compelled a revisiting of Arna’s Children, the masterpiece Juliano made with Danniel Danniel in 2004. I will not follow standard practice here and provide a plot summary. If you have not yet watched this film, stop reading now and watch it. (And once you have watched it, buy a copy of the DVD to help support The Freedom Theater.) I first wrote about Arna’s Children as part of a review essay for Arab ...
Keep Reading »Opportunities and Challenges Facing the Egyptian Revolution: Interview with Blogger Wael Khalil
![[Image from interview]](/content_images/3/sm_wael2.jpg "[Image from interview]")
This is our second in our series of interviews we conducted in Cairo recently. We had the pleasure of catching blogger Wael Khalil on May 30th between tweets and blogging the post-revolution phase. Wael discussed the opportunities and concerns that many Egyptians have as the post-revolution period unfolds. Wael Khalil is an activist and a blogger. He has been active in the Palestinian Solidarity, Anti-War, and Democracy movements that pervaded the Egyptian scene in the decade that preceded the revolution. He is a software engineer by education and profession. Wael maintains a popular blog at waelk.net and you can find his resourceful ...
Keep Reading »Democracy Now! Interview with Abdul-Ghani Al-Iryani on Saleh Departure
![[Image from democracynow.org]](/content_images/3/sm_dndndndndndndndnd.jpg "[Image from democracynow.org]")
This is an interview conducted with Abdul-Ghani Al-Iryani on Monday, June 6, in regards to President Ali Abdallah Saleh's departure from Yemen. The interview addresses the events surrounding his departure to Saudi Arabia, highlighting the possibilities of regime change and the role US foreign policy. Transcripts of the interview follow the below video. Thousands of people in Yemen are rejoicing at the departure of President Ali Abdullah Saleh. The embattled leader is reportedly in Saudi Arabia for medical treatment after being injured in a rocket attack on his presidential compound. Saleh temporarily ceded power to his vice president on Saturday night. His nephew ...
Keep Reading »Translating Palestine: Dispatches from the 2011 Palestine Festival of Literature
![[Palestinians and Guests of the Palestine Festival of Literature at the Local Market in Al-Khalil. Image by Taline Voskeritchian]](/content_images/3/sm_لوز.jpg "[Palestinians and Guests of the Palestine Festival of Literature at the Local Market in Al-Khalil. Image by Taline Voskeritchian]")
Finally, on our way to Jerusalem, the first stop of Palestine Festival of Literature (PalFest). There are some twenty of us mainly from the UK, persons engaged in literature, writing, publishing, and teaching. We’re young and old; white and black; from the US, UK, Pakistan, and beyond; speakers of smooth-English as well as its accented variations. Pal Fest activities will include writing workshops, readings, panel discussions, and meetings with local individuals and organizations. The venues will be diverse, as well: refugee camps, community centers, open air cafés, classrooms, cultural sites, and homes. But most of all, we will be on the road, crisscrossing the ...
Keep Reading »The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony and the Burial of the Martyrs: Syrian Dances in the Arab Spring
![[Audience at the Bosra Festiva, Dar`a, Syria, August 2009. Image by Maria Kastrinou-Theodoropoulou]](/content_images/3/sm_Jumhur-Bosra.jpg "[Audience at the Bosra Festiva, Dar`a, Syria, August 2009. Image by Maria Kastrinou-Theodoropoulou]")
Some Fires Burn More than Others [August 10th, 2009] Bosra is on fire. Red lights shine through the night in the ancient Roman amphitheatre. The smoke pours onto the stage, where the famous pop singer, Ali al-Deek, and his orchestra have set the audience and the stage on metaphorical fire. Everyone is dancing: old men in traditional attire, women with children in their hands, with or without hijab on their hair, young men and women in groups, people in the front rows, at the back, on the stairs, officials, guests and dignitaries along with ordinary, village people. The impressive Roman theatre of Bosra, one of the world’s best preserved, located in the municipality ...
Keep Reading »44 Years Since al-Naksa: Qalandia - June 5, 2011
![[Protesters at Qalandia. Image from Nour Joudah.]](/content_images/3/sm_nouraqalanwriteup.jpg "[Protesters at Qalandia. Image from Nour Joudah.]")
I spent most of this week undecided on whether or not to head to Qalandia today, though I suppose from the moment I considered going, I should have known that I wouldn’t be able to suppress the thought. The consensus by many was that buzz on the ground was relatively weak - not to be compared with the Nakba day protests - but between online promotional videos and Facebook statuses, I remained encouraged and intrigued, to say the least. Protesters were called to meet at the Qalandia checkpoint at 11am for the peaceful march to Jerusalem. I got off the service (servees) from Ramallah near a supermarket on Qalandia’s main road - a little over a quarter of a mile from the ...
Keep Reading »Shooting at Protesters at Qalandia Crossing (and the Golan) Today: Live Video by Jadaliyya Researcher
![[Image from Jadaliyya's Nour Joudah, at the protest today]](/content_images/3/sm_QalandiaProtestjune5.jpg "[Image from Jadaliyya's Nour Joudah, at the protest today]")
While commemorating al-Naksa before marching peacefully to Jerusalem today, Israeli soldiers shot and injured at least four protesters (with rubber bullets) and dozens were hospitalized from inhaling tear gas. Jadaliyya researcher Nour Joudah was at the demonstration and was affected by the tear gas but did not require hospitalization. She captured the following video during the protest and managed just recently to edit it and send it to us. In addition to the video below, click here to read Nour's eye-witness account of the event. In other news, more than thirty have been reported killed and several hundred injured by Israeli live fire across the occupied ...
Keep Reading »Essential Readings: Iran
![[Image by Farhad Rajabali]](/content_images/3/sm_blockingtraffic.jpg "[Image by Farhad Rajabali]")
In recent years, there has been a deluge of popular English-language writings by Iranians in exile, as well as hand-wringing public policy books by U.S.-based think tank pundits, all insisting on the same basic message: Iran represents a geo-political problem of unparalleled importance. While the stated goal of these books and organizations is to educate the English-reading global public about Iran, very often the message comes laced with support for militarily enforced regime change and full-scale neo-liberalization. Case in point: the mission statement of the Iran Democracy Project, a well-established California-based think tank, claims that its “central goal is to ...
Keep Reading »التخييل هو فعل صناعة الخيال : حوار مع صنع الله إبراهيم
في الشهر السابق زارت " جدلية " بيت الروائي المصري صنع الله أبراهيم لتتحدث معه عن الثورة ، الأدب و أمكانيات التخييل. كما يفعل دائما أكرمنا المؤلف بتقديم رؤية شاملة ليس للإبداع و السياسة فحسب بل لحياة البشر أيضا. الترجمة باللغة الأنجليزية هنا و باللغة الأسبانية هنا سؤال: هل كانت أحداث يناير وفبراير ثورة أم تغيير نظام فقط أو إسقاط عائلة أو شئ آخر ؟ أجابة: لا طبعا لم تكن ثورة ، لا تستطيع أن تقول إنها ثورة لأن الثورة من المفترض أن يكون لها برنامج وهدف هو تغيير كامل للوضع وإحلال ...
Keep Reading »Gays, Islamists, and The Arab Spring: What Would A Revolutionary Do?
This past May, the blogger behind the “Gay Girl in Damascus” site responded to an alarmist front-page article by CNN International on the future of LGBT rights in the wake of the Arab Spring. The crux of the blogger’s response centered on the ways in which gay rights rhetoric is being used to undermine the revolutions sweeping the region and with them, the first tangible possibilities of democracy in states that have suffered under decades of brutal authoritarian rule. In the past few days, news has ...
Keep Reading »How Do You Finance Social Justice in Egypt? Jadaliyya Interview With Journalist Wael Gamal
This is our third in a series of interviews we conducted in Cairo during our recent trip. We had the fortune to meet with a friend and prominent journalist, Wael Gamal, whose column in al-Shurouq's economy section is closely followed in Egypt and beyond--and is also published here on Jadaliyya (see video below). We discussed the overarching question of "social justice" after the revolution. In particular, how do you finance social justice in a country like Egypt? The left has always ...
Keep Reading »Iraq After Maliki's "100 Days": An Interview with Iraqi Organizer Uday al-Zaidi
On February 27, 2011, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki gave his parliament 100 days to "reform" their sometimes totally nonfunctional ministries or face consequences, in response “to people’s demands” as he put it. Those demands have taken the form of some of the least noted events of the Arab Spring: large mobilizations in Baghdad's Tahrir Square; mass acts of civil disobedience and a general strike in Mosul; and the resignations of several governors all over Iraq, including two Basra ...
Keep Reading »Following the Torture Trail through the Arab Spring: First Speculations
Torture and anti-torture are everywhere. Are the revolutions sweeping through the Arab world, and being confronted with violent counter-revolutions, in part a battle over the use of torture? It is, perhaps, too early to know how significant or central torture is to the protest movements that have disposed of the torture-prone regimes in Tunisia and Egypt, and the ongoing battles against authoritarians in Syria, Yemen, Bahrain, not to mention the Palestinian Authority, Saudi Arabia, Libya and beyond. ...
Keep Reading »The Lebanese Left Fails in Syria
[This article was written in Arabic by Khalil Issa and translated into English by Hanna Petro] When the left loses all the material elements of its steadfastness, as a result of its mistakes on the one hand and because of surrounding local pressures on the other, it is usually left with nothing but the political-ethical discourse as a principled stance on the basis of which to fight. In the end, being a leftist is to side with justice against oppression, with the victim against the perpetrator, with the ...
Keep Reading »Algeria's Impact on French Philosophy: Between Poststructuralist Theory and Colonial Practice
Pal Ahuluwalia. Out of Africa: Post-Structuralism’s Colonial Roots. New York: Routledge, 2010. Jane Goodman and Paul A. Silverstein (eds). Bourdieu in Algeria: Colonial Politics, Ethnographic Practices, Theoretical Developments. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2009. Christopher Wise. Derrida, Africa and the Middle East. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. In the past few years, there appears to have been a falling out between Middle Eastern studies and post-structuralist theory. Edward Said’s ...
Keep Reading »Nizar Qabbani's "Poetry Buses"
Nizar Qabbani (1923-1998) was a Syrian poet, essayist, diplomat, and publisher and one of the most popular poets in the Arab world in the last few decades of the 20th century. He was born and raised in Damascus in a middle-class merchant traditional family. At the age of 15, Qabbani’s sister committed suicide because she was unwilling to marry a man she did not love. It is believed that this tragic event incited Qabbani to write poetry that expresses women’s desire and exposes their social condition. In ...
Keep Reading »Culture VIII
This week's basket has everything you need to start the week: Greek mythology, French philosophy, the politics of poetry, and a dispatch from Palestine: Algeria's Impact on French Philosophy: Between Poststructuralist Theory and Colonial Practice by Muriam Haleh Davis The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony and the Burial of the Martyrs by Maria Kastrinou Nizar Qabbani's "Poetry Buses" by Gaelle Raphael Translating Palestine: Dispatches from the 2011 Palestine Festival of Literature by ...
Keep Reading »The Largest Demonstration in Hama Ends with Blood, and Signals a Shift
In what has been dubbed as the "Friday of the Children of Freedom" protests yesterday, Hama witnessed the largest demonsration yet, and Syria the largest crackdown to-date, with more than 50 protesters reported killed and several hundred wounded by live ammunition in the key city of Hama alone. These protests across the country were particularly motivated by the torture and killing of the 13-year old Hamza al-Khatib (see Jadaliyya report here). The spread of the protests to Hama at this ...
Keep Reading »Yemen in the Wake of Saleh's Departure: Ongoing Updates from San'a
Follow our ongoing reports from our affiliates in San'a, Yemen below as well on our Twitter feed here (hashtag: #JadYemen). Click here for updates from Friday (June 3) and Saturday (June 4). For historical and contemporary background to today's event, visit Jadaliyya's Yemen Page. Below is what we have so far on the feed for today. If electricity holds where our reports are coming from, we'll keep at it. Jadaliyya Updates/Tweets from San'a, Yemen [As of late Saturday night, early Sunday ...
Keep Reading »Letter from Tehran
[This interview was conducted in Tehran by Manijeh Nasrabadi of the Raha Iranian Feminist Collective one year after the green uprising. For more from the Raha Iranian Feminist Collective, see their "Essential Readings: Iran"] On June 12, 2010, the tense one-year anniversary of the post-election uprising that made the color green an international symbol of a people’s democratic aspirations, hundreds of special security forces stood shoulder to shoulder along Tehran’s major boulevards and ...
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