Live with ASI: Episode 3.3 Digest — November 2022

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Nov 10, 2022

Live with ASI: Episode 3.3 Digest — November 2022

By : Jadaliyya Reports

Live with ASI is a monthly broadcast program that showcases recently published content from the Arab Studies Institute’s various branches. This content includes articles, reviews, pedagogical resources, podcasts, and more. Also featured in the broadcast are brand new interviews and discussions with authors and contributors.

This month, co-hosts MK Smith and Bassam Haddad highlighted the recent coverage of the protests in Iran by Jadaliyya’s Iran Page, a piece on Afghanistan and the Left, the upcoming Fall 2022 Issue of the Arab Studies Journal, several new episodes of the Connections Podcast, an event on the historical role of protest in Jordan, pedagogy, new texts out now, and must-read recommendations.

The episode also featured interviews with Catherine Sameh, Naveed Mansoori, Anila Daulatzai, Saadia Toor, Mouin Rabbani, and Jillian Schwedler.

Uprising in Iran


It has been over a month since anti-government protests broke out in Iran after the death of Kurdish-Iranian woman, Mahsa Jin Amini, while in police custody. In that time, Jadaliyya’s Iran page has been working diligently, putting out a number of pieces addressing various aspects of the protest movement and the politics surrounding it.

We want to commend the Iran Page for their dedicated work during this time, as the work they’re putting out provides much-needed depth for the current moment. Two of the Iran Page’s co-editors, Catherine Sameh and Naveed Mansoori, joined the show to discuss developments and their recent coverage of the protests.

Jadaliyya Iran Page Co-Editors Catherine Sameh and Naveed Mansoori discuss how the protest movement has progressed over the last month, and share some of the insights that can be found in the pieces published by the Iran Page.
 

Grievance as Movement: A Conversation on Knowledge Production on Afghanistan and the Left


Earlier last month, to mark 21 years since the US invasion of Afghanistan, Anila Daulatzai, Saadia Toor, and Sahar Ghumkhor wrote a piece for Jadaliyya titled “Grievance as Movement: A Conversation on Knowledge Production on Afghanistan and the Left.” Here, Anila, Sahar, and Saadia discuss the various shortcomings demonstrated by the Left in their engagement with Afghanistan and its history.

The piece is an important read for anyone who felt concerned by the discourse surrounding the US’ withdrawal from Afghanistan, be it from those who were “disappointed” by the lack of results of the US’ efforts, or from those touting the withdrawal as an anti-imperialist victory.

Coming Soon: Arab Studies Journal Fall 2022 Issue


We are happy to announce that the Fall 2022 Issue of the Arab Studies Journal will be released on December 1st! To bide us over until then, the Editor’s Note and Table Contents for the issue were published on Jadaliyya. 

This issue presents  a stellar collection of articles, essays, and reviews that provide new perspectives on vital questions of capitalism, nationalism, and the environment. The issue also includes an essay section titled “Critical Environmental Perspectives in Middle East Studies,” as well as another robust reviews section. 

Connections Podcast


Last month was a busy month forJadaliyya Co-Editor Mouin Rabbani, who was hard at work publishing FOUR great episodes of Connections Podcast. In case you’re not already familiar, the Connections Podcast combines journalism, analysis, and scholarship to offer timely and informative interviews on current events and broader policy questions, as well as themes relevant to knowledge production.

As always, Mouin brings us timely and incisive discussions on urgent matters, and over the course of the last month, covered topics ranging from the Palestinian Right to Self-Determination, Class and Identity Politics in Egypt, the Uprising in Iran, and the attacks on Armenia.

Jadaliyya Co-Editor and Connections podcast host Mouin Rabbani shares some highlights from his recent conversations, and teases upcoming interviews.
 

Protesting Jordan: Geographies of Power and Dissent with Jillian Schwedler 


In an event co-sponsored by ASI and George Mason University’s Schar School of Policy and Government, Jillian Schwedler, who is Professor of Political Science at the City University of New York’s Hunter College and the Graduate Center and Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Crown Center at Brandeis University, discussed her new book titled “Protesting Jordan: Geographies of Power and Dissent.” 

In her book, Jillian Schwedler considers how space and geography influence protests and repression, and by challenging conventional narratives of Hashemite state-making, offers the first in-depth study of rebellion in Jordan, arguing that protest has been a key method of political claim-making in Jordan from the late Ottoman period to the present day.

Jillian Schwedler discusses how her book challenges conventional narratives of Hashemite state-making, and how space and geography interact in the Jordanian context to influence protest and repression.
 

ASI’s 30th Anniversary at MESA


It’s that time of year again, with the Middle East Studies Association’s conference right around the corner! 

MESA’s 56th Annual Meeting will take place December 1-4 in Denver, and we hope to see you there as we celebrate 30 years of ASI. 

Pedagogy


The Middle East Studies Pedagogy Initiative team recently published Part 2 of the Engaging Book Series: Hoopoe Selections on New Fiction from the Middle East. If you’re not already familiar, Engaging Books is a monthly series featuring new and forthcoming books in Middle East Studies from publishers around the globe. 

Each installment highlights a trending topic in the MENA publishing world and includes excerpts from the selected volumes. This installment covers information and an overview of four new pieces of fiction from the region.

The MESPI team also put out a new installment of the Arab Uprisings in Peer-Reviewed Articles Review series. This is the fourth of six parts of a series that presents peer-reviewed articles concerned with the Arab uprisings published in 2010-2020 from our peer-reviewed articles database, with this part covering the topic of Islamists and Democratization.

NEWTONs


In his book “The Political Economy of Reforms in Egypt,” Khalid Ikram draws on his experience working on Egypt for the World Bank to illuminate the political economic factors that shaped Egyptian reforms since 1952. The discussion includes the role of interest groups, foreign actors, military crises, political institutions, among others throughout the administrations of Nasser, Sadat, and Mubarak. 


Mai Al-Nakib’s new novel, “An Unlasting Home,” is a multigenerational saga that traces the lives of five formidable women from the early twentieth century to 2013, across Lebanon, Iraq, Kuwait, India, and the United States. This story is one of inherited trauma, migratory passage, loss, and resilience, and an exploration of a lost or forgotten Kuwait.

Must-Reads


Tadween Publishing is excited to announce the near-release of “The Search for Power,” a new book by Jadaliyya Co-Editor Ziad Abu-Rish and Tania El-Khoury, who is Distinguished Artist in Residence of Theater and Performance and Director of the Center for Human Rights & the Arts at Bard College. This book follows their journey to document the history of electricity black-outs in Lebanon as their paper trail took them across five different countries and as far back as 1906.

ASI co-sponsored an event with George Mason University where Jadaliyya Co-Editor and associate professor in the department of History at UC Santa Cruz, Muriam Haleh Davis, discussed her new book titled “Markets of Civilization: Islam and Racial Capitalism in Algeria.” 

In the talk, Davis discussed how the framework of racial capitalism might be expanded to reflect on the history of the French empire in North Africa, as well as the porous boundaries between race and religion in colonial and post-colonial Algeria.

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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