global politics

The Rey Chow Reader

emily — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 16:00:00 +0000

Not many theorists would re-imagine Jane Eyre as a Maoist. However, postcolonial thinker Rey Chow does and with great aplomb. Furthermore, it's not in the context of English literature in which Chow invokes the fictional heroine, but rather the issue of Orientalism in today's academia. According to Chow, the Maoist Jane Eyre is a romantic and a self-styled victim that is embodied in the non-native scholar of East Asian studies who bemoans the loss of cultural “authenticity” in an increasingly globalised world. Chow's deft and even fanciful portrayal of the latter-day Orientalist that demonstrates her creative ingenuity and unconventional analytical mind is evident throughout the collection of her essays, The Rey Chow Reader, edited by Paul Bowman.

These qualities are important in the primary themes tackled in her writings—sexuality, racism, and postcolonialism. In the post-Edward Said world, the Orientalism of yore is not only outmoded but a disgrace to the Western academic code of practice, but Chow is perceptive to detect the more subtle Orientalisms she finds still pervasive in the academy, particularly in East Asian studies in Western institutions. Not only are academics (and often highly respected icons; Julia Kristeva for one) safe from Chow's relentless critique of latter day Orientalism, the works and words of art house film-makers Zhang Yimou and Bernado Bertolucci also go under her microscopic scrutinising gaze.

She is also self-aware of her own position in the ivory tower that she turns this gaze towards herself in an essay about her early career in academia; scholars from the former colonial frontier during the dissolution of the British empire such as herself (Chow hails from Hong Kong) were seduced by the imagined prestige of English literature that rendered Chinese writing less superior and intellectually legitimate. Chow's essay on the postcolonial-ised scholar is a subdued call to arms for the reclamation of one's own scholarship and by effect, cultural identity, even if one cannot readily give up the tools fashioned by the master.

It becomes clear that Chow is also deeply political. 'Seeing is Destroying' charts the changes in the US discourse of war since the devastating bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to today's brutality of war made sophisticated. These historical observations are perhaps nothing new, however, her concept of the target has chilling resonance of the primordial hunt. As the target in the hunt for America's national Other, first Japan, then the USSR, and now the shadowy figure of the Muslim terrorist, it is reduced to an object on which the trigger is on perpetual threat mode. What links 'Seeing is Destroying' with most of Chow's essays is visuality and the continued technological advancements that make the act of seeing increasingly powerful and more instrumental in xenophobic and sexist control.

Chow's tentacle-like approach to a diversity of disciplines that probes into every crevice of detail promises a thrilling experience and an inspiration to younger scholars of postcolonialism like myself. Perhaps the level of microscopic detail that Chow magnifies throughout her merciless analyses on Orientalism in film and her idiosyncrantic salad-bowl approach to theory may not appeal to everyone, but Chow has certainly created a fan in me.

Written by: Alicia Izharuddin, October 29th 2010

You Don't Play With Revolution: The Montreal Lectures of C.L.R. James

admin — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 08:00:00 +0000

Edited by David Austin

AK Press

This accessible and engaging collection presents eight never-before-published lectures by the celebrated Marxist cultural critic and anti-colonial scholar, C.L.R. James, who played an important part in the international socialist movement. James’ collection demonstrates his expertise in various fields, from Caribbean history and the Haitian Revolution, to Leninist political philosophy to Shakespeare. He has defined and popularized the autonomist Marxist tradition in the United States and Canada. You Don't Play With Revolution is a collection based on a series of lectures delivered by James during his stay in Montreal in 1967 and 1968 when he was invited to contribute to the practical work of people devoted to revolutionary change in Canada and the Caribbean. Thus, James’ work not only embodied his vision of the creative power of ordinary people who shape history, but the ways they do so and document their struggles. James strongly believed that without the involvement of the mass population politics is destined to fail.

This collection is significant because it provides essential, and previously lacking, information about James’ work with Canadian students and West Indian intellectuals in the late 1960s. It also includes a series of letters James exchanged with the West Indian university students who made these lectures possible, in addition to two seminal interviews with James during his stay in Canada. Those interested in social movements and, more specifically, James’ work, will find this collection to be a great contribution to existing scholarship.

James’ work is relevant to revolutionary politics today, while opening the window into the particular cultural moment in which James’ work took place. I recommend it to both the novice and the expert who wants to learn more about James and his stunning insights. As Austin summarily puts it, “James not only remind us that ‘another world is possible’ is real, but also help us to chart a course toward creating this new world in present.”

Written by: Olivera Simic, June 7th 2010

Transforming Faith: The Story of Al-Huda and Islamic Revivalism Among Urban Pakistani Women

admin — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 08:00:00 +0000

By Sadaf Ahmad

Syracuse University Press

In Transforming Faith, Sadaf Ahmad explores the role of Al-Huda, a women’s Islamic religious school, in promoting the spread of a particular kind of Islam, especially among educated middle- and upper-class women in Islamabad, Pakistan.

Ahmad sets the scene by situating her topic in an historical and global context. She provides a broad overview of the various branches of Islam, and she tells the history of Pakistan’s self-conception as an Islamic state. She describes how Pakistani leaders have drawn discursively on certain flavors of Islam in order to consolidate political power, and how those choices laid the foundation for today’s increasingly conservative politico-religious milieu in Pakistan. Ahmad also links these developments to contemporary global pressures, including the hegemonic and military threats to Pakistan that accompany the skyrocketing Islamophobia in the West.

Against this backdrop, Ahmad explores the growing movement of Islamic women’s religious education, which takes place through small dars, classes for neighborhood women about technical and practical dimensions of Islam that are usually run out of one woman’s home, and through the larger, more institutional Al-Huda network. Its official branches and smaller, less formal dars are run by Al-Huda graduates.

Drawing on a body of carefully selected theory, Ahmad sensitively situates her description of the Al-Huda movement (which in many ways promotes a rigid, patriarchal form of Islam) in its political and cultural context. She notes that women are often positioned by the modern state as the “keepers of tradition,” and that women (especially Muslim women under the Western gaze) are perceived to be helpless victims of patriarchal and state pressure. While she does not hesitate to identify Al-Huda’s flavor of Islam as reactionary, she is also careful to tease out the complex reasons that women seek out Al-Huda and find its teachings transformative and personally meaningful.

On the whole, I found the book extremely nuanced and insightful; however, I did feel that one key element was missing. I found it strange that Ahmad does not discuss the communal feminist aspects of Al-Huda and the dars. Large numbers of women are organizing themselves and each other to obtain highly technical religious knowledge without the mediation of male teachers. In fact, Al-Huda promotes Arabic literacy to enable women to develop a direct relationship with the sacred text of the Qu’ran. It seems that this growing expertise might enable women to take more of a role in defining what it means to be a devout Muslim (and a devout Muslim woman in particular), which could have far-reaching implications. The lack of discussion of this question is puzzling.

Ultimately Transforming Faith is an exploration of the role of pedagogy in producing social and cultural change. How do teachers (in whatever sense of the word) identify and recruit a body of students? In a given sociopolitical context, how do teachers discursively situate their chosen body of knowledge (or, as Foucault would say, technologies of the self) against the backdrop of their students’ lives? What makes it possible to convince students to use those technologies of the self to discipline themselves into “ethical/pious subjects” (as Ahmad writes, drawing on Foucault and Mahmood)? In what way does the state co-opt those particular “ethical/pious subjects” for its own ends? In what ways do “ethical/pious subjects” develop a particular vantage point for resistance?

With its complementary combination of critical history, theory, and ethnography, Transforming Faith is an excellent—and thoroughly readable—case study for examining these questions.

Written by: Ri J. Turner, April 6th 2010