TY - JOUR
T1 - On Saidian postcolonialism
T2 - the Middle East between culture, capital and class
AU - Azeez, Govand Khalid
PY - 2019
Y1 - 2019
N2 - The Middle East finds itself plagued by imperial and civil wars, capital ravaging and plundering its societies, dictatorships and plutocracies, the migration catastrophe, ecological crises, the rise of various forms of fundamentalism and unimaginable poverty and inequality. Yet, today we find that, to borrow from Marx, the ‘arm of criticism’ has been hijacked by a cohort of postmodern-postcolonialist Saidians, who are unwilling or unable to provide an appropriate prognosis for these fundamental political and economic problems. Moved by cultural relativism, identitarianism, pathological religiosity, ad hominem logicality and postmodern epistemological nihilism, this epistemico-political faction has redirected scholarly critique in the region from an examination of class and private property to identity politics. Fetishising ‘alterity’, ‘hybridity’ and ‘Otherness’, dismissing the idea of a radical-truth that links the particular to the universal and impossibilizing a world beyond capital and the state, this worldview whilst always radical in tone manufactures a set of domesticated and interpellated subjectivities. Following the tradition of radical emancipatory and egalitarian positions of European and ‘Third World’ thinkers, this paper argues for a return to revolutionary universal politics.
AB - The Middle East finds itself plagued by imperial and civil wars, capital ravaging and plundering its societies, dictatorships and plutocracies, the migration catastrophe, ecological crises, the rise of various forms of fundamentalism and unimaginable poverty and inequality. Yet, today we find that, to borrow from Marx, the ‘arm of criticism’ has been hijacked by a cohort of postmodern-postcolonialist Saidians, who are unwilling or unable to provide an appropriate prognosis for these fundamental political and economic problems. Moved by cultural relativism, identitarianism, pathological religiosity, ad hominem logicality and postmodern epistemological nihilism, this epistemico-political faction has redirected scholarly critique in the region from an examination of class and private property to identity politics. Fetishising ‘alterity’, ‘hybridity’ and ‘Otherness’, dismissing the idea of a radical-truth that links the particular to the universal and impossibilizing a world beyond capital and the state, this worldview whilst always radical in tone manufactures a set of domesticated and interpellated subjectivities. Following the tradition of radical emancipatory and egalitarian positions of European and ‘Third World’ thinkers, this paper argues for a return to revolutionary universal politics.
KW - Capital
KW - Class
KW - Cultural Relativism
KW - Islamophobia
KW - Middle East
KW - Post Colonialism
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85059953002&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/03017605.2018.1554761
DO - 10.1080/03017605.2018.1554761
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85059953002
SN - 0301-7605
VL - 47
SP - 123
EP - 142
JO - Critique
JF - Critique
IS - 1
ER -