Textual Trimmings

  This is the second in the series of unpublished pieces that I wrote throughout this year. The first could be found here. This year I wrote, in Arabic and in English , about the Kyle Rittenhouse case. A paper I submitted over a year ago to Radical Philosophy discusses the hierarchization of fire in Western thought, and opens by discussing the shooting scene in Kenosha, wherein Rittenhouse shot three people, killing two and seriously injuring the third. The editors suggested I focus the paper more on the Kyle Rittenhouse case, which was still recent then. I reformulated the paper to centre the argument that the impunity with which Rittenhouse carried out the shooting is rooted in a Western epistemology that entrusts the white man with the advanced forms of fire (the fuller argument can be found in the Radical Philosophy paper , and hopefully in a forthcoming paper on incendiarism and hysteria- perhaps parts of a future book project on fire). About two weeks before the paper’s p...

Since this blog started as a concession to the hegemony of the Gregorian New Year,  and as 2021 is drawing to an end, I will be publishing pieces that I wrote throughout the year but did not publish. The first of the series is this article which reflects on the memory of the Paris Commune and how it intersects with the memories of the Arab Uprising and the more recent memory of this year's Palestinian insurrection. I originally wrote it in May to mark the 150th anniversary of the Commune. I am posting it here with minor modifications.  The Paris Commune, Unknown Artist, Getty Images French Police suppress pro-Palestine demonstrators, EuroNews Dislocating Paris, Locating Versailles This year, we commemorated the 150 th anniversary of the Paris Commune in a world dominated by the forces of imperialism, colonialism, counterrevolution, and reaction. The Mairie of Paris officially celebrated this memory while the French authorities banned and brutally suppress ed demonstrations ...

Recently, I applied for a job in "Global Liberal Arts." One of the questions on the job application stated: "What do you consider the value of a BA in Global Liberal Arts to be and how would you want to shape the programme over the next three years?"  At this point, I am more interested in speaking my mind than pandering to search committees. So here is an edited and incomplete version of my response, which I admit may have taken the form of an academic and political rant:  “Liberal Arts” is a floating signifier: it would be absurd to assign a sui generis value to a floating signifier. Instead we can acknowledge that 'Global Liberal Arts' can be what we make of it. ‘Liberal Arts’ can serve as a throw-back to the classics and their “seven liberal arts,” or as a post-disciplinary gesture that transcends the hegemonic delimitation of systems of power-knowledge (this is not to say, of course, that the options are limited to these two extremes or  that they are n...

Yesterday, I published an article  at Middle East Eye on how the show Friends and especially its universalisation , regardless of the intentions of the show's creators, has played an imperialist role in the Middle East. In the spirit of this blog being intended as a set of "textual trimmings," here are two sections that I chose not to include in the final of the published article. They deal with how the universalising role played by Friends is cited and carried over in two other television series.  Friends and the Universal: The Case of  Skins In an episode of the British television dramedy Skins,  the show’s protagonists encounter a young Russian woman whom they assume would not speak or understand English. The woman then surprises the show’s protagonists and audiences that she speaks fluent, colloquial, American punctuated with local pop American references; having learned from “like, the best American show ever” (i.e. Friends ). As a running gag throughout the res...

  This, or an earlier version thereof, was originally written in reaction to Trump’s Stormy Daniels scandal. It was largely in response to a self-righteous CNN article that was more interested in virtue signaling and in depicting Trump as a licentious and uncivilized sexual freak than criticizing his policies. I have no interest, obviously, in defending “Trump sexuality,” but I felt the attack on Trump’s (in this particular case consensual) sexual misconduct serves to cast, by contrast, mainstream American   and imperial (sexual and non-sexual) misconduct as normative. I particularly worry about the civilizational, and potentially racial, aspect of this discourse, and of course about how the discussion concerning the private misconduct of people in power can divert attention from their public crimes (crimes in which they are partners with others who lead normative private and sexual lives but are equally criminal when it comes to their exercise of public power). I was recent...

  The gorgeous shots of the Paris landmarks, the attractive lead actress, and the lighthearted comedy of the show, all got nearly everyone talking about Emily in Paris. Here is why I tried to watch the show, and why I couldn’t.   Why I tried to like it First, of course, there is the show’s setting: the city of Paris itself. No no no no, this is not going to be about any of the fantasies surrounding “the city of lights” or clichés about the “city of love”; je m’en fous about everyone’s (largely unrequited) love affair with that place. Paris is a city I love to hate. I have never passed on a chance to visit (even during layovers, as long as I had a valid Schengen visa and enough time to go in and out of the airport; I happen to have even entered Paris twice on the same day but that’s a different story for a different time), and yet I never stop complaining about it. If you think of it, partaking of whatever joy the city brings while endlessly complaining about it is t...

(نُشر هذا المقال على موقع حبر بتاريخ 30- 9- 2020 وأعيد نشره هنا لتخطي الحجب)  تقدم   نتفلكس   نفسها، في العموم، صوتًا معتمدًا للصوابية السياسية ومتحدثًا رسميًا باسمها. وعندما شاركت في توزيع الفيلم الفرنسي «الظراف» أو «كيوتيز» (Mignonnes بالفرنسية، أو Cuties بالإنجليزية) وقدمت فيه فتيات دون سنّ الرشد في أوضاع ذات إيحاءا ت جنسية، شعر الليبراليون من حملة لواء الصوابية السياسية بالخيانة، وبأن المتحدث الرسميّ باسم قيمهم بدأ يطعنها في الصميم، فانطلقت حملات المقاطعة ضدّ نتفلكس. لم تمتد هذه الحملات إلى صنّاع فيلم «كيوتيز» ومموليه ومنتجيه الفرنسيين، ولم تصل إلى محتوى الفيلم العنصري أو تذكر إغراقه في العداء لثقافات الأفارقة والمسلمين، بل لم تطل محتوى الفيلم من الأساس، وأغلب الظنّ أن كثيرين ممن شاركوا بالحملة لم يشاهدوا الفيلم أصلًا. لنقلها صراحةً ومن البداية؛ فيلم «كيوتيز» مليء بالمشاهد المقززة التي تعرّي طفلات وتظهرهنّ في أوضاع ذات مدلولات جنسية وشهوانية. وحتى لو تقبلنا دفاع المخرجة الفرنسية-السنغالية ميمونة دوكوري، ومن ورائها نتفلكس، بأن الفيلم كان يقصد نقد الثقافة الغربية، والفر...