Poetics of Anti-Colonialism in the Arabic Qasidah (Brill Studies in Middle Eastern Literatures)

305 Pages·2004·1.58 MB·English

by  Hussein N. Kadhim

THE POETICS OF ANTI-COLONIALISM
IN THE ARABIC QA‘^DAH
BRILL STUDIES IN
MIDDLE EASTERN LITERATURES
SUPPLEMENTS TO THE
JOURNAL OF ARABIC LITERATURE
The series Studies in Arabic Literature has now expanded its purview to include
other literatures (Persian, Turkish, etc.) of the Islamic Middle East. While
preserving the same format as SAL, the title of the expanded series will be Brill
Studies in Middle Eastern Literatures (BSMEL). As in the past, the series aims to
publish literary critical and historical studies on a broad range of literary
materials:classical and modern, written and oral, poetry and prose. It will also
publish scholarly translations of major literary works. Studies that seek to
integrate Middle Eastern literatures into the broader discourses of the humanities
and the social sciences will take their place alongside works of a more technical
and specialized nature.
EDITED BY
Suzanne Pinckney Stetkevych
VOLUME XXIX
THE POETICS
OF ANTI COLONIALISM
-
IN THE ARABIC QA‘^DAH
BY
HUSSEIN N. KADHIM
BRILL
LEIDEN•BOSTON
2004
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Kadhim, Hussein N.
The poetics of anti-colonialism in the Arabic QaßÊdah / by Hussein N. Kadhim.
p. cm. — (Brill studies in Middle Eastern literatures, ISSN 1571-5183 ; v. 29)
Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.
ISBN 90-04-13030-6
1. Arabic poetry—History and criticism. 2. Anti-imperialist movements—Poetry.
I. Title. II. Series.
PJ7561.K29 2004
2004040759
ISSN 1571-5183
ISBN 90 04 13030 6
© Copyright 2004 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored
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Fees are subject to change.
PRINTEDINTHENETHERLANDS
CONTENTS
Preface ........................................................................................ vii
Acknowledgements ...................................................................... xiii
Chapter 1 The Lord and the Bard: Colonial Discourse and
Counter-discourse .................................................. 1
Chapter 2 Empire as Occasion: A˙mad Shawqì’s Elegy for
Damascus .............................................................. 35
Chapter 3 Ma'rùf al-Rußàfì and the Poetics of
Anti-Colonialism .................................................... 85
Chapter 4 Rewriting the Metropolitan Text: Badr Shàkir
al-Sayyàb on “Arab Decline”................................ 131
Chapter 5 Palestine: The Central Cause:
'Abd al-Wahhàb al-Bayàtì’s “Odes to Jaffa” ...... 173
Chapter 6 The Elusive Dream: 'Abd al-Wahhàb
al-Bayàtì’s Odes to His Son 'Alì ........................ 199
Epilogue ...................................................................................... 231
Appendices .................................................................................. 233
Bibliography ................................................................................ 265
Index ............................................................................................ 271
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PREFACE
Napoleon Bonaparte’s short-lived invasion of Egypt in 1798 set in
motion the progressive Isti'màr (colonization) of much of the Arab
lands by the major European powers of the time. Britain occupied
Egypt (1882), Palestine (1917), Iraq (1918), and Syria (1918). For its
part, France occupied Algeria (1830), Morocco (1912), and, follow-
ing the San Remo Conference, Syria (1920). Henceforth Britain and
France would enter into a relationship with their Arab subjects char-
acterized by Albert Hourani as follows:
It is this imposition of an alien rule upon an unwilling people which
is called ‘imperialism.’ At the present time [1953] much effort is spent
in trying to prove that there never was such a thing as imperialism.
Apologists of Britain and France put forward statistics to show that
the countries of Asia and Africa have benefited materially from Western
rule. That may or may not be true, but it is strictly irrelevant. The
essence of imperialism is to be found in a moral relationship—that of
power and powerlessness—and any material consequences which spring
from it are not enough to change it.1
Hourani’s characterization of Imperialism (often used interchange-
ably with colonialism) as a relationship of “power and powerlessness”
is crucial to an adequate conceptualization of colonialism within a
specifically Arab context. As long as this relationship thus charac-
terized persisted, so does colonialism, whether or not the hegemonic
power maintained direct rule over the subject territory.2 Fifteen years
after Iraq went through what Frantz Fanon called “the farce of
national independence,”3 the leading Iraqi poetess Nàzik al-Malà"ikah
(b. 1923), for instance, could still cite as one of the reasons for the
melancholy note of her first verse collection 'Àshiqat al-Layl (Lover of
the Night, 1947) “exasperation over the British colonization of Iraq.”4
1 Albert Hourani, “The Decline of the West in the Middle East—I” International
Affairs, vol. XXIX (1953), London: Royal Institute of International Affairs 30–31.
2 This point should be borne in mind particularly with respect to the discussion
in chapter 5.
3 Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, trans. Constance Farrington (New York:
Grove Press, 1963) 67.
4 Nàzik al-Malà"ikah, “Al-Shi'r fì Óayàtì,” Al-Majallah al-'Arabiyyah lil-Thaqàfah 4
(1983): 189.
viii preface
A variant though less common term is Isti'màr Istì†ànì, which denotes
“settler colonialism.” This term has been largely associated with
French colonization of North Africa as well as Jewish settlement
activity in Palestine. With respect to the latter, however, the term
never gained a wide currency; the more derisive al-kiyàn al-ßuhyùnì
(the Zionist entity) is most often used in reference to the “state of
Israel.” Opposition to this entity took the form of muqàwamah (resis-
tance); the literary output connected with this resistance has, since
the mid-twentieth century, been known as adab al-muqàwamah (the
literature of resistance). In an essay presented to a conference on
contemporary Arabic literature held in Rome, 16–20 October 1961,
the Jordanian critic 'Ìsà al-Nà'ùrì defines Arabic literature of the
post-1948 era as: “a literature of struggle, or a resistance literature
(adab muqàwamah), or a literature of liberation.”5
It is widely held that the field of postcolonial studies has focused
on the study of predominantly Western imaginative, polemic, and
other discourses related to Empire. This emphasis has prompted
some critics of the postcolonial theoretical stance to point to a pos-
sible complicit role postcolonial studies may have played in the con-
tinued centrality of the West. The charge pertains to the field’s
“alleged reinscription of the cultural authority of the West by virtue
of a largely exclusive attention to colonial discourse as the privileged
object of analysis.”6 Preoccupation with the colonial has indeed tended
to displace the anti-colonial body of writing as the object of critical
and cultural analysis. This body of writing, moreover, has often been
deprecated on aesthetic grounds as well as for reasons that have to
do with the issue of provenance. In the course of discussing the
reception of African literature in the West, Edward Said acknowl-
edges that “an ambiance of polemic surrounds this work” but rightly
notes,
[O]ne cannot look at African writing except as embedded in its polit-
ical circumstances, of which the history of imperialism and resistance
to it is surely one of the most important. This is not to say that African
5 'Ìsàal-Nà'ùrì, “Al-Adìb al-'Arabìwal-Thaqàfah al-'Àlamiyyah,”Al-Adab al-'Arabì
al-Mu'àßir: Proceedings of the Rome Conference on Contemporary Arabic Literature, Rome,
16–20 October 1961, ed. Simon Jargy (N.p.: A∂wà", 1962?) 67.
6 Bart Moore-Gilbert, Postcolonial Theory: Contexts, Practices, Politics (London: Verso,
1997) 156.
preface ix
culture is any less cultural than, say, French or British culture, but
that it is harder to render invisible the politics of African culture.7
Barbara Harlow, a leading theorist of “resistance literature” is less
apologetic in her defense of anti-colonial discourses. In her highly
perceptive book Resistance Literature, Harlow notes that “[t]he resis-
tance poems actively engage in the historical process of struggle
against the cultural oppression of imperialism, and assert thereby
their own polemical historicity.”8 Harlow goes on to say,
Within this historical conjuncture, the inherited notion of literature in
the west as objective, aesthetic, representing universal human values is
either compelled to redefine its criteria or is destined inevitably to par-
ticipate in the First World’s post-colonial project of cultural imperialism.9
With respect to the issue of provenance, moreover, critics on both
sides of the cultural divide seem in agreement as to the (extensive)
influence of the West in the “emergence” of postcolonial literature.
However, while defenders of this body of discourse often employ
such euphemistic terminology as “borrowing,” and “re/appropria-
tion” of Western modes of discourses by the colonized,10 detractors
have cited that literature’s putative tendency to duplicate Western
modes as grounds for dismissing it. Commenting on modern Arabic
literary output, the Orientalist G. M. Wickens has this to say:
I will not linger on it, for, to be frank, I doubt whether there is much
worth saying about it: most of it, though not quite all, seems to me
little but a servile imitation of the worst features of our own modern
literature.11
To account for such sweeping dismissal, Salih Altoma cites “the ten-
dency to judge Arabic literature on the basis of external, i.e. Western,
literary canons.” Altoma goes on to note:
What is truly astounding is that such a wholesale dismissal is pro-
nounced without any reference to the genres, works or authors Wickens
has in mind while surveying the field. The fact that some of the most
7 Edward W. Said, Culture and Imperialism (New York: Vintage Books, 1994) 239.
8 Barbara Harlow, Resistance Literature (New York: Methuen, 1987) 37.
9 Harlow 40.
10 See, for example, Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin,Empire Writes
Back: Theory and Practice in Post-colonial Literatures (London: Routledge, 1989) 38–77.
11 Quoted in Salih Altoma, “The Reception of Najib Mahfuz in American Publica-
tions,” Yearbook of Comparative and General Literature 41 (1993): 163–4.