EXPeditions - The living library of knowlegde

Eugene Rogan - The dynamic of changes in the Arab world

Eugene Rogan, Director of St. Antony’s College Middle East Centre, examines recent Muslim movements throughout the Arab world.
About Eugene Rogan"I am Professor of Modern Middle Eastern History at Oxford, and Director of the Middle East Centre at St Antony’s College.
My field is the modern history of the Arab world. I focus primarily on the 19th and 20th centuries, and my real interests have always been in the end of the Ottoman Empire, the emergence of modern States in the Middle East, and the way that has shaped the modern reality of the Arab world today."
Key Points
• Suppression of Muslim movements, especially in Egypt, breeded resentment and a view of regional governments as un-Islamic and unaligned with Muslim interests.• The successful Iranian revolution galvanised militant movements in the Arab world. Organisations like the Muslim Brotherhood were thereby emboldened to challenge autocratic regimes and further their political agenda.• The 2003 invasion of Iraq resulted in a Sunni-Shia divide. This division increased violence in the region and allowed for hypercharged movements like ISIS to gain influence.
A rising challenge
For the Arab world, the experience of total defeat in 1967 was a seismic moment. It forced a rethink of politics across the board. As always, with plate tectonics, such movements take time.
Nevertheless, one could argue that between 1967 and 1979, the politics of Arab nationalism had been tremendously undermined by the failure of the Arab States to realise numerous goals. These included the liberation of Palestine, the development of modern institutions and industry and the establishment of a dignified position for the Arab world among world powers.
The reality of the Arab world in the 1970s stood in stark contrast to these ambitions. The region was fragmented, divided and weak. There were States coming under the control of autocrats who would suppress their citizens. Only a handful of movements had the courage of conviction needed. Indeed, only organisations inspired by the Islamic discourse were regularly challenging these autocratic States.

Faisal Devji - How Islam came to be a global phenomenon

Faisal Devji, Professor of Indian History at the University of Oxford, discusses the rise of global Islam.
About Faisal Devji"I’m Professor of Indian History at the University of Oxford.
My interest is in the intellectual history of India and Pakistan, as well as in political thought, specifically the political thought of modern Islam."
Key Points
• Islam historically referred to a set of actions and attitudes, not faith. Today, the term has evolved into a proper noun for a global religion.• The humanisation of the prophet Muhammad makes him a target for insult, which can trigger violence.• Global Islam derives its strength from numbers, but not necessarily from faith or theology.
Islam as a set of actions or attitudes
Islam seems to be an old name and word because you find it in the Koran, although it’s mentioned only a few times. However, I argue that it was created in the 19th century because this term, Islam, only came to be deployed frequently as a proper name from the second half of the 19th century. Before, Islam referred to a set of actions or attitudes. The term Islam is not a noun, but a kind of adjectival, semi-verbal construction. It's an adjectival verb. Therefore, it has to do with practice, doing something, and was rarely used as a name. It was used alongside other terms like Iman or Faith, and Deen, which is normally translated as religion. Often, that was the word used for the true religion instead of Islam.
The moment Islam becomes a proper name, interestingly, it becomes particular. It is no longer the true religion. It is simply a religion among other religions. Islam as a proper name is the product of a 19th century project to create what scholars have called world religions. There is Islam, Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Zoroastrianism, and so on. The thing about Islam as a proper name, is what does it name? It names a whole set of beliefs and practices organised systematically. It is no longer possible for these beliefs and practices to be tied to specific forms of authority, as they once were.

Charles Tripp - Revolutions in the Middle East and North Africa

Charles Tripp, Professor Emeritus of Politics at the School of Oriental and African Studies, discusses Middle Eastern and North African revolutions.
About Charles Tripp"I'm Professor Emeritus of Politics of Middle East and North Africa at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.
My work has been mainly in the area of the examination of power and the abuses of power across the Middle East and North Africa: how in different forms it's been used, abused and mediated by people who are both in control of States and people who try to resist the power of states."
Key Points
• In the 19th century, many of the countries of the Middle East and North Africa were undergoing revolutionary changes, which were disrupted by European intervention.• After the withdrawal of European powers in the 20th century, revolutions with popular backing overthrew monarchies and republics; however, the rise of military power led to disappointment.• Various forms of resistance against authoritarian rule emerged across the region. Contrary to common assumptions, the Arab Spring follows a long history of rebellion and resistance.A forgotten historyWhen people think about revolutions across Middle Eastern and North African history, they often forget that many of these countries were undergoing revolutionary changes in the beginning and middle of the 19th century. In many ways, European colonial intervention at the end of the 19th century disrupted that process of indigenous revolutionary change, where autocrats were being questioned and revolutions were beginning to simmer throughout the educated and middle classes – and indeed in many rural areas as well – in Egypt, Tunisia and Iran.
When the Europeans intervened, often on the pretext of suppressing the disorder associated with these revolutions, it was a case of arrested development. The Europeans intervened to prop up the old, creaking dynastic ruling families of these countries. In doing so, they froze political development and then imposed their own pace upon it rather unjustly, therefore accusing the peoples of the Middle East and North Africa of being unready for political development. Of course, they had been very ready for political development, but this had been disrupted by European intervention.

Kehinde Andrews - Race and the global economy

Kehinde Andrews, Professor of Black Studies at Birmingham City University, discusses race and the global economy.
About Kehinde Andrews"I am Professor of Black Studies at Birmingham City University and the Chair of the Harambee Organisation of Black Unity.
My research focuses on understanding race and racism and, really importantly, on how the community is mobilised to combat the problems that we face."
Key Points
• The West is rich because the rest are poor. From slavery, through empire to economic colonialism, Western countries have always found ways to extract resources from the underdeveloped world.• Post-war institutions like the IMF and the World Bank represent what Malcolm X called “benevolent imperialism”. They enable the continuation of exploitation under the guise of development and investment.• The only way underdeveloped countries can develop is to take themselves out of the system that is oppressing them.
Exploiting Africa
The only way to understand what is happening now is to put it in its historical context. Africa is a perfect place to start. Walter Rodney wrote an excellent book called How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. Today Africa, and particularly so-called Sub-Saharan Africa, is the poorest part of the world. Why? People often point to corruption or a lack of advanced technology. But again: why?
You need a historical understanding to answer these questions. Africa was first underdeveloped by slavery, which took out or murdered tens of millions of people. The lower estimate is 40 million; the higher estimate is 100 million. This draining of resources completely shattered Africa’s political economy, which was ahead of Europe’s political economy when Europeans arrived. Things weren’t much better after slavery because Africa was so depleted. This is why Europe could take over. Europe’s major powers carved up the continent among themselves, draining its resources.
After independence, the focus shifted to economic colonialism. From chocolate companies like Cadbury’s to tire companies in Congo, the major corporations operating in Africa are still foreign-owned, still draining out all of the resources. You can’t understand poverty in Africa without understanding the historical forces that created it.

Catherine Hall - A new conversation about the legacy of slavery

Catherine Hall, Emeritus Professor at University College London, argues that the legacy of slavery is more relevant than ever.
About Catherine Hall"I'm the chair of the Center for the Study of the Legacies of British Slave-Ownership and Emerita Professor of Modern British Social and Cultural History at University College London.
My research has been concerned with questions of Britain and its Empire. In particular, I focused on both the connected histories of Britain and Jamaica, and on the history of writing as central to the ways in which the story of Empire is told. In general, I've been preoccupied with trying to write a different story of the history of Empire."
Key Points
• The 2007 bicentenary of the abolition of the slave trade sparked a new conversation in Britain about the legacies of slavery.• A ‘reparatory’ history is required if we are to properly understand the wrongs of the past and take responsibility for them in the present.• Race politics today cannot be understood outside the legacies of slavery and the legacies of Empire.
A new conversation about slavery
The 2007 bicentenary of the abolition of the slave trade marked the whole question of the legacies of slavery and the importance of thinking about new ways of understanding that history. In the context of that bicentenary, Black activists, historians, writers and documentary makers, who had been thinking for a long time about the forgotten histories of slavery and the way in which the story of abolition had displaced the history of the violence, coercion and destruction associated with slavery and the British Empire, started what I think of as a national conversation about the slave trade and how it should be remembered.
Re-evaluating Britain’s role in abolitionShould we be thankful and remember proudly how Britain had supposedly led the way (which, of course, it didn’t) with the abolition of the slave trade in 1807? Or is it more important to remember the whole history of slavery, and to try and bring that history back into view?
The way in which the history had been written from the time of the abolition of the slave trade onwards was in terms of abolition and emancipation, being part of the history of progress and the way in which Britain had led the world. There was the notion of the civilising humanitarian route that was Britain’s task in the world: to improve the rest of the world in the image of itself.
That’s how history has been understood. To unpick that history became a major task and has been taken up in so many different ways by writers, artists, historians, people making television and radio programmes and so on.

Philippe Sands - Closing the book on colonisation

Decolonisation, as a process, has more or less run its course, but not entirely. There is a small number of colonies that exist.
About Philippe Sands"I’m Professor of Law at University College London, Director of the Centre on International Courts and Tribunals in the Faculty, and a key member of staff in the Centre for Law and the Environment. I am a Barrister at Matrix Chambers and a writer.
Everything that I do – teaching, research, writing, litigating cases – revolves around my great passion, which is international law, the settlement of international disputes (including arbitration), and environmental and natural resources law."
Key Points
• In 1945, as the United Nations Charter was being negotiated, the countries of the world decided that it was time to bring colonialism to an end.• There are still a small number of colonies that exist. Britain’s last colony in Africa is called the Chagos Archipelago, where the United Kingdom is an unlawful occupier.• The devastating irony is that the United States and the United Kingdom created the rules that are premised around the United Nations Charter, but they have now upended those rules. A commitment to decolonise
We all know that in the 18th and 19th centuries, European countries went around the world picking up bits of territory and colonising them. It was known as colonialism in Africa, in South America and in Asia. Spain, France, Britain, Germany, Italy, Denmark, Holland and various other countries were rather expert in this practice, which proceeded until the 20th century.
Then, in 1945, as the United Nations Charter was being negotiated, the countries of the world decided that it was time to bring colonialism to an end. They negotiated a Charter, which contained two new rules: one rule articulated the proposition that every human being had minimum rights under international law. It coined the phrase “human rights” in modern parlance. The second new rule was a commitment of every country in the world to decolonise – for the colonial powers to leave their colonies and to allow the inhabitants of those colonies to exercise something that is known as “the right of self-determination”: being in charge of their own futures, deciding for themselves how they wish to be governed, and not being governed by outsiders or by others. That is the principle of decolonisation.

David Hillman - Shakespeare and male and female bodies

In Shakespeare’s work, the relationship between acknowledgment of the other and knowledge of the other often plays out through the body.
About David Hillman
"I lecture on Shakespeare and Renaissance culture at the University of Cambridge and direct studies at King’s College in Cambridge.
I'm the author of Shakespeare's Entrails, which is my first monograph. I've also written about Shakespeare and Freud; the history of the body in relation to Shakespeare in particular; Shakespeare and philosophy and epistemological issues around Shakespeare. I am currently completing a monograph, Greetings and Partings in Shakespeare and early modern England, which addresses the rich topic of salutary acts in Shakespeare and early modernity."
Key Points
• Shakespeare was interested in the relationship between what can be performed externally and what is internal.• In Shakespeare’s work, the relationship between acknowledgment of the other and knowledge of the other often plays out through the body.• Shakespeare thinks of the sceptical attitude as primarily masculine, and the addressee of this attitude as primarily feminine.
My work began with thinking about the insides of the body. I wrote my first book, Shakespeare’s Entrails, while I was working as a doctoral student at Harvard, and I was pretty isolated. The one thing that got me out of isolation was playing lots of basketball, and the relation between being very embodied on the basketball court and being rather disembodied in the library, working with books, gnawed at me. I wanted to bring the body back into the text.
Shakespeare was interested in a fantasy of the body, of what is inside the body. Hamlet imagines that there is something inside the body that is beyond access to anyone else but him. He says: ‘But I have that within which passeth show, / These but the trappings and the suits of woe.’ In other words, wearing black, shedding tears and so on are ‘actions that a man might play’, as Hamlet says; they are external ways of mourning a father. But that ‘within which passeth show’ is what is inaccessible to knowledge, especially to knowledge of other people. There is a relationship between knowledge and embodiment which is paradigmatic.
Scepticism and the bodyScepticism about others, about who they really are, is a scepticism about what is going on inside them. People can reveal all sorts of things on the outside, but there can be no proof that those things are the same on the inside. One’s gestures of love or admiration or disgust can be performed; they are ‘actions that a man might play’. Shakespeare was clearly interested in the relationship between what can be performed – what can be simply external – and what is internal, partly because he was a man of the stage. Actors can have one thing going on inside and a different thing going on outside. And yet, can they really?
There’s a relationship between acknowledgment of the other and knowledge of the other, which plays out through the body. Hamlet is a character who is very sceptical and constantly trying to prove things about others. He puts on the play about Claudius to catch the conscience of the king. Hamlet says, ‘I’ll tent him to the quick’, meaning he will probe him. A tent is a surgical instrument; to the quick means to the centre of the body, to the heart of him. Hamlet idealises the inside of the body, and this is part of his problem. He doesn’t trust. This leads us into the psychoanalytic areas of trust, autonomy and relationship to otherness.

Susie Orbach - What is happening to our bodies?

In my discipline, we tend to look at body-based problems as being expressions of psychological distress.
About Susie Orbach
"I am a psychoanalyst, psychotherapist and writer, and the co-founder of the Women’s Therapy Centre in London and New York.
I look at how the issues of society are structured into the individual, and constitute how we become who we are, but holding on to the notion that we live in a society and that every relation that exists is imbued with the power relations, the unconscious desires, the longings, and the struggle for subjectivity that exists between people."
Key Points
• We tend to look at body-based problems as being expressions of psychological distress, but it’s worth exploring the whole question of how a body comes into being and what body distress might express in its own terms.• Almost everything that occurs in the mother-baby interaction is expressed as a psychological relation. However, it’s also, and primarily, a body-to-body relation. Today, many mothers come to parenting with very troubled bodies, full of upset or anxiety.• There are various societal forces that are impacting on the body. There is demand that we have a body that’s camera-ready the whole time, a body that can seduce, a body ready for display. There are enormous industries which are impacting on the body.• If you look at any of the disembodied bodies in AI, they are all shown in plastic versions of women. That seems to me preparation for accepting lots and lots more AI. Look how attractive it is. I think the long-term notion is that we will be bodiless.
I’ve been interested in the question of how we get a body, partly because over the last 40 years, as a psychoanalyst, I’ve seen a huge increase in body-based problems. There are many theories contested and agreed upon about how we get a mind but, somehow, the whole question of the body has been left out of the story.
It’s useful to paraphrase both Simone de Beauvoir – “Women are made, not born” – and Winnicott, the British psychoanalyst and paediatrician, who said, “There is no such thing as a baby. Wherever you see a baby, you see a mother-baby unit.” I’ve been applying those two ideas to the body, arguing that wherever you see a body, you see a body that has been made, not simply born. Bodies are an outcome of the body-to-body relations around them.
Expressions of a distressed mind?In my discipline, we tend to look at body-based problems as being expressions of psychological distress: a paralysed arm, speaking in tongues, or believing that you are pregnant – pseudocyesis. There is a psychological motivation behind these, but there’s also a sense of the body itself as being troubled, and it’s worth exploring the whole question of how a body comes into being and what body distress might express in its own terms.
If you take something very simple, like eczema, a skin disease, it would be discussed in general as the weeping of a mind. The mind hurts so much that feelings can’t be expressed: the person can’t cry, they can’t tolerate the irritation that they’re feeling inside of them. I think that’s perfectly valid, but I also want to look at the fact that perhaps it’s an expression of a body that’s never been accepted easily, partly because of the way it’s been introduced to itself, and therefore it’s an expression also of bodily distress, that it’s a body saying I need attention, I need comfort and soothing for myself.

Susie Orbach - The exploitation of the body

The commercialisation of the body hides the amount of work that we put into producing our bodies.
About Susie Orbach
"I am a psychoanalyst, psychotherapist and writer, and the co-founder of the Women’s Therapy Centre in London and New York.
I look at how the issues of society are structured into the individual, and constitute how we become who we are, but holding on to the notion that we live in a society and that every relation that exists is imbued with the power relations, the unconscious desires, the longings, and the struggle for subjectivity that exists between people."
Key Points
• Today, beauty labour is accepted as part of what we need to be engaged with. The commercialisation of the body hides the amount of work that we put into producing our bodies. This beauty labour is presented to us as pampering, as self-care, as pleasure.• Cosmetics and fashion press on our bodies in ways that are extremely disturbing, especially for girls. Their anxieties about their bodies are stoked by commercial exploitation, which creates the sense that the body they live in is not OK.• Pre-adolescent boys are being introduced to sex as something that has to do with performance. What sex is for girls and women is less brutal, it’s just very different. I think there’s a terrible mismatch what porn is and what sex is.• We’ve brought up a generation that requires confirmation of all their acts and all their physical being through the camera and through the sharing and the acknowledgement that what they’re sharing is acceptable.
Today, beauty labour is accepted as part of what we need to be engaged with. When you take a selfie, whether you’re in England or China, you can have an app that will give you seven different degrees of beauty to enhance yourself by. The commercialisation of the body hides the amount of work that we put into producing our bodies. Ingeniously, this beauty labour is presented to us as pampering, as self-care, as pleasure. We find ourselves enjoying the act of producing a self that is OK in the world.
We often think of the industries that are involved in the production of beauty labour, health and fitness and the fashion industry as being small industries. When it comes to fashion, the richest people in Europe are producers of fashion and cosmetics.
The diet wellness industry is an absolutely enormous industry that does very well because it’s based on a 95% failure rate, a recidivism rate. Every time you go on a diet, or a wellness regime, you’re mucking around with the most basic of mechanisms that tell you when to eat and when to stop, and if you do that repeatedly, you will mess up that mechanism; but, more importantly, after you come off a diet, you will feel success for a very short time, and a few months later, you will feel you need to go on another one. Companies like Weight Watchers rely on repeat customers. They don’t want customers who are successful. In fact, under questioning at the British Parliament, Weight Watchers could only show results of a weight loss of about five kilogrammes, which is absolutely nothing when you think about the amount of budgets going from our health systems into their coffers.

Josh Cohen - Loneliness and solitude

The expression “being in one’s own company” captures the idea that, internally, we are more than one.
About Josh Cohen
"I’m a psychoanalyst in private practice in London and Professor of Modern Literary Theory at Goldsmiths, University of London.
My research is at the borders of psychoanalysis, literature and cultural theory. I’ve written a number of books, including one on Sigmund Freud, on privacy, on our aversion to work and, most recently, on the relationship between literature and life."
Key Points
• The expression “being in one’s own company” captures the idea that, internally, we are more than one.• Solitude is possible when we have a rich relationship with our inner companion; loneliness is when that companion is somebody we’d rather not be with.• Rousseau describes an experience of total, perfect happiness that is only possible in solitude, because it is a closing of the gap between one’s self and one’s inner companion. "Liking one’s own company"
There are many different kinds of loneliness. It’s a state that allows for all kinds of variegation. The expression “being in one’s own company”, or “liking one’s own company”, captures what’s at stake in the whole idea of loneliness and being alone; it puts into ordinary language the sense that, internally, we are more than one.
We’re the person who moves through the world, but there is also someone in our minds, in ourselves, who moves alongside us, providing a kind of companionship as well as a running commentary on the state of our lives. That companion can be somebody that we find congenial; somebody that helps us to be curious about ourselves and interested in the world. When we feel lonely, that companion can be somebody that we’d rather not be with; somebody that seems to offer no solace or interest of any kind. That’s when the experience of the world starts to feel empty and sad.