SAYYID – Lecture 2 – From Kemalism to the Islamic States

The break of Westernized/Westphalian state in the Muslim World started with the creation of Pakistan. It hosted 33% of the Muslim population in the world until 1971. In 1979, the Iranian Revolution added more elements into the Muslim State configuration. The Iranian Revolution happened in a place which was mostly urban, living in the profits of oil exploration, which made it almost impossible to predict (and then, allowing the Western World to stop it).

The White Revolution (1963-73) was a reaction to the rise of the Muslim States. For them, there was a dichotomy:

“True Islam” = Shadow of God = “Social Justice” = WHITE REVOLUTION

Opposite of

“Black Reaction”= Backward Iran = “Red Destruction”

A more complete relationship is:

Pre-Islamic Aryan Persia = Shah/”Spiritual Leader” = Great Civilization = White Revolution = USA / Free World = Resurgency Party = SAVAK

Opposite of

Arabic occupied Semitic Persia = Black Reaction = Backward Iran = Red Destruction = TRAITORS

The expanding logic of Great Civilization can be defined by the quote of General Iberico Saint Jean

“First we must kill the subversives, then their sympathizers, then the indifferent and finally the timid.”

But how to destroy a determination built so strong in our minds? Freud can give some answers. It is called OverDetermination: if you dream about a person it does not follow that you are dreaming about that specific person. It can be interpret as anything, which is not exactly what it looks in a first moment, because actions and actors carry meanings. “The meaning of signifier cannot be read back to its signifier”.

Another way is to use Intertextuality, which says that:

One is never in one discourse;

The impossibility of denotation means the social is always a connotative field;

Denotation is the last connotation.

And to think:

“Mohammed of Arabia ascended to the highest heaven and returned, by God. If I had reached that point I should not have returned.” Abdul Quddus of Gangoh in Mohhamed Iqbal, The Reconstruction of Religious Thought.

Lecture of DAPHNE TAYLOR-GARCIA: “Newly Discovered Countries”: Sexuality, Print Culture and Colonialism

Prof. DAPHNE V. TAYLOR-GARCÍA is a UC President's Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her article (“The Discursive Construction of "Women" in the Americas: An Analysis of 16th Century Print Culture” ) is available here.

“Pedro Alvares Cabral is also from a wealthy family. He was chosen by the Royal Family to continue Vasco da Gama’s work. […] The description of people in Brazil […] is like arabs, by their color […] they were very sexualized […] girls by the age of 8 would be looking for partners, because they knew they wouldn’t be able to hold a husband without their virginity. […] All descriptions are very sexualized.”

SAYYID – Lecture 1 – Introduction of Decolonial and Postcolonial Muslim Studies

Prof. SALMAN SAYYID is a Reader in Postcolonialism and Racism Studies and Director of the Centre for Ethnicity and Racism Studies in the School of Sociology and Social Policy, University of Leeds, UK (click here to visit the page). Here, a Amazon search of his publications. Here, Prof. Sayyid in the Lecture List (“Mirror, Mirror: Western democrats, oriental despots?”). Sayyid and Barnor Heese’s article “A war against politics?”, published at OpenDemocracy.net in 2001 here.

Sayyid started remembering us of the X-Files Affirmation:  “The truth is out there”. As it may sound funny, he calls our attention to the truth that is supposed not to be based in our common sense of what is the Orient, the Islam, the Other. Below, some of his slides.

“The Scandal of Islam

How can we explain the appearance in the Modern World of something which is pre-Modern?

The disclosure of ‘Islam’ is experienced politically, since the political is sign of disruption of what is considered to be natural or conventional.”

The development of the world is just one: the Western model.

The enemy is the one that prevents you from being yourself.”

“Politics

A politics without difference is not possible, but differences are not permanent.

A politics without decisions are not possible, but all decisions are provisional.

Politics is about formation of identities

All identities are about exclusion and inclusion”

“Geopolitical Challenge

‘War Against Terror’ as grammar of international relations

Internal Security and Surveillance of ethnically marked”

Audio removal

To the readers,

As asked by the lecturers, I took off the audio from the posts. The links will be there, but they will take you nowhere. I cannot publish them, nor share them. I'm sorry, but to know what happened here word by word, you should have spent some time with us, here.

NIMAKO – Lecture 1 – Introduction to (Post-) Colonial African Studies

Prof. KWAME NIMAKO teaches International Relations at the International School for Humanities and Social Sciences (ISHSS, lectures here), Universiteit van Amsterdam, Netherlands. He introduced us to some new ideas related to the African Studies, mostly into a (post-) colonial perspective. Amazon book search about Prof. Nimako here. His article available here (Designs and (Co)Incidents : Cultures of Scholarship and Public Policy on Immigrants/Minorities in the Netherlands)