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April 16, 2006
Can anti-Muslim bigotry can be understood properly as "racist" ?
Is it, as Jean-Paul Sartre in Anti-semite and Jew [1943/46], and Frantz Fanon,following him In Black Skin, White Masks [1952], put it, a matter of the Other being constructed as such by the dominant social and cultural categories? Sartre asserted that Jewish identity (in a country like France) was inextricably bound to, and really the product of, enduring anti-Semitism; Fanon followed him in asserting that blackness is the product of white racism, of no intrinsic value in itself, and that the only future for the Black Man was "white."
Can we understand the basis and significance of Muslim identity along similar lines? That Muslim identity (in a country like Australia ) after 9/11 is inextricably bound to, and really the product of, enduring anti-Muslim racism and it has no intrinsic value in itself and that the only future for Muslims is to become "white"?
I don't know. I know the shrills reckon as that the Iraqi war and the overall war on terror is, apparently is really a war against Islam, so lets declare ourselves at war with Islam. That means mocking and ridiculing Islam.
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I think that extending the Sartre/Fanon argument is valid and your point is well taken, but at this point in "our" histories one must take into account post-colonialism and the agency that it offers any takers, as well as critical theories of feminism, pedagogy, etc. that embrace a liberation from dominant structures.
Of course, theory is bullshit when preemptive war is wrought against your country and shock and awe comes raining from the sky, tearing the flesh from the innocent and destroying an ancient civilization as an afterthought. It is my opinion that unless a cadre of Martin Luther King/Gandhi-type figures emerges from the disaster that is Iraq/Iran(?) (and their aftermaths) and fights fire with water, ignorance with knowledge, war with peace- and in the process shames the present administration and the neocon/neoliberal (mutually exclusive) policy makers of the Beltway, then this version of the United States is lost forever.
Perhaps it has been for a long time, but I think that the Republic died on the day that Bush v. Gore was decided. I'm sure that I haven't really commented on your astute analysis, but, to be honest, I'm a little out of my depth with theory and without that framework I'm at a loss to truly empathize with Fanon's "wretched of the earth." The crisis of representation in anthro, etc., the arrogance of power/knowledge.
The academy is certainly one way to understand the manifold problems that encompass the globe, but the social sciences do not (in this case) help in any way to solve them.