Joshua Mitchell - Tocqueville in Arabia: Dilemmas in a Democratic Age

TOCQUEVILLE in ARABIA

Dilemmas in a Democratic Age

JOSHUA MITCHELL

The University of Chicago Press
Chicago and London

JOSHUA MITCHELL is professor of political theory in the Department of Government at Georgetown University in Washington, DC. From 2005 to 2008, he taught at Georgetown Universitys School of Foreign Service in Doha, Qatar. From 2008 to 2010, he was the acting chancellor of the American University of Iraq, Sulaimani. He is the author of several books, including The Fragility of Freedom: Tocqueville on Religion, Democracy, and the American Future, also published by the University of Chicago Press.

The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637

The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London

2013 by The University of Chicago

All rights reserved. Published 2013.

Printed in the United States of America

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ISBN-13: 978-0-226-08731-3 (cloth)

ISBN-13: 978-0-226-08745-0 (e-book)

DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226087450.001.0001

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Mitchell, Joshua, 1955

Tocqueville in Arabia: dilemmas in a democratic age / Joshua Mitchell.

pages; cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-226-08731-3 (cloth: alkaline paper) ISBN 978-0-226-08745-0 (e-book)
1. Tocqueville, Alexis de, 18051859Study and teachingQatar. 2. Tocqueville, Alexis de, 18051859Study and teachingUnited States. 3. Tocqueville, Alexis de, 18051859. De la dmocratie en AmriqueInfluence. 4. Political science Study and teachingQatar. 5. Political science Study and teaching United States. I. Title.

JA88.Q2M583 2013

320.973dc23 2013011348

This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper).

I undertook to see, not differently, but further than the parties; and while they are occupied with the next day, I have wanted to ponder the future.

ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE, Democracy in America

CONTENTS

Preface

For five of the past seven years, I have been in the Middle Eastthree in Qatar, helping Georgetown establish its School of Foreign Service there; and two in Iraq, helping to build the nascent American University of Iraq, Sulaimani. Tocqueville in Arabia pertains to the three years I spent in Qatar, between 2005 and 2008. In the course of my overseas duties, there was one author whom I carried with me daily. Indeed, not an hour went by when Tocquevilles thinking about the movement from the aristocratic age to the democratic age did not occupy my imagination.

Now, seven years later, my conclusionsor, rather, my premonitions, apprehensions, and hopeshave been drawn together in Tocqueville in Arabia, a work whose ancient ancestry might be Montesquieus Persian Letters, and whose recent pedigree might be traced to an imagined embrace between Azar Nafisis Reading Lolita in Tehran and Allan Blooms The Closing of the American Mind. Like Nafisis work, Tocqueville in Arabia seeks to illuminate the concerns of students in the distant lands of the Middle East; like Blooms work, it aspires to be a comprehensive reflection on the challenges facing America today. I hasten to add that where Bloom saw America through the lens of Rousseaus suspicions of the modern world, I have fixed my gaze on Tocqueville, who understood that modernitythe democratic age, in his termsis here to stay; and that our charge is to reinforce its strengths and be mindful of its weaknesses.

Tocqueville in Arabia is in one sense a work of political theoryhow could I escape that? Yet after having written several rather formal works in political theory, it seemed to me that to understand what I was witnessing in the Middle East, a different sort of book needed to be written, one that always returned to the evidencein this case, the years of discussions I have had with my students in the Middle East and on the main campus here at Georgetown. These conversations led me again and again to wonder just how my students have arrived at the conclusions they hold. Throughout Tocqueville in Arabia my answer has been twofold: on the one hand, the students have been shaped by the understandings and misunderstandings of the sixties generation and, just as importantly, by the longer trends associated with the developments of the democratic age itself. This twofold answer has necessitated that I weave occasional reflections about the 1960s into the larger theoretical argument on which I rely, which can be found on nearly every page of Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocquevilles magisterial work. The result, as I have mentioned, is a book that is both less and more than a conventional work of political theory. I will leave it to the reader to decide if there is something to be gained by writing in this way.

In Tocqueville in Arabia, I have sought at once to be generous and critical of developments happening in the Middle East and in America. Some will say I have gone too far, and some will say that I have not gone far enough. Above all, I have sought to foster an understanding about one another that eludes Americans and Middle Easterners alike. The need to undertake this task I take to be self-evident. Yet where today can the earnest reader discover how such understanding might be achieved? The daily media reports are scarcely helpful. Polemicists on both sides tend to deepen the existing wounds. And scholars, in general, speak only to one another, in a language that the earnest reader finds tedious, unhelpful, or arcane. Clearly a new kind of writing is needed to help bring about the understanding that is sorely lacking.

Before beginning in earnest, something needs to be said here about a more traditional convention of writing that I have used throughout Tocqueville in Arabia. It goes without saying that in the age of equality, the use of the term man is likely to be jarring. Indeed, Tocqueville himself gives us the reason why this is likely to be so: as conditions become more equal, we are apt to become uncomfortable with terms that seem exclusionary. Unity, Tocqueville says, becomes an obsession. And so it is not surprising that the once-conventional term man falls out of favor in the democratic age. The difficulty faced by the contemporary writer who wishes to maintain fidelity with a great author who writes before these new conventions arose is, therefore, formidable. Tocquevilles use of the term man is ubiquitous. Indeed, some of the most powerful and eloquent passages in Democracy in America involve the term man. Not wishing to alter his usage when I cite passages from his writing, I thought it best to maintain consistency throughout Tocqueville in Arabia and use his term man. To readers unaccustomed or uncomfortable with this older convention, I ask that they indulge my interest that parsimony be maintained, and that they look beyond the form of my writing to the content itself. My hope is that they will be rewarded by doing so. The matter is made more complicated, as the reader soon will discover, because on many occasions I use the terms fathers, mothers, sons, and daughters. Tocqueville worried that in the democratic age, the great temptation would be to think only about the present moment and lose sight of the fact that society must be in the business of regenerating itself. My invocation of the terms fathers, mothers, sons, and daughters occurs in those places when such regeneration is directly at issue or lurking in the background. Critics will point out that there is something to be gained by avoiding these various usages; I have thought it necessary, however, to rely on these archaisms so that certain issues can be illuminated that otherwise might remain obscure.