Achcar - Marxism, Orientalism, cosmopolitanism

GILBERT ACHCAR is Professor at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. His most recent book is The People Want: A Radical Exploration of the Arab Uprising. His other previous works include the highly acclaimed The Arabs and the Holocaust: The ArabIsraeli War of Narratives, The Clash of Barbarisms: The Making of the New World Disorder and, with Noam Chomsky, Perilous Power: The Middle East and US Foreign Policy.

SAQI

Published 2013 by Saqi Books

Copyright Gilbert Achcar 2013

ISBN 978-0-86356-793-3

eISBN 978-0-86356-798-8

Gilbert Achcar has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publishers prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

First published 2013 in Great Britain

Saqi Books

26 Westbourne Grove

London W2 5RH

www.saqibooks.co.uk

A full CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.

Printed and bound by CPI Mackays, Chatham ME5 8TD

Orientalism in Reverse:
Post-1979 Trends in French Orientalism

Marx, Engels and Orientalism:
On Marxs Epistemological Evolution

This book is a collection of four essays, two of which are published here in English for the first time and comprise the largest part of the book. One of the new essays was written especially for this collection; the other has, until now, been published only in German translation.

The first essay, Religion and Politics Today from a Marxist Perspective, examines Marxs view of religion as a prelude to a comparative assessment of Christian liberation theology and Islamic fundamentalism in the spirit of a Marxian comparative sociology of religions. It was first published in the 2008 edition of the annual journal Socialist Register.

The second essay, Orientalism in Reverse: Post-1979 Trends in French Orientalism, is the text of the fourth Edward Said Memorial Lecture, which I had the honour of delivering at the University of Warwick on 20 November 2007 at the invitation of the Department of English and Comparative Studies. On that occasion I chose to speak on a peculiar instance of Orientalism in the Saidian sense with regard to Islam: not the usual denigration informed by a colonial mentality that despises the Muslims, but the reverse attitude of uncritical apology, not only of Islam as a religion but of Islamic fundamentalism itself represented as the sui generis path of Muslims to modernity. Both attitudes share a common essentialist assumption of religion as the natural ideology of Muslim peoples, and of secularism as a Western ideology alien to them. The essay focuses on French authors because this tradition was born and developed in France, for reasons explained in the text. However, it has certainly spread to the English-speaking world, both in the form of political attitudes paved with good antiracist, anti-Islamophobic intentions and in the form of academic stances widely encountered in the fields of Islamic Studies, anthropology, post-colonial studies, etc. The text of the lecture was first published in the journal Radical Philosophy in 2008.

The third essay, Marx, Engels, and Orientalism: On Marxs Epistemological Evolution, was written especially for this collection. It discusses the controversial issue of classifying Marx among the Orientalists in the Saidian sense, begun by Said himself in his famous book. While acknowledging the huge importance of Saids contribution to the debunking of Orientalist attitudes, I take as a starting point a criticism of his rather uninformed characterisation of Marx in Orientalism in order to examine the evolution of Marx and Engels attitude towards the Orient. The essay is based on an epistemological appraisal of their thinking in historical context, and pays due attention to its development along with the progress of their own knowledge and experience.

The fourth and last essay in the collection, Marxism and Cosmopolitanism, was initially written as a long entry in the German Historical-Critical Dictionary of Marxism (HKWM) and was published as such in German translation. It begins by assessing the general idea of cosmopolitanism, distinguishing between four general conceptions thereof. It then examines the use of the notion in the writings of Marx and Engels and its evolution, as well the vagaries of its use in the history of Marxism up to contemporary discussions within the broader left, in our era of globalisation.

My thanks go first of all to the editors of each of the three publications mentioned above. In the case of the HKWM, the editors input went beyond mere copy-editing/translating into a fruitful exchange on the topic. I am also very grateful to my good friend Michael Lwy, who read and commented on the drafts of three of the four essays included in this collection (except Orientalism in Reverse). I am also thankful to another of my good friends, Enzo Traverso, who sent me detailed comments on the draft of the piece on cosmopolitanism. Needless to say, none of those to whom I am indebted for this book bears any responsibility for the views that it expresses.

The two essays that were published previously are here reproduced in their original version, unaltered but for editing improvements. Mitchell Albert, the commissioning editor at Saqi Books, was very helpful in nicely editing all four essays. It is worth noting in this respect that this book is my first ever directly written in English, my third language after Arabic and French.

London, 15 June 2013

Religion and Politics Today from a Marxist Perspective in Global Flashpoints: Reactions to Imperialism and Neoliberalism, Socialist Register 2008, Halifax (Canada): Fernwood Publishing, New York: Monthly Review Press, and London: Merlin Press, pp. 5576.

Orientalism in Reverse: Post-1979 Trends in French Orientalism in Radical Philosophy, no. 151, SeptemberOctober 2008, pp.2030.

Kosmopolitismus, moderner in Historisch-kritisches Wrterbuch des Marxismus, 7 II, Berlin: Institut fr kritische Theorie (Inkrit), 2010, pp. 18921926.

For the sake of homogeneity, most references to the works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in this book have been located in their Collected Works (see bibliography), designated by the acronym MECW.

We had an excellent history teacher in my penultimate year of high school in Beirut. I still remember listening to him with bated breath as he told us the story of the Russian Revolution. That was in 1967: revolution was in the air, and I had been freshly converted to Marxism. Like any good history teacher, ours used to discuss with us various matters of past, present and future, after classes as well as during them.

One of these discussions remains engraved on my memory: a chat during a break about the issue of religion. I cant remember what brought us to this topic, but what I do remember is my deep frustration when the teacher contradicted my youthful Marxist positivism. At that time, I was fully convinced that the progress of science and education would wipe out religion in the twenty-first century. Needless to say, I imagined this century as the outcome of the worldwide triumph of socialist revolution, which I expected to happen during the next few decades.