In 2013, Gianni Vattimo and Michael Marder published 'Deconstructing Zionism: A Critique of Political Metaphysics'. Their intervention can be situated within an admirable trajectory of collaborative efforts in Europe to press both hermeneutics and deconstruction into service on behalf of all those today who are disempowered by the machinations of global capitalism - not only the Palestinians. As a contributor to Vattimo and Marder's collection, I have followed with interest the diverse critical responses to…
The following study is a critical close reading of Walter Benjamin's well known essays 'Surrealism' and 'The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction', supplemented by a discussion of Theodor W. Adorno's critical response to these essays, as documented in Adorno's 'Letter to Walter Benjamin: 18 March 1936' and his much larer Aesthetic Theory. Specifically, we will examine Adorno's dialectical critique of Benjamin's largely progressive characterization of technological reproducibility in the arts. This…
Conflict and intervention in northern Mali has a deep history of Arab and Western racism and self-interest.At the time of his birth, Leo Africanus was named al-Hasan ibn Muhammad al-Wazzan al-Zayyati. His parents were Arab Muslims from Granada, Spain who migrated to Fez after the Christian Reconquista; that is, after European Christians recaptured much of the Iberian Peninsula from Arab Muslim control. He was born sometime between 1489 and 1493. At the age of seventeen…
After 9/11, former US president George W. Bush famously proclaimed that Osama bin Laden was a 'wanted' man who would eventually be brought to justice, 'dead or alive'. In the western United States, especially in places like Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas, Bush's words resonated with the public in ways that transcended mere theatrical bravado. When Bush was first elected, it may be remembered, the lawn of the White House was transformed into a chuck wagon…
The paradoxical responses of the Obama administration to popular uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Saudi Arabia and other countries of the Middle East are not the result of Barack Obama's foreign policy incompetence, as is now whispered on both sides of the House and Senate in the United States, but the logical outcome of five centuries of realpolitik. What Democrats and Republicans seem to share at this current juncture is the mistaken assumption that those…
At the time of his birth, Leo Africanus was named al-Hasan ibn Muhammad al-Wazzan al-Zayyati. His parents were Arab Muslims from Granada, Spain, who migrated to Fez after the Christian Reconquista; that is, after European Christians recaptured much of the Iberian Peninsula from Arab Muslim control. Leo Africanus was born some time between 1489 and 1493. At the age of seventeen he went on a commercial and diplomatic mission to the land of the Songhay…
The prominent attitudes about Arab identity in the Sahel zone of West Africa, especially Mali, Senegal, Niger, Mauritania and Burkina Faso are discussed. The recognition of an ancient and shared history between Blacks and Arabs, including the traumatic experience of European colonization, can provide a foundation for building stronger political alliances to the benefit of both parties.
Gilbert Achcar, a teacher at the School of Oriental and African Studies speaks about the concept of Arab nationalism following the war in Iraq. Achcar also elaborates on the Israel-Palestine situation as being one of a no-state solution.
The exchanges between Jewish literary critic Jacqueline Rose and Palestinian-American critic Edward W. Said on the relationship between Palestinian Arabs and Israeli Jews and also Diaspora Jews are analyzed. While Rose attempts to deconstruct Zionism from within Zionist ideology and expects Israel to treat Palestinians better, Said had dismissed the context of Zionism in the issue and expected Israeli Jews to acknowledge their mistakes towards Palestinian Arabs and make amends.
