Salem, Sarah Mamdouh Ibrahim 
ORCID: 0000-0002-7872-5613 and Malak, Karim
(2015)
Reorientalizing the Middle East: the power agenda setting post-Arab uprisings.
Middle East: Topics and Arguments, 4.
pp. 93-109.
ISSN 2196-629X
Abstract
Claims to new or critical knowledge can often be non-performative. Building off of this assumption, this paper demonstrates the ways in which the 2010-2011 uprisings across the Middle East and North Africa have been analysed through approaches that claim to be critical and post-Orientalist and yet reproduce problematic assumptions about the region, revealing their connection to a longer genealogy dating back to Orientalism. This serves to sanitize the uprisings by virtue of a neoliberal agenda that reproduces the 'Middle East' straitjacket, in turn creating a typology not too different from realist analysis in the region that (re)posits 'Arab exceptionalism'. Claims to being critical, or making a critical turn, are thus questioned in this paper through an analysis that shows how theory has been in the interest of power through the appropriation of native informants into the academic complex of think-tanks, Western donor institutions, and foreign media. Taking our cue from Edward Said, we explore how new approaches have presented themselves as critical and have disrobed themselves of their exotic and explicit racist discourse, despite the fact that the same assumptions continue to lurk in the background. Using Sara Ahmed's notion of the non-performativity of claims to being critical, we survey how the Middle East is being reshaped through these 'new' and 'critical' approaches that in essence are apologetic to neoliberalism and liberal governmentality at large. We show how minorities continue to be an intervention mechanism under the so-called 'freedom of belief' agenda, how the 'democracy paradigm' advances electoralism as freedom, and how rights-based approaches with their underlying (neo)liberal assumptions continue to determine gender politics and analysis despite postcolonial interventions. By creating a contemporary genealogy of Middle East area studies and surveying calls for proposals for journal articles, media publications, Western think-tank reports, donor programs and Civil Society Organizations' (CSOs) expansion into the Middle East, this paper argues that this form of surveillance, though masquerading as 'critical', builds off of neoliberal governmentality. This, in turn, molds a subjectivity that reifies the Middle East as a stagnant entity.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Official URL: | https://meta-journal.net/index |
| Additional Information: | © 2015 The Authors |
| Divisions: | Sociology |
| Subjects: | H Social Sciences > HN Social history and conditions. Social problems. Social reform J Political Science > JC Political theory D History General and Old World > DS Asia D History General and Old World > DT Africa |
| Date Deposited: | 09 Sep 2019 09:30 |
| Last Modified: | 15 Sep 2023 16:12 |
| URI: | http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/101554 |
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