beauty of literarystudy

October 2006 University of Sharjah Journal for Shari’a Sciences & Humanities, Volume 3, No. 3 1

The Terrible Beauty of Literary Study

اجلمال القبيح يف الدراسات األدبية

Dr. Tahrir Khalil Hamdi خليل حمديتحرير . دArab Open University

Jordan Branch الجامعة العربية المفتوحة

األردنية الهاشميةالمملكة ، عمان

ABSTRACT This paper aims at shedding light on the inadequacy of English literary studies

at Arab universities. The equation under study involves both the object (i.e. the aims) and the subject (i.e. the instructor/ investigator) in foreign literary and cultural studies programs. The study argues that the aim of Arab scholars should be cultural critique, rather than cultural transmission or 'critical learning' as opposed to 'delicate learning'. This entails the interrogation of western texts since these texts make many assumptions and draw conclusions that have the effect of maintaining an oppressive status quo. The unnatural and ideologically-motivated separation of literature from the world, culture and history can have a devastating result upon the post-colonial subject. It is concluded that 'critical learning' allows for a much needed reversal in thinking, especially at a time when our region is experiencing a cultural, economic and military invasion, whether under the guise of neo-colonial globalization or old-fashioned colonial occupation.

الخالصةتهدف هذه الورقة الى القاء الضوء على المادة األدبية غير المناسبة في مناهج اللغة االنجليزية في

إن دور الباحث ). المدرس او الباحث والهدف(الجامعات العربية، وفي هذا السياق تعنى الورقة بأمرين أساسيين أي التعليم الهادف وليس الشكلي، بحيث –حرفيتها العربي يجب ان يستهدف نقد الثقافة األجنبية وليس نقلها ب

تتضمن هذه العملية تشريح النص الغربي ومساءلته، ألن هذا النص يطرح مجموعة من الفرضيات تصل الى استنتاجات يكون لها آبير األثر على االحتفاظ بواقع اإلضطهاد الراهن، وآذلك فإن الفصل غير الطبيعي لألدب

عن الواقع والثقافة والتاريخ يؤدي الى نتائج تدميرية لشخصية الفرد في فترة ما بعد " الموجه ايديولوجيًا"يفرض علينا إعادة النظر بشكل جذري في نمط تفكيرنا خاصة في " التعليم القبيح"وفي هذا نرى أن . الكولونيالية

عولمة الكولونيالية او سواء وقت تتعرض فيه منطقتنا إلى غزو ثقافي، إقتصادي، عسكري، سواء أآان في إطار ال .في إطار اإلستعمار التقليدي

™¶IXæA LBaAZX{A ßs S¶Iw{A |B}O{A The Terrible Beauty of Literary Study

University of Sharjah Journal for Shari’a Sciences & Humanities, Volume 3, No. 3 October 2006 2

INTRODUCTION

That was when he began writing on the walls in his own handwriting on fences and buildings and on the giant billboards The change was no small thing quite the contrary in the beginning he fell into a deep creative slump. It's just that sonnets don't look good on walls and phrases he was mad about before, like "oh abysmal sandalwood, honey of moss" looked like a big joke on peeling walls.

Roque Dalton—"History of a Poetic"

If Roque Dalton's walls are peeling, then ours must be caving in. It is obvious that a change in our foreign literary canon and teaching strategies are long overdue. There seem to be two contradictory forces of change nowadays. One, I would argue, is Western-instigated and aims at further domesticating the "Other," thus producing a state of acquiescence with globalization and neo-colonial policies which are political at the core, and the other is in genuine response to the devastating cultural, educational, political and economic hegemony of globalization. It is indeed time to discuss issues pertinent to the teaching of foreign literatures and cultural studies at Arab universities. The aims of foreign language and literature education at Arab universities need to be reassessed; in other words, the object and subject of literary study must be clarified. The role of the instructor/ investigator and the selection of literary curricula are the cornerstones in this debate.

I. QUESTIONING THE CONCEPT OF THE LITERARY CANON

Aside from the great post-colonial attention being given nowadays to such pressing issues, even mainstream Western critics are considering

Tahrir Khalil Hamdi (1- 22) ®X}R |¶{U Z¶ZRK) 1_ 22(


a much needed reorientation in English studies in Western institutions. In their important book Criticism and Culture, Robert Con Davis and Ronald Schleifer (1991) agree with Shoshana Felman's idea that there should be a shift from the teaching of literature for the sole purpose of the transmission of culture to studying literature as cultural critique—that which "examines the conditions and realization of discourse in its various groundings" (p. 222). This shift would entail critiquing a particular text's mode of existence, rather than treating it as a sacred object belonging to a fixed canon. Accordingly, the once canonized text is thrown into flux and "teaching uncovers the conditions of knowledge," (p. 222) how and why a certain discourse came to be.

The role of the instructor/ investigator, however, would not be limited to identifying the "conditions of knowledge," but of course should and necessarily must get into the realm of making ethical and political choices. The instructor/ investigator makes political and ethical choices when he/ she chooses to teach certain texts and not others, certain theories and not others. According to Davis and Schleifer (1991), the "practice of literary study itself is always forming canons, is always a cultural activity…the practices of criticism determi[ne] the objects of study" (p. 224). Davis and Schleifer, however, distinguish between criticism and critique by arguing that critique is more "self-consciously framed in this activity" (Ibid).

Thus understood, when the instructor is not an active participant in the cultural critique process, his very existence is called into question. His role becomes the passive transmission of a canon designed elsewhere to suit the needs and aims of its designer. The word "canon" in itself suggests something sacred and unchangeable; in terms of literary study, this would entail being imprisoned within the confines of a strict English tradition in the Arnoldian sense. This is the same canon that is represented by F. R. Leavis' "great tradition" or Eliot's tradition which can change or reshuffle ever so slightly to allow the entrance of a new work that meets the standards of Eliot himself. Critique calls for "social, linguistic and ideological interrogations" of literature and literary theory (Davis and Schleifer 1991:



227). It is indeed imperative to view literary texts as "cultural discursive practices," (Ibid: 228) thus allowing for an interrogative critique of a text's discourse. When literary study becomes cultural critique, there is a possibility for reform, but if the object of literary study is simply the transmission of a canon, then there is no room for change and no chance of dislodging the dominant ideology or paradigm of thought.

Consider the following aim as written in a syllabus for a course on Shakespeare at a private Jordanian university: "Selections of Shakespeare's pre-1600 poetic and dramatic works are studied in the light of literary developments of his time so as to project the prominence of his artistic and literary genius" (Zaytoonah University Course Description Booklet: 2001). The assumptions made in the above statement are that literature exists outside of culture, and that literature should be confined to the realm of aesthetics and is altogether oblivious to ethics. The instructor, in this particular case, will take an appreciative, rather than an interrogative stance. Are Shakespeare's plays devoid of social behavior structured in a particular culture? Didn't Shakespeare hold the mirror up to nature? Are his plays merely an interplay of aesthetic elements devoid of cultural and (why not?) political dimensions? The instructor in the above case would probably be a passive transmitter of culture; he does not possess his own subjectivity, which is crucial in the investigative act and whose very nature entails an active involvement in the interpretative process.

According to Davis and Schleifer (1991) , the investigator or subject of literary study belongs to a specific culture and historical period and is necessarily molded in his/ her particular cultural, historical and ideological clay (pp. 229-230). Cultural studies then come to exist when the instructor turns into an investigator and advances his own subjectivity in relation to the discourse of a text, which is itself a cultural discursive practice. Therefore, the adequate stance to take is the one of a "cultured" subject. Davis and Schleifer elaborate thus:

The investigator then represents him—or herself in the activity of cultural discourse. Never simply personal, the subjective moment—the



situating and constructing of a subject at a historical juncture—is a crucial reference for cultural studies in that it is the rigor of critique that this model has instead of "disinterestedness" or "objectivity. " (1991: 229-230)

This means that cultural studies programs involve interestedness, activity and subjectivity which allows for a true critique of a culture by means of the text's discourse. Barbara Harlow (1987) advances a similar argument in her brilliant book Resistance Literature by drawing on Ghassan Kanafani's study Literature of Resistance in Occupied Palestine: 1948-1966 in which Kanafani denies the existence of "academic objectivity" or "scientific dispassion" and, in fact, rejects this criterion as a basis for literary study (Harlow 1987: 3). Departments of literature cannot insulate themselves from political and cultural movements in the name of a false objectivity in scholarship. Harlow is absolutely right to argue in favor of Armand Mattelart's proposition of having literature and theory succumb to the criterion of relevancy: "the very notion of theory does not escape the contingency of the criteria of relevance which each culture elaborates for it…" (Harlow 1987: 28). Relevance is the criterion which should be relied upon for the shaping of a literary and theoretical corpus. When this criterion is absent, the poetic instinct is to start writing on the walls, but the canon now being taught is neither adequate nor relevant and appears to be a "big joke on peeling walls. " Frederic Jameson claims that the aim of an "aesthetic of cognitive mapping" is to "endow [the student] with some new heightened sense of [his] place in the global system" (qtd. in Harlow 1987: 13).

It is then the ethical responsibility of the "subject of knowledge" to uncover the power relations and assumptions of the text. Homi Bhabha's Nation and Narration (1990) emphasizes the dynamics of nation, culture and power relations within any given narrative. His work shows how a literary text is a place of contestation and reveals the ethics behind the aesthetics. For feminist and post-colonial critics alike, this endeavor becomes more than a literary or critical debate per se, but a matter of survival. The cultural critic works within an institution in order to interrogate and uncover the assumptions and ethics of a foreign literary



text and not merely to transmit its aesthetics. Contestation, argue Davis and Schleifer, "defines culture as well as cultural studies" (2001: 232).

According to such arguments, our foreign literature departments need to dispose of canons, or at least what Stephanie Newell (2001) calls, "a nation-centered 'canon' of literature" (p. 754) in the Arnoldian sense. Canons are transcendent and universal, but culture is historical. Cultural studies are deeply entrenched in culture and history, and any critique would by necessity have to start with the historical moment. The object of literary study becomes in a real sense critique, not canonization. Critique is an altogether more fluid process that unmasks the ethics behind the aesthetics. The text makes many suppositions, assumptions and draws many conclusions that have the effect of maintaining an oppressive status quo. We cannot continue to ignore the fact that assumptions are structured in cultures. The canon implies a stability that does not exist in cultures. Raymond Williams argues that "a culture while it is being lived, is always in part unknown, in part unrealized. The making of a community is always an exploration…" (qtd. in Davis and Schleifer 1991: 234). This concept of culture can easily be applied to literary study—to accept a universal, transcendent reality means there can be no contestation, no reversal, and no change in the status quo.

It is obvious that a reassessment of the aims of foreign literary study at Arab universities is in order in the light of new challenges and changes in curricula that are imposed upon us from the outside. We are asked to be neutral and objective and not to look for politics in literature. Some may argue that Shakespeare, for example, is not political, so why should we drag him into this debate anyway. Ruby Cohn insists that "The Tempest was created by Shakespeare to harm no one" (qtd. in Cartelli 1999: 87). Whether Shakespeare's plays are directly political or not may be debatable, but one cannot deny the fact that it is not only Shakespeare that has been put to political uses historically, but even the idea of establishing departments of English in the British empire previously was in essence a political gesture. Literature in many ways has played the role of the accomplice, furthering the aims of the



colonizer by producing a more "cultured," domesticated and more easily colonized "Other. " A few historical examples may help elucidate this point. In his essay entitled, "The Beginnings of English Literary Study in British India," Gauri Viswanathan (1995) explains how British colonial officials hoped to secure the obedience of the native Indians by means of intensive educational programs which concentrated on the teaching of Western literature. This literature would be presented to the "natives" as objective, universal, and rational" (Viswanathan 1995: 434-435). Thus, English literature, and specifically texts by Shakespeare, Addison, Bacon, Locke, and Adam Smith would keep the natives under "psychological" control (Viswanathan 1995: 435) and enable the English not only to colonize the land, but also the mind. Texts which might encourage native dissent would be excluded from the literary diet.

British education policies in India were designed by Thomas Macaulay (1995) who in "Minute on Indian Education" in 1835 outlined the aims behind the ideological teaching of English literature. English literature, as Macaulay thought, is more valuable than the Indian's own literature, and English curricula would result in "prejudices overthrown…. knowledge diffused…taste purified" (Macaulay 1995: 429). It is interesting to note here, as clearly revealed by Macaulay's various statements, that the imperial mentality and ideology begin with a racist premise of the superiority of the colonialist over racially and culturally inferior masses. Supposedly, the barbarous element in the Indian character would be sanitized by English literature. In a similar neo-colonial gesture, Arab children's textbooks today need to be "purified" of undesirable elements that simply do not suit Western aims, and English departments at Arab universities need to instill Western values and civilization, thus making the role of the colonizer easier. In this case, Macaulay's aim for India's education policies can be realized in the Arab world and that is to create: "a class of persons, [Arab]" (the original word is Indian) "in blood and color, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect" (Macaulay 1995: 430). Such statements show, in fact, that the aim of English literary study is not the innocent endeavor of spreading knowledge for the sake of knowledge, or



art for art's sake, but as Viswanathan (1995) points out, such programs were, and I would maintain, are still being used as a "strategy of containment" (p. 437).

II. ASSUMPTIONS MADE BY THE WESTERN LITERARY TEXT

Impetuous son that tree young and strong That tree there In splendid loneliness amidst white and faded flowers That is Africa your Africa That grows again patiently obstinately And its fruit gradually acquires The bitter taste of liberty.

David Diop from "Africa"

Diop's patiently growing tree can only thrive in a healthy African environment, a "decolonized" atmosphere, metaphorically speaking. A first step towards a decolonization of the mind involves uncovering the assumptions made by colonial discourse, which prevails in a large portion of the English literary canon being taught at schools and universities of the post-colonial world. Shakespeare's plays, which are still being taught as part of a sacred canon of literature at Arab universities, are currently being hotly contested on the post-colonial stage. In his important book entitled Repositioning Shakespeare, Thomas Cartelli (1999) discusses the post-colonial reaction to Shakespeare's plays, especially The Tempest and Othello. Many critics in the non-Western interpretive community see in Shakespeare's plays the archetypal master/ slave relationship that has been later rehearsed, more or less controversially, in texts by Joseph Conrad, Rudyard Kipling, E. M. Forster, Albert Camus, and more recently, Doris Lessing and Nadine Gordimer. It is Cartelli's belief that The Tempest "has made seminal contributions to the development of the colonialist ideology through which it is read" (Cartelli 1999: 89). The colonialist presumption underlying this text and upon which imperialist ideology is formulated is that the savage non-Western "Other," as represented by Caliban in the



play, is incapable of being civilized. It is the role of the Western self and master, as represented by Prospero, to bring civilization to the intractable savage. Prospero fails in his endeavor to civilize Caliban: "A devil, a born devil, on whose nature/ Nurture can never stick" (4. 1. lines 188-189) , a statement that has resonated throughout Western colonial history, culture and the literature of the colonial period and beyond.

The problem the post-colonial critic has with such literary relationships is the assumption of white superiority and high-mindedness, on the one hand, and nonwhite inferiority and savagery, on the other. This assumption is at the core of Western colonialist thinking. The European/ American overlord cloaks himself in the robes of humanity, nobility and civilization. The French colonialist spoke of the "mission civilisatrice"; Conrad writes in Heart of Darkness that the conquest of the earth is "not a pretty thing when you look into it too much. What redeems it is the idea only. An idea at the back of it; not a sentimental pretence but an idea; and an unselfish belief in the idea—something you can set up, and bow down before, and offer a sacrifice to…. " (pp. 69-70). This is, as Edward Said (1994) points out in Culture and Imperialism, “the rhetoric of power [that] all too easily produces an illusion of benevolence when deployed in an imperial setting," (p. xix) and this rhetoric has been historically used in politics as well as literature. It is the same twenty-first century idea which brings the hope of democracy to the "inferior masses" by means of brutality and violence in the guise of "wars of freedom and liberation. "

Prospero's failed attempt to bequeath civilization upon Caliban is "psychologically coextensive" with Kurtz's similarly failed attempt in Heart of Darkness (Cartelli 1999: 95). Thus, Prospero is considered by many post-colonial writers, Cesaire and Ngugi most prominently, as the predecessor of countless latter day Prosperos, memsahibs, bwanas, pashas who deal with incorrigible, intractable savages, possessing neither a history nor a language of their own. It is not what Shakespeare's play meant at the moment of its production, but what it was made to mean politically at the moment of its reception. Consider



the example Cartelli (1999) gives of G. Wilson Knight who identifies Prospero with "Plato's philosopher-king" and refers to The Tempest "as a myth of the national soul. " In the same book in which Wilson Knight celebrates The Tempest, he goes on to praise British colonialism, "especially [Britain's] will to raise savage peoples from superstition and blood-sacrifice, taboos and witchcraft and the attendant fears and slaveries, to a more enlightened existence" (qtd. in Cartelli 1999: 98). Cartelli does not fail to point out that Wilson Knight's book was first published in 1947, the year India became independent and reprinted six more times by Oxford University Press (p. 98) , thereby testifying to the fact that literature as a nation's cultural heritage can be used politically to further the aims of the imperial enterprise. Post-colonial critics have targeted Shakespeare precisely because he has long been and continues to be an important part of the colonialist canon as exhibited by British colonial rule in India. In this way, Shakespeare's play is implicated in the imperialistic uses to which it has been put by history. Thus, the transmission of such knowledge without critique would only perpetuate an imperialistic ideology and help maintain the status quo by fixing such oppositions as civilized/ uncivilized, superior/ inferior, colonizer/ colonized. Such teaching methodologies and aims would simply instill within the student a belief and acceptance of his own inferiority.

It is time to reevaluate the foreign literary canon and reconsider the aims of English departments at Arab universities. The danger embodied in a nation centered canon that aims at the glorification of a specific culture cannot continue to be ignored by Arab scholars.. In an introductory survey course in English literature, the editor of a book entitled English and Western Literature (1984) writes: "Throughout this world-wide community, the global village, people continue to look to British literature for a glorious tradition that is still growing and seeking new directions" (p. 455). One must consider, however, exactly what is being transmitted to Arab students besides the glory of England. This is not to say that Arab universities should not teach Western literature, but it does mean that a more critical approach is in order.



Many Western texts have dealt with the character of the Oriental "Other" over the centuries. Shakespeare's Othello comes to ruin because he lacks the faculty of logical thinking. Unlike all of Shakespeares's tragic heroes, Othello's tragic flaw does not seem to be that of a particular individual, but the tragic flaw of his race and culture since this flaw seems to arise from his Moorish background, a fact that Shakespeare does not ignore. Othello's background is fore grounded; therefore, it is difficult to think of Othello in the same vein as a Hamlet or a Lear, for example. Othello's flaws (lack of logic and intellect, wild nature and so on) are inevitably linked to his race and culture as the following aside by Iago suggests: "The Moor is of a free and open nature,/ That thinks men honest that but seem to be so,/ And will as tenderly be led by th'nose/ As asses are" (1. 3 lines 393-396). And that is what the much more intelligent Venetian does; he takes advantage of the Moor's naiveté and irrationally passionate nature.

The Arab student should understand that the character in the story, play or poem is a Western representation of the Arab, the Muslim, the Turk, the African, the Indian and not the reality. Sometimes the unwitting student may be trapped into thinking that this representation is true; the danger lies not in the Western representation of the Oriental per se, but rather if the Oriental "Other" comes to believe in the Western representation. The danger is real when the Western representation goes unnoticed and unquestioned. Shakespeare's sixteenth century representation of the passionate and illogical Moor is further fortified by the nineteenth century portrayal of the Oriental in Lord Byron's "The Corsair. " In Byron's poem, the white European male is needed in order to free the Muslim female from the mercilessly cruel and profane Muslim male. Byron's Christian European hero, Conrad, is courageous and moral in contrast to his Muslim Turkish foes who are lusty and immoral. Conrad, in his bid to defeat the Pasha Seyd, the lusty Turk, and save the women of the harem, orders his men to: "Oh! Burst the Haram—wrong not on your lives/ One female form—remember—we have wives'' (lines 202-203). Notice how Conrad's attack on the Turks is actually a war of freedom. Conrad has come to free the harem, and he is



careful to give instructions to his men not to harm the women. The Westerner is portrayed as high-minded, moral, merciful and even his war is for freedom. This is why the Oriental Gulnare, Seyd's mistress, ends up falling in love with the chivalric Conrad. Even when Gulnare offers to secretly free Conrad from the Pasha's ruthless grip, Conrad refuses because he follows a strict code of honour that belongs to his Western world. He is a prisoner of war, and it is morally right that he remain so. Gulnare, like Othello, is ruled by her passion which ultimately forces her to kill her tyrannical lover, Pasha Seyd, an act that horrifies Conrad, Seyd's foe:

That spot of blood, that light but guilty streak, Had banished all the beauty from her cheek! Blood he had viewed—could view unmoved—but then It flowed in combat, or was shed by men! (lines 426-429)

Again Conrad thinks and acts according to a strict European code of honour, something that does not exist in Gulnare's Muslim world. Conrad could accept Seyd's blood to be spilled in combat—then he would be "unmoved," but Gulnare's unjust Oriental ways weigh too heavily on his European conscience. Conrad's conscience could only allow him "To smite the smiter with the scimitar; such is my weapon—not the secret knife" (lines 363-364). This idea of just warfare ("To smite the smiter with the scimitar…") is presumably absent from the world of the Oriental, who only understands the "the secret knife. " Thus, this unjust and immoral mentality is deeply entrenched in the Oriental psyche.

Byron's portrayal of Oriental warfare is a theme often harped upon by the Western media of the twenty-first century. Gulnare's "secret knife" has become the twenty-first century weapon of the Muslim "terrorist" as Josef Joffe points out in his political article entitled "Asymmetric Warfare" in which he writes:

Take the Palestinians of the intifadeh. Against their assault rifles, Israeli Merkava tanks and F-16 attack planes can achieve little, for a democratic nation is loath to use 120-



mm rounds or laser-guided bombs as its soldiers face killers in the street sheltering behind women and children.

(Newsweek, September 24, 2001: 36)

According to the above description, Israel, the decent, high-minded democratic nation, follows in the tradition of the highly chivalric and moral Conrad, who is horrified by the "secret knife" of Gulnare. Similarly, Israel is loath to use its advanced weaponry against the Palestinian "killers" because these loathsome creatures hide behind women and children. Conrad's concern for the women of the Pasha's harem is paralleled by Israel's concern for women and children. Terrorism, then, seems to be a time-honoured tradition of the Oriental "Other" as evidenced by the publication of blasphemous cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him. These cartoons, which emphasize the themes of terrorism, profanity and so on, are indeed part of an archive of knowledge that is passed down from one generation to the next. Edward Said writes in Orientalism (1978):

Most important, such texts can create not only knowledge but also the very reality they appear to describe. In time such knowledge and reality produce a tradition, or what Foucault calls a discourse, whose material presence or weight, not the originality of a given author, is really responsible for the texts produced out of it. (p. 94)

It is this tradition that produces a reality that the Arab student and instructor must safeguard against. Said believes that this endeavour is not innocent; the West has not simply set out to discover the East. This intellectual curiosity is bent on creating a new reality which the "Other" will believe; it is "a Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient" (Said Orientalism, l978: 3). Such texts should not be dealt with solely on the basis of their artistic merits. Texts are culturally and historically determined. It is essential to uncover the assumptions made by these texts, the "realities" they attempt to establish and the histories they try to make and erase.



III. THE ERASURE OF THE NATIVE'S HISTORY IN THE WESTERN TEXT

As Thomas Cartelli (1999) perceptively points out in his discussion of Shakespeare's Tempest, Prospero is especially incensed at Caliban's "claim to a history and inheritance which imply a state of equality" and not at Caliban's attempted rape of Miranda (p. 101). In fact, the colonialist refusal to admit that the "Other" has a history is bent on erasing that history since to recognize it would not only imply that the native "Other" is the white man's equal, but would cast a shadow on the whole imperial enterprise. The Westerner's very existence in the land of the "Other" is questioned, interrogated by history itself. The erasure of the historical context from literature is an imperialist project serves the purpose of maintaining an oppressive status quo which Arab scholars and teachers must safeguard against in their choice of curricula and teaching strategies.

One such example of the erasure of the native's history is Albert Camus' novel The Stranger, which has been traditionally taught as an existentialist novel with no historical or political implications whatsoever. It is my belief that the novel makes several assumptions that are political at the core. Mersault is presented to us as a "stranger," not because he is a Frenchman living in Algeria which is populated by nameless Arabs, but because he did not cry at his mother's funeral. The novel's existential philosophy does not present the reader with an explanation of Mersault's presence in Algeria. History is present but absent. This absence of presence naturalizes Mersault's French existence in Algeria. It is because of a historical fact that The Stranger is set in Algeria. But the historical detail of this presence is referenced out of the novel, making the presence of the French characters in this setting natural. Thus, the naturalization or normalization of this incongruent situation is established by leaving out historical detail. The reader is not meant to question this presence because the narrative presentation makes it a non-issue. Algeria belongs to Mersault just as much as France belongs to him. The Arab is an intruder upon the sensuous happiness and peace that represents Mersault's world. The presence of the unnamed



Arab violently disrupts Mersault's harmonious relationship with his (Mersault's) environment. The reader (along with the Arabs of Algeria) is robbed of a historical context that is imperative for understanding the dynamics of the literary and historical relationship between the named French characters and the nameless Arabs.

My reading of Camus' novel would probably be labeled "political" or "propaganda" by many Western critics who are proponents of the "art for art's sake" formula. They would call for a more "objective" or "purely literary" reading. Their existential reading of this text like that of Jean Paul Sartre is apolitical; Sartre, commenting on The Stranger when it was first published in 1942, states that this novel presents us with "chance, death, the irreducible pluralism of life and truth, the unintelligibility of the real—all these are the extremes of the absurd" (qtd. in Harlow 1987: 17). Sartre's reading of the novel, however, would be regarded by Ngugi as part of the Western writer's "mania for man without history" (qtd. in Harlow 16-17). In fact, this dehistoricizing tendency has the effect of silencing the "Other" in the text of the European. Why does Mersault kill the Arab? Why is Mersault in Algeria? Is it by chance that Mersault happened to be in Algeria, as Sartre would have us believe? Not only are we robbed of a historical context as readers, but the very humanity of the Arab in the novel is nonexistent since he only appears to us as a distant stranger, a stranger in his own land. We do not want Mersault to be tried for killing the Arab. We are meant to sympathize with Mersault, an honest man living in an absurd and incomprehensible world. What stance is left for the reader to take?

Conrad's Indian natives similarly cannot lay claim to a history in his novel Nostromo. The only history that Conrad recognizes for Costaguana is that of the European. At the outset of Nostromo, Conrad introduces us to the port city of Sulaco, which had been of no significance before the Europeans put it on the world map. Conrad simply uses Costaguana as a setting for the drama of Nostromo's European characters in the same way Camus uses Algeria as backdrop for his French characters with one difference being that Camus' Arab characters are so insignificant that they do not even deserve the reader's



scorn as do Conrad's barbaric native mobs. Working within the same ideological paradigm is the white South African writer Nadine Gordimer who shows sympathy for the native but fails to provide him with a history which of course would call into question her own existence and identity in South Africa. Gordimer's black African character "Old Boy" in her short story "The Train from Rhodesia" is exploited by the white man but how that situation came to be is a point that Gordimer does not wish to consider within the scope of her story. The history of the "Old Boy" is muted; instead we get a story of the guilty conscience of a white South African woman. Such gaps in information are intentionally filled in by post-colonial writers who position the native in his homeland and endow him with a name, history and rich culture, albeit a culture with its weaknesses as well as its strengths. The native in post-colonial literature comes out of the background and takes his rightful place as a main actor in the struggles of his people. One must not overlook the fact that the exclusion of the colonized people's history was a political and ideological tactic before it became a literary one. Any form of resistance to occupation and colonization is fashionably termed "terrorism" nowadays, an argument made "plausible" by excluding the historical dimension—that is by uprooting the cause and dealing with the effect.

The Western created "terrorist" is a rebel without a cause or history. Likewise, Conrad's native mobs in Nostromo have no cause; the reader does not understand why this population of rascals acts in such an erratic and barbaric way. In fact, we, like Decoud, the respectable young man of Parisian origins, come to condone any violence used against these thugs. Decoud says in a letter to his sister: "We had an awful riot—a sudden outbreak of the populace" (p. 205) and "I have also fired at the mob from the windows of the club…[the] enraged mob" (p. 206). Any violence used against such "pestilence" is right and part of "civilization's fight," a phrase used by the American President George Bush in his "State of the Union" address to the American Congress in September 2001. Native dissent is never resistance but thuggery or terrorism. That the native town is a place of hunger and desperation and is "crouching" and "on its knees" and can only be occupied by "niggers and dirty arabs" (Fanon 1961: 30)



presumably has nothing to do with the angry mobs who want to dislodge the occupier and take his place. That the "dirty arab" is stripped of his identity, history and humanity has nothing to do with the violence he wants to perpetrate against his executioner. This knowledge which would provide a better understanding of Kipling's and Forster's Indians, Camus' Arabs, Conrad's Africans, and Lessing's and Gordimer's South Africans is very conveniently excluded since it may endow the native with a cause, the text with a context and the savage with a language with which he can break his oppressive silence. This unnatural ideologically-motivated separation of literature from the world, culture and history will have devastating results upon the future of the "post-colonial" subject. It is not that Caliban is "a born devil, on whose nature/ Nurture can never stick, but rather it is precisely because Caliban had been previously nurtured in his own culture that Prospero's nurturing of Caliban can never stick. Similarly, the native's desire to use violence against the settler is better understood when the reader comes into contact with a history he had not previously known as we have in Ngugi wa Thiongo's short story "The Martyr. " Not only do we sympathize with the native African character whose history is very clearly presented, but we can even justify his desire to kill the white settler woman. We are presented with a native with a just cause in Ngugi's story, which disappears in "sympathetic" European or white South African literature like that of Nadine Gordimer.

IV. A MUCH NEEDED CHANGE

…our part To murmur name upon name As a mother names her child ........... Now and in time to be, Wherever green is worn, Are changed, changed utterly: A terrible beauty is born.

William Butler Yeats from "Easter 1916"



I hope to have shown by the above discussion the dire need for Arab scholars, teachers and critics to "change utterly," to borrow a phrase from Yeats, their teaching strategies and to reassess the foreign literary canon in light of the cultural, political, economic and military invasion we are now facing. What, then, should be the object of literary study? Literary study must be part and parcel of a wider cultural studies program, and this entails critique as defined earlier in this paper. The text must be interrogated, assumptions and presumptions uncovered, not simply transmitted as part of the "art for art's sake" formula. The text is, as Said (1991) argues in The World, the Text and the Critic," "affiliated" and the work of a literary critic should be to uncover the affiliations of the text by which he means how:

a text maintain[s] itself as a text, and this is covered by a range of circumstances: status of the author, historical moment, conditions of publication, diffusion and reception, values drawn upon, values and ideas assumed, a framework of consensually held tacit assumptions, presumed background. (pp. 174-175)

There is no denying that we live in what Eleanor Wilner terms a "crisis culture" which entails a "powerful longing for a radical inversion, or reversal, of the prevailing status quo in fulfillment of the biblical notion that "the last shall be first," (qtd. in Behrendt 1986: 260) a phrase also used by Frantz Fanon (1961) in his seminal book The Wretched of the Earth in order to describe a reversal in the colonizer/ colonized relationship. What is needed is just such a reversal of our aims in teaching foreign literatures: a change from what Northrop Frye describes as "delicate learning" in reference to the work of the New Criticism (Davis and Schleifer Criticism and Culture 1991: x) —that is the transmission of culture—to what Mathew Arnold derogatorily calls "terrible learning, which discovers so much" in his criticism of Francis Newman's translation of Homer's Iliad. Arnold's objection to what he calls "terrible learning" is that it questions what is, from his point of view, natural and universal—i.e. the "truth" of the Iliad and positions it within historical time (Ibid pp.



1-2). Davis and Schleifer are right to invert the meaning of Arnold's concept of "terrible learning" into something positive and much needed. The aim of literary study should be terrible, not delicate, critique, not transmission. We need provocative theory and literature which, in the words of Anthony Easthope, "unfixes the solidity of the old hierarchies," (qtd in O'Brien 1996: 7) and which would "provide necessary nourishment" for today's and tomorrow's generations and not simply be "an occasion for discourse among critics" (Christian 1995: 458).

V. RECOMMENDATIONS AND CONCLUSIONS:

In the light of the current situation at Arab universities, it is an absolute necessity to consider several essential changes in the teaching of Western literature. First of all, teaching methodologies should not emphasize form at the expense of content. The literary text is more than a verbal icon; a text has a context that needs to be analyzed and understood. The assumptions of the text must be uncovered. The very foundations of the West's great archive of knowledge on the East must be interrogated, critiqued and overturned.

Secondly, a "World Literature in English Department" or a "Postcolonial Studies Department" would be more feasible than the traditional and colonially-minded "English Department" for the purposes of the Arab student. A world literature in English department can consider texts originally written in English or in translation from all over the world, such as England, the United States, Europe, Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa, the Arab world, Australia, China, Japan and so on. Only then can the student gain a more comprehensive and balanced view of literature in English, thus allowing for a true sharing of knowledge and experiences amongst peoples and cultures, instead of concentrating on a nation-centered canon as do most Arab universities that teach foreign literatures. The University of Jordan, for example, offers England I, England II, England III and England IV courses, covering all the periods of the development of literature from England at the B. A. level and the "American Studies Program" at the M. A. level. One wonders whether this is really education or indoctrination.



Thirdly, Arab scholars need to accelerate the process of translating Arabic texts into English in order to make these texts more accessible to other world literature departments or postcolonial studies departments around the world. Such texts could become a part of a much needed counter discourse movement that must inevitably originate in the postcolonial world. Funds should be channeled into such endeavours rather than into American studies programs that aim to create Macaulay's tamed "native," Indian or Arab in blood and Anglo-American in culture, morals and intellect.

Let us hope that Shakespeare was not foreshadowing the future of the descendants of the Moor when he made Othello kill the "circumcised dog" (5. 2 line 351) in himself as he retold the story of how he slew "the malignant and turbaned Turk" (5. 2 line 349) Isn't it interesting that Shakespeare chose to end Othello's story in this way?

I took by th'throat the circumcise'd dog And smote him thus. He stabs himself. (5. 2 lines 351-353)

A question remains to be asked: Will the Arab scholar play the role of the "circumcised dog" of Shakespeare's Othello and allow his Western-trained "Self" (i. e. the Venetian slayer in Othello) to kill the "Oriental Other/ Self" (as reenacted by Othello at the end of the play) , so he/ she can belong to an elite community of Western scholarship (i. e. Othello's Venice) or allow for the birth of "terrible learners" who are courageous enough to "discover so much" and bestow upon the Moor his long lost dignity? It is now time for Arab scholars to change, change utterly and pave the way for the long overdue birth of "the terrible beauty of literary study. "

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