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Inscribing the Arab Self:Butrus al-Bustani andParadigms of SubjectiveReformStephen Paul SheehiPublished online: 28 Jun 2010.

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British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies (2000), 27(1), 7–24

Inscribing the Arab Self: But½rusal-Bustan õ and Paradigms ofSubjective ReformSTEPHEN PAUL SHEEHI*

ABSTRACT This article attempts to understand But½rus al-Bustan õ ’s Naf õ rSuriyya as a foundational text in the creation of a new discourse of modern Arabsubjectivity. More speci� cally, the study examines the epistemology that circum-scribes al-Bustan õ ’s conception of the modern Syro-Lebanese Arab citizen. Thearticle highlights the nomenclature fundamental to al-Bustan õ ’s formula for‘concord and unity’ and ‘love of the nation’ in the wake of the inter-confessiona lviolence, or civil war, of 1860 in Lebabnon and Damascus. In doing so, itreveals how conceptions of Arab self-hood are enframed by a binary of ‘success’and ‘failure’. While identifying native ‘failure’, al-Bustan õ displaces it intoseveral different agents in his attempt to salvage his conception of an ‘ideal’native subject. Inevitably, the author demonstrates, this ideal national subjectthat Naf õ r narrates is mired in an inescapable Hegelian, master–slave, strugglewith the West.

Introduction

These intellectuals, these ‘new buds’ in the East, have become numerous in everycommunity and every religion in the East. They know the detriment of mixing worldlyaffairs with religious matter in an age such as our own. They have come to seek a sacredand respected place for their religions on the side, so that they can master unity—realunity—and keep up with the torrent of European civilization and be able to compete withits people. If they cannot put religion aside and master unity, this current will pull themdown all together and make them all subjects to those other than themselves.1

In his dedication to his controversial book on secularism, Islam, and thephilosophy of Ibn Rushd, Farah½ Ant½un dedicates his researches to ‘the newintellectual seedlings’ of the East for their efforts in establishing a modern,secular civil society. Ant½un was writing from the position of an early socialist;yet still, the passage above concisely articulates key principles within a seculardiscourse particularly common to Young Ottomanist Arab intellectuals at theturn of the century. These principles, however, have a clear genealogy that canbe mapped to the Levant about half a century earlier. That is, although thededication to Ibn Rushd wa Falsafatuhu would be written some years later and

* Assistant Professor of Arab Studies, American University of Sharjah. The author would like to thank MichaelBeard, Miriam Cooke, Alexander Knysh, Brinkley Messick, and Ara Sara� an for their most conscientious andrigorous readings, as well as Marguerite and Jad for their support. Thanks are also extended to the anonymousreaders of this article, whose comments were critical but unbiased. An abbreviated version of this article, entitled‘Unpacking Modern Arab Subjectivity’ was presented at the Middle Eastern Literature Seminar at HarvardUniversity, Cambridge, MA, 15–16 March 1996.1 Farah½ Ant½un, Ibn Rushd wa Falsafatuhu, (Alexandria: al-Jam¨iyya, 1903), dedication.

1353–0194 print/1469–3542 online/00/010007–18 Ó 2000 British Society for Middle Eastern Studies

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at some distance away in Alexandria, we can detect the memory of inter-sectarian violence of Ant½un’s homeland.

Written one year prior to Ant½un’s birth, Mikha©il Mishaqah provides oneaccount of the inter-confessiona l violence of 18602 in his chronicle-memoirs,al-Jawab ¨ala Iqtirah½ al-Ah½bab.3 Mishaqah was a physician who had convertedto Protestantism and, while a resident of Damascus, was a member of theBeirut-based al-Jam¨iyya al-Suriyya li©l-¨Ulum wa©l-Funun.4 For this observer,the violence is clearly one sided; Christian houses were burned, churches andmonasteries were destroyed, property looted, and monks, priests, and civilianskilled.5 Despite this inequity, he attributes the violence not only to Muslim‘fanaticism’ but also to ‘special causes that grew out of the conduct of ignorantChristians when the intelligent among them were no longer able to curb them’.6

This analysis regarding the causes of the ‘events of 1860’ (ah½dath 1860) is notoriginal, but lifted almost verbatim from the most signi� cant contemporaneouscommentary on the violence, entitled Naf õ r Suriyya (Trumpet of Syria)7 byal-Mu¨allim But½rus al-Bustan õ (1819–1883).8

2 Most recently, Leila Tarrazi-Fawaz has documented the violence in Mount Lebanon and Damascus, assertingthat concurrent social and economic transformations eroded the traditional power structure and motivated the civiland inter-confessiona l discontent. See An Occasion for War (London: I.B. Tauris, 1994). For the relationshipbetween confessionalism and economy during the period, see Dominique Chevellier, La societe du Mont Libana l’epoque de la revolution industrielle (Paris: P. Geunther, 1971); Leila Fawaz, Merchants and Migrants inNineteenth Century Beirut (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983); Samir Khalaf, Persistence and Changein Nineteenth Century Lebanon (Beirut: AUB Press, 1979); Waddah½ Sharara, Fõ Us½ul al-t½a ©ifõ (Beirut: Daral-T½ al õ ¨ah), and, the often overlooked, I.M. Smilianskaya, al-H½ arakat al-Fallah½ õ ya fõ Lubnan (Beirut: Daral-Farab õ , 1972).3 Mikha©il Mishaqah, al-Jawab ¨ala Iqtirah½ al-Ah½bab, written in 1873, published by Asad Rustum as Mukhtarat

al-Jawab ¨ala Iqtirah½ al-Ah½bab (Beirut: Wizara al-Tarbiya al-Wat½aniyya, 1955). Rustum’s source however isincomplete. Brandan Wheeler has adroitly pieced together a ‘complete’ narrative of Mishaqah’s writings in hisotherwise inappropriately titled translation of the chronicle-memoir , Murder, Mayhem, Pillage, and Plunder(Albany: SUNY Albany, 1988).4 Al-Jam¨iyya al-Suriyya li©l-¨Ulum wa©l-Funun (The Syrian Society of the Arts and Sciences) was a

literary-scienti� c circle centred around the American Protestant mission. Al-Mu¨allim But½rus al-Bustan õ was itssecretary and also the editor of a collection of the papers presented at the Society’s meetings. Written by Americanmissionaries and native intellectuals, the compilation included six articles by al-Bustan õ , as well as an article byMishaqah himself on superstition, entitled ‘Fõ¯ Sa¨d wa©l-Nah½s wa©l-¨Ayn’. Republished by Yusuf Quzmakhur õ ,¨A¨mal al-Jami¨yya al-Suriyya li©l-¨Ulum wa©l-Funun 1847–1852, (Beirut: Dar al-H½ amra©, 1990).5 Mayhem, p. 244. Rustum’s Mukhtarat curiously ends immediately before Mishaqah’s account of the war of

1860.6 Ibid., p. 244.7 See But½rus al-Bustan õ , Naf õ r Suriyya ([Beirut: s.n., [1861]), republished as Naf õ r Suriyya (Beirut: Dar Fikr

li©l-Abh½ ath, 1990). For a truncated analysis of Naf õ¯r Suriyya, see my article ‘Unpacking Arab Subjectivity’ in TheJournal of Arab Studies (Spring) 1998.8 Al-Mu ¨allim But½rus al-Bustan õ studied at the renowned Maronite seminary ‘Ayn Waraqa. After teaching at

¨Ayn Waraqa, he tutored American Protestant missionaries in Beirut, eventually converting to Protestantism justas fellow ¨Ayn Waraqa alumnus Ah½mad Faris al-Shidyaq and Mishaqah had. Al-Mu¨allim But½rus subsequentlytaught at the Americans’ school in Abeih before moving to Beirut to translate the Bible into Arabic with Eli Smith(1848–1856) and also was the dragoman for the American consul. Al-Bustanõ became the unof� cial leader of thenative Protestant community, leading the protest and, eventually, the rebellion against the American missionarieswho had restricted them from leadership positions in the native church. Gradually distancing himself from themission, he established his own school, al-Madrasa al-Wat½aniyya (the National School), the � rst secular schoolin the Middle East. Among other works, he compiled a comprehensive ‘modern’ Arabic dictionary, Muh½ õ t½ al-Muh½ õ t½(1869), founded the ground-breakin g literary-scienti� c journal al-Jinan (1870–1883) and composed half of the� rst Arabic encyclopedia, Da ©irat al-Ma¨arif (Beirut: Dar al-Ma¨arif, 1876). For a basic biography and reviewof works, see Yusuf Qizmakhur õ , Rajul Sabiq li-¨As½rihi: al-Mu¨allim But½rus al-Bustan õ (Beirut: Bisan,1994/Amman: al-M¨ahad al-Malakõ li©l-Dirasat al-D õ niyya, 1994). For a discussion in English of al-Bustanõ ’ssocial-political views, Albert Hourani’s Arab Thought in the Liberal Age (Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, 1962) is still empirically the most concise. Regarding al-Bustanõ ’s relations with the mission, see ¨Abdal-Latif Tibawi, ‘The American Missionaries in Beirut and But½rus al-Bustanõ ¨ in St Antony’s Papers, No.16(Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1962), pp. 137–182.

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As an intellectual pillar of Beirut’s burgeoning intelligentsi a and bourgeoisie,al-Bustanõ wrote 11 patriotic broad-sheets which he called wat½aniyyat. WhileRifa¨a Ra� ¨ al-T½ aht½aw õ (1801–1873) had used this term to describe his patrioticpanegyrics of Egypt, al-Bustan õ ’s wat½aniyyat could be called, as historian KamalSalibi suggests, ‘advice sheets’ regarding the path to domestic peace and socialreform.9

The � rst wat½aniyya was published in September of 1860, while the last wasissued in April of 1861. The span of time between two broad-sheets wasirregular and could range from 10 days to 2 months. This erratic disseminationof the wat½aniyyat mirrored the diversity between the broad-sheets themselves,which varied in length, theme, and rhetorical tenor. Despite the variation, theseries of ‘bulletins’ or nasharat is bound by a stylistic and ideological uniformitythat is punctuated by each wat½aniyya’s opening address, Ya abna© al-wat½an (‘Ohsons of the nation!’).

For Arab nationalist George Antonius, Naf õ r was a watershed for modern Arabcultural production and social thought. In The Arab Awakening, he describesal-Bustanõ ’s series as:

a small weekly publication … the � rst political journal ever published in the country,[which] was mainly devoted to the preaching of concord between the different creeds andof union in the pursuit of knowledge. For knowledge, he argued week after week in theearnest columns of his paper, leads to enlightenment; and enlightenment, to the death offanaticism and birth of ideals held in common.10

Relying on The Arab Awakening as a reliable, ‘objective’ historical source hasbeen much assailed.11 Indeed, Antonius is incorrect in describing Naf õ r as ajournal or newspaper, let alone the � rst published in Syria.12 Stylisticallycompelling, however, he succinctly outlines the fundamental blueprint forcultural and social renewal offered by Nafõ r, where inter-confessiona l concordand positivis t knowledge lay as the corner stones for the patriotism andenlightenment , and hence, ‘progress and civilization’. This formula for nationalunity squarely locates Nafõ r in a tradition of the national self-critique that wasunderway during al-nahd½a al-¨arabiyya (the Arab Renaissance). In fact, al-Bustan õ can be credited as one of the earliest intellectuals who embarked on acoherent self-analysis of Syrian Arab culture and society. In Naf õ r, as elsewhere,this cultural self-criticism posited that the source of Greater Syria’s nationaldisunity and civil discord originated from its state of cultural decay (inh½ it½at½).

Just as Hourani adjures us to understand The Arab Awakening as an ideologi-cal manifesto,13 this article attempts to understand Naf õ r as a foundationa l

9 See Kamal Salibi, The Modern History of Lebanon (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1965), p. 145.10 See George Antonius, The Arab Awakening (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1939), pp. 49–50.11 For a critical, if not pedantic, reading of Antonius’s work as a historical source, see Ernest Dawn, FromOttomanism to Arabism (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1973); or Sylvie Haim, ‘The Arab Awakening: ASource for the Historian?’, in Welts des Islams, 2 (1953).12 Had õ qat al-Akhbar, established in Beirut in 1856, was the � rst weekly newspaper in Arabic published in GreaterSyria. Its founder and editor was Khalõ l Khur õ , also the author of poetry and social criticism in ¨As½r al-Jad õ d (TheNew Age) and al-Nasha©id al-Fu©adiyya (The Loving Anthems) and founder of al-Mat½ba¨a al-Suriyya (the SyrianPress).13 In his review ‘The Arab Awakening Forty Years Later’, Albert Hourani makes the argument that Antonius’work is an important primary source not for its empirical but rhetorical content, saying that ‘the analysis of‘Arabism’ as an ideology, with all that this implies, is missing from The Arab Awakening, but it is also missingfrom the work of most of its critics’. See Hourani, The Emergence of the Modern Middle East (London: MacmillanPress, 1981), p. 206.

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discursive utterance. That is, we will examine the very epistemology thatcircumscribes al-Bustanõ ’s conception of the modern Syro-Lebanese Arab citi-zen. In doing so, we will reveal how the ‘ideal’ national subject that Naf õ rnarrates becomes mired in an inescapable Hegelian, master–slave struggle withthe West.

The Nomenclature of Reform

In 1859, al-Bustan õ presented a talk to ‘a well-attended assembly of Westernersand native sons in Beirut’.14 This assembly was al-Jam¨iyya al-Suriyya li©l-¨Ulumwa©l-Funun and the oration was Khut½ba f õ Adab al-¨Arab (Lecture on the Cultureof the Arabs). In this lecture, al-Bustan õ formulated an equation for Arab culturaland subjective reform, which Antonius concisely summarizes above. The for-mula maintained a distinct semantic nomenclature that would become essentialto discourses of native reform. The acquisition and mastery of knowledge(al-¨ulum wa©l-ma¨arif),15 al-Bustan õ asserts, is facilitated by the establishment ofcultural infrastructure such as schools, presses, and libraries, which are the keysto socio-cultura l reform (is½lah½), civil order (madaniyya), national success (al-najah½ al-wat½an õ ), social progress (taqaddum), and civilization (tamaddun andh½adara). If reform is to be autogenetic , the Arab subject must possess the desire(raghba) for progress and unity (ittih½ ad). This desire allows the native torecognize the signi� cance of knowledge and exert the ‘efforts’ (juhud) necessaryto master and reproduce it.16

If Khut½ba offers an equation for subjective reform vis-a-vis culture reform,then Nafõ r Suriyya presents formulas for subjective rebirth vis-a-vis socialreform. Al-Bustanõ expands Khut½ba’s propositions in Naf õ r, declaring that the‘desire’ for knowledge does not only create cultural prosperity but also begets‘concord and unity’ (ulfa wa ittih½ ad).17 This national unity and harmony, in turn,produces the conditions for societal reform, thereby leading to the end point of‘civilization’.

The concepts of ‘unity’ and ‘concord’ exist throughout the works of nahd½aintellectuals.18 However, following the violence of 1860, they take on added

14 But½rus al-Bustan õ , Khut½ba f õ Adab al-¨Arab ([Beirut]: s.n., [1859]), in colophon; also published in A¨malal-Jam¨iyya al-Suriyya, op. cit. For a discussion of it, see Yusuf Choueiri’s Arab History and the Nation-State;A Study in Modern Arab Historiography, 1820–1980 (London: Routledge Press, 1989); or Qizmakhur õ , Rajul,pp. 40–47.15 By al-¨ulum wa©l-ma¨arif, al-Bustan õ did limit himself to the classical disciplines like al-insha©, ¨ilm al-falak,or ¨ilm al-� qh. He states in his introduction to his encyclopedia that al-¨ulum wa©l-ma¨ arif include literature, thepolitical sciences like civil and commercial law; the ‘historical sciences’ like geography , ancient and modernhistory, and Greek mythology; the ‘educational sciences’ of algebra and engineering; the natural sciences likebotany, geology, chemistry, and medicine; and ‘the arts and crafts’ including architecture, music, photography,mining, and printing. See Da©irat al-ma¨arif (Tehran: Mat½bu¨at- õ Isma¨iliyya, 1971; 1st edn.), pp. 3–5.16 For an analysis of this ‘formula’ for reform, see my article, ‘Epistemography of the Modern Arab Subject’ inPublic, 16 (Toronto, 1997).17 In an article entitled, ‘Ittih½ ad wa ulfah’ As¨ad Trad expresses the same idiom of al-Bustan õ ’s discourse ofnational ‘progress’. See al-Jinan (Beirut), I (1870), pp. 304–305 and 340–344. Later, his son, Salõ m al-Bustan õ ,develops the idiom in his article ‘al-Ulfa wa©l-Ittih½ ad wa©l-Ta¨aqqul wa la siyyama f õ ©l-Wilayat al-¨Arabiyya©’(Concord, Unity, and Reason in the Arab Provinces’), in al-Jinan, VII (1876), pp. 649–652.18 The concepts are prominent in the Egyptian independence movement. For an example, see Mustafa Kamal’sarticle in ¨Abd al-Lat½õ f Hamza, Adab al-Maqala al-Sah½ a� yya fõ Mis½r (Cairo: Dar al-Fikr al-¨Arab õ , n.d.), 5, p. 115;originally in Kamal’s newspaper al-Liwa©, 2 January 1900.

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force in al-Bustan õ ’s formula for the self and cultural reform. Indeed, al-Bustan õironically states that:

There have been a few dubious gains which the nation has won as a consequence of thecivil violence. Principally, native sons now have the knowledge that their public welfare,and consequently personal welfare, requires the bonds of unity, virtuous concord, andlove to exist between themselves and their communities … Syria and its peoples onlyreached these states of decrepitude, humiliation, and backwardness by demonstratingtheir lack of unity and the paucity of mutual love. They have exhibited a lack of concernfor the welfare of their country and its children, and surrendered themselves to foolish-ness and ignorance, as well as submitted to the power and strength of sectarian,confessional, and familial prejudice and fanaticism …19

Over and over again, al-Bustan õ stresses the centrality of ‘concord and unity’.They are ‘the currency of the nation’ that facilitate economic and socialreproduction, while also directly in struggle with debilitating ‘ignorance’ and‘fanaticism’.20 As we recognize that ‘concord and unity’ are posited by al-Bustan õ as the foundational conditions for national progress (taqaddum) andcivilization (tamaddun), we notice a critical gap in the formulation by whichthey are realized.

The Enacting of ‘You’ (pl.)

Al-Bustan õ ’s Khut½ba is similar to T½ aht½aw õ ’s Manahij al-Albab al-Mis½riyya andKhayr al-D õ n al-Tunis õ ’s Aqwam al-Masal õ k in that it identi� es and analyses thecontemporary socio-cultural state of the nation, but also offers prescriptions forreform. Falling partially into this tradition, it is not a coincidence that Naf õ r’snarrative summons similar topoi such as h½ubb al-wat½an (love of the nation) thatare prominent not only in Khut½ba but also al-T½ aht½aw õ ’s Manahij.21

What distinguishe s Naf õ r from these works is its rhetorical tone and form ofaddress. It is a direct appeal to the peoples of Greater Syria, rather than adiagnosis and a prescription for reform. That is, Khut½ba f õ Adab al-¨Arab is bothdescriptive and prescriptive, presenting a series of constative statements regard-ing the ‘objective’ conditions of the nation’s state of decrepitude and theirredress.

Naf õ r, however, is characterized by a narrative and rhetorical shift. Directlyaddressing his compatriots, the wat½aniyyat function as performative invocationsmeant to incite intercommunal reconciliation and subjective reform.22 This19 Naf õ r Suriyya, IX, p. 48. Citations are as such: tract (wat½aniyya) number is in roman numerals, followed bythe page number found in Naf õ r’s republication (1990). All translations are my own.20 Ibid., VII, p. 35. Al-Bustanõ also writes, ‘We call the attention of the nation’s sons to two issues. The � rst issueis that the reform of their overall condition and their country is dependent on unity, which is accomplished onlythrough personal effort. This is because relying on fate to reform them is like a hungry man relying on feeling� lled if his friend or companion has eaten. Hoping for things to get better on their own is like an ignorant manhoping to become a philosopher if his neighbour or coreligious has studied … Secondly, the demonstration ofinter-communal hate … is very detrimental. It induces the cessation or prevention of unity and concord, uponwhich the people’s and country’s success are both dependent ’ (IX, 54).21 See Rifa¨a Ra� ¨ al-T½aht½aw õ ’s own formula for national ‘progress and civilization’ methodically laid out in hisintroduction to Kitab Manahij al-Albab al-Mis½riyya fõ Mabahij al-Adab al-¨As½riyya (Cairo: s.n., 1869), 2nd edn(Cairo: Mat½ba¨at Sharikat al-Ragha©ib, 1912).22 According to Austin, constative statements are fundamentall y factual and objective truths. They are, to a degree,autonomous ‘utterances’, comprehensibl e even without a speci� c context. Performative statements, however, arecircumstantial and bound to their context for meaning and intelligibility. In other words, performative statementsare contingent on an exterior reference for coherent signi� cation. See J. L. S Austin, How to Do Things with Words(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1962), e.g. pp. 3, 6–8, or 42.

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assertion underscores the move from Khut½ba’s denotative and analytical narra-tive and method to Naf õ r’s connotative and rhetorical stance.23 For example,notice the address and impassioned tenor of al-Bustanõ ’s appeal:

How often have we heard you (pl.) talking about this ruinous event (khirba), the thirdof its kind in a span of less than twenty years? You have tried civil war time after time.You have weighed its pros and cons. But what have you gained? Have any of youbecome a king, an advisor (mushõ r), or a minister (waz õ r)? Have you risen in status andposition? Have you increased your reputation or wealth? What has been the consequenceof violence? Widowhood, orphanhood, and poverty? Degradation (safala), earthly andspiritual destruction, and humiliation? Belittlement of native sons in the eyes of rationalmen (‘uqala’) and foreigners? …

Now then, isn’t it more suitable to your welfare that you exchange your blind preju-dice—which is nothing but a kind name for excessive self-love—with love for the nationand interconfessional friendship (mawadda)? The success of the country (najah½ al-bilad)is achieved only through concord and unity. With them, you can vex reviled Satan,extend the carpet of valour (bisat½ al-muru©a), remember past harmony (ulfa). By them,you can strive to alleviate these calamities and make restitution for this destruction. Youall are one hand in our nation’s interest, and you must realize that some of you are ashield not an enemy to the others.24

The rhetorical tone of this excerpt contrasts Khut½ba as well as the previouslycited passage from wat½aniyya IX. In this passage, the native ‘we’ speaks to thecompatriot ‘you’ (pl.) as opposed to Khut½ba’s reference to ‘the sons of thenation’ in the third-person. The pervasiveness of ‘we’ and ‘you’ (antum) usagein Naf õ r indicates more than a shift to familiar language for rhetorical purposes.Rather, the ‘sons of the nation’, who previously represented a uni� ed nationalcitizenry, are now differentiated. Such a movement suggests that a dialecticalprocess of national self-formation is underway.

The introduction of ‘we’ and ‘you’ represents a bifurcation in nationalselfhood, where the wilful and enlightened native Self disassociates himself fromhis ‘fanatical’ and ‘ignorant’ compatriot Other. This interpretation calls attentionto the dialogia of al-Bustan õ ’s discourse on subjective reform itself.25 Thatis, within the unity of the subject, the self differentiates native failure from

23 Derrida recognizes that constative statements also function within an index of meaning and context. Therefore,they too are subtle ideological utterances, which � nd signi� cance in the same semantic ambiguities as performativestatements. Austin himself calls into question the ‘felicity’ or ‘happiness’ of constative statements, recognizinghow they are contingent on outside signi� cation. (Austin, op. cit. p. 136.) In fact, he explicitly shows how the‘truth or falsity of a statement’, the constantive utterance, ‘depends not merely on the meanings of the words,’particularly in relation to fact, ‘but on what act you were performing in what circumstances’. (Austin, op.cit,pp. 142 and 145.) Irrespective of these acknowledgments , Derrida reveals that Austin still does not relinquish theobjective nature of constative statements, stating that whatever ambiguity that the constative may have arises fromthe process of interpretation not enunciation itself. See Derrida’s article, ‘Signature Event Context’ in Glyph(Baltimore: Vol. I, 1977). As a historical and cultural review, Khut½ba assumes impartiality, and therefore, shouldbe taken, for the time-being, as a series of constative statements. Likewise, as a series of illocutionary andperlocutionary acts, that is, a rhetorical address meant to induce its reader to action, Naf õ¯r can be understood asperformative. (Austin, op. cit., pp. 109–110.)24 Naf õ r, V, pp. 27–28.25 Bakhtin has taught us to recognize the diverse discursive pedigrees and relationships within language anddiscourses. Consequently , we acknowledge the dialogia of Naf õ r’s narrative, its ideological platform, as aheteroglossia of the discourses, or a diverse assemblage of performative and constative statements that point tothe complexity of the subject the text puts forth. See M. M. Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination (Austin: Universityof Texas Press, 1992), e.g. pp. 279 and 291.

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native self-ef� cacy. By doing this, al-Bustan õ is able to detach the ‘successful’native son from the corrupt. By naming the ‘we’ and the ‘you’, an ideal nativeSelf is created, who, on the one hand, extends new possibilitie s for collectivereform, while, on the other hand, disowning his debauched countrymen and theirodious actions.

Just as the word or utterance is dialogic, a unity of competing meanings andpedigrees, the split in subjectivity does not represent two separate subjects butone. This subject exists in two states, that of knowing and that of ignorance. Theyou-plural of Naf õ r vacillates between a term of accusation and a rhetorical termthat enacts a singular national identity. This ‘you’ is one of commonalties:shared culture, history, and language and we see it in the earliest wat½aniyya:

You (antum) all drink one water, breath one air. Your language which you speak, yourearth on which you walk, your welfare and your customs are all one.26

‘You’ transforms the native into a performative subject who acts out theeschatology of his failure. Simultaneously , it represents the very potential toovercome this failure because ‘you’ links the individual to a collective and ashared communal culture, language, and history. By forming an identi� cationbetween the individua l and the collective, a national subject is born. Empoweredby collective will and compelled by communal welfare, this national subject isperformative and constituted by the fact that his27 deeds, or misdeeds, literallyenact the nation. In other words, Naf õ r surpasses the generic descriptions andprescriptions of Khut½ba, Manahij, and Aqwam al-Masalõ k because it summonsthe native to intervene in his own social and political milieu by forsaking localand confessional identities for an a priori collective identity. Bridging the gapbetween confessional and collective identities, antum uni� es a metaphysical,ideal Arab (those who recognize the fraternity and welfare of the nation) witha material native (those who participated in fanaticism and violence), tetheringhim to ‘the nation’ (al-wat½an).

Love of the Nation

We have seen that a process of identi� cation between the individual and thecommunity facilitates the leap from the confessional to national identity. Inaddition to you-plural, the correlation between the nation and its subject isreinforced through another powerful association, that is, the relationship betweenthe members of a family. This metaphor looms large in al-Bustan õ ’s narrative,which states that relationship between the citizen and the nation

is like [the relationship between] members of a family, its father the nation, its motherthe land, its one creator God, and its members from one soil …28

Rather than subordinating the family to the nation or supplanting the primacy ofthe family in the reproduction of society, Naf õ r forms a complementary bondbetween the two through an associative parallelism. For example, al-Bustan õ

26 Naf õ r, I, p. 9.27 While al-Bustan õ was one of the earliest advocates of women’s rights, writing ‘Ta¨lõ m al-Nisa©’ (The Educationof Women) in A¨mal al-Jam¨iyya al-Suriyya, the national subject which he and other intellectuals imagined wasfundamentall y male.28 Naf õ r, VII, p. 38.

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casts the effects of the cultural infrastructure (i.e. unity) in terms of this familiarmetaphor, stating:

The means of acquiring culture, such as through schools, presses, journals, commerce,and the like, tend to increase the mutual attachment (ittis½al) and the closeness of thepeople, making them as one family.29

As we see, the metaphor allows the nation to coopt the bonds of the familywithout displacing it. The most compelling of these bonds is love, the force thatbinds the family. As the central theme of the wat½aniyyat, ‘love of the nation’(h½ubb al-wat½an) is the transcendenta l motive that links the subject to the nation,the performative to the constative , and the metaphysical to the material. Thepolitical, social, emotional, and semantic nexus that this platitude exempli� es isclear in the following passage:

The people of the nation (ahl al-wat½an) have a right to their nation just as the nation hasduties to its people. Among these rights which the nation has for its children, and mostimportant of them, is security for their life, goods, and wealth. Likewise, freedom of theircivil, cultural, and religious rights is important, particularly, freedom of conscience inconfessional matters. In fact, many nations have sacri� ced martyrs for this freedom. Thesons of the nation increase love for their nation when realizing that the country (balad)is their country; that their happiness is its construction and comfort; and that misery isin its ruin and misfortunes. A desire for the nation’s success and enthusiasm for itsprogress are increased in the nation’s sons only if they have a hand in its deeds andparticipate in its welfare. The more the responsibilities in question are put upon them, themore these feelings are strengthened and become resolute. Among the duties whichthe sons of the nation have for their nation is love. It is mentioned in the H½ ad õ th ‘Loveof the nation is from faith’ (h½ubb al-wat½an min õ man). Many are those who spend theirlife and all their money out of love for their nation. There are those who exchange thelove of their country for sectarian fanaticism and sacri� ce the good of their country forpersonal interest. They do not deserve to be considered members of the nation but areenemies of it. Those who do not exert their effort to prevent the realization of the motiveswhich cause harm to the nation, and those who do not exert the effort to ameliorate themafter these terrible actions transpire are also the nation’s enemies. How few are thosesons of this nation who demonstrate love for their nation in these trying days!30

‘Love of the nation’ is the central discursive element in the social andpsychological process by which the self becomes a national subject.31 As wehave seen, this process is one of identi� cation and association where the nativesubject forms a cathexis with the nation, which in turn becomes subjectivity’sraison d’etre. Similar to the effects of you-plural, love bestows propriety and therights of the nation on its subject, making him responsible for its success orfailure. Al-Bustan õ himself acts out this relationship by signing every evocativewat½aniyya as muh½ ibb al-wat½an, ‘lover of the nation’.

Furthermore, the maxim of ‘love of the nation is from faith’ is a crucialinterlocutor in the subject’s investment in what al-Bustan õ determines as ‘thenational welfare’. The aphorism32 links the social (the nation) to the spiritual29 Ibid., XI, p. 69.30 Ibid., IV, p. 22.31 Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet shows that a similar equation involving ‘love of the nation’, ‘civilization’, and nationalunity existed in the process of the formation of Iranian national subjectivity at the turn of the century. See her‘Frontier Phenomenon: Perceptions of the Land in Iranian Nationalism’, in Critique, 10, (1997), pp. 30–36.32 ‘Love of the nation’ even became the motto for the constitutionalist movement in the Ottoman Empire. Salõ$mal-Bustan õ invokes the idiom many times, posing it as diametrically opposite to ‘fanaticism’ (ta¨as½s½ub). For anexample, see his editorial, ¨Ijaba dawa õ h½ubb al-wat½an wa nabdh al-inshiqaq wa ©l-ta¨as½s½ub© in al-Jinan, 9 (1878),pp. 511–513.

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(faith). Such a correlation is not unusual. ‘Love of the nation’ was central, forexample, to al-T½ aht½awi’s platform for cultural reform. Yet for him, national lovewas a religious dictate and a fundamental rule to good civil conduct set by theexample of the Caliph ‘Umar ibn al-Khat½t½ab.33 In the wake of civil war,however, ‘love of the nation’ provides for al-Bustanõ a moral, emotional, andrhetorical bridge between contradictory cultural and social leitmotifs and priori-ties, if not providing a bridge between warring communities themselves. That is,Nafõ r’s formula for national ‘success’ is predicated on the initiative of a wilfulnative subject, who pursues the acquisition of knowledge. Enlightened bylearning, the subject surrenders not his confessional af� liation but his con-fessional antagonism and prejudice, recognizing the sameness of his cross-sectarian brethren. This ‘unity and concord’ among the ‘sons of the nation’‘restores’ a common national identity and, thereby, establishes the socialconditions for the fruition of national ‘progress and civilization’.

Over the Camel’s Hump

The love-axiom supplies a motivation for accepting the primacy of a nationalidentity while also containing a solipsism, which assumes that if one shouldersadditional national duties then one’s love of the nation will increase. Until thispoint, the ‘felicity’, as Austin would say, of Naf õ r’s formula seems fundamen-tally intact. However, al-Bustan õ inlays critical gaps in the process by which ashattered nation becomes ‘reuni� ed’ and rejuvenated. The question is thenimminent: What is to be done if the native subject cannot muster the initiativeto seek knowledge, to recognize commonalties, or to make the leap from faithand family to nation and collective? To redress this lacuna, al-Bustan õ providesa supplemental factor in his equation for reform, one who is extra-subjective .This supplement is a quali� ed and responsible ruler.

The necessity of just and prudent rulers is not strange to Arab intellectuals’formulas for reform. As I stated earlier, they maintain prominence throughoutal-T½ aht½awõ ’s Manahij and al-Tunisõ ’s Aqwam al-Masal õ k. Al-Muwayl õ h½ õ , some40 years later, dedicates a chapter to many of the same notable leaders thatal-Bustanõ had named in Khut½ba, such as Muh½ammad ¨Alõ and the Caliphal-Mans½ur.34 Yet, for al-Bustan õ , the enlightened leader is a linchpin for areformed society and pivotal for the realization of national unity and success, asthe following passage illustrates:

Among the greatest losses resulting from the violence is the loss of con� dence betweenthe leaders and their followers or between the citizens (ra¨aya) and their government. Itis well-known that the ruler’s con� dence in the people depends considerably on thepeople’s con� dence in the rulers and vice versa. Therefore, effort (ijtihad) on both sidesis necessary for the return of con� dence and the strengthening of its foundation. On theone hand, the hope is that the rulers’ wisdom, the quality of their administration, thereform of their behaviour with, and the demonstration of their consideration for, thepeople will dispel the vile effects of the past events. On the other hand, we hope that thepeople’s knowledge (ma¨rifa) of their welfare, their forbearance, and their avoidance ofextremism in seeking a pardon or punishment for what is politically, religiously,

33 Al-T½aht½aw õ , Manahij, p. 10.34 Muh½ammad al-Muwaylih½ õ¯, H½ ad õ th ¨Isa ibn Hisham, (Cairo: Mat½ba¨at al-Ma¨arif, 1907), pp. 74–6. Firstserialized in the journal Mis½bah½ al-Sharq (1898).

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culturally, and customarily prohibited will dissipate these effects, because these twogroups share past bonds such as customs, tastes, dispositions, and the degree ofcivilization … The social wheel will turn in the long run along its former axis.35

In this passage, al-Bustan õ ’s conceptualization of a ‘wise’ ruler cannot beseparated from progress. The ruler’s intervention is necessary to assist thedebilitated and scarred native subject ‘over the camel’s hump’ of recent historyand decadence towards the establishment of a civilized society.36 The ruler’sintercession is the catalyst for the subject’s will, making ‘love of the nation’,‘concord and unity’, and ‘progress’ possible. Therefore, the return of a peacefuland productive civil society, where there exist familial bonds and ‘love’ betweenconfessions, depends primarily on the competency of an egalitarian leader, whosupplies guidance for the general population, thereby aiding them to recognizeand work for national interests. Structurally, then, the leader functions as a thirdterm, imported to bridge the gap between the decrepit subject and his currentsubjective state.

Al-Bustan õ ’s paradigm of unity and progress is interesting because its co-herency, or as Austin would say, its happiness, wavers even after the introduc-tion of ‘love of the nation’ because the axiom’s effectiveness requires thearbitration of a term exterior to the subject–nation relationship . The followingpassage demonstrates the necessity for the intervention of the leader (as a thirdterm) for progress:

We think that two matters which we have mentioned several times in our past patriotictracts (wat½aniyyat) are essential in these days for the civilization of the nation’s sons, thepeople of Syria. The � rst of them is the existence of concord between their individualsand their groups, and particularly, civil concord whose existence or the lack thereofdepends on the strength, ardour, and will of the rulers. These rulers must rely on thedesires and multiple interests of the people. However, we do not doubt the dif� culty, orperhaps impossibility, of heartfelt and faithful concord after the occurrence of what hashappened. What we have witnessed is the intrusion of death into the nation’s religionsand laws, and we are not pleased by it.

The second matter is love of the nation, and preference of its welfare to self-interestwhether it be personal or confessional. As long as the sons of our nation do not feel thatthe nation is theirs, and the country is theirs, love of the nation and concern for itsgeneral welfare cannot be hoped for. Rather, the native sons are always disunited, eachone of them searching for what he imagines as most advantageous to his own person orgroup. It is well-known that when every house or piece of property is divided in itself,the result is necessarily its destruction. For this reason, if one hopes that the reform ofthe conditions in Syria will come from the ideas and opinions of its people, then that ishoping for one to accomplish an impossible feat. It is like asking a sick person to treathimself.37

These paragraphs present the kernel of al-Bustan õ ’s discourse of subjective andsocial reform, expressing not only the inter-relations of the nationalisti c leitmo-tifs and semantic nomenclature but ambiguities and contradictions endemic tohis discourse. The � rst paragraph suggests that both the ruler and the subject

35 Naf õ r, VIII, p. 45.36 Ibid., X, p. 60.37 Ibid., XI, p. 69. See n. 20 for a similar passage.

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cooperate to restore inter-sectarian harmony and social stability. The formerbrings the will and know-how while the latter brings the desire and authenticity .

The second paragraph, however, proposes that the native subject is virtuallyincapacitated by his own shortcomings and the weight of these grievous events;hence, the nation requires the intervention of a leader. This enlightened leaderpossesses an analogue, the doctor, whose intervention on behalf of the sickre� ects the patient’s inability for self-rejuvenation . With this metaphor in mind,we see that the leader’s intervention is the supplement, as Derrida might say, forthe imminence of subjective lack, not least of which is the native’s inability torecognize his own greater welfare.38 The introduction of the ruler as an exteriorterm in al-Bustan õ ’s formula for progress and national unity conjures doubtsabout the Arab subject’s ability for autogenetic reform. That is, on a politicallevel, the leader’s intervention is necessary to ameliorate inter-communal antag-onism. Therefore, when al-Bustan õ asserts that ‘You (pl.) are as just as he whorules over you’, we understand that the subject–nation con� guration depends onthe intervention of a mediating leader who is both external and internal to thenative subject.39

In addition, we witness that the ruler has effects on the level of signi� cationitself. The ruler’s appearance makes apparent but also bridges the logical andontological gaps that separate the national subject and subjective success,ameliorating the distance, for example, between the fanatical citizen and his ownnational welfare. However, if local and Ottoman rulers are to supply the securityand the hope of prosperity,40 the onus for cultural progress and, contrarily, socialdisorder should be placed upon them.

Displaced Failure

We have seen that, for al-Bustan õ , the fruition of national progress cannot beachieved without the good governance of a competent ruler. Therefore, sincenational rulers are responsible for national unity, inter-sectarian concord, andimbibing love of the nation, then the lack of competent governance and aneffective governor has egregious legal, social, and moral effects. Al-Bustan õexplicitly develops this relationship:

The lack of the existence of good government and the scorn for laws are both among thegreatest evils for a country whatever be the stage of its civilization and success.Government and laws resemble good health. That is, you do not know their worth exceptin their absence. This lack causes the sons of the nation to transgress the boundaries ofhumanity and justice, and makes them blame-worthy in front of the whole world.41

Passed from ‘corrupt native sons’ to leaders, the process of transferring theresponsibilit y for failure, if not success, is structurally inherent in al-Bustan õ ’sparadigm for national unity. Indeed, the events of 1860 incriminated the of� ce

38 Jacques Derrida states, ‘The supplement adds itself, it is a surplus, a plenitude enriching another plenitude,the fullest measure of presence. It cumulates and accumulates presence … But the supplement supplements . Itadds only to replace. It intervenes or insinuates itself in-the-place-of; if it � lls, it is as if one � lls a void’. See JacquesDerrida, Of Grammatology (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976), pp. 144–145.39 Naf õ r, XI, pp. 68–69.40 Ibid., III, p. 19.41 Ibid., IX, p. 52.

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of Fu©ad Pasha. The assertion that the ‘absence of good governance and laws’leads to chaos clearly indicts the ruler himself.

Yet, what is further interesting about this passage is that this ‘lack’ releasesthe barbaric within the sons of the nation. Therefore, al-Bustan õ ’s logic compelshim to assert that, just as national leaders are responsible for the disorder, thenative sons of Greater Syria cannot be exonerated, including al-Bustan õ ’s fellowintelligentsi a and rational natives (‘uqala’). He states that:

… [T]he blame, loss, and responsibility in such and such deeds in the end falls onrational men and the wealthy. Thus, they are aware that their foremost interest is, at alltimes and places, the prevention of ignorance. They must educate by means of exampleand instruction, affecting peace, concord, and friendship … If the rational men of Syriahad taken into account the results of ignorance and disunity, and if they knew that thesematters would lead them to the state in which some of them arrived and many more ofthem will arrive, then, by their own intelligence, they would have been the � rst to throwout the delusions sent by Satan or extremists. They would have been the � rst to haveimmediately extinguished the spark which was made by the hand of ignorance andfoolishness, the same spark which had been created by a vicious mentality hiding inSyria’s deepest forests and arid ravines. Or, at least, they could have, if they were old,gone outside in the midst of the ignorance and turmoil of the war and made it clear tothe entire world that they did not have a hand in these ugly deeds, and that thesebarbarous perpetrations do not win their satisfaction nor are they founded by them.Rather, they should have made clear that these deeds are, in truth, against their wishes,interests, and will.42

We have seen in the beginning of this article that Mikha©il Mishaqah wouldreiterate this same assertion some years later. Yet, al-Bustan õ ’s incrimination ofthe national intelligentsia faults them not for ‘ignorance’ or accepting the‘delusions’ of fanaticism. Certainly, we have seen that these are the reasons forthe actions of ‘corrupt’ native sons. Rather, al-Bustan õ rebukes ‘rational men andthe wealthy’ for their inability to act forcefully and prevent the violence. Thatis, he castigates them for failing to perform as effective, even exemplary,national subjects. This failure of enlightened natives represents to the Westculpability in their compatriots’ fanaticism. Al-Bustan õ ’s concern for world,particularly Western, opinion is not coincidental . It indicates that the diagnosisor identi� cation of native lack is inextricable from the authority of a constantlypresent, exterior judge, or what I have chosen to call the European spectre.

The Spectre of the West

Indeed, the failure of rational ‘sons of the nation’ and rulers resulted not only inmass dispossession , massacres, and the shaming of a nation, but foreign militaryand political intervention itself. ‘The transgression of boundaries of humanityand justice’ by ‘the sons of the nation’, the author says,

made necessary the intervention of a foreign hand in their country’s affairs … We are� rm in the conviction that intervention by a foreign hand in the politics of whatevernation … is harmful to the country even though it may provide some temporarybene� t …43

42 Ibid., IX, p. 51.43 Ibid., IX, p. 52.

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Al-Bustan õ does not speci� cally explain why foreign intervention is unaccept-able. Apart from the horrors of colonialism that we know in retrospect,al-Bustanõ was primarily concerned with the reform of his nation by hiscompatriots themselves. The formulas for ‘progress and civilization’ and ‘con-cord and unity’ with which he struggled all of his intellectual life demonstratethis. For al-Bustan õ , the necessity of foreign intervention indicated more than acomplete breakdown in native civil society. Rather, the breakdown substantiatedthe idea that Syrian Arabs were as ‘barbarous’ as the West had suspected. As wehave seen in an earlier passage, al-Bustanõ reminds us that the misdeeds of ‘thesons of the nation’ make all Arab Syrians blame-worthy in front of the wholeworld.44

This concern with ‘foreigners’ is nothing new in the writings of ruwwadal-nahd½a (pioneers of the Renaissance). The West was omnipresent in theirpolitical, social, and literary writings. In addition to the voluminous social andpolitical commentaries, most of the seminal literary texts of the century, bothprose and poetry, struggled in one way or another to make sense of the radicallynew social and political conditions of the time. Ah½mad Faris al-Shidyaq’senchanting al-Saq ¨ala al-Saq and ¨Abd Allah al-Nad õ m’s short stories inal-Tank õ t wa©l-Tabk õ t are just two examples.45 As a text of non-� ction, however,Nafõ r is particularly concerned with the immediate political and cultural presenceof the West in Greater Syria.

As a set of vocative, rhetorical broad-sheets, this is not surprising. Whatstarted out as inter-confessiona l violence soon turned into the routing ofMaronite and Orthodox villagers in Mount Lebanon as well as a pogrom of theChristian residents in Damascus. The Great Powers in conjunction with theSublime Porte agreed to send Austrian–British troops to re-establish civil order.Nafõ r was concerned with creating national consciousness but also nationalawareness. From the very � rst wat½aniyya,46 al-Bustanõ pays special attention tothe existence of these troops in Lebanon. Nevertheless, his messages are notunequivocal. In wat½aniyya IX, he claims that the foreign powers ‘came for theprotection of human rights and the enforcement of the principles of justice andrestraint’.47 ‘This time’, he continues:

foreign intervention was bene� cial to all native groups. It was necessary to stop thecontinuation of hostilities and destruction which were like infectious diseases spreadingfrom place to place with complete determination and speed.48

Despite his earlier admonitions against foreign interference, al-Bustan õ confessesthe necessity of their entry into Lebanon. The metaphor of the contagion issimilar to the early simile regarding the necessity of intervention of the ruler, as

44 Ibid., IX, p. 52.45 See Ah½mad Faris al-Shidyaq’s al-Saq ¨ala al-Saq fõ ma huwa al-Far õ yaq (Paris: Benjamin Duprat, 1855). Thisgeneric collage relates the wanderings of the protagonists, al-Far õ yaq, throughout Europe and the Middle East.Also, see ¨Abd Allah al-Nad õ m’s short lived journal al-Tank õ t wa©l-Tabk õ t, which contains innumerable shortstories usually regarding the drastic social changes underway at the time, many of which were motivated by theprominence of Western culture or foreigners in Egypt. For a humorous and brief example see, ‘al-¨Arab õal-Tafarnaj’ about a native son who upon returning from study in Europe has forgotten Arabic and becomeestranged from his peasant parents. See ¨Abd Allah al-Nad õ m, al-Tank õ t wa©l-Tabk õ t, (Alexandria), I (1881),pp. 7–8; reprinted (Cairo: al-Hay’a al-Mis½riyya, 1994), pp. 40–41.46 Naf õ r, I, p. 10.47 Ibid., IX, p. 52.48 Ibid., IX, p. 53.

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a doctor � gure. If asking the corrupt to reform their conditions is like expectinga sick person to cure himself, then European intervention in Lebanon is the onlymeans to restore order that broke down under the care of native rulers andintelligentsia . Al-Bustan õ further expounds on his understanding of the role ofthe ‘Great Powers’ in Lebanon. He says:

We hope that this assistance from foreigners, combined with an agreement on Syria’swell-being, will last until the basis of justice and security is established and strengthened.We hope it closes the door to the fear of crime, treachery, and the actions of thecorrupt and their associates, who are the vilest of people and perpetrators of these savageacts.49

Similar statements to this effect are found throughout the century. For example,Sal õ m al-Bustan õ would write articles considering the ‘positive’ effects of directBritish intervention in Egypt and their cooperative relationship with the Khe-dive.50 In both cases, father and son hoped that foreign presence would be moreparticipation and cooperation than intervention and interference and that theWest would otherwise ‘guide’ and assist these troubled Eastern nations inenacting the reforms necessary for order and productivity .

Torn between rejecting and endorsing intervention, we cannot fail to noticethe con� icting desires of al-Bustan õ that communicate an anxiety and a contra-diction endemic to the relationship between the Arabs and the West during thepre-colonial era. Al-Bustan õ perceives the West, not unproblematically , as aharbinger of peace, justice, and stability. Elsewhere, he clearly admires Europefor its advancements, whether they be technological , cultural, social, or political.His experience with the missionary community endowed him with an apprecia-tion for foreigners’ interest in Arabic as well as their efforts to educate nativesons and daughters.51

By no means, however, was al-Bustan õ an uncritical admirer of the West. Hisopus itself was an attempt not only to introduce ‘Western’ and scienti� cknowledge but, as the Khut½ba shows us, also to reconceptualize Arab culturaltradition as a forceful phenomenon of progress and change. Arab culture was notto be discarded for al-Bustanõ , who said:

As long as [those who super� cially adopt the trappings of the Western civilization]mislead themselves and accept false dirhams with true dinar, they are patching usedclothes with new rags …52

Super� cial and blind imitation of Western ways was just another form ofdebilitating ‘ignorance’ for the author and reformer.53 Likewise, his experience

49 Ibid., IX, p. 53.50 A series of editorials and articles appeared in al-Jinan at the end of 1882 and beginning of 1883 discussingthe ¨Urab õ Revolt, British paci� cation, and direct intervention in Egypt. These articles are particularly interestingin relation to the discourse of national reform put forth by Naf õ r. While initially sympathetic to ¨Urab õ ’s struggle,Salõ m al-Bustan õ increasingly saw the revolt as self-centred and myopic. The discourse that Salõ m invokes isdirectly rooted in his father’s work, posing the tension between individual interests (al-s½awalih½ al-ifradiyya) versuspublic welfare (al-s½awalih½ al¨umumiyya). See for an example, the editorial ‘Jumla Siyasiyya’ in al-Jinan, 13(1882), pp. 445–447. For one of Salõ m’s more sympathetic articles towards the British in Egypt, see the followingfortnight’s editorial, ‘Ih½ tilal Bar õ taniya f õ Mis½r’ in al-Jinan, 13 (1882), pp. 577–579.51 Naf õ r, X, p. 60.52 Ibid., XI, p. 67.53 Less than a decade after Naf õ r, Salõ m al-Bustan õ , for example, wrote a short story in the � rst volume of hisfather’s journal al-Jinan, entitled ‘Naj õ b wa Lat½õ fa’ (1870), demonstrating the effects of super� cial adoption ofEuropean ways. ¨Abd Allah al-Nadõ m has numerous similar short stories. See al-Tank õ t.

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with the American consul and the mission made him distrustful of the motiva-tions and character of the West, as well as acutely aware of their colonialambitions.54

This tension between admitting the need for foreign intervention, acknowledg-ing Western designs on the East, and desiring autogenic reform presents thefundamental juggernaut within reform discourse and exposes an irony thatcannot be overlooked. That is, despite the basic presupposition that Arabs must� nd it within themselves to rekindle their desire for concord and unity, nativeand communal needs must initially be redressed by the intercession of anextra-subjective , authoritative catalyst, which subsumes the role of even thenation’s rulers. The irony of the metaphorical doctor is revisited in this regard.Instead of the intervention of good governance and rational natives, the East isforced to rely on the West to intervene, ‘cure’ it, and act as the catalyst for nativerehabilitation.

The West � nding the Arabs ‘blame-worthy’ highlights the inability of thenative subjects autogenically to reform their conditions. As we have suggested,al-Bustanõ is concerned with this sort of censure because it otherwise degradesthe reputation of the Arabs in the eyes of the scornful West.

Much of what we have seen is that the lover of the nation bows his gaze down to theearth. [He is embarrassed] particularly in these days as foreigners have opened aninvestigation of the causes of the violence. [We bow our heads] not out of cowardice norfear, but out of shame and disgrace.55

This ‘shame’ is peppered throughout the text56 and reveals the anxiety caused bythe simultaneous recognition of the West’s advancement, on the one hand, andtheir ill-intention and political opportunism, on the other hand. The followingpassage is telling, expressing al-Bustan õ ’s fears that the recent events willvalidate foreign disdain for the Arabs.

Oh, sons of the nation, what excuse should we make for the sons of our country in frontof the foreigners who are not stupid nor lack civilization, and impugn the strength of theArab intellect?57

This brief passage indicates that the native’s ‘shame’ is not independentlygenerated. It con� rms that there is a Hegelian, master–slave struggle under wayfor Self recognition.58 Questioning his compatriots, the passion of al-Bustan õ ’s is

54 The fact that al-Bustanõ , as a dragoman, was not entrusted with the keys to the American consulate, when theywere forced to close for a period of time, apparently disturbed him. Also, a running debate between the Beirutmission and Rufus Anderson, the Foreign Corresponding Secretary of the American Board of Foreign Missions(ABCFM) in Boston, took place during 1850–1851, debating whether to ordain a ‘native minister’. As the mosterudite and brilliant convert in Lebanon, al-Bustanõ was an obvious choice. However, by the time the offer wasextended in the mid to late 1850s, al-Bustan õ had started to distance himself from the mission and turned downthe offer despite his earlier interest. See Tibawi, ‘American Missionaries’; also see the ABCFM archives,particularly letters from Cornelius Van Dyck to Anderson, 17 August 1850; William Thomson to Anderson, 2September 1850; and Eli Smith to Anderson, 17 June 1851. Also insightful are the personal letters betweenal-Bustan õ and Eli Smith in ‘Personal Correspondence ’. These letters are found in the ABCFM Series, in HoughtonLibrary, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA.55 Naf õ r, VIII, p. 41.56 For example, ibid., V, p. 28.57 Ibid., V, p. 26.58 Amending Hegel, Rene Girard identi� es a similar process in subject formation, particularly between the subject,his desire, and his Other. In the case of the nineteenth century Arab subject, he might say that the native Arabcoterminously identi� es with European ontological and political presence while also resenting it because he must,in fact, rely on it for success. See Rene Girard, Deceit, Desire, and the Novel (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press,1965).

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a response to pre-existing European contempt, the contempt of a legitimatesubject for his ineffaceable Other.

Al-Bustan õ continually struggles with both the West’s contempt and the veryreal failure of his compatriots. We have seen in the beginning of this article howal-Bustanõ worked to illustrate an ideal native subject, who has the possibilitie sfor reform and inciting ‘concord and unity’. However, this exemplary native ismarked by the failure to perform, a failure to prevent the violence. Even nationalreconstruction is haunted by the anxiety of failure. For example, al-Bustan õimagines reconstruction and the return of a productive environment. However,fear and angst invade even his vision of normalcy.

Yes, we see, over there, a house being built, and the land being cultivated. But also, weare anxious that every time a particular roof is built, a public shrine is simultaneouslydemolished.59

This vision is representative of the aforementioned split in the ‘you’ and ‘we’address. The productive subject is separated from the destructive subject. Yet,we recall, al-Bustan õ is not talking of two subjects but one national subject intwo states. His recrimination, therefore, is a rebuke of the subject now facing thederisive, critical eye of the West. An anonymous foreign voice echoes thisself-incrimination.

One of our losses is that of truthfulness and credibility. I have heard foreigners declare:‘How remarkable! … Did the sons of this nation have truthfulness before the currentevents? Is what they say true? They had it before but now, for whatever reason, they’velost it?’60

Without a doubt, the possibility of reform remains alive in this statement byrecalling the ‘previous’ existence of Arab integrity. However, the fact that sucha statement is put in the mouth of ‘foreigners’ shows us that al-Bustan õ fears thatthe recent violence may con� rm European prejudice and that this prejudicerelegates the Arabs to a disadvantageous political and cultural position vis-a-vistheir Western counterparts.

Al-Bustan õ ’s unambiguous argument against Western bias expresses hisunderstanding of the ideological platforms historically used to justify colonial-ism. His argument further illustrates that the Arabs are in a struggle with theWest that is not only political, social, and cultural but also ontological. That is,the concern for the critical or approving appraisal by the West indicates that theArabs are in a struggle for the recognition of their Selfhood. This assertion isfurther substantiated when al-Bustan õ inserts into his narrative another commen-tary by one more anonymous ‘foreigner’. This foreign voice is cast into adialogue between a generic foreign accuser and al-Bustan õ himself who acts asthe native defender. He narrates:

That same day I had spoken with a man who was defaming the Arab race and slanderingthe Arabs as being, without exception, cheating liars and without conscience. My Arabblood stirred. Rebutting the maliciousness of his speech, I said to him fervently andpassionately, that lying and cheating are two natural things found in all peoples and

59 Naf õ r, VIII, p. 44 (my italics).60 Ibid., VIII, p. 42.

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races. I provided as the proof of my case what appears in the saying of the Prophet(kalam al-rasul) where he said, ‘All people are liars’. I was not happy with this response.So, I followed it up by saying that the lies of the Arab are perhaps more than the liesof other races in regards to number and quantity. This is because they lie casually,without deliberation, and ignorantly just as it is their habit (da©buhum) in the rest of theiractions. As for the lies of other races, perhaps they are greater than the lies of the Arabsin terms of importance and quality. This is because they do not lie except withdeliberation and cognizance, and for a purpose and pro� t. If, then, their lies are skillful,so too are their actions.61

At this point in Naf õ r, al-Bustan õ assumes an irregular, rhetorical tact. The authorconfronts directly the accusations of a judgmental ‘foreigner’. This confrontationhas several key discursive effects. First of all, by contesting ‘foreign’, i.e.Western, indictments of Arab integrity, al-Bustan õ enacts reform. He performsprecisely the same prescriptions that he had faulted his fellow ‘rational natives’for lacking during the fratricidal violence. In addition to demonstrating nativecompetency in rebuking recriminations of Arab culture, al-Bustan õ successfullyillustrates the actions of an exemplary native.

Another discursive effect is more ambiguous. It is not by chance that therhetorical form of al-Bustan õ ’s defence or recourse to recrimination is a dialogue.The dialogue form discloses that the Arab subject is in a dialectic of recognitionwith the West. Al-Bustan õ tries to level the playing � eld by appealing touniversalism. All nations and all eras, including the West, have had corruptpeoples and degenerate tendencies, he states.62 Such a reply is not surprisingwhen one remembers that intellectuals of al-nahd½a worked to rede� ne the Arabs’place and relevance in a universal historical and cultural continuum. Therefore,it is curious that al-Bustan õ amends his defence. He simultaneously confessesand rationalizes native guilt, but apparently turns this admission into an indict-ment of the West’s calculating dishonesty . This indictment of the West’scharacter, the gravity of their dishonesty , could certainly be seen as a commenton Western policies in the Middle East during the nineteenth century.

However, amending his defence and engaging foreign accusations, al-Bustan õaccepts the gauntlet thrown down by his foreign accuser, thereby, instantlyentering into a Hegelian dialogue with the West. In his Khit½ab f õ ©l-Hay©aal-Ijtima¨iyya wa©l-Muqabala bayn al-¨Awa©id al-¨Arabiyya wa©l-Ifranjiyya writ-ten some 10 years later, al-Bustan õ struggles within this dialogue. Whiledemonstrating the virtue of Arab culture, his honest and self-critical natureforced him continually to recognize the ‘superiority’ of the West and the lack ofthe Arabs.63 In Naf õ r, the last sentence of this passage has the same effect ofrecon� rming Western mastery. That is, even their actions as liars represent thequalities of Westerners. Or stated otherwise, the forceful performance of theircalculating lies demonstrates their competence and wilfulness, which are con-trasted with Arab indifference and indigence. By asserting his dubious innocencequa ignorance, the Arab subject reaf� rms his own otherness in relation to theEuropean Self-Same. Recognizing that there is the Hegelian dialogue at hand

61 Ibid., VIII, p. 42.62 For a similar assertion see, ibid., X, p. 56.63 See But½rus al-Bustan õ , Khit½ab f õ ©l-Hay©a al-Ijtima¨iyya wa©l-Muqabala bayn al-¨Awa©id al-¨Arabiyyawa©l-Ifranjiyya (Beirut: Mat½ba©at al-Ma¨arif, 1869).

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reveals that it is this European Self that serves as a subjective referent forprogress in the writings of al-Bustan õ and others.

Conclusion

In the opening pages of The Nation and Its Fragments, Partha Chatterjee objectsto Bernard Anderson’s much cited argument regarding the formation of nationalidentities by colonized peoples. Chatterjee asks:

If nationalisms in the rest of the world have to choose their imagined community fromcertain ‘modular’ forms already made available to them by Europe and the Americas,what do they have left to imagine? Europe and the Americas, the only true subjects ofhistory, have thought out on our behalf not only the script of colonial enlightenment andexploitation, but also that of our anticolonial resistance … I object [to this argument]because I cannot reconcile it with the evidence on anticolonial nationalism.64

Chatterjee shows how Indians not only ‘imagined’ a national selfhood andenacted statehood but also struggled against colonialist discourses within thesevery processes. This article, however, has attempted to reveal that, at one basiclevel, the native imagination or la pensee, as Muhammad Arkoun might say, wasaffected by Western presence, which extended itself into the realm of thought,culture, and politics.65 This is not to say that the discourses of national resistanceor even selfhood were passively formed by a master logos dictated by the West.Rather, I have tried to map out the epistemology of national unity and social‘progress’ as ‘imagined’ in Naf õ r Suriyya. In doing so, we have recognized thatthe possibilities for national success and autogenic reform existed in the mindsof native activists. However, by highlighting how failure is deferred from a split,popular native subject to national leaders and back to native intellectuals, I haveexposed the syllogistic logic in the formulation of ‘unity and progress’ and howthis equation posits contemporary disunity as the effect of an a priori lack ofnational will and competency.

Native lack was a de� nitional, epistemologica l component of Arab subjec-tivity for al-Bustan õ , despite his struggle with it. This is not to say that Arabfailure was the only component in conceptualizing modern Arab subjectivity .Al-Bustan õ ’s opus was a testimony to the culture’s past success as possibilitie sfor the future.66 However, the epistemologica l prism by which reformers envi-sioned and deployed this past success was effective. If the native imagination hasnot been colonized, as Chatterjee suggests, this inquiry has demonstrated that thediscursive and performative process by which the native conceptualizes himselfin the modern era was informed by exterior as well as interior forces. As Hegelhas shown us, the existence of a Western presence in al-Bustan õ ’s writings atteststo a dialectic of self-formation, where the West becomes inextricable frommodern Arab subjectivity .

64 Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories (Princeton: PrincetonUniversity Press, 1993), p. 5.65 For the most lucid de� nition of la pensee, the thinkable, see the introduction to Muhammad Arkoun, Lecturesdu Coran (Paris: G.P. Maisonneuve et Larose, 1982).66 Al-Bustanõ wrote at length about the classical Arab heritage. It is no coincidence that he took an interest inpoets such as al-Jah½ iz½ and al-Mutanabb õ who expressed strong proto-Arab nationalistic sentiments and are releventin discussing the shu¨ub õ debate. For example, al-Bustan õ edited and republished D õ wan al-Mutanabb õ (Beirut:n.p., 1860).

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