زملائي الأعزاء،
اسمحوا لي في عرض هذه المساهمة في هذا النقاش المهم باللغة الانجليزية وذلك لأنني استخلصتها من أصل كنت اشتغلت عليه بهذه اللغة ولكم مني فائق الود والتقدير.
A contribution to the discussion of who is the Intellectual
Abdellatif Zaki
IAV – Hassan II, Rabat
In this contribution, I would like to share some ideas on the issues that have been discussed in this platform on the Arab and Islamic“Intellectual” / “intelligentsia”. I will argue that the “Arab” Intellectual partakes with “intellectuals” from other nations some fundamental features. I will also argue, that like any other concept, that of “Intellectual” is relative and is subject to appropriation, adaptation, rise and fall. It gains and loses relevance according to who uses it as well as to when, where and why it is used.
One danger concepts have always run is that of being oversimlified to cater for the many constraints which people usually have to work with and which include the limitations of reason, memory, imagination, time and space. In fact, speaking of a complex concept such as that of the Intellectual with all these constrains in addition to those related to the genre of a seminar will by necessity strip the whole of issue of many of its fundamental characteristics and dimensions.
Concepts never refer to unique and unequivocal representations or ideas. Let me start by suggesting that there is no such thing as the Intellectual but there are as many representations of the Intellectual as there are concerns and/or interests and strakes to talk about the Intellectual. Likewise, there can be no such thing as the whole Intellectual but aspects, manifestations, representations, stages of development, and profiles revealed through different angles and from different points of view and perspectives as well as projections of what one wishes the Intellectual to be or to have been at a certain time. The definition of the Intellectual is itself a matter of representation and interpretation and is therefore a matter of the ideology of any discourse on the issue.
One of the first difficulties concerns the dating of the breed; the historical moment at which a non Intellectual has become one. These difficulties are related to the identification of the very features which distinguish an Intellectual from a non Intellectual as well as the transformations, the adaptations, the adjustments, the ruptures and the leaps that the Intellectual had to go through/went through under different environments to secure the survival of the species. In other words, the difficulty concerns the characterization of the functions which the Intellectual had to assume in the community to survive, and of the organs or implements he had to develop to make the transition from one age and its requirements to another one and its new requirements.
Many of the contributions in this platform seem to have come to a final judgment and removed the Intellectual from the perspective of any form of positive participation in the prservation, consolidation, innovation or making of Arab and Islamic Destiny. It seems that the attitude expressed by these contributions is that the Intellectual is already to be counted among the species of bygone days which the supreme materialistic deveploment/accumulation of capital had turned into new forms of global domination, which we have often refered to as imperialism; a character that may have served both the rise of such domination and its heralded downfall.
Two issue that have to be settled prior to any further discussion concern the history of the Arab and Islamic or Moslem “intellectual” and the various social, political, cultural and ideological functions he/she has assumed throughout the ages and confines of the Arab / Islamic / Moslem State. Who among the authors, thinkers, philosophers, scientists and activits can actually be referred to as an “Intellectual”. (Cf. to The Crisis of Arab Intellectuals” by Abdallah Laroui as well as the work of Abd Al Jabri. for a thorough discussion of these issues).
The character of the “Intellectual” in the West has been identified according to criteria that include contesting the establishment, challenging the gatekeepers of the heritage and of tradition, criticizing the values of reference of the community, rebelling against dominant discourses and ideologies, re-reading and re-interpreting history and actually taking action for the promotion and implementation of alternative processes for the resolutions of the conflicts that characterize the relationships within their communities. To what extent has “the intellectual” contributed to the changes and to the transformations of the foundations of power distribution in the Arab and Islamic/Moslem world? To what extent has this intellectual, in case, there is one, contriuted to the empowerment of the have-nots, the vulnerable and minorties and in their entitlement to making the decisions which concern their lives? In which countries has this intellectual claimed the rights to re-assess history, to challenge the traditional legetimacies of power and to actually undertake other than discourse actions to implement change processes?
How can affiliation to the the breed at issue be established in the context at hand? To what extent can anyone who has contested a political establishment, ridiculed the gate-keeping institutions of science and knowledge, been imprisoned for libel or for illegal activism calim legetimate affiliation to the breed? Or should there be additional and necessary conditions for such affiliation to be legetimate?
If there seems to be among Western analysts a consensus on the various stages of the growth of the concept in the West, there are hardly any indicators that Arab and Islamic / Moslem Intellectuals have been able to reach an agreement on who they are, what they should stand for and on how they should go about materialising their intentions. In fact, early Western intellectualism seems to have started with Bacon who, among many others, had started shaping the discourse and ideolgy of the founding values of the origins of imperialistic ideology while its fall and loss of currency has often been associated with the rise of newer forms of domination that supersede traditional imperialism. However, one could just as well work with a dating of the concept a century later with the case of Dreyfus as it has been made in Zola’s J’accuse in 1898 and seal the death statement with Jean Paul Sartre.
Now, there are two options. Either to integrate the discussion of Arab “Intellectuals” within the discussion of the issue as a historical phenomenon that encompasses all nations, races, creeds and ideologies or set the Arab “Intellectual” apart from mainstream human history and posit that Arabs have their own history that is independent of any influences from the rest of the world and must, therefore, be approached as aspecific requiring different concepts, analytical instruments, assessment devices and interpretation grids. The concept of the “Intellectual” belongs to an ideological system of values, either it is borrowed as a comprehensive system of reference, or it is to create more dissonance than coherence in the analyses of what it is supposed to refer to.
One cannot be an Intellectual and not accept to be widely traveled. The intellectual is willing to cross academic frontiers as swiftly as she/he is willing to cross the limits of imagination, of what is permissible, and what has not yet been revealed. She/he takes all the courage available to investigate and to explore not only the worlds, but also the experiences, that have not yet been trodden or discovered. Her/his mind is set more to anticipate, to project and to depart than to rewind, to revisit or to stay put waiting for trains to come.
She/he also goes over the threshholds of his/her own hearing scope stripped of any preconditions to listen and negotiate with others. Listening to others guarantees at least the awareness of their existence and hopefully the understanding of their difference and of that on which it has grown. To what extent is what we have been witnessing actually an indication of the end or downfall of the Intellectual or at least of some sort of Intellectual – or intellectuals? Should that be the case, is there or should there be anything to do? In other words, to what extent would saving the Intellectual be worthwile if the breed has not already been decimated to an irreversible degree?
In much of the discourse about the Intellectual in the “Arab world”, a consensus seems to have culled anyone without the credentials of some left from this special and prestigious breed of lettered human beings. In fact, for one to be admitted as an intellectual, one had to be actively involved in some opposition – political, cultural, ethnic, economic, environmental, led by some left – whatever that happened to mean at the given times - or some organized dissidence. In the “Arab world” organized dissidence often means a state led by a figure who has declared himself a revolutionary and set up a nomenclatura of clerks to legetimate his “official dissidence” in the various sectors of art, literature, science and knowledge. While I have no quarrel with this terminological consensus, although consensual traditions should inspire mistrust for their irrationality, the whole concept, seems to be standing on fast sands as the bases for opposition and for dissidence are never eternal. Does one stop to be an intellectual when the battles she/he fights have been won or simply become irrelevant? Does one stop being an intellectual when one integrates a government and becomes, by the nature the institution, a non dissident?
Dissidence and rebellion go hand in hand with dreams and visions. Many of them do come true. Many dreams of the past have actually become realities. Take the dreams of some nations. The Shah was removed, The USSR dismantled, the wall of Berlin was pulled down, Soviet satelite régimes / countries have gotten loose, man walked on the moon, women can vote in Morocco, they can even conduct Friday prayer in some countries, and Tifinagh has been rehabilitated in at least two countries. Newer dreams of a yet recent past have also come true. Has not Saddan been toppled, courted and hanged? Has not the head of one his collaborators been severed when hanged? etc. Are not US troops going to have to leave under the pressure of the law of the right of the people? Is the Iraqi people not going to overcome and recover ascendance of reason over that of treason? The dream of Iraqis is the nightmare of the US led agression. The best bet is that the dream will overcome the nightmare. “Is dawn not near?”
This seems to be warning everyone to watch out what their dreams are about because there are chances they might come true. Who knows women may be allowed to drive in S.A. some day. The warning, however, is also about making sure nightmares do not migrate from their territories to invade possible futures. One of the roles of the Intellectual is perhaps to make sure everyone is aware of and understands well the dreams and nightmares of everyone else. This is the old function of interpreting dreams which was reserved to seers, prophets, witches and Freudian psychiatrists re-appropriated outside the prescribed castes.
Dreams are about transgressing reality. They are about making the impossible handy and feasible. They are about change. However, for dreams to come true, action both on reality and on the self is called for. The profile of dreamers can be converted into that of change agents. “Intellectuals” are dreamers turned into change agents. As such, they lose and gain character as they fare through the ages. Like all other living being, they are in constant competition with other profiles; tending to seek refuge in them, ensuring their viability by hatching in them their own seeds, letting themselves host the seeds of others, accepting to transform their structures to serve the functions they assign themselves in the inevitable evolutionary process. The extent to which they resign their potential to influence and mark their environment and to maintain, cultivate and perpetuate whatever impact they have on it will determine not only the strength of their various legetimacies but the prospect of the sustainability of their global projects. Likewise, choosing to speak or not to speak, to stand for or against a decision of other indivduals or of a community, to take part or not to take part in an action, to think and reflect or not to will inform on an individual’s commitment to make the journey from what should be to what can be and to how it can : will done. In other words, to cross the frontiers from the realm of values and ideals to that of everyday life of men and women and from the constraints of values and rights to those of law, state and actual governance.
Choosing sides is an unavoidable plight a man has to endure throughout his life. There are, however, those who will never make the choice of which side to satnd for themselves letting others, parents, teachers, organised opinion groups, make the choices for them. These are not the Intellectuals. The Intellectuals are those who can, because they have learnt to, observe, listen, analyze, assess, assign meaning, imagine alternatives, plan implementation processes, promote options, stand for their choices and never trade their independence, their dignity, the control over their destiny for any worldly value.
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