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Transgressive Truths and Flattering Lies Markus Schmitz Transgressive Truths and Flattering Lies Postcolonial Studies | Volume 39 Für Gini Markus Schmitz teaches Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies at Münster University, Germany. His research revolves around (Anglophone) Arab Represen- tations, Relational Diasporic Studies, Theories of Cross-Cultural Comparison, Forced Migration and Border Regimes, and (Counter-)Archival Arts. Markus Schmitz Transgressive Truths and Flattering Lies The Poetics and Ethics of Anglophone Arab Representations Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche National- bibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http:// dnb.d-nb.de This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (BY-SA) which means that the text may be remixed, build upon and be distributed, provided credit is given to the author and that copies or adaptations of the work are released under the same or similar license. For details go to http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ Creative Commons license terms for re-use do not apply to any content (such as graphs, figures, photos, excerpts, etc.) not original to the Open Access publication and further permission may be required from the rights holder. The obligation to research and clear permission lies solely with the party re-using the material. First published in 2020 by transcript Verlag, Bielefeld © Markus Schmitz All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utili- zed in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Cover layout: Maria Arndt, Bielefeld Cover illustration: Larissa Sansour, »Space Earth«, C-Print (2009) Printed by Majuskel Medienproduktion GmbH, Wetzlar Print-ISBN 978-3-8376-5048-8 PDF-ISBN 978-3-8394-5048-2 https://doi.org/10.14361/9783839450482 Contents Acknowledgements ...................................................................... 7 0. Setting in Motion: The Trans-Location of Anglophone Arab Cultures ................ 9 1. EndingsasDesert(ed)Starts ...................................................... 29 2. Beginnings as Cultural Novelties: Intertexts and Discursive Affinities ............. 39 2.1 Pulling Apart or Pushing Together: Relations of Alterity and Critical Instrumentality ....40 3. Khalid’s Book and HowNot to BowDown Before Rihani............................. 49 3.1 An Arab (Drago)man in New York and the Cultural Imaginary of Confrontation............54 3.2 Post-Gibran Before The Prophet: Khalid’s Figurality and Performative Arabness .........69 3.3 Transmigrations and Turnovers ........................................................................94 3.4 Quixotic Entanglements and Disruptive Translations ............................................ 110 3.4.1 Cervantes’s Fictional Flight, the Moorish Unconscious, and Reversed Plagiarism.......................................................................125 4. Nocturnal Traces and Voyaging Critique: From Shahrazad to Said ................ 137 4.1 Lies, Counter-Lies, and Self-Made Lies ..............................................................154 4.2 Edward Said in Anglophone Arab Works and in this Study......................................176 5. Reading Anglophone Arab Enunciations Across Genres: Narrative Display, Performative Evidence, and the Parafiction of Theory ............................ 187 5.1 The Horrors of Assimilation, Uncanny Transferences, and the End of the Roots-Talk...189 5.1.1 The Laughter and Slaughter of Subjection ................................................ 191 5.1.2 Being Non-Arab and the Anxiety of Re-Filiation......................................... 205 5.2 Blurred Archives and Queered (Hi-)Stories: Literary Writing and Art Work in Trans- migration ....................................................................................................215 5.3 Palestinian Parkours—Matters of (F)Act: Occupation, Deterritorialization, and Cul- tural Resistance ..........................................................................................233 6. The Challenge of Anglophone Arab Studies: For a Post-Integrationist Critical Practice .......................................................................... 257 Works Cited ............................................................................ 269 Image Credits .......................................................................... 295 Index ................................................................................... 297 Acknowledgements Some will argue that a non-Arab critic working in Germany who tries to construct an Anglophone Arab poetics and ethics must be conscious of his intrinsic inadequa- cies. He doesn’t have first-hand experiences of being Arab in a world of anti-Arab racism and he doesn’t really know the heavy burdens of English as a former colonial language that one has to carry to get oneself across. To intervene into the academic sub-field of Anglophone Arab literatures, arts and cultures from such positional- ity almost automatically risks disenfranchising oneself from the debate. I cannot but see it as an epistemological privilege to imagine myself as a tolerated house- guest who labors under such slightly embarrassing predicament. I boldly assume that I too am among the implied readers of these cultural texts—and yes, I claim to being among these works’ implied critics. It is perhaps in my partial silence on the issue of identity politics, my refusal to speak morally, and my mere failure to write with the authentic authority of an insider about the collective value of An- glophone Arab representations that something of the true ethics resulting from my own intersectional limitations is articulated. Most critical writings begin with some affirmative idea toward which they strive. I am afraid this project first and foremost was set in motion by mydis- comfort toward dominant readings of contemporary Anglophone Arab discourse. However, in the course of writing against other critics’ attempts to locate this discourse in a reality which does not allow for fantasy, inconsistency, and disso- nances, the initial idea of alternative interpretive approaches underwent profound transformations. The idea itself was constantly caught up in its actualization—in re-reading and re-writing. Such continuing actualization took the form of imag- ined and real exchanges. The book’s various chapters reflect the immediacy of these textual and/or personal encounters. I have benefitted from each and every of them. I am deeply grateful to a number of people—writers, artists, critics, colleagues, students, and friends—who helped me each in their own way to traverse the fiction of truth and counter-truths in literary and cultural criticism and who encouraged me to write this book. I wish to thank Rabieh Alameddine in particular for the ten- der smile of his narratives’ metafictional wisdom as well as for a conversation on 8 TransgressiveTruthsandFlatteringLies writing and the birds’ non-qualification for ornithology at the Berlin Gemäldega- lerie. Works of concept and performance art played an important role in shaping my ways of reading and seeing Anglophone Arab articulations. Emily Jacir and Walid Raad’s artistic tracing of the regularly harsh adjustment, transformation, and re- moval of historical meaning and Larissa Sansour’s apparently playful dystopian imaginaries were particularly instructive for my undertaking. I appreciate Larissa’s kind permission all the more to use one of her visual works for this book’s cover design. I wish to thank Ella Shohat whose ways of re-thinking Arab diasporic rela- tions have decisively inspired my own critical project. Sofian Merabet, Katja Sarkowsky, Tobias Döring, and Mark Stein reviewed the habilitation thesis from which this book derives. I have a long-standing debt to my colleague and friend Franziska Quabeck who has generously spared time from her own scholarly work to read and criticize the manuscript in every stage of its drafting. I am particularly obliged to Sofian for his thoroughly reading and his many very helpful comments. Last but not least my wife and intellectual companion Regina Göckede, was among those rare swans that I am proud to call my earliest readers and critics. A book like the one at hand would not have been possible without the material basis of a research position and the respective support of an institution. An earlier version of this study has been filed as a post-doctoral (habilitation) thesis atthe University of Münster. I particularly have to thank Mark Stein at whose chair I was affiliated during the period of the book’s fabrication. I wish to thank Anita Kaul who did an excellent copy editing and Anke Poppen from transcript for her professional management of the publishing procedure. Maria Arndt and Philip Radowitz helped me to implement my ideas for the design of the cover. The book’s open-access dissemination is financially supported by the publica- tion fund of the University of Münster. Although I have constantly tried to circumvent a too-rigid notion of truth and lie I do now strongly believe one can describe, if not what truths and lies are, at least what they do, in literary fiction, in works of art, in the world, and between worlds. In any case it is my hope that this book can
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