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ARAB, ARAB-AMERICAN, AMERICAN: HEGEMONIC AND CONTRAPUNTAL REPRESENTATIONS Inauguraldissertation zur Erlangung der Doktorwürde der Fakultät für Sprach-, Literatur- und Kulturwissenschaft der Technischen Universität Dresden vorgelegt von: Lalla Khadija Fritsch - El Alaoui Betreuerin: Professor Doktor B. Georgi - Findlay Leipzig, den 10. Februar 2005 Acknowledgments I consider myself very fortunate to have had Professor Brigitte Georgi-Findlay for a mentor. I will always feel grateful to her immense intellectual generosity. She has supported my work as a true colleague and scholar and respected my arguments even when she disagreed with them. My sincerest thanks go also to Professor Eckehard Schulz who suggested paying more attention to the world of economic realities. I will always be grateful to Professor Julia Leyda for her insights and support. Many thanks to Kerstin Mächler for treating the final editing work with the highest level of professionalism. The research that led to this dissertation could not have been accomplished without the financial support of the Sächsische Landesstipendium. Thanks to its support I was also able to conduct my research in the United States as well as in several countries in the Arab world, like Egypt, Jordan, and Morocco. My special thanks go to my husband Andreas Fritsch, my sister Ouafâa El Alaoui, my brother Saifeddine El Alaoui, my family in Germany, especially Annelie Fritsch and Christa Mosert. I am also very thankful to all my friends for their constant and loving support. To my parents, Fatima El Jaouhari and Sidi Mohammed El Alaoui, I dedicate this work. Next the statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception. Mark Twain, posthumous in Harper’s Monthly, 1916 Columbia, My dear girl, You really haven’t been a virgin for so long It’s ludicrous to keep up the pretext. You’re terribly involved in world assignations And everybody knows it. You’ve slept with all the big powers In military uniforms, And you’ve taken the sweet life Of all the little brown fellows In loin cloths and cotton trousers. When they’ve resisted, You’ve yelled, “Rape,” At the top of your voice And called for the middies To beat them up for not being gentlemen And liking your crooked painted mouth. [……………………………………….] Being one of the world’s big vampires, Why don’t you come on out and say so Like Japan, and England, and France, And all the other nymphomaniacs of power […]? Langston Hughes, “Columbia,” The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes Contents INTRODUCTION........................................................................................................................ 1 Imperialism Without Colonies?............................................................................................. 5 Constructing the Muslim Enemy......................................................................................... 14 Postcolonial Theory............................................................................................................. 21 I. ARABS: THE NEW OLD ENEMY ................................................................................ 29 1. Bernard Lewis and the Practice of Orientalism ......................................................... 30 1.1. Arabs’ Original Sin: “The Impact of the West”......................................................... 32 1.2. “The Arab Mind:” A Bottomless Well of Hatred ...................................................... 38 1.3. “The Clash of Civilizations:” Muslims as Eternal Aggressors .................................. 43 2. Daniel Pipes and the Business of War ....................................................................... 50 2.1. The Muslim as Total Enemy...................................................................................... 50 2.2. In the Path of Imperialism.......................................................................................... 58 3. Fouad Ajami: A Case of the Native Informant .......................................................... 64 3.1. In the Beginning Arabs Were Human........................................................................ 65 3.2. A Scholar Combatant: Intellect at the Service of Power............................................ 68 II. EXPERTS ON THE ARABS OR OVERSEERS? ............................................................... 76 1. The Possibility of Challenging the Restraints on Covering Arabs ............................ 78 2. Closing in on Arabs: Reactivating Colonial Representation ..................................... 82 3. Robin Wright’s Sacred Rage...................................................................................... 85 3.1. Good Export vs. Bad Export...................................................................................... 85 3.2. The Twenty Thousand Lebanese Deaths and Seventy Days ..................................... 91 3.3. Good Islamic Fundamentalism vs. Bad Islamic Fundamentalism............................. 96 3.4. The Icons of Modernizing Ideology in North Africa................................................. 98 4. Judith Miller: Overseeing the Arab World/Plantation ............................................. 101 4.1. The Geopolitical Guidelines of Lives’ Expendability ............................................. 102 4.2. The “Subject Race” and Its Tough Government...................................................... 105 4.3. Arab Public Opinion or Fanaticism and Irrationality............................................... 107 4.4. Maronism and Zionism Under Siege ....................................................................... 109 4.5. Power at Work: Double Standards as Realpolitik.................................................... 118 5. Milton Viorst: The Boundaries of Skepticism ......................................................... 119 5.1. The 1990-91 Gulf Crisis in Context......................................................................... 120 5.2. Back to the Muslims’ Threat.................................................................................... 121 5.3. Terrorism from the Occupier’s Point of View ......................................................... 124 5.4. The Rhetoric That Is Fact......................................................................................... 126 5.5. The Reality That Is Sandcastles............................................................................... 128 6. Thomas Friedman: From the Middle East to the Lexus........................................... 131 III. CORPORATE MEDIA AND IMPERIALISM ................................................................. 138 1. Media Matters All the More in an Imperial Democracy.......................................... 138 1.2. The First US Gulf War in Context........................................................................... 140 1.3. Corporate Media and US Foreign Policy................................................................. 145 1.4. The Media Coverage of the 1990-91 Gulf Crisis..................................................... 149 2. The “Unfinished” in CNN’s The Unfinished War ................................................... 155 2.1. Professionalism and Lack of Context at Work ........................................................ 157 2.2. The Native Informant............................................................................................... 163 2.3. Accommodating Dissent.......................................................................................... 164 2.4. The Unfinished Business ......................................................................................... 169 3. The “America” in Steven Emerson’s Jihad in America........................................... 171 IV. HOLLYWOOD AND EGYPTIAN CINEMA: A SENSE OF SIEGE .................................. 180 1. Edward Zwick’s Arabs in The Siege........................................................................ 182 1.1. “Them” and “Us” ..................................................................................................... 185 1.2. Purging Frank Haddad: A Necessary Curfew on His Spatial Representation ......... 190 1.3. Coming Full Circle: How Symbolic Lines Become Barbed Wire........................... 194 2. Youssef Chahine’s The Other: Terrorism from an Arab Point of View.................. 197 2.1. The Other’s Fundamentalists ................................................................................... 200 2.2. The Representation of the US as All Evil................................................................ 204 3. Three Kings’ Three-Dimensionality ........................................................................ 206 3.1. Bataan’s Tradition ................................................................................................... 209 3.2. Demystifying the Justness of the Gulf War ............................................................. 210 3.3. From Pygmalion to Caliban ..................................................................................... 217 3.4. The Mystical Ending: In Tears and with Gold......................................................... 221 4. Khaled Youssef: The Storm at Home .....................................................................

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