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“Cultural Constructs” and other Fantasies: Imagined Narratives in Imagined Communities; Surrejoinder to Gershoni and Jankowski's “Print Culture, Social Change, and the Process of Redefining Imagined Communities in Egypt”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2009

Charles D. Smith
Charles D. Smith
Affiliation:
Charles D. Smith is Professor of Near Eastern Studies at the University of Arizona at Tucson, Ariz. 85721, U.S.A.
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Extract

Israel Gershoni and James Jankowski provide a spirited defense of their book, Redefining the Egyptian Nation, which I critiqued in the November 1997 issue of IJMES. They explain their ideas on nationalism and how they purportedly applied them in the book, and conclude that I have misread “both modern nationalism and Egyptian history.” That remains to be seen. What is certain is that one cannot find in Redefining the Egyptian Nation the analysis of the thought of Benedict Anderson and Anthony D. Smith presented in their response (“Print Culture, Social Change, and the Process of Redefining Imagined Communities in Egypt,” present issue). Neither can one find in Imagined Communities the ideas and the stress on “nationalism as a cultural construct” that they attribute to Anderson. Gershoni and Jankowski now allege intentions and arguments for books whose texts do not contain what they ascribe to them. Their claims here for Redefining the Egyptian Nation appear to reflect the more extensive reading on nationalism which they did for their recent co-edited book Rethinking Nationalism in the Arab Middle East rather than a familiarity with the literature evidenced in the book under discussion, which was published four years ago.

Type
Articles
Information
International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 31 , Issue 1 , February 1999 , pp. 95 - 102
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1999

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References

Notes

1 Smith, Charles D., “Imagined Identities, Imagined Nationalisms Print Culture and Egyptian Nationalism in Light of Recent Scholarship,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 29 (1997): 607–22Google Scholar. The essay issue a review of Gershoni, Israel and Jankowski, James, ed., Redefining the Egyptian Nation, 1930–1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 Anderson, Benedict, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism, 2nd ed. (London, 1991).Google Scholar

3 Jankowski, James and Gershoni, Israel, ed., Rethinking Nationalism in the Arab Middle East (New York: 1997). I will discuss this book later as its arguments impinge upon claims made for Redefining the Egyptian Nation.Google Scholar

4 CfGershoni, and Jankowski, Google Scholar, Redefining, 213, and, idem, “Print Culture, Social Change, and the Process of Redefining Imagined Communities in Egypt,“ International Journal of Middle East Studies 31 (1999): 90.

5 Smith, Charles D., Islam and the Search for Social Order in Modern Egypt: A Biography of Muhammad Husayn Haykal (Albany: SUNY PressGoogle Scholar, 1983). See also my article “The ‘Crisis of Orientation’: The Shift of Egyptian Intellectuals to Islamic Subjects in the 1930s,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 4, 4 (10 1973): 382–410CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Gershoni and Jankowski imply in their book that our views coincide when they are clearly in opposition.

6 See Ralph Coury's two-part article, “Who ‘Invented’ Egyptian Arab Nationalism” International Journal of Middle East Studies 14, 3 (08 1982): 249–81; 14, 4 (08 1982)Google Scholar: 459–79, esp. 469–73. Coury's forthcoming book, The Making of an Egyptian Arab Nationalist: The Early Years of Azzam Pasha, 1893 1936 (Reading: Ithaca Press), elaborates on these issues with a trenchant evaluation of past scholarship on Arab nationalism.Google Scholar

7 Gershoni, and Jankowski, , Redefining, 46, 48. The authors discuss Haykal's views in the 1930s before turning to his shift to the East in 1928.Google Scholar

8 Eastern peoples at that time confronted their own despotic rulers, whether the Ottoman sultan, Persian shah, or Afghan amir, or they were controlled by imperial powers. All opposed reform and advancement, making it inevitable that the people in each region band together to demand improvements. Gershoni and Jankowski deal with this period discrepancy by using the terms “implicit” or “indirect” to refer to Haykal's supposed “call” for a popular movement.

9 Smith, “Imagined Identities, Imagined Nationalisms,“ 617.

10 Gershoni, and Jankowski, , Redefining, 217.Google Scholar

11 idem, “Print Culture, Social Change,“ 88.

12 Ibid., 89. See my comments later on this question. Gershoni and Jankowski have inserted postmodernist rhetoric into their discussion of Anderson, attributing it to him.

13 Ibid., 91.

14 Ibid., 89.

15 Anderson, Imagined Communities, xiii. Anderson's “advancement” in Gershoni and Jankowski's terms is in applying the same criteria to emerging nationalisms. Western or non-Western, as I note in “Imagined Identities, Imagined Nationalisms,” 609.

16 Gershoni and Jankowski, “Print Culture, Social Change,” 89.

17 Gabriel Piterberg, “The Tropes of Stagnation and Awakening in Nationalist Historical Consciousness: The Egyptian Case,” in Rethinking Nationalism, 42–62. Compare his quotation on p. 47 with Gershoni and Jankowski's version in “Print Culture, Social Change,” 89.

18 Piterberg, “Tropes of Stagnation and Awakening,” 49.

19 Smith, “Imagined Identities, Imagined Nationalisms,” 619.

20 Gershoni and Jankowski, “Print Culture, Social Change,” 89.

21 Cf.ibid, and Smith, Anthony D., The Ethnic Origins of Nations (Oxford, 1986), 169Google Scholar. Gershoni and Jankowski correctly use Smith's term “mental construct” but, by omitting Smith's reference to “sovereign but limited community,” they can suggest that Smith's vision of Anderson's nation matches their own broader, “cultural” interpretation.

22 Smith, Ethnic Origins, 135.

23 Anderson, Imagined Communities, 19.

24 Israel Gershoni, “Rethinking the Formation of Arab Nationalism in the Middle East, 1920–1945: Old and New Narratives,” in Rethinking Nationalism, 3–25. Gershoni refers to Anderson (p. 3) and applies his term “imagined communities” to an Arab nationalism “crossing geographic and religious boundaries,” without noting that he is expanding Anderson's frame of reference. In their article, “Print Culture, Social Change,” the authors have it both ways, declaring their adherence to Anderson (pp. 88–89) and then later claiming that they are extending his views (p. 91).

25 Duara, Prasenjit, “Transnationalism and the Predicament of Sovereignty: China, 1900–1945,” The American Historical Review 102, 4 (10 1997): 1030–51Google Scholar. Duara assumes familiarity with Anderson in his essay. See also his Rescuing History from the Nation: Questioning Narratives of Modern China (Chicago, 1995)Google Scholar. Duara's sophisticated treatment of the subject allows for the co-existence of nation-states and transnational, cultural entities, with the latter possibly being absorbed by the former. His approach contrasts sharply with that of Gershoni and Jankowski. They establish an artificial distinction between statal and cultural nationalisms, Western and non-Western. They then laud Anderson for supposedly overcoming this distinction by recognizing the transnational cultural essence of nationalism, when in fact he eradicates the distinction the opposite way. All nationalisms are statal in reference. They thus assign views to him that he does not hold and reverse the distinction that he eradicates.

26 Smith, “Imagined Identities, Imagined Nationalisms,” 616.

27 Gershoni and Jankowski, Redefining, 219.

28 Gershoni, “Old and New Narratives,” 24.

29 James Jankowski, “Arab Nationalism in ‘Nasserism’ and Egyptian State Policy, 1952–1958,” in ibid., 167.

30 Ibid.

31 Ibid.

32 Gershoni, “Old and New Narratives,” 24, where he lists Ralph Coury along with Jankowski and others as supporting him. In fact, Coury's articles and his forthcoming book contradict Gershoni, as does Jankowski in his article.

33 It is in those sections also that one sees the listing of terms without contextual reference, as noted in my review article. I reiterate my comment in my article that, in Redefining the Egyptian Nation, Gershoni appears to be forcing material into a supra-Egyptian thesis first stated in his doctoral dissertation in 1978.

34 Smith, “Imagined Identities,” 615.