Mark Bradley and Amira Jarmakani are both interested in culture as a lens for thinking through how Americans understand US global engagement. They are also both interested in how those US global engagements shape American culture. What do you find interesting about their arguments and approaches?
Studies of the US in the World, Fall 2017
MALS 70000 Intro to Graduate Studies, Professor Karen Miller
Both authors are interested in the way Americans view global cultural narratives through specific lenses. In the case of the Bradley article, he relates the global human rights narrative as it is experienced by Americans in school settings and through cultural exhibitions. In the case of the Jarmakani article, she explores the way Americans view the Middle East through fictionalized accounts of an idealized version of the Arab Sheikh and the ways in which this colors our perceptions.
In the first article the author explores how the global human rights agenda was pursued by the United States and came to the fore in the 1970’s and became a dominant mode of discourse in International Relations. This according to the author’s assertion inspired countries who were being newly formed or in some cases reformed to center their constitutional framework after such notions after having discarded the American constitution as a model previously. At the same time such notions were reflected back on the US population itself in the form of the UN Declaration on Human Rights becoming an important item of study in US high school classrooms. This serves as a reminder that cultural narratives are both outwardly forceful and reflective.
The second piece demonstrates how US produced cultural items such as romance novels and also journals carry within themselves the collective unconscious ideas that Americans have about other cultures. In this case particularly about the Middle East. We view the landscape through our own individual wants and desires and these are shaped collectively and individually by the images that surround us. In other words, we shape our internal cultural narrative through a US tinted bubble.
Mark Bradley studies the emergence and historical developments of the current American preoccupation with human rights. The author begins his book with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the United Nations in 1948. This document served as a starting point for what later transformed the global perception of political culture, freedom, and the eventual rise of human rights. The revolutionary provisions of the Declaration necessitated a fundamental reimagination of the connections between people, countries and the global community. Bradley explores how the idea of human rights in America transformed from an outlandish aspirational rhetoric in the 1940s to the “everyday vernacular” of American culture. He points out that American understanding of human rights was shaped following the currents of human rights outside the U.S. For example, experiences of such individuals as Solzhenitsyn, Havel and Sakharov gave Americans a perspective of the ways the Soviet Union disciplined those who tried to resist its oppressive political regime by violating basic human rights including freedom of speech. The author argues that human rights agenda transformed the American perception of its place in the world. By tracing developments of visual culture along with people’s lived realities outside the U.S. Bradley demonstrates how human rights became so believable and central in American culture.
Jarmakani focuses on questions of security, neoliberalism, and multiculturalism, and explores how they are used as instruments of American imperialism and the paranoid logic of American exceptionalism. She points out that romantic novels about Arabiastan offer a deep and sometimes radical explanation of the war on terror in the 21st century. The author also explores the role of desire and fantasy in the progression of American imperialism. Jarmakani points out that desert romances facilitate the idea already prevalent in Western nations about the benevolence of imperial actions in the war on terror. Thus, Americans consider political actions of the Western powers as humanitarian intervention aimed to free the nations from oppressive regimes. The image of a romantic sheikh as an ideal political ally that wants to change the oppressive regime in his fictional country represents the idea of struggle between evil and good (“evil” being the Islamic terrorists and “good” being the American powers). The sheikh’s eventual transformation is initiated through his desire for an equal heteronormative union with the white emancipated heroine. Another important feature of desert romances is that they heavily rely on the notion of feminism, putting in opposition Western empowerment and oriental oppression. Jarmakani’s analysis of the heroine thus has a political framework. It brings the reader’s attention to the feminist fantasies prevalent in the U.S. (of helping the oppressed Arab women), as desert romances are usually perceived as empowering.
I found these two pieces an odd pairing. The Jamarkani piece criticized the neoliberal propaganda that is presently (post 9/11) promulgated through various narratives of the Arabic/Muslim world including romance novels, films and National Geographic magazine. Here the author argues that the various narratives follow similar themes which seek to situate certain Arab characters in a way that hides their complicity with the West and thus their complicity with Imperialism. The claim here is that much of the politics of the Neoliberal world is dictated by outside forces which are obscured by inside participants (i.e.: Arab characters) who are really performing the Western Imperialist agenda.
Having only read the two sections assigned from the Bradley book, I can’t say whether other chapters branch out to include detailed discussions of human rights abuses performed by the US. Nevertheless, based on the two sections we read, I was really shocked that all of the discussions centered around abuses by communist regimes with little to no mention of what we were doing to the Vietnamese people in the 1970s. This erasure of human rights abuses enacted by the U.S. seemed to be an example of the very thing that the Jamarkani piece criticized (the erasure of history to reinforce the “other” as the bad guy and the U.S. as the good guy). In the Bradley piece, the “bad guys” were the Communists while in the other piece the bad guys were Muslims, but it seems that little else has changed. Beyond this, I found the Bradley piece problematic in its seeming blindness towards how little the human rights movement has actually accomplished when it comes to the “super-powers” like the U.S. and Russia. There was also no mention of how the U.S. was often responsible for putting into place and then supporting dictators that then committed human rights abuses. The author also incorrectly states at the bottom of page 231 that “Hundreds of terrorist suspects held in Guantanamo Bay” have been subjected to various types of torture. This is actually inaccurate in that it has been proven that less than a handful of those detained at Guantanamo have any connection to terrorism at all. Thus, the sentence should read “Hundreds of innocent civilians at Guantanamo Bay” have been tortured. Not only would this be more accurate, it would also avail the author of his obvious American prejudices. The author also doesn’t seem to have read recent articles uncovering the “fair trade” movement as more often than not, little more than a marketing scheme.
The novels which main theme was desert love and had a dessert prince as ‘alpha hero’ were being popular in the post 9/11 America. The increasing popularity of the sheikh heroes in the mass-market made Jarmakani think the stories must convey contemporary American Imperialism, particularly in the context of war on terror. She wanted to show that desert romances somehow contain some of the covert tactics of contemporary US imperialism which has been dined by the novel writers and readers. The book shows that the writers of the dessert romance mostly use an imaginary place, often invented by themselves, as the homeland of the sheikhs and they always use distinct ethnic, cultural, and religious markers to exoticize sheikhs not to clearly associate them with terrorists. This is how they makes the sheikh hero more desirable. Author here shows that desert romances are not universal and “color-blind” fantasy stories as they have claimed, but are directly related to race, gender, religion etc. The book delineates the way contemporary US imperialism works by deploying three technologies of imperialism —security, freedom, and liberal multiculturalism. She describes in the first chapter of her book how the hunt for security develop more violence and insecurity.
Bradley shows although human right was very old concept and was reason for many great revolution like French revolution, but the global practice of human right is very recent phenomena. When the international human right emerged in the mid twentieth century, US had played an important role to remake international human right thought and practice. To contrary in 1970s US did not bring that very idea to home and ‘human right became a resonant vernacular largely for problems beyond the United States.’ In this book the author was trying to find why US was more interested to solve problems of strangers rather that its own? Bradley was more interested to describe international human rights which includes ‘protection against torture and forced disappearance and for the rights of children, migrant workers, and persons with disabilities.’ While human rights became commonplace to day to day professional life in US in the twenty first century and everybody is talking about human right and women empowerment, it was very surprising to know that US is the only country who did not ratify for children’s right to UN. Also, it took a long for US to legalize gay marriage. When it is well known that ‘the United States does not torture’, after 9/11 suspected people were being tortured in an inhuman way and lately that had been justified by the people of US. In this book author has shown how US is being obsessed about human right and not obeying the laws of international human rights at the same time.
What I found most interesting about Bradleys depiction of how the discourse and perception of human rights developed in the US was his emphasis of the importance of the “individualist affectual turn” (p. 159) and how it – by bringing attention to the testimonials of individual victims – contributed to a rise of visibility of and public attention to human rights violations in the world. Another point he didn’t stress that much, but that arose my attention, is that the perception of human rights violations in other parts of the world was also connected to immigration of people from those countries to the US. Overall the main conclusion I draw from his findings is the central role of empathy within our perception of human rights violations. At the same time his depiction – especially within the last chapter – made me think again about the problematic fact that the international application of human rights is not effectively guaranteed by an international institution which really has the power to enforce them.
Jarmakani’s piece deals with the trope of the “romantic Sheikh” in “desert romance novels”. On the one hand I found his methodology of critically analyzing those novels in order to reveal how they can be interpreted as expressions of “the way citizen-subjects of an empire (…) come to desire for the sheikh-hero, who allies his country with the U.S. war on terror by adopting the logic of securitization” (p. 26) very interesting and productive. On the other hand I am not too sure if his analysis really needs the high level of sophistication he applies by referring to the work of Deleuze/Guattari in various ways. But this is not to say that I don’t appreciate his methodology. I just found that his concrete findings in chapter 1 didn’t clearly refer to all the theoretical background he developed in the introduction or maybe not enough to make me – as someone who is not familiar with this theoretical approach – fully understand all of the points he wants to make.
These two readings offer widely differing views of America’s reactions to dangerous current situations.
Mark Bradley’s chapters deal with the concept of humanitarian responses from the decade of its initial worldwide interest – the 1940’s – to the decade when the impulse gained U.S. ‘believability’ – the 1970’s. As Bradley aptly points out, America was late in getting ‘on board’ the humanitarian train for a variety of reasons, but certainly no less than the Vietnam War and self-centered indifference stemming from corrosive domestic politics. Bradley more particularly, reckons that it was as a turn towards individualist thinking and a ‘redefinition of the self’ that propelled American interest in humanitarian affairs. This left Americans open to the emergent wave of human rights concerns that was breaking across the world, but most especially in Europe in the 1970’s. However, this awakening in American sensibilities has now begun to reverse itself as early 21st century preoccupations indicate. Although Bradley has not specifically stated this, it has become all too painful that Americans are not as enthusiastic about being humanitarian trail-blazers as they once were. In the defense of this polity though, there is probably a surfeit of other confounding complications that require attention in the age of Trump.
Criticisms of thinly reasoned out ‘desert romances’, as a metaphor for interactions with the ‘war on terror’ (or ‘GWOT’ as Islamophobic warriors would prefer), are not the only thrust of the readings in Amira Jarmakani’s work. At the end of chapter one, Jarmakani delivers what I think are her principal concerns, namely, that what ‘the world needs… is not romance and love, but rather a committed engagement with the notion of freedom.’ As Jarmakani explains this, a turn away from the American feminist version ‘of a valorization of individual choice as women’s liberation,’ should be directed instead towards ‘collective emancipation,’ which she sees as the real goal that American feminism should strive for. However, the bulk of her writings deal broadly and piercingly with the American misconceptions regarding the ‘GWOT’ that the George W. Bush administration so thoughtfully bequeathed to the nation. She deftly makes the point, that these romances literally wholesale the crass ideas that Arab nationalists (i.e. the stand-in sheikh) can be co-opted and turned into ‘the exceptional ally to (the) U.S.-Anglo imperialist powers.’ An analysis of that dynamic by her, posits that the way ‘hegemonic power works’ is by ‘fomenting the desire for security and protection’ from the very target people that the hegemon seeks to subdue. Jarmakani shows that the sheikh, a stand-in for the Arab nation, is both a commanding figure and is also vulnerable to the forces symbolized by the ‘white heroine.’ These ‘desert romances’ encapsulate American notions of fantasy and reality, and are perfect vehicles for the angst that the public feels in its encounter with these unconventional opponents. These challenges, it is important to recall, were triggered by this nation’s interventions in Arab societies, for the express purpose of usurping their mineral resources.
Sheldon Teicher
2 November 2017
Self-worth and incongruity seem to be the underlying theme of both readings at first glance. Wile both authors explore their respective topics through a cultural lens, Bradley and Jarmakani take two different approaches towards the imagery of the war on terror, how these images influence our perceptions of war, and our perceptions of the “enemy”. While Bradley explores human rights or the lack thereof previously and its continued shift presently in the world, he also explores inconsistencies of human rights, war and results of war on its face, condemning Americans for their brutal behavior in Afghanistan, Iraq etc., while noting then President Bush’s aloofness towards the “alleged” torture. On the other hand, Jarmakani’s retelling of authors and the romanticized novel industry of the Sheikh, almost seems as an attempted method of redemption, or dignifying the essence of the Arab hero, while normalizing him into a feminist, primal like, submissive (to the white heroine). Approaching the war on terror indirectly, through metaphors of the imaginary of the Sheikh, that ultimately shape our views.
In the matter of incongruity, Bradley reveals American’s contradictory behavior of torture and sodomy overseas, while furthering their jurisprudence, pertaining to human rights at home. Their lack of morality goes unpunished by George W. Bush’s account of torture, “The United States does not torture… It is against our laws. And it is against our values” (Bradley, 231). This was clearly the opposite of what was actually going on. While in a less direct manner, Jarmakani, notes the author’s ability to steer clear of “turning off their readers” by associating their hero Sheikh to the realities or assumptions of what a Sheikh actually is to an American. Thereby, the author dilutes the Sheikh, to make him more palatable, “Rashid is part English, and this fact of birth functions in the narrative to crucially distinguish him from the prototype of the cruel, savage Arab, namely, his half-brother Tariq,” (Jarmakani, 15).
Similarly as other texts that we have been reading previously, both Bradley & Jarmakani are taking materials form the visual culture to explain and analyze cultural attitudes and reactions from US towards foreignness.
In Bradley’s case, he also explores the textual and legal dimensions of the wartime human rights imagination, arguing that “visual forms of right consciousness emerged alongside sustained wartime conversations”.
I found very interesting his mention about gestalt theory and the cultivation of self-awareness connected to the emergency of Human rights and something that start to reshape the political in the 1960s.
It is also surprising to read that out of Havel and Solzhenitsyn novels, a new vocabulary came up “by which tu understand how the suffering from strangers might matter as much as one`s own”. This does not seem to apply right now.
Reading those text makes me remember an exhibition I saw recently at BRIC, about Brooklyn Photographs, especially conned with the mention about Zoe Strauss “Mattress Flip Front” work, as a contradiction to the feeling of freedom that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights offers us, which is usually hidden behind nationalist proclaims.
https://www.bricartsmedia.org/art-exhibitions/brooklyn-photographs
Specially George Malave who photographed Puerto Rican migrants in the late 1960s:
https://www.georgemalave.com/varet-street-kids
I enjoyed reading Jarmakani’s piece because it embraced the psyche of women who read romance novels, which is a subject not usually touched on in an academic light. This piece described the way US relations with the Middle East heavily influenced romance novels set in the deserts of Arabia. Jarmakani was clear to point out how negative American views towards the Middle East transitioned into a ambiguous details concerning Arabia and the background of the Sheikh. The authors of the books seemed deliberate in what details to research and what details to leave out of the novel as not offend anyone (or most likely not to inadvertently bring up oppressive subjects and ruin their books sales). It was interesting to read how politics transcended into US culture specifically concerning the arousal of women, but I feel Jarmakani overreached in some interpretations of the female psyche. For example, the abduction by the Sheikh contributing a political obsession with security.
Bradley’s readings focused on how human rights came to be a focus for Americans. Mostly through the depiction of human rights’ violations in other countries were the awareness of Americans increased. Even though we have our own human rights issues in the US, none of that was in the forefront of American’s view of America. Only in the protests of war, the shared vulnerability of foreigners and a heavy political emphasis on consciousness and therapy in the 1970’s did human rights because an issue to care about in the United States. Although UNESCO brought this issue to light in the 1940’s. It seems the presumed superiority of the United States transcended into a general attitude of “that could never happen here” towards human rights violations in the United States.
Jarmakani’s piece uses the representation of the Sheik in western “desert novels” as an entry point to critically analyze the hegemonic use of desire for imperialist goals particularly when it comes to the American War on Terror. The Sheik is a used as an entry point because it represents the projection of the paradox of American imperialist aims or as she puts “…illustrates a micropolitics of desire that simultaneously resonates at the macropolitical level of imperialism.” (p.20) Her method of using the micropolitical and highlighting the various ways it resonates at the macropolitical is very effective and makes for a thoroughly convincing argument. In investigating the different allegorical tropes in the “desert novel” dealing with notions of masculinity, geography, wealth, technology; she is able to use these to help us to understand macropolitical representations in U.S. policy in the War on Terror.
Bradley’s piece I found it much harder to locate his central argument, he appears to want to offer an understanding of human rights from a less conventional perspective that focuses on the shift in the use of human rights in U.S. life. He wants to do this by juxtaposing human right discussions in the 1940s and the 1970s. I had trouble with this argument because he fails to make a clear distinction in terms of which human rights he is discussing. America has always existed and as a results has had its worldview shaped by a racial binary, therefore any discussion of white human rights will be much different from a discussion of human rights of black and brown peoples. His failure to understand this somewhat undermines his argument as between 1940 and 1970 white human rights are clearly still prioritized be it the victims of the Holocaust or Russian dissidents, while the human rights in the black and brown periphery are still renders basically invisible unless the Cold War necessitates otherwise.
Bradley’s questions about human rights he was answering are ones expected to be answered for this topic. I would have liked to see a more complex explanation of the reasons and meaning of the birth of the term, human rights, particularly dissecting former Secretary General of the UN definition, “the yardstick by which we measure human progress.” I think that definition is problematic, colonial and racist and this piece would be more constructive if Bradley began to question the way America manipulates the English language for its imperial agenda. One particular argument I found interesting was the emergence of an individual consciousness and autonomy – working on your own evolution versus seeking answers from society and linking this to finding your roots and your heritage all to reach higher levels of consciousness which to feels counter-intuitive to the human rights movement where the fight should be working in tandem with each other as a community.
Jarmakani’s arguments are convincing in linking post-9/11 events and psychology with romantic Sheikh novels. After researching these novels and how incredibly popular they are, Jarmakani’s claim on America viewing the Middle East in a fantastical way started to make sense. Desire is one interesting argument which is linked as an assistance to imperialism. Desire of security, freedom, and liberal multiculturalism with economic policies, proxy wars and tyranny hiding under it through the binary storylines of a good sheikh-hero that has American qualities and the evil Arabiastani terrorist. This kind of complex argument of the damage desert romances can actually cause, by manipulating one’s psyche through desire, lust and fantasy strategically after 9/11 leads me to other questions like, why this propaganda in desert romances, who is the target audience and what was the effects of these novels in the ultimate goal of American-Iraqi war?