Mahdi Amel was a philosophy professor at the Lebanese University, who wrote on questions of anti-imperialism and national liberation from a Marxist perspective during the Lebanese Civil War before his assassination in 1987. This collection of essays brings his writing to the Anglosphere for the first time.
The first pair of essays by Amel present his theory of the Colonial Mode of Production. Amel takes an Althusserian/structuralist approach, but hides it up his sleeve, instead buttressing his argument with a close reading of several passages from Marx. In brief, Amel views the Colonial Mode of Production (which is not necessarily shrugged off when countries achieve nominal liberation from their colonizers) as one where capitalism is imposed from without, but not allowed to truly develop due to surplus being captured by the colonizing country, keeping the colonized country producing agricultural cash crops, extracting natural resources, and offering services — all under the supervision of a stunted petty-bourgeoisie (what other anti-colonial Marxists might call the national bourgeoisie).
The strength of this section was its recognition of class struggle as not merely breaking along the lines of worker-versus-capitalist, but also integrating questions of national liberation. He illustrates this multiplicity with the example of the European Algerian neighbourhood of Bab El Oued. This spot had been a popular base of the communist party before the revolution kicked off, when it transformed into “a haven of European racism as well as the home-base and centre of fascist European terror against the revolution.” I also appreciated his development on the dangers of applying “preformed thoughts” rather than conducting an analysis of a given time and place to see if the class relationships of, say, 19th century England, do in fact apply there. Altogether, Amel's close fidelity to Marx and his analysis of the political economy of colonized countries results in a defense against charges of eurocentrism in Marxism.
That said, I had several reservations with his argument. The author uses “Hegelian” as a synonym for simple, static, and overall undialectical; there were also several claims I found to be unfounded and too eager to make their point (e.g., “Only Marxist thought captures the complex nature of the contradiction at the heart of historical reality, because the Marxist contradiction — unlike the Hegelian contradiction — is in its very nature complex.” or “Colonisation is what introduced into our countries the contradiction without which there is no history.” There was, of course, history before colonization.). His structuralist argument falls into many of the same traps of Althusser’s: his structural model is not a philosophy of change but instead makes these structures themselves seem almost eternal; it is a philosophy that dissolves the individual, transforming relationships between individuals into ones between things.
The remaining four chapters included an interesting critique of Edward Said (who he argues insufficiently understood Marx and thus fell into his own form of orientalism), a Marxist assessment of sectarianism (it’s all class struggle; Islam adopts different forms depending on the material conditions of its practitioners, including the bourgeois state), and a study of ideology in national liberation (cultural heritage is always viewed from the present through class ideology, a critique of colonialism as "civilizing"). These essays were an interesting peek into a part of the world I knew very little about. However, most of Amel's answers to these questions were particular to his time and place, making for a challenging read. Broadly, Amel takes a line that does not reject the coupling of Islam with national liberation movements, recognizing that the conflict between religious sects is a (sometimes mystifying) way class struggle manifests, and that this class struggle itself shapes Islam into the various expressions we see today.
The first two chapters are written by the collection’s editors and attempt to contextualize Amel’s writing in the broader tradition of anti-colonial thought and Arabic Marxism in particular. I would have been more satisfied with just a brief biography of Amel, plus a more heavy-handed editorial voice throughout the work. For example, I would have appreciated a preamble for each essay explaining why they were selected, the audience Amel likely had in mind, the political situation at the time of writing, etc. Additional footnotes providing a brief description of some of the political actors or historical events referenced would also have helped me get more out of the text. There was also extensive use of square brackets and excerpting, which made me wonder what was changed or skipped in translation and why. Overall, the presentation seems like a missed opportunity for a collection aiming to popularize Amel’s writing for a Western audience, although the essays themselves provide insight into 20th century West Asian national liberation struggles.
No comments:
Post a Comment