The Importance of Being Wrong
Shauna McLean
A fourth year at the University of Toronto studying International Relations, Peace, Conflict & Justice, and Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations. Her work focuses primarily on democratic decay, women’s rights, and international norms. She is currently serving as the Head of Trinity College.
This article is part of the “The Arab Renaissance in Contemporary Eyes” project, which is the fruit of cooperation between Henna Platform and The Department of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations. In this project, Henna team provides editorial assistance to the graduate and undergraduate students to publish their final papers on Henna’s website. You read in this series of articles: Intellectuals of the Modern Arab World by Jens Hanssen,Taha Hussein and the Dialectic of Arab Enlightenment by Quinn Teague-Colfer, The Arab Nahda from Feminist Perspective by Sara Molaie, Cultural Healing After Tragedy by Timothy Boudoumit, and Self-definition in Changing Worlds by Mosab Alnomire.
Translated to Arabic by Ola Barqawi.
When confronted with a question as great and complicated as a matter of cultural identity and sovereignty, the gap in knowledge makes it incredibly difficult to be sure of the correct way forward. Every path presented ahead is built upon hypotheticals and philosophical considerations that come from a deeply personal space to tackle much larger phenomena. When writing about her liberatory process, Bell Hooks best described the value of theorizing: “To me, this theory emerges from the concrete, from my efforts to make sense of everyday life experiences, from my efforts to critically intervene in my life and the lives of others… While we work to resolve those issues… that are most pressing in daily life, we engage in a critical process of theorizing that enables and empowers” (Hooks 1991, 11). In this context, theory becomes a development not of solutions but of personal exploration.
When we engage with history, then, we engage with the emotions and thought processes of thinkers who can be incredibly distant to us but are writing in the mindset of their present day. Within this framework, the act of studying history becomes incredibly current. One such period of history that could benefit from such study is the Nahda, the Arab literary renaissance that developed around the late nineteenth century. Nahda writers examined identity and culture during a time of incredible change and potential, grappling with their time in a way marked equally by uncertainty and optimism. By properly examining the personal exploration and framework of Nahda intellectuals, we in the present can uncover a new understanding of our own intellectual process and how we must historicize authors of the past and their uncertainties.
Taha Hussein wrote in a time rife with intersections of personal and political development in Egypt. An avowed intellectual, he wrote many literary masterpieces before moving to the political sphere in an attempt to shape education and culture in a decolonizing country. As a vital pillar of Nahda’s philosophies, he argued for a revival of Arab culture by exploring traditionally European institutions and philosophies. The value in Hussein’s writing is contested, with postcolonial and modern thinkers often disregarding him as an elitist who was blinded by Europe as a blueprint for culture to the extent of disregarding any distinct Arab identity. Much of the dissatisfaction with Nahda’s ideas is born of the same origins in a larger frustration with the continued influence of imperial powers in the region and the patronizing view of Arab culture as underdeveloped or lesser (Ahmed 2018). This trend is plainly clear in Hussein’s writing. For example, in The Future of Culture in Egypt he stated, “I do not want us to feel inferior to the Europeans because of our cultural shortcomings. This would cause us to despise ourselves and admit that they are not treating us unjustly when they are being arrogant.” Within the context of a larger passage attempting to distance Egypt from ‘Eastern’ mentalities by connecting the cultures of Ancient Egypt and Ancient Greece, he often disregarded the effect of Islam on Egyptian culture and instead focused on his argument that “in order to become equal partners in civilization with the Europeans, we must literally and forthrightly do everything that they do.” (Hussien 1938)This appears to be a deeply imperial or complacent view from a man who went on to enact reforms within Egypt, and yet it elucidates the personal space from which his theory emerged.
David Scott writes at length about criticism after post-coloniality, offering strategies on how to interact with theories that developed at the time of decolonization. One of the most valuable reminders he offers is that “you cannot assume in advance that you know the question in relation to which the text constitutes itself as an answer.” Criticism must therefore be strategic, properly entering the problem-space of a writer to consider the context of stakes, goals, insecurities, and perceived viable solutions (Scott 1990). Hussein, as an intellectual and literary talent who found his passions within his education in Europe, brought this experience forward in his educational and cultural arts reform projects. His ‘solutions’ were individual in nature, and he developed them out of what he knew.
To be clear, this exploration of personal questions is not to defend Hussein’s flawed and structuralist view of Egyptian culture and development. This is instead to offer the value hidden within the many projects and works that Hussein produced: the understanding that he was wrong. Many great young thinkers of the time emerged from the opportunity to disapprove of Hussein and to offer refutation or debate against his ideas in an environment of “intense social debates, fierce political battles, and serious scholarly engagement with both classical Arab-Islamic thought and contemporary European pedagogical and research methodologies” (Ahmed 2018, 10). Intellectuals cannot know the future as they write, and Hussein offered his view of solutions within his present scope. While many thinkers were more capable of distinguishing how colonialism negatively impacted culture, it is equally true that much of these realizations can be found in the space of discourse. He himself chose to begin The Future of Culture in Egypt with a quote by Abu al-‘Ala’ al-Ma’arri that could serve as instructions to the reader: “Take my opinion and evaluate it for itself / with all its deviousness and weakness…”. Disagreement is, therefore, a prescription for a healthy intellectual culture. Past generations provide answers to the future thinkers in their own pitfalls as solutions are attempted, reconfigured, and disregarded and a scholarly community emerges.
Occasionally I am surprised to realize that in the moment of my furthest study, I could perhaps say that I have never ‘known’ less. One of the most beautiful things about being a student is the process of discovering all your mistakes, the gaps in your logic, and the facts that change your mind. Granted, the stakes of my education are low and deeply personal. No country depends upon my efficacy and there is no population or culture that I must work unerringly to defend. Still, I find that I learn more from my confusion, from my disagreement, than I ever do from my immediate understanding. Nahda authors gave us questions, if not answers. The ability to disagree, debate, and defend one’s argument is, therefore, a valuable personal project and essential to grappling with decolonization or state-building.
Bibliography
Ahmed, Hussam R. “The Nahda in Parliament: Taha Husayn’s Career-Building. Knowledge Institutions, 1922-1952,” Arab Studies Journal 26 (2018), 8-32.
Hooks, Bell. “Theory as Liberatory Practice,” Yale Journal of Law & Feminism 4:1 (1991-2), 1- 12.
Husayn, Taha. The Future of Culture in Egypt. 1938.
Scott, David. “Criticism after Postcoloniality,” Refashioning Futures (Princeton, 1999), 3-20.
