1 00:00:04,930 --> 00:00:12,870 OK. So welcome to the Friday Middle East Centre Seminar webinar on this case. 2 00:00:12,870 --> 00:00:20,370 Before we begin, I just have a couple of announcements to make. The format today will be as follows. 3 00:00:20,370 --> 00:00:29,880 I will talk to Professor Dabashi for about 20 minutes to give us time to look at some of the main themes of the book. 4 00:00:29,880 --> 00:00:36,120 And then we will go to a question and answer session if you have questions. 5 00:00:36,120 --> 00:00:43,080 Please to submit them as we go so that we can get through as many as possible in the last half hour. 6 00:00:43,080 --> 00:00:50,270 Could you please submit them through the Q and A box and not through the chapel? 7 00:00:50,270 --> 00:00:59,020 Last one last thing is that should you wish to purchase the book at Denver University Press has given us a discount. 8 00:00:59,020 --> 00:01:09,580 You need the code event three zero, and you can you can pay that into the UTI website and you'll get a discount on the book, 9 00:01:09,580 --> 00:01:13,540 which is certainly well worth the cost. 10 00:01:13,540 --> 00:01:22,050 And it looks so nice and it's a work of great intellectual significance. 11 00:01:22,050 --> 00:01:25,980 So, Professor Deffeyes, [INAUDIBLE], I would like to, first of all, 12 00:01:25,980 --> 00:01:34,080 welcome you to the Middle East centre at Oxford, albeit a virtual Middle East centre at Oxford. 13 00:01:34,080 --> 00:01:39,290 It's a wonderful opportunity for us to hear you talk about your own work, 14 00:01:39,290 --> 00:01:46,650 which I think we've all been looking forward to a great deal over the last few days. 15 00:01:46,650 --> 00:01:49,230 I'm sure you need no introduction. 16 00:01:49,230 --> 00:01:58,530 But just briefly to mention that you are the head of Vokoun, professor of Iranian studies and comparative literature at Columbia, 17 00:01:58,530 --> 00:02:07,740 and of course, the author of many works on a variety of topics which it's impossible to to mention so much here. 18 00:02:07,740 --> 00:02:14,130 But of course, they range from the very famous theology of discontent, books on cinema, 19 00:02:14,130 --> 00:02:20,580 books on Iran, on cinema, books on some of Palestine history culture and so on. 20 00:02:20,580 --> 00:02:26,550 But I'm sure that this linkage is familiar to our audience. 21 00:02:26,550 --> 00:02:31,950 So if I can start by asking you some fairly broad questions. 22 00:02:31,950 --> 00:02:36,690 Professor. The first question is, is is quite obvious, really. 23 00:02:36,690 --> 00:02:45,420 Why this book and why now? This book? So I wondered if you can tell us a little bit about the genesis of the book and how it 24 00:02:45,420 --> 00:02:52,110 fits into the general trajectory of your intellectual work over the past few years. 25 00:02:52,110 --> 00:03:03,840 By all means festival. I would like to begin, Stephanie, by thanking you for accepting this book in your series in Edinburgh University Press, 26 00:03:03,840 --> 00:03:07,620 as I'm sure you know, I'm a great admirer of your scholarship, 27 00:03:07,620 --> 00:03:17,900 and I was delighted that you have it, this series with Edinburgh University Press into which you generously and graciously accepted my my book. 28 00:03:17,900 --> 00:03:22,170 Thank you for chaperoning the book into final fruition. 29 00:03:22,170 --> 00:03:26,690 I'm grateful. I'm also delighted to see Eugene Rogan with us. 30 00:03:26,690 --> 00:03:34,620 I just reminded him that he is one of our alumni and that we miss him right now because I'm the director undergraduate studies. 31 00:03:34,620 --> 00:03:40,050 I look at him as he was a 18 year old coming to Columbia. 32 00:03:40,050 --> 00:03:44,250 We're delighted to have a Columbia connexion at our school. 33 00:03:44,250 --> 00:03:53,630 Now, as for this book, as you well know, a book of this sort comes together from a variety of perspectives and reasons. 34 00:03:53,630 --> 00:03:57,420 And if I were to start somewhere, I would say the book has started from its end. 35 00:03:57,420 --> 00:04:03,020 The last chapter you remember the book on Towards Theology, Liberation Theology, 36 00:04:03,020 --> 00:04:13,560 post Islamist Liberation Theology that I had written on post Islamist Liberation Theology on varieties of occasions that, 37 00:04:13,560 --> 00:04:13,980 as you know, 38 00:04:13,980 --> 00:04:23,610 the origin of this idea with my dear friend and colleague ossify out and also with Rivoire who have been thinking that writing about system ism, 39 00:04:23,610 --> 00:04:31,260 I have my own take on it. But the question of the theology of post Islamism was preoccupying me. 40 00:04:31,260 --> 00:04:36,570 And then habitually I kind of thinking in terms of a two bookends. 41 00:04:36,570 --> 00:04:41,930 I wanted to begin somewhere and end somewhere. It naturally went to. 42 00:04:41,930 --> 00:04:48,210 Allama, as you well know, is a seminal figure as quote unquote controversial figure. 43 00:04:48,210 --> 00:04:54,250 People either deeply loved and admired him or the other way around. 44 00:04:54,250 --> 00:05:00,700 And as I say, early in the book. I grew up with Allama. 45 00:05:00,700 --> 00:05:05,800 As all young people were with their fathers initially, they think it's God's gift to humanity. 46 00:05:05,800 --> 00:05:13,540 Then they feel, God, how could this man be my father? And then finally settled with, oh, he's just a man like everybody else. 47 00:05:13,540 --> 00:05:20,290 So it was a moment that I needed to gain for theoretical reasons. 48 00:05:20,290 --> 00:05:23,380 Notions of theology, of persistent ism. 49 00:05:23,380 --> 00:05:32,230 I went to him, but once I started working on him and rereading him and rereading some wonderful pieces of a scholarship, 50 00:05:32,230 --> 00:05:39,940 some of them by my own students, some of them by other scholars, have worked over the last 50 years, as you well know. 51 00:05:39,940 --> 00:05:42,220 And you kind of mentioned Theology of the Spanton. 52 00:05:42,220 --> 00:05:51,850 I first had an encounter with I met some 40 years ago when I was working on the ideological full grounding of the revolution in Iran. 53 00:05:51,850 --> 00:06:01,240 But since then, a lot has happened. Wonderful work has been done both in Persian and in English and occasionally in other languages. 54 00:06:01,240 --> 00:06:06,610 So catching up with this is. She was also very, very exciting. 55 00:06:06,610 --> 00:06:18,100 But perhaps the most significant discovery as I was writing was this full volume of correspondences between al-Ahmed and his wife seeming Dinah Shore, 56 00:06:18,100 --> 00:06:22,210 eminent novelist of her own. Right. 57 00:06:22,210 --> 00:06:28,240 And you may recall that halfway through as I was writing, I wrote to you, Nicholas, saying, 58 00:06:28,240 --> 00:06:34,480 well, I've just come across this and I will probably need another 20000 more words or so. 59 00:06:34,480 --> 00:06:42,370 As I was writing, that chapter became crucial in what I call gendered voice of the of our. 60 00:06:42,370 --> 00:06:46,810 That reflects on many aspects of of his writings. 61 00:06:46,810 --> 00:06:54,670 The other point that worth mentioning is I just finished the book with Cambridge University Press on travelogues of the 19th century, 62 00:06:54,670 --> 00:07:06,250 reversing the colonial gaze in which I cover about a dozen or more travellers from Iran and India go to all around the world. 63 00:07:06,250 --> 00:07:17,530 And much of this literature has been read exclusively for their European part of their travelogue rather than the entirety of their travelogue. 64 00:07:17,530 --> 00:07:22,720 And one of my point of contention was actually to looking at the entirety and not just the European part, 65 00:07:22,720 --> 00:07:26,860 which sometimes is only a small part of the of the book. 66 00:07:26,860 --> 00:07:35,200 So that background came to my read rereading of his travelogues, his major for what he called for pedlars. 67 00:07:35,200 --> 00:07:38,990 So his trip to Soviet Union to attend an anthropological conference, 68 00:07:38,990 --> 00:07:47,410 his visit to unite the states for fellowship at Harvard that Kissinger had had organised. 69 00:07:47,410 --> 00:07:54,630 And then, of course, his trip to Mecca, his famous trip to Mecca, and writing his travelogue as Haj Pilgrimage. 70 00:07:54,630 --> 00:07:59,910 And also his trip to Jerusalem. So that was another aspect. 71 00:07:59,910 --> 00:08:03,510 But the third aspect, I lost count. 72 00:08:03,510 --> 00:08:10,290 These are all in the process of writing that I that I discovered was his writing on his essays. 73 00:08:10,290 --> 00:08:20,190 He was a master essayist. In Persian, as you know, the origin of modern Persian essay goes back to early 19th century. 74 00:08:20,190 --> 00:08:30,510 But he had a knack and panache for writing essays that were particularly the parts that 75 00:08:30,510 --> 00:08:36,180 he was writing about people like Nimo You Shige on Saturday had died and so forth. 76 00:08:36,180 --> 00:08:40,800 And that prose became interesting and important to me. 77 00:08:40,800 --> 00:08:46,560 Finally, it is there is a it is an autobiographical aspect of this. 78 00:08:46,560 --> 00:08:53,400 I just collected my work on Edwar site and published a book on it will say, Alarmed, as you know, 79 00:08:53,400 --> 00:08:59,460 was probably will more than probably was the Edward side of my youth as I was growing up. 80 00:08:59,460 --> 00:09:05,670 And it was say it was all a matter of my adulthood. So these two books kind of reflect each other. 81 00:09:05,670 --> 00:09:13,620 And there's a serious aspect of autobiographical narrative in the in the book that is I'm 82 00:09:13,620 --> 00:09:18,690 beginning to kind of have a recollection of how things happened that I am where I am. 83 00:09:18,690 --> 00:09:30,210 So all of these things came together, gave the book a theoretical consistency, sort of marching, pivoting towards the end of the final chapter. 84 00:09:30,210 --> 00:09:39,000 That is not just the life and legacy of Allama that actually moves towards a direction that colleagues in contemporary Islamic studies, 85 00:09:39,000 --> 00:09:40,020 Middle Eastern studies, 86 00:09:40,020 --> 00:09:50,220 people interested in post Islamism, the writings that have appeared, etc. they can find things in it that is not just exclusive to too much. 87 00:09:50,220 --> 00:10:01,160 So that, in a nutshell, is how the book came about, a posting from a friend of my post-colonial and post-modern man. 88 00:10:01,160 --> 00:10:07,690 And I still couldn't find a little bit what you mean about some kind of person. 89 00:10:07,690 --> 00:10:20,550 Hi there. My reading and and definition is different from a slightly different from USCIRF buyouts and who are for me, Islamism. 90 00:10:20,550 --> 00:10:27,690 Stephanie is a plus a particular epistemic formation that emerges early in the 19th 91 00:10:27,690 --> 00:10:33,480 century in which Muslim intellectuals of the generation of Jamaluddin al-Afghani, 92 00:10:33,480 --> 00:10:41,010 Muhammad Abdul Rashid, rather, that generation of Muslim critical thinkers and intellectual are far more important, 93 00:10:41,010 --> 00:10:48,120 actually, than European Orientalists. What they are doing in the work that I have done, I describe it as follows. 94 00:10:48,120 --> 00:10:55,140 They are actively engaged in a radical transformation of the of the spectrum of Islamic 95 00:10:55,140 --> 00:11:02,670 intellectual history into a singular sites of resistance to European colonialism. 96 00:11:02,670 --> 00:11:08,460 And this generates a particular steam of ideology production that, again, 97 00:11:08,460 --> 00:11:22,590 we can say starts with sir say that Harmattan or al-Afghani Rashid, rather, just comes forward ultimately to figures like Ali Shariati. 98 00:11:22,590 --> 00:11:29,340 But then what I mean by Puss Puss Islamism, that is that this particular. 99 00:11:29,340 --> 00:11:35,220 His team of knowledge production and ideology production ultimately exhausts itself. 100 00:11:35,220 --> 00:11:40,020 In my book, a book on Islamic Liberation Theology, Resisting the Empire. 101 00:11:40,020 --> 00:11:45,150 I mark the events of 9/11 as the end of Islamism. 102 00:11:45,150 --> 00:11:50,610 Not people were really looking at it as the beginning of Islam. As I say, no is Islamism has ended. 103 00:11:50,610 --> 00:11:56,260 There is no people were reading Osama bin Laden. 104 00:11:56,260 --> 00:12:01,500 You know, some of my own colleagues, for hints as to where his theology is, is moving. 105 00:12:01,500 --> 00:12:06,420 And my argument was that there is no theology. This is this are these are visual productions. 106 00:12:06,420 --> 00:12:19,260 This is violence for visual effect without any more all imaginative political or economic project behind behind the spectacle was just a spectacle. 107 00:12:19,260 --> 00:12:28,080 So let's say from Napoleon's invasion and occupation of Egypt to events of 9/11, 108 00:12:28,080 --> 00:12:36,990 that period is is a period of ideology production conducive on this binary between Islam and the West. 109 00:12:36,990 --> 00:12:46,020 And my argument is that that binary has exhausted itself, is not producing ideologies and thinking and critical reflections anymore. 110 00:12:46,020 --> 00:12:49,740 It has done it for worse or better, whatever it is has done. 111 00:12:49,740 --> 00:13:00,090 We have entered into a period of what Harten Negri call in their book Empire, a period that the Emperor has no centre. 112 00:13:00,090 --> 00:13:04,560 So I put I said the World Trade Centre is a misnomer. 113 00:13:04,560 --> 00:13:13,310 A world trade doesn't have a centre. And because of the Smurfs nature of capital, we have an amorphous empire that has no centre. 114 00:13:13,310 --> 00:13:17,610 It doesn't is all over the place. Islam may kill. 115 00:13:17,610 --> 00:13:23,040 Critical thinkers have lost their interlocutors. They don't know who they are talking to. 116 00:13:23,040 --> 00:13:31,810 And this is what I mean by by post Islamists. I have to control myself, not to cook too much, give more chance for you. 117 00:13:31,810 --> 00:13:39,710 Thuc. Can I ask you about the title of the book, The Last Muslim Intellectual? 118 00:13:39,710 --> 00:13:45,510 I think people would be happy to explain why you adopted this title. 119 00:13:45,510 --> 00:13:50,810 And I would also like to ask, wasn't intended to be a little bit provocative. 120 00:13:50,810 --> 00:13:58,090 Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. No, no, no doubt. And if you may recall, initially, not you, but. 121 00:13:58,090 --> 00:14:02,300 But Nick Lemba, our editor, was a little bit suspicious of the title. 122 00:14:02,300 --> 00:14:06,440 But I insisted and she agreed the. 123 00:14:06,440 --> 00:14:09,980 Yes, it is intended intentionally to be provocative. 124 00:14:09,980 --> 00:14:16,930 I was talking to another launch with with colleagues in Mexico and Spain and a colleague from Spain, 125 00:14:16,930 --> 00:14:22,490 Professor Moots was saying that she put it on their Twitter and people started objecting. 126 00:14:22,490 --> 00:14:27,440 Well, what does he mean? Listen to that. What about that? ET cetera? 127 00:14:27,440 --> 00:14:37,130 And my response was and my response is, you know, that famous joke, that old fashioned ways when we went to cinema and you know who done it. 128 00:14:37,130 --> 00:14:47,060 You have to know who has done it. And if you didn't tip Dosher when he put this statue down, he would whisper to your ears. 129 00:14:47,060 --> 00:14:52,620 The butler did it. So I don't want I don't want to tell. 130 00:14:52,620 --> 00:14:56,150 I want my audience is teasing my audience in a way. 131 00:14:56,150 --> 00:15:09,170 But I also mean, it's genuinely that is a period of a particular mode of critical thinking that I place along my next to MSRA and fun on and so forth, 132 00:15:09,170 --> 00:15:14,570 that in that epistemic constellation of critical thinking, 133 00:15:14,570 --> 00:15:23,680 who was the last Muslim intellectual after which we enter a period of sectarian bifurcations and positioning in which. 134 00:15:23,680 --> 00:15:27,880 Muslims stop being conversant with the world. 135 00:15:27,880 --> 00:15:34,280 My objective is capture the moment when Muslims are conversant in with the world. 136 00:15:34,280 --> 00:15:40,450 In a book that I published a few years ago, maybe a decade ago, being a Muslim in the world, I. 137 00:15:40,450 --> 00:15:44,500 I define Islam as a quintessentially dialogical proposition. 138 00:15:44,500 --> 00:15:49,960 Islam has always been in dialogue with Greek philosophy, with Islamic Iranian literature, 139 00:15:49,960 --> 00:15:57,100 with Indian wisdom, literature, etc. It has always been dialogical, Islamic theology, 140 00:15:57,100 --> 00:16:02,260 emerging conversation with Jewish theology, Islamic philosophy and conversation with Greek philosophy, 141 00:16:02,260 --> 00:16:07,870 Islamic mysticism in conversation with Buddhism and so forth. 142 00:16:07,870 --> 00:16:13,840 And the same is now that is the period that culminates in Alabama. 143 00:16:13,840 --> 00:16:20,980 This is why I create a multifaceted and escorted character that, yes, he's a Muslim. 144 00:16:20,980 --> 00:16:30,880 Yes, he became a member of the two party and in many ways he was drawn to Marxism, initially to nationalism at colonial nationalism, 145 00:16:30,880 --> 00:16:39,480 then to Third World socialism, then to existentialism and all of these phases when he was translating SAFTA Camu and so forth. 146 00:16:39,480 --> 00:16:43,390 He was genuinely an existentialist. 147 00:16:43,390 --> 00:16:56,230 That that that that ease and facility and generosity and catholicity of learning where we're not in in opposition to his being a Muslim. 148 00:16:56,230 --> 00:17:03,040 Many people thought that when he wrote his his Hajj pilgrimage that he returned to Islam. 149 00:17:03,040 --> 00:17:07,390 And my argument, he's never left Islam for him to return to Islam. 150 00:17:07,390 --> 00:17:18,460 And even in his harsh pilgrimage at the end, he says very bluntly, he didn't go to Mecca to find God because he says people who want to find God. 151 00:17:18,460 --> 00:17:24,440 God is everywhere. I went to find my my deceased brother. 152 00:17:24,440 --> 00:17:34,550 So, yes, in answer to your question, it is a provocative title, intentionally so, but it is also meant as an argument is not just there. 153 00:17:34,550 --> 00:17:43,930 It is not. It is an argument that people can accept, reject, modify or pose, agree, etc. 154 00:17:43,930 --> 00:17:51,000 He makes some very large claim for the significance to La la land. 155 00:17:51,000 --> 00:17:57,760 And you mention on page 59 you a combination of how how fast I myself am coming from. 156 00:17:57,760 --> 00:18:03,360 I have to tell you, the non-com city in the U.S., as you mentioned, from Malcolm X, 157 00:18:03,360 --> 00:18:10,480 an all time stamp programme, and I have now heard from Rocky as the kind of company he ought to be take power. 158 00:18:10,480 --> 00:18:18,510 But he also points out that he's not really being inducted into that Pontell Hall Colonial Francoeur. 159 00:18:18,510 --> 00:18:31,150 Why? This is partially. First of all, many of this, if you consider EMRs air and transfer there they were Francophonie, they were writing in French. 160 00:18:31,150 --> 00:18:37,270 And as a result, too, especially after A-s wrote Introduction to Wretched of the Earth, 161 00:18:37,270 --> 00:18:41,800 Faloon was immediately inducted into a domain of critical thinking of the colonial period. 162 00:18:41,800 --> 00:18:53,110 Most of the African critical thinkers were part of the French Francophonie intellectual domain. 163 00:18:53,110 --> 00:18:59,230 And the same was with people like Jose Marti and the Caribbean domain and the Latin American domain. 164 00:18:59,230 --> 00:19:04,720 They were writing in Spanish and as a result, part of a different but interconnected domain. 165 00:19:04,720 --> 00:19:10,750 All I meant was writing primarily in in in Persian and the language was not accessible to me. 166 00:19:10,750 --> 00:19:16,650 In fact, in one of her his correspondences with his wife, he complains about the fact that he. 167 00:19:16,650 --> 00:19:27,550 Right. He has to write in Persian. And the fact that he is not part of that pantheon now calling him as significant as all of this. 168 00:19:27,550 --> 00:19:39,400 It doesn't mean that they are all on the same level of rootedness or engagement or sophistication, even amongst his contemporaries. 169 00:19:39,400 --> 00:19:50,230 There were many critical thinkers and intellectuals and philosophers and and university professors were far more learnt than he was. 170 00:19:50,230 --> 00:19:57,070 But as he says early in his travels, I that engie and Mr. Execution. 171 00:19:57,070 --> 00:20:04,180 Sometimes the horse senses a coming earthquake better than as his Margaretha. 172 00:20:04,180 --> 00:20:07,240 He was a provoked Arjun's provocateur. 173 00:20:07,240 --> 00:20:15,040 He touched on the issue, touched on anthropology and sociology and comparative literature and poetry and travelogue. 174 00:20:15,040 --> 00:20:22,060 He had a restless sowed. And then the fact is that he is one of my claim. 175 00:20:22,060 --> 00:20:31,660 In the chapter on his relationship with his wife, Simona Schwa is that that combination had a had a provocative. 176 00:20:31,660 --> 00:20:38,260 As you recall, I go through a whole series of what does it mean to be a more than contemporary couple? 177 00:20:38,260 --> 00:20:48,760 And many people have legitimately criticised him because of certain passages in in his book Sankei by Goodyear Tombstone, 178 00:20:48,760 --> 00:20:56,110 but which are, again, as I said, are legitimate. But at the same time, for a man of his generation to put it in print, 179 00:20:56,110 --> 00:21:04,960 that he could not tolerate the fact that he had to take his wife to a male gynaecologist is a historical document, 180 00:21:04,960 --> 00:21:11,290 is not the question of all how horrible that he was that way or anything of that sort. 181 00:21:11,290 --> 00:21:19,930 But the fact that he put it committed not to paper. So 50 years from now, 100 years from then, we can actually read it. 182 00:21:19,930 --> 00:21:24,760 So that flame is not a relation to fruit, for example. 183 00:21:24,760 --> 00:21:30,490 He was beholden to the fact that he was beholden to Mahmoody human. 184 00:21:30,490 --> 00:21:35,710 There were many of his contemporaries in many ways were more sophisticated. 185 00:21:35,710 --> 00:21:48,760 But at the same time, their sophistication, their knowledge, their rootedness of their command of various intellectual fields also paralysed them. 186 00:21:48,760 --> 00:21:57,850 They could not produce provocative ideas. But he he there is there was a there was a flamboyance about him. 187 00:21:57,850 --> 00:21:58,990 There was the engagement. 188 00:21:58,990 --> 00:22:07,540 The scene is with the with either side, if we jump this way, that Edward's side made comments about a number of his major book, tourism. 189 00:22:07,540 --> 00:22:17,140 He was making comments about the whole vast history of Orientalism that I myself, amongst one of his closest admirers, have taken issue with. 190 00:22:17,140 --> 00:22:27,070 But at the same time, there was a few radical courage in the writing of safe lives that as you remember in the chapter on that absurdity, 191 00:22:27,070 --> 00:22:31,270 I was, um, very critical of him. Almost half of the book is gibberish. 192 00:22:31,270 --> 00:22:38,140 It is only really one chapter that is that is provocative and engaging. 193 00:22:38,140 --> 00:22:42,550 So I am neither, as I said at the beginning. Another great admirer of him. 194 00:22:42,550 --> 00:22:51,280 No. Him, no. Blame him for Islamic Republic. The trajectory of the book goes somewhere else again towards the end of the book. 195 00:22:51,280 --> 00:22:57,850 And what it means to engage, to be a Muslim intellectual and I have thought I am always that he is a Muslim. 196 00:22:57,850 --> 00:23:04,960 He is intellectual. But what does it mean to be a Muslim intellectual in his time and then in order to. 197 00:23:04,960 --> 00:23:09,590 You paint a very intimate portrait of their lives, compromise. 198 00:23:09,590 --> 00:23:14,600 I haven't gone this far. It's quite moving. 199 00:23:14,600 --> 00:23:23,410 But it does. It is quite interesting what you say about them becoming a kind of role model for a modern marriage with. 200 00:23:23,410 --> 00:23:31,310 That's a very frightening kind of responsibility to have. I mean, why the warts and all Courtright? 201 00:23:31,310 --> 00:23:37,580 He does come across a difficult man to be my imagine. 202 00:23:37,580 --> 00:23:45,520 And then we have the story of the affair and it becomes throughout the novel and the ways that multiple marriages do become rather banal. 203 00:23:45,520 --> 00:23:51,840 I wonder, you know what? I'm personally not a man. Do you think he was a difficult person? 204 00:23:51,840 --> 00:23:58,580 It is difficult. I thought he had half of the reason for his credit for the best. 205 00:23:58,580 --> 00:24:00,560 We are we are blessed. 206 00:24:00,560 --> 00:24:11,480 The next generation is blessed with two absolutely exquisite texts that seem donor Schwab has written on her husband was one of them is called Shohat. 207 00:24:11,480 --> 00:24:15,590 I'm Jallal, my husband, Jelen. And the second one is called Blue Ridge Yellow. 208 00:24:15,590 --> 00:24:24,680 The Sunset Jello. Absolutely stellar example of Persian prose of of this genre of a woman writing about 209 00:24:24,680 --> 00:24:33,140 her husband lovingly but also critically somewhere I think is in in my husband, 210 00:24:33,140 --> 00:24:42,500 Jalloul ish, sitting on his very first tomb, says Ahmad is the first draught of what people know as the final draught. 211 00:24:42,500 --> 00:24:49,190 So as a husband, she is the first draught. And then people know they have a person with, say, 212 00:24:49,190 --> 00:24:57,100 Chick Navys and putting this that I know him as a first draught, but the world knows him as the final draught. 213 00:24:57,100 --> 00:25:09,290 There is as a model. One of the most moving parts of their correspondences is precisely the moment of of his 214 00:25:09,290 --> 00:25:15,830 extramarital affair and the struggle that she has to come to terms with this and writes to him. 215 00:25:15,830 --> 00:25:25,970 I mean, there is a period that I that I navigate when she addresses him, Mr. al-Ahmad, early on and so forth, and then they married. 216 00:25:25,970 --> 00:25:31,610 And then they have a varieties of the most gorgeous Persian affectionate terms, Jalala as his name. 217 00:25:31,610 --> 00:25:38,870 Isn't it that until this period of anger and frustration that again, she goes back over your life, 218 00:25:38,870 --> 00:25:44,020 man and such, and then again eventually goes back to Jallow as his own? 219 00:25:44,020 --> 00:25:55,120 So this this trajectory is extraordinary. And at some point, she tells him, you must understand, I have a responsibility on my shoulder. 220 00:25:55,120 --> 00:26:03,410 It was it was women of my, my, my homeland. And I cannot live with this and continue to pretend nothing has happened. 221 00:26:03,410 --> 00:26:06,980 And he goes through a song and dance. 222 00:26:06,980 --> 00:26:13,280 And apparently when they were both invited to Israel, we don't know what exactly he does in the Tel Aviv airport, 223 00:26:13,280 --> 00:26:17,930 but something happens because she says after what you did in Tel Aviv airport, 224 00:26:17,930 --> 00:26:25,040 we don't know, song and dance, whatever he did to apologise and moving on. 225 00:26:25,040 --> 00:26:32,300 It is in that sense, a very modern marital relationship that is honest. 226 00:26:32,300 --> 00:26:40,600 They didn't have children and that was a vexing issue for them, for their family and so forth. 227 00:26:40,600 --> 00:26:47,300 They had a creative and critical relationship with each other, seeming to Fed tells us, for example, 228 00:26:47,300 --> 00:26:53,690 when they went for their walks, they come across a scene and then in their mind, they begin to compose their stories. 229 00:26:53,690 --> 00:26:59,130 Well, how would they write it? And then they will exchange notes. This is the moment that I talk about anymore. 230 00:26:59,130 --> 00:27:07,820 And animists borrowing from young in terms of the relationship with each other and the gendered voice that that emerges. 231 00:27:07,820 --> 00:27:16,970 It is unique. We don't have I mean, I'm sure we have we have many such relationships in any country, in any culture, but not a written record of it. 232 00:27:16,970 --> 00:27:29,270 So detailed. He was obsessively writing maybe three volumes of the four volumes, actually his letters to her and one volume of her to him obsessively. 233 00:27:29,270 --> 00:27:33,800 When is his pacing and waiting for the mailman to come? He just writes, Oh, I'm waiting. 234 00:27:33,800 --> 00:27:38,840 I know. No mail mail amended to show up. I have to go to this party, but I will come back. 235 00:27:38,840 --> 00:27:48,440 He just obsesses writing. He can't imagine himself while Donna Summer is in in a fellowship in Stanford. 236 00:27:48,440 --> 00:27:56,060 And they had some money that her father had had given to them with which he was building a house. 237 00:27:56,060 --> 00:28:00,260 So brick by brick, he writes to two seeming Danish. 238 00:28:00,260 --> 00:28:05,470 Today I did the windows and then I bought the doors. And then I did that. 239 00:28:05,470 --> 00:28:10,350 I I did as much as I could in the in the chapter of the book on the. 240 00:28:10,350 --> 00:28:11,940 But as I say, 241 00:28:11,940 --> 00:28:22,800 somebody has to go through these two volumes because we have an extraordinary document of what it means to have been a married life in this period. 242 00:28:22,800 --> 00:28:28,800 Thanks, sir. Time is passing very quickly. But before we move to the TNI, there is one thing I'd like to. 243 00:28:28,800 --> 00:28:32,920 One final thing I'd like to ask you about, which you made a brief reference to. 244 00:28:32,920 --> 00:28:37,950 If what you call the controversial visit to Israel, some people would call it. 245 00:28:37,950 --> 00:28:42,560 Have to reconcile. It really is quite extraordinary. 246 00:28:42,560 --> 00:28:51,800 And I wonder if you can tell us a little bit, because you are very critical, extremely critical about as critical as possible to be in panic. 247 00:28:51,800 --> 00:28:57,690 So are you ready to give up some entirely satisfactory explanation? 248 00:28:57,690 --> 00:29:03,050 How what seems to be a complete failure political? 249 00:29:03,050 --> 00:29:10,260 No, I can't say that he doesn't know about the situation, but he seemed to fail. 250 00:29:10,260 --> 00:29:18,870 I guess if you can. Let me try to explain this to the this standard explanation. 251 00:29:18,870 --> 00:29:20,520 With much of it, I agree, 252 00:29:20,520 --> 00:29:30,510 is the fact that this is the his post in Shaab is after he parted ways with to the party and was extremely critical of the Soviet Union. 253 00:29:30,510 --> 00:29:36,030 And he was part of Khalili Maliki, who was also very critical of the Soviet Union. 254 00:29:36,030 --> 00:29:43,920 And the experience of kibbutzim in Israel became very attractive as an alternative form of socialism, 255 00:29:43,920 --> 00:29:54,840 not just to Islam at all generation of Iranian socialists who were dissatisfied with Soviet experience and were looking for alternatives. 256 00:29:54,840 --> 00:30:02,700 And the the idea of the socialist cooperative, like he would seem, was very attractive to them. 257 00:30:02,700 --> 00:30:07,710 This was was primarily what attracted him to Israel. 258 00:30:07,710 --> 00:30:14,460 And then he came back and he was enamoured by Israel and wrote a travelogue. 259 00:30:14,460 --> 00:30:22,890 And of all people, as you know, the current leader of Islamic Republic hominine came from a woman called him and said, 260 00:30:22,890 --> 00:30:33,530 how dare you to write this, something like this. I mean, they loved him and admired him, but nevertheless critical until 67 when the 67 war happens. 261 00:30:33,530 --> 00:30:35,730 He completely flips. 262 00:30:35,730 --> 00:30:47,190 And then there is a there is a sort of when I was writing my book on the revolution, I said, well, these two parts could not be from the same pen. 263 00:30:47,190 --> 00:30:52,080 This is how odd they are from each other, but they are from the same pen. 264 00:30:52,080 --> 00:31:02,340 And it is the same person who until 67, thinks some one way and after 67 thinks another way. 265 00:31:02,340 --> 00:31:11,130 What I also did in this book that I had not done before was look at the writings of people were close to him, Brooke, Reza Barahona. 266 00:31:11,130 --> 00:31:15,570 And so because his brother, Shamsul Ahmad, was a devotee of Islamic Republic, 267 00:31:15,570 --> 00:31:21,740 casted a very different look, including the conspiracy that he was killed by Subha. 268 00:31:21,740 --> 00:31:29,920 There is no such thing as a is a nonsense. But when you read people like his contemporaries, critical thinkers like this are better. 269 00:31:29,920 --> 00:31:37,080 Honey, you see that it is apparently at some point says Matt was lucky that he was alive when 270 00:31:37,080 --> 00:31:45,150 67 happens so he could sort of re re conceptualise his his encounter with Israel. 271 00:31:45,150 --> 00:31:51,870 So I wouldn't say yes. The notion of the saviour of his instincts is is true. 272 00:31:51,870 --> 00:31:52,830 But at the same time, 273 00:31:52,830 --> 00:32:03,690 there is something in the period of post delusion with the Soviet Union that that they were looking for alternative modes of socialism, 274 00:32:03,690 --> 00:32:08,420 that in part at least explains their attraction to Israel. 275 00:32:08,420 --> 00:32:16,840 I can't say we have a large number of questions for law professor Rockhampton to begin to introduce the question, 276 00:32:16,840 --> 00:32:21,320 which will occur with great pleasure. And again, thank you so much for joining us. 277 00:32:21,320 --> 00:32:27,080 I mean, it's been wonderful getting to hear you talk about your new book and, of course, to reconnect with my alma mater. 278 00:32:27,080 --> 00:32:31,820 So greetings to Colombia from Oxford. I'm actually going to jump the queue. 279 00:32:31,820 --> 00:32:39,090 I was struck by the way you brought Edward Side and Jalal Ali Ahmad into the same line of analysis. 280 00:32:39,090 --> 00:32:48,020 And the thing that strikes me is for so many of us not familiar with the work of Ali Ahmed, we really think of him as a one argument author. 281 00:32:48,020 --> 00:32:57,470 It's hard not to argue that we know, and in the same way that one might say that Orientalism becomes the signature idea that people know side by. 282 00:32:57,470 --> 00:33:05,240 And yet he side scholar would recognise that there is a much broader work that looks at culture and imperialism more broadly or covering Islam. 283 00:33:05,240 --> 00:33:07,520 So my question to you is, in your book, 284 00:33:07,520 --> 00:33:18,080 are you able to break the intellectual contribution of Ali Ahmed away from just the idea that we have obsessed on in the West? 285 00:33:18,080 --> 00:33:22,070 I hope so. To see him as a three dimensional intellectual? I hope so. 286 00:33:22,070 --> 00:33:30,560 The first thing that I do, I demythologise I was that I was a biggie is really a constellation of a few 287 00:33:30,560 --> 00:33:35,330 articles put together that there is a lot of creampuff around the main argument. 288 00:33:35,330 --> 00:33:39,560 And the main main argument is this and you move on. 289 00:33:39,560 --> 00:33:47,750 Second, I pay very close attention to his travelogues, which is some of his most compelling writings, 290 00:33:47,750 --> 00:33:54,290 travelogue to the Soviet Union, to United States, to Israel, to to Mecca. 291 00:33:54,290 --> 00:34:01,220 And that chapter in and of itself introduces a whole different aspect of it. 292 00:34:01,220 --> 00:34:06,200 Third are his essays in which he writes about comparative poetics and comparative politics. 293 00:34:06,200 --> 00:34:10,100 Fourth are his translations from European sources, from Arabic sources, 294 00:34:10,100 --> 00:34:17,930 from sources of Indian mythology and Persian mythology that he and his wife translate together. 295 00:34:17,930 --> 00:34:30,440 So I do present a multifaceted aspect that does not negate the significance of poems and diggy, but places arrives at the gate in a larger context. 296 00:34:30,440 --> 00:34:39,830 For example, in the in the chapter in his travelogues, he travelled extensively inside Iran and wrote what today we will call ethnographies, 297 00:34:39,830 --> 00:34:46,160 detailed ethnographies of small villages or Haaga Island, etc., 298 00:34:46,160 --> 00:34:53,290 which are covered them in detail in in order to use whatever is possible for us to come up with. 299 00:34:53,290 --> 00:34:59,750 In his extensive writings, to be fair, he is no other side and one side is a whole different ballgame, 300 00:34:59,750 --> 00:35:05,640 partially because Edwar Side was in conversation with the whole spectrum of other altimetry. 301 00:35:05,640 --> 00:35:11,690 Brennan's book has just been out and it will say it is absolutely a brilliant sort of coverage of 302 00:35:11,690 --> 00:35:18,590 the entirety of his work and is not just the link between Orientalism and cultural imperialism, 303 00:35:18,590 --> 00:35:25,280 but Edwards work on the world and the text on the significance as a literary theorist, 304 00:35:25,280 --> 00:35:31,760 which is really the thing by which most people in the field know him, and also his work on music. 305 00:35:31,760 --> 00:35:42,320 His work on Adorno there is a multifaceted deadness. There were two different ways, but I happen to hate the link in my mind, the link. 306 00:35:42,320 --> 00:35:49,190 So as I said, the book in many ways is also autobiographical. 307 00:35:49,190 --> 00:35:53,750 Thank you for that. I'm going to now open to the questions they are piling in very quickly. 308 00:35:53,750 --> 00:35:57,650 There is a number that are challenging your approach to post Islamism. 309 00:35:57,650 --> 00:36:03,410 And indeed, Islamism. So there'll be a couple of questions on the same field, but we'll take them one at a time. 310 00:36:03,410 --> 00:36:09,260 From Iftikhar Malik, why call it Islamism? What is wrong with Islamic modernism? 311 00:36:09,260 --> 00:36:16,140 Islamism has violent and often exclusive components of Islamic modernism all the way from Afghani's. 312 00:36:16,140 --> 00:36:20,930 Serious said to Iqbal Shariati and Father Rahman was. 313 00:36:20,930 --> 00:36:26,540 It is a genuine search for cooptation and synthesis. Excellent point. 314 00:36:26,540 --> 00:36:36,080 The reason for that. First of all, Islamic modernism, of which I'm critical because of the concept of modernity and modernism, 315 00:36:36,080 --> 00:36:42,380 is exclusively European phenomenon and has perfect meaning within the European context. 316 00:36:42,380 --> 00:36:49,070 And it does not dovetail in Chinese or Indian or Islamic frames of references. 317 00:36:49,070 --> 00:36:55,010 But Islamism, the way that I read it, as I said, 318 00:36:55,010 --> 00:37:06,260 begins with transmutation of Islamic intellectual history intentionally into a political site of resistance to Western colonialism, 319 00:37:06,260 --> 00:37:07,940 European colonialism. 320 00:37:07,940 --> 00:37:14,960 So you can say, I disagree with this definition of Islamism and you are perfectly fine to go and write differently the way you do. 321 00:37:14,960 --> 00:37:19,580 This is how I am in response to Stephanie's question. 322 00:37:19,580 --> 00:37:24,710 What do you mean by post? Islam is the first I have to say what I understand and define as Islamism. 323 00:37:24,710 --> 00:37:28,760 As this colleague says, you can say forget about Islamism. I don't want to talk about Islam. 324 00:37:28,760 --> 00:37:32,000 I want to talk about Islamic modernism. Perfectly fine. 325 00:37:32,000 --> 00:37:38,120 And Rahman wrote about Islamic modernism and many other critical thinkers have written about modernism. 326 00:37:38,120 --> 00:37:39,740 Then the issue is not resolved. 327 00:37:39,740 --> 00:37:50,720 The issue is compounded in a different way that a conceptual category with which is a specific to European intellectual history becomes 328 00:37:50,720 --> 00:37:59,520 applied to an Islamic context that may or may not dovetail the same way that I'm uncomfortable with the phrase mediƦval Islam. 329 00:37:59,520 --> 00:38:08,540 MediƦval is is a period in European historiography and Pianola doesn't apply to Islamic or Chinese or Indian context. 330 00:38:08,540 --> 00:38:16,250 So, yes, you can shift from Islamism to Islam and modernism or modernist Islam, perfectly legitimate. 331 00:38:16,250 --> 00:38:21,390 Many have done it, but I don't think necessarily that resolves the issue. 332 00:38:21,390 --> 00:38:29,030 OK, you're not off the hook that easily because you're one of the group way. Give us another question challenging the Islamist episode today. 333 00:38:29,030 --> 00:38:31,190 As you said it out in a binary way, 334 00:38:31,190 --> 00:38:39,560 as Ronnie and the others you mentioned creatively and energetically engaged with other cultures and non-Muslim thinking, as well as challenging them. 335 00:38:39,560 --> 00:38:43,640 Your comments would be appreciated. OK. First of all, I do want to be off the hook. 336 00:38:43,640 --> 00:38:47,780 The whole point is I'm here to be on the hook, not off the hook. 337 00:38:47,780 --> 00:38:54,050 I'm delighted and grateful for what is perfectly wonderful questions. 338 00:38:54,050 --> 00:39:04,400 Again, as I said, the kinds of engagement that a person like al-Afghani or certainly if I'm at home or Mallone, I'm on duty or, you know, 339 00:39:04,400 --> 00:39:14,740 the whole spectrum of them are doing it is not Islamic intellectual history is not a joke, is a very rich and powerful tradition. 340 00:39:14,740 --> 00:39:20,750 I philosophy, mysticism, literature, Arabic, Turkish or do Persian, etc., 341 00:39:20,750 --> 00:39:27,920 transforming it under colonial duress to come and respond to European colonialism. 342 00:39:27,920 --> 00:39:33,140 This is what constitutes the epistemic formation of a certain kinds of ideology. 343 00:39:33,140 --> 00:39:40,880 This is what I mean. Again, you're perfectly right to call to question this way that I frame it. 344 00:39:40,880 --> 00:39:46,110 But the thing is, how else do you premium frame it when you frame? 345 00:39:46,110 --> 00:39:51,290 Better off, is it a better sort of inroad into understanding what is happening? 346 00:39:51,290 --> 00:39:54,700 And one last question for you. This phone is from Yousef Hamid. 347 00:39:54,700 --> 00:40:02,040 Just saying, if we're living in a post Islamism or Islamist world, so presumably in your post 9/11. 348 00:40:02,040 --> 00:40:07,020 Construction. One of the main features and characteristics of this study. 349 00:40:07,020 --> 00:40:14,370 Excellent. We don't know. As I said, the period of Islamism is a period of a binary opposition. 350 00:40:14,370 --> 00:40:19,950 Islam is here. The West is here. So Islam and the West are on each other's throats, OK? 351 00:40:19,950 --> 00:40:24,710 That is, you take Islam from the West. Islam doesn't know what to do with itself. 352 00:40:24,710 --> 00:40:34,270 OK. In other words, the Constitution of the West, a Western civilisation, is contingent on the formation of Chinese civilisation. 353 00:40:34,270 --> 00:40:41,760 In the end, civilisation, Islamic civilisation. You need all territories for this thing to remain at the centre. 354 00:40:41,760 --> 00:40:50,610 The exaltation, epistemic exhaustion of this binary, which I use sometimes the metaphor of the the Twin Towers right here in New York, 355 00:40:50,610 --> 00:40:59,120 the collapse of the Twin Towers or the Buddha statues in Afghanistan in bombing on the collapse of this is the collapse of this binary. 356 00:40:59,120 --> 00:41:02,730 The binary, I don't know. This is not sort of a speculation. 357 00:41:02,730 --> 00:41:12,060 It is predicated on my reading of globalised capitalism, namely, the capital doesn't have a centre and New York is not the centre, nor is centre. 358 00:41:12,060 --> 00:41:17,700 You pick up the phone. And at this very instrument that we're using is 18 hours. 359 00:41:17,700 --> 00:41:26,980 Backbreaking hours of migrant labour in China has nothing to do with Steve Jobs or or Apple. 360 00:41:26,980 --> 00:41:35,220 There is this this amorphous disposition of the operation of globalised capital has translated into a Memphis operation of empire. 361 00:41:35,220 --> 00:41:40,050 And this is being it is not my argument. This is the heart and agree with which I totally agree. 362 00:41:40,050 --> 00:41:50,670 So alternative ways of reading Islamism, perfectly plausible, has to be rooted in our reading of contemporary material, 363 00:41:50,670 --> 00:41:54,150 economic, political and sociological reading of where we are. 364 00:41:54,150 --> 00:42:00,000 We stand in the world patterns of labour, migration, look at parties of labour migrations. 365 00:42:00,000 --> 00:42:08,480 There are right now is statistically 850 million human beings going to bed every night, hungry, 850 million. 366 00:42:08,480 --> 00:42:15,750 It doesn't really matter whether they are in Africa, Asia or here, right here in the United States, where about 60 million are under the poverty line, 367 00:42:15,750 --> 00:42:22,710 which now by then is trying to address 320 million human beings roam around the globe in search of job. 368 00:42:22,710 --> 00:42:30,330 This is even before the current crisis of running away refugees from war torn areas. 369 00:42:30,330 --> 00:42:42,090 These are demographic material, economic factors that no longer allows for Islam and the West binary kind of assumption. 370 00:42:42,090 --> 00:42:52,000 And as a result, any alternative reading of our contemporary situation has to be rooted in these material realities. 371 00:42:52,000 --> 00:43:02,380 Move from Islamism now there to questions that are bringing the ideas of imperialism and decolonisation into the frame. 372 00:43:02,380 --> 00:43:10,810 So from Zubair Ahmed, he's wondering if you could say a bit more about the relevance of Arnotts anticolonial thought for us today. 373 00:43:10,810 --> 00:43:19,390 And where would you place his legacy? These are V the D colonial critique offered by others such as his are final, 374 00:43:19,390 --> 00:43:30,100 but also more recent thinkers arguing for Muslim or Islamic de Carloni allergy and Frank Timoney on the same theme. 375 00:43:30,100 --> 00:43:35,770 Just wants to ask whether it's really true to say that the age of colonialism is over. 376 00:43:35,770 --> 00:43:42,010 Surely what happened was a sort of false decolonisation. So could we bring decolonisation into the analysis? 377 00:43:42,010 --> 00:43:44,050 Excellent point. All of them. Good. 378 00:43:44,050 --> 00:43:53,280 First of all, if you begin with the period of colonialism, especially settler colonialism and by which we don't need a very sophisticated. 379 00:43:53,280 --> 00:44:01,350 A theoretical definition. The British in India. The French in Algeria, et cetera. 380 00:44:01,350 --> 00:44:11,680 You have a period of direct colonisation in which you don't have just a question of economic exploitation, but actual cultural domination. 381 00:44:11,680 --> 00:44:21,600 Rohan Peck. I think he's coming to Europe. Just that we watched on HBO, the US premiere of Rowel Pax Exterminate All the Brutes. 382 00:44:21,600 --> 00:44:28,440 Absolutely shattering four episodes documentary that I highly recommend. 383 00:44:28,440 --> 00:44:35,880 So the period of colonisation results in a period of decolonisation or anticolonial, 384 00:44:35,880 --> 00:44:43,620 a nationalism that results in a in a period that you have post-colonial nation states. 385 00:44:43,620 --> 00:44:50,740 In my recent book, The Emperor is Naked, I talk about the proposition that the assumption of the nation is state. 386 00:44:50,740 --> 00:45:00,240 The category of nation and state was actually a monkey wrench that was thrown at Muslim or African or Latin American societies didn't work. 387 00:45:00,240 --> 00:45:04,890 And nations went one way and the state went another way. And a state has no legitimacy. 388 00:45:04,890 --> 00:45:16,150 Period. In my in my reading of it. Now, the question is the key question is anticolonial writings of the sort of ultimate anticolonial 389 00:45:16,150 --> 00:45:22,230 it'd be cool unreality literature that is emerging from Africa or from Latin America, 390 00:45:22,230 --> 00:45:32,370 particularly the world that is attractive, is coming from Walter Minuto and others from from Latin America is an epistemological project that is 391 00:45:32,370 --> 00:45:38,040 the decolonisation of mind that you begin to think in terms of epistemology of knowledge production, 392 00:45:38,040 --> 00:45:42,870 that people like Modin, the invention of Africa is way ahead of us. 393 00:45:42,870 --> 00:45:44,340 Way, way ahead of us. 394 00:45:44,340 --> 00:45:55,260 What you what he why the embedded in in invention of Africa was in search of alternative at this demolishes of knowledge production that 395 00:45:55,260 --> 00:46:03,750 went beyond the condition of Colonial City rather than are we mother or worry post mother or let's let us talk about Islamic modernism. 396 00:46:03,750 --> 00:46:11,480 This is a trap. One has to look at the work of revolutionary thinkers like Maddin, The Invention of Africa, 397 00:46:11,480 --> 00:46:19,560 or like Walter Minnillo and a whole group of Latin American thinkers who write about the colonial city to see the 398 00:46:19,560 --> 00:46:27,840 issue is not just the sort of the British collecting their flags and leaving India or the French from North Africa. 399 00:46:27,840 --> 00:46:32,430 But the question of changing the epistemology of knowledge production. 400 00:46:32,430 --> 00:46:36,270 Some call these epistemology of the South. 401 00:46:36,270 --> 00:46:39,810 I don't think we can call it epistemology of the South because it's not enough of. 402 00:46:39,810 --> 00:46:45,840 So I mean, where are we right now? We are all in the Internet. I'm I'm on Europe, on the campus of your alma mater. 403 00:46:45,840 --> 00:46:49,710 You are magnificent, Oxford, but we're all in the Internet. 404 00:46:49,710 --> 00:46:52,620 Take this shot, this thing, and we're nowhere. 405 00:46:52,620 --> 00:47:04,620 So the location of colonial AT&T Colonial City is is a whole different condition today, 2021, than it was at the time of Alabama. 406 00:47:04,620 --> 00:47:10,710 But the logic of scholarship and critical thinking that has been done in Africa, 407 00:47:10,710 --> 00:47:20,340 in Latin America and in the Caribbean scene is very crucial for us to begin to reflect, 408 00:47:20,340 --> 00:47:25,820 not copy it when it comes to studying somebody like Ahmad or anybody else in that context, 409 00:47:25,820 --> 00:47:31,680 but to see in what way they can have productive and creative conversation with them. 410 00:47:31,680 --> 00:47:34,200 The book of my book on Allama, in a way, 411 00:47:34,200 --> 00:47:45,030 is an invitation to that kind of deep colonial city that is yet to emerge for critical thinkers like Ahmad or later thinkers, 412 00:47:45,030 --> 00:47:52,740 more sophisticated thinkers, Hermy Nutrition's Loch Ness, the Abuzaid and what he was doing in moronic hermeneutics. 413 00:47:52,740 --> 00:48:02,730 That is what mass Ahmed Abu Zaid was doing. And we have no Iranian intellectual and political thinkers combative, comparable to some of the opposite. 414 00:48:02,730 --> 00:48:09,280 That is the kind of colonial city that we need. You make you want to read the book. 415 00:48:09,280 --> 00:48:13,600 The more you talk about it, the more. That's the whole point. I think so. 416 00:48:13,600 --> 00:48:18,310 I think it's going to catch on as well. I've got a couple more questions that I'd like to share with you. 417 00:48:18,310 --> 00:48:22,480 Jarana de Groot has come back with a question that sort of builds on what you 418 00:48:22,480 --> 00:48:28,420 were saying about the ideal marriage and the notions of gender and masculinity. 419 00:48:28,420 --> 00:48:35,530 And so Joanna asked if you could comment on the importance of a gendered analysis of his life and work using categories of 420 00:48:35,530 --> 00:48:44,680 masculinity and misogyny and linking them to the wider trends of sexism and misogyny and modernist Iranian intellectual life. 421 00:48:44,680 --> 00:48:50,770 I'm thinking of the mid and late 20th century that's to go beyond the biographical approach to those issues. 422 00:48:50,770 --> 00:49:00,010 All I meant, like in fact, like his wife seeming done is very on Ashwell when she is writing Savage. 423 00:49:00,010 --> 00:49:06,520 She is in full command of an entire history and an entire genre of writing fiction, 424 00:49:06,520 --> 00:49:17,810 which is far superior to anything that anybody like Allama could ever write when she's at her writing desk room of her own, as it were. 425 00:49:17,810 --> 00:49:24,820 And what is important about Allama is that he's very honest, honest to the point, 426 00:49:24,820 --> 00:49:31,790 to have to a fault that, as I said, the first example of it is when he take. 427 00:49:31,790 --> 00:49:38,710 He has to go with his wife to a gynaecologist. He can't take it that a male gynaecologist is examining his wife about it. 428 00:49:38,710 --> 00:49:49,840 But the thing is, many Iranians, I dare say many British do I think the same way, but they don't write it and commit to paper and publish it. 429 00:49:49,840 --> 00:49:54,880 And in fact, when Chancellor Schmidt published a Barghuti seemingly honest, I was very embarrassed. 430 00:49:54,880 --> 00:49:58,660 So. Oh, dear, you shouldn't have published it. There was there was private. 431 00:49:58,660 --> 00:50:04,450 But when you read it, you realise this is not a private writing. He is writing it for posterity. 432 00:50:04,450 --> 00:50:14,990 So going to Johns question what I have done, which is really based on the scholarship that many of our colleagues have done, 433 00:50:14,990 --> 00:50:22,450 Janet Zafari and Farzaneh Milani and and others in this field is yes, of course, 434 00:50:22,450 --> 00:50:29,920 we are talking about a period and a culture and the context of misogyny and and patriarchy and all of that. 435 00:50:29,920 --> 00:50:41,100 But at the same time, something is happening in the core and context and texture and tenor and discipline of their relationship with each other. 436 00:50:41,100 --> 00:50:51,700 When you read them closely that you see the the vanguard of a different kind of reading of gendered voice work becomes evident. 437 00:50:51,700 --> 00:50:56,410 And here literary scholarship, the fact that in, say, through Bastin, 438 00:50:56,410 --> 00:51:01,900 we can talk about hetero glossier or through you we can talk about animals and animals, 439 00:51:01,900 --> 00:51:08,740 allows us to begin to tease out from their factual writings, not imaginative wishful thinking. 440 00:51:08,740 --> 00:51:15,520 Evidence of a different kind of gender relationship that we hope will eventually emerge. 441 00:51:15,520 --> 00:51:20,200 Because this cannot just be you know, as I just wrote something. 442 00:51:20,200 --> 00:51:26,620 What's her name? The late queen. The former queen of Iran just made herself look like Audrey Hepburn. 443 00:51:26,620 --> 00:51:30,880 Well, we can do that. You know, there are plastic surgeries. There are all sorts of things. 444 00:51:30,880 --> 00:51:39,400 But that doesn't really mean that you have the emergence of a genuine modern contemporary couple were Iranian in many respects. 445 00:51:39,400 --> 00:51:46,580 But at the same time, they haven't renegotiated their gender relationships in multiple ways. 446 00:51:46,580 --> 00:51:51,230 We have time for one last question, and this comes from Maggie Asghari. 447 00:51:51,230 --> 00:51:58,990 He asks her to really take the conversation towards the role of Alien, not to the revolution itself. 448 00:51:58,990 --> 00:52:05,870 This is what, Ali, I'm not entirely sure yachtie, I thought, instrumental in causing the Iranian revolution of 1979. 449 00:52:05,870 --> 00:52:15,740 Please give a brief account of the reach of each his role and the comparison of their effects on the revolution in 1979. 450 00:52:15,740 --> 00:52:19,970 You see in my first book, Theology of Discontent, I actually string them together. 451 00:52:19,970 --> 00:52:24,770 First comes along and Koshary Shariati, that comes Matahari, then comes Talabani, 452 00:52:24,770 --> 00:52:33,890 etc. But that's retroactive reading of history, although it did not anticipate the coming of an Islamic revolution. 453 00:52:33,890 --> 00:52:39,430 And I even dare say if he were, he would have opposed the atrocity that is now happening. 454 00:52:39,430 --> 00:52:43,790 Sherry, I did not anticipate the coming of an Islamic revolution. 455 00:52:43,790 --> 00:52:52,910 If he were here, I dare say. And I say it, he would have opposed the atrocities that have happened. 456 00:52:52,910 --> 00:52:57,960 But at the same time, when you did the this is what we call an assembly reading, 457 00:52:57,960 --> 00:53:06,260 when you create this assemblage of all of these critical thinkers, you see that is going to a direction until Khomeini comes. 458 00:53:06,260 --> 00:53:16,040 And Khomeini's critical thinking is not rooted in Oklahoma, it is not rooted in Shariati is not rooted even encloses a student of these matari. 459 00:53:16,040 --> 00:53:24,950 In fact, what he was talking about, the notion of the lad at the same time that he was talking about the layout in Najaf, 460 00:53:24,950 --> 00:53:31,910 Mawatari was in, you know, completely opposite of each other. So there is no conspiracy of of any sort. 461 00:53:31,910 --> 00:53:37,040 So what has not should avoid being a historical in these terms. 462 00:53:37,040 --> 00:53:44,030 So, yes, today, if you go to your own, there are highways named after all AAMA then stamp's named after all, 463 00:53:44,030 --> 00:53:51,650 I am an award winning after all armour, but this is their appropriation of Allama for their own ideological reasons. 464 00:53:51,650 --> 00:53:58,280 It doesn't mean that historically we have to kind of go back and reimagine and retrieve what was happening at the time, 465 00:53:58,280 --> 00:54:02,780 which is the literal that I have done to the best of my ability. 466 00:54:02,780 --> 00:54:10,070 Thank you very much. I think we have to stop there, although I think there are many more questions to be asked. 467 00:54:10,070 --> 00:54:12,390 The time has gone very fast. 468 00:54:12,390 --> 00:54:23,180 And I'd like to thank Professor Tomassoni for on behalf of Oxford, on behalf of the audience is clear, fascinated by this account. 469 00:54:23,180 --> 00:54:34,130 And I just urging everyone to buy the book because it's got a very nice cover and it's full of the kind of issues that we've been talking about today. 470 00:54:34,130 --> 00:54:38,180 Thank you very much, Professor Thomas. My pleasure. Thank you for having me, Stephanie. 471 00:54:38,180 --> 00:54:43,580 Thank you, Jennifer. Come come back and visit your mother, Stephanie. 472 00:54:43,580 --> 00:54:48,470 I just heard that Tunisia is hosting you for the launch of your book. 473 00:54:48,470 --> 00:54:54,440 I'm very proud of her uterus. She was it was one of my earliest generation of my students. 474 00:54:54,440 --> 00:54:59,360 And I'm delighted that you'll be hosting with your book. Thank you for your invitation. 475 00:54:59,360 --> 00:55:05,360 Delighted to be with you. Thank you for the audience to the wonderful, provocative questions. 476 00:55:05,360 --> 00:55:10,610 All I say is just go and read a book. By the way, the book is coming out in open access. 477 00:55:10,610 --> 00:55:18,380 I just heard I filled out the paperwork for open access to which I hope we will all have access and then soon. 478 00:55:18,380 --> 00:55:23,100 Hint. Hint. Stephanie will see to it that it comes out also in paperback. 479 00:55:23,100 --> 00:55:26,970 I love her. Thank you very much. 480 00:55:26,970 --> 00:55:42,289 Miklosi, thank you.