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