Battles of the mind
Ma'arek Naqdiya (Controversies), Magdi Youssef, Cairo: Maktabat Al-Usra, 2003. pp181
Qualitative terms in sociology are used to denote human experiences that have specificity with regard to time and place, since although such experiences may resemble one another on the surface they may also vary considerably in terms of cause and effect. It follows that a writer who uses such terms outside their appropriate socio-political contexts will be prone to fallacious conclusions. And herein lies the importance of criticising works that deploy a battery of jargon, when it is obvious that their authors are unaware of the origins and theoretical substance of such terms.
However, real problems begin when a writer automatically discards criticism on the grounds that the critic is merely out to slander him, instead of offering corrections or enhancing readers' knowledge of the subject at hand. Perhaps this accounts for why some writers will cling so tenaciously to their opinions, rather than taking criticism as it is actually intended: as an opportunity to pause, reflect and make any necessary adjustments to one's original premises and/or conclusions. Because of such attitudes, writers and critics too often circle one another in a kind of vicious battle, the first victim of which is the reader.
What a relief, then, to come across Magdi Youssef, a writer who knows that the true value of criticism lies in its capacity to promote original thought and to raise literary standards. Moreover, having an extensive sociological background and, thus, a thorough familiarity with the jargon, Youssef is alert to misappropriations of sociological terms. As a result, in his new book Critical Battles, Youssef is well placed to address many of criticism's central concerns.
The work is also unprecedented in its format, featuring reprints of the original material that Youssef is criticising, along with his criticisms of it and thereby allowing the reader to contrast and compare the two. Youssef has selected 10 articles on various philosophical, literary and artistic subjects for his criticism; of these, I will select three in order to illustrate how useful criticism can be, in the right hands, in the revision and refinement of ideas.
Not long ago, the cloned sheep Dolly was the subject of considerable controversy. In his discussion of the issue, the Egyptian writer Fouad Zakariya, the author of one article reproduced here, cites a magistrate as saying that in his opinion it was possible for creatures to reproduce without sexual contact because Satan is known to have begot children from human beings. Zakariya remarks that this comment, indicative of a superstitious mentality prone to concretising abstract concepts such as the devil, stands in contrast to the empirical mentality of the modern West. He follows this with a comment on another person's call for the Egyptian authorities to create scientific programmes "for ourselves, derived from our own circumstances, instead of taking them from the West". Zakariya writes: "let people in Egypt study satanic propagation, then, given that it derives from our circumstances. Then there will be no need to borrow genetic engineering from the West."
In response to this, Youssef takes Zakariya to task for creating a dualism that juxtaposes scientific thinking as a characteristic of the West with superstition and magic as intrinsic to the thinking of Arab society. Such a distinction is entirely unfounded, Youssef argues, especially given that Western science itself originated in alchemy and other magical practices. He further holds that the development of the scientific method cannot be considered in isolation from social and cultural history or from the prevalent modes of production. Therefore, contrary to the beliefs of some, the pursuit of science is not neutral or independent of social needs.
A second example concerns Galal Amin's assertion that "cultural overproduction" can sacrifice quality for quantity. By way of example Amin writes that the popularity of two Egyptian cultural magazines, Al-Risala and Al-Thiqafa, very popular before World War II, fell off dramatically after the war, whereas one would have expected their circulation to have increased with growing population figures and the spread of education. The reason for the decline in popularity and eventual disappearance of these magazines, Amin continues, was the glut of sensationalist or superficial cultural publications at the time that appealed to the public's baser instincts. He further holds that such attrition of cultural standards is equally possible under capitalist and socialist systems, since the publishing business under both is attuned to the lowest common denominator among the public. Here, Youssef disagrees. The expansion of the market under socialist central planning generated the broad dissemination of, and increasing demand for, international literary and artistic works at cheap prices, he writes. This process had nothing to do with the Soviets' vulgarisation of culture among the population as a whole as a result of their zeal for the dissemination of their particular ideology.
A third example involves Youssef's critique of Abdel- Wahab El-Messiri's discussion of the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory's distinction between the utilitarian and the critical mind. According to this school, utilitarianism went hand in glove with capitalism, serving its appetites for gain by promoting sociological homogenisation, the severance of man from nature and the emergence of economic man. According to Youssef what El-Messiri has overlooked here is that the founders of the Frankfurt School, Adorno and Horkheimer, were German Jews whose primary concern in the 1930s when the school was consolidating itself was to counter Nazism. Eventually, they fled to the US where they cooperated with the US Office for Strategic Services, later to become the CIA, under Truman, returning to Germany after the Second World War. Youssef contends that the Frankfurt School's well- known condemnation of the utilitarian mind, with its focus on the mechanisms of pure exchange and its aversion to religious, ethnic and sectarian specificities, ultimately serves the interests of Israel and Zionism. According to Youssef, there is also not a single Western enlightenment in the way that El-Messiri uses the term. Rather, there were numerous enlightenments: that of the French, which overturned the feudal order and ushered in the rule of the bourgeoisie, that of the British, which vacillated between empiricism and a kind of metaphysical aversion, and that of the Germans, in which the philosopher was identified with the ordinary man in the process of shaping the "German character" preparatory to national union. As for Arab enlightenment, he adds, rather than attempting to turn its back on religious heritage it has appealed to ijtihad, or rational interpretation.
If criticism expands the scope of discussion it also expands the scope of difference, particularly when contending parties refuse to budge from their contradictory positions. Nevertheless, Magdi Youssef in this book offers two antidotes to such a "dialogue of the deaf". The first is for scholars to be wary of any tendency to transport ideas and concepts from one culture or context to another uncritically, as though these things were disembodied and not context-specific and context- relative. The second is to pay closer attention to ideas and concepts in terms of the sociological and historical contexts in which they originated. Were these pieces of advice to be followed, perhaps writers would no longer cast themselves adrift without a critical compass.
Reviewed by Assem El-Dessouqi
