For a “Foreign” Audience: The Challenges of Teaching Arabic Literature in the American Academy

Abstract

Recently Mary Louise Pratt suggested that we expunge the term ‘foreign’ as it applies to non-European languages and literature, and that we replace it with the term ‘modern,’ thereby “put[ting] an end to another lexical legacy of the Cold War.” I want to argue that, at least for the time being, replacing the term ‘foreign’ would be a dangerous masking, a denial of the realities of the encounters that, from my vantage point as an Arab and a professor of Arabic literature in the American academy, are still characterized by power inequalities, ignorance, and outright racism and hostility, encounters with ‘foreignness’ that must, at the very least, be apprehended as such.Arabic literature is primarily taught in this country in departments of Middle or Near Eastern Studies. Almost everyone in the humanities today is aware of how institutional structures of limited funding and resources, the distinctions between tenured, non-tenured, and adjunct faculty, the politics of publication and advancement, and so on affect the production of the knowledge that our students and readers are exposed to. In the case of Area Studies departments the problems are more acute. It is not simply that the resources are less, the support from the administration weaker, and the prestige at the bottom of the academic food chain, all of which are true. It is also that, when it comes to Area Studies, it becomes almost impossible for the American academy to be an arena of opposition and contestation. Edward Said traced the history of Area Studies departments in Orientalism over twenty years ago, and exposed the ways in which the knowledge they produce has served the interests of some at the expense of others, and has functioned to consolidate a world order, ‘new’ or ‘old’ does not seem to make much difference, of a privileged few, and a disenfranchised majority.