I've been meaning to write this post for a while, but haven't really found the right way to approach it...
This pretty much sums it up I guess.
But yeah, before I lived in Egypt I was perfectly happy to give it not just the Benefit of the Doubt, but really much more; I wrote my thesis on Islam as an "alternative and cohesive telos and worldview."
And yet... after 7 months in Egypt I couldn't believe how disillusioned I felt. I've touched on it before... how everyone middle class just wanted to get the hell out of there. How it felt like the clash between "Islam and the West" was based on the fact that they desired literally everything Western, which led to a natural problem with the "Islam" part. (not the religion per se, but the economic, political, and cultural stagnation that because of the holistic nature of Islam, is hard to attribute to anything other than Islam, or it's deterioration due to Western influences.)
I went to Egypt open-minded, and I left with the same opinion that a lot of egyptians have:
(to quote an Egyptian i was particularly fond of )
"Egypt is fucked"
So how does one deal with the fact that liberalism is better served by theorizing than by experience? Would i have been a better "scholar" if I'd stayed at home?
Speaking to people who study the Middle East from afar, i literally feel tainted by experience.
3 comments:
academics vs. experience
academics vs. experience
academics vs. experience
question of the year (decade? century? all time?)
i vote for academics being tainted by lack of experience over you being a tainted scholar. i'd say, if anything, this makes you a BETTER scholar.
do you know sophie woodruff? you should talk to her about this.
Hey Mark
This is Sophie- Perhaps you remember me from Hampshire but alison gave me a heads up about your blog.
I just returned from a stint in Turkey- I lived there for three months and similarly wrote my thesis about Turkish women and Islam in Berlin- and wrote about Turkish communities living in Berlin rather lovingly.
However, after spending time in Turkey, I felt well- horrible- does not begin to explain the overwhelming fear of sexual assualt that I experienced on a daily basis. The shock was- I came, much like you, with a relatively open mind- excited about my experience there and left feeling...
Turkey is fucked.
I was shocked by the contrast between what I saw as home life- where I was treated relatively well and the street where the appearance of any foreign woman allowed women to be treated blatantly and aggreesively like objects to be touched and harassed.
But I agree with alison that it made me a better scholar- less idealistic... It gave me a very different opinion of what I was writing about. And it was the first time I had to face harsh realties about how the world really is.
I would love to discuss more if you are interested.
-Sophie
I wish I could say something more profound here but my studies were just in English Lit. I guess that is more or less the study of human nature maybe. Reality is cold, uncaring,and harsh. I think you can learn from it's taint.. like how not to be and just telling the truth about your own experience. Maybe you are better person from the experience but you haven't realized it yet.
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