This article focuses on North African Rai music as a fertile and explosive site of gendered and transnational Maghrebi identity, exploring two separate yet related paths. The first is the "Rai versus Islam" binary, which the article demonstrates to be a falsely constructed combat zone that serves to further the political interests of the FIS (Islamic Salvation Front), the FLN (National Liberation Front), and the financial interests of the Western music industry. The second focus is on the role of gender in Rai, and the increasing masculinization of the genre. The article's goal is to reveal the complex intersections of Rai, Islam, and masculinity in the construction of transnational Maghrebi identity. Introduction In a postmodern world where globalization, migration and cyberspace have blurred national and territorial boundaries, identity continues to play a vital role in a network of shifting and overlapping categories that work to construct and deconstruct each other. In this article I focus on Rai as a fertile and explosive site of Maghrebi identity. (1) Rai, originally a Western Algerian/Eastern Moroccan musical genre, traces its roots back to the early twentieth century. In its contemporary form (from the 1970s onward), it has followed Maghrebi immigrants to Europe, and the recent release of the duet Desert Rose (1999) featuring British Sting and Algerian Cheb Mami, has increased its visibility as a global phenomenon. Typically, Rai is associated with youth and immigrant subcultures, and often described as risque or vulgar. (2) Yet as this article will demonstrate, Rai is a much more complex phenomenon that speaks to the multiplicity of a gendered and transnational Maghrebi identity. In order to explore this complexity, my article follows two separate yet related paths. The first focus will be on the seemingly, but not necessarily, adversarial relationship of Rai and Islam, whose conflict has been promoted for different reasons by its Islamist (3) opponents and its Western proponents. I will demonstrate how the "Rai versus Islam" binary is a falsely constructed combat zone that serves to further the political interests of the FIS (Islamic Salvation Front), the FLN (National Liberation Front), (4) and the financial interests of the Western music industry. The second focus will be on the role of gender in Rai, and the increasing masculinization of the genre. My goal is to reveal the complex intersections of Rai, Islam and masculinity in the construction of a transnational Maghrebi identity. While considerable attention is being given to the economic impact of globalization, similar scholarly inquiry into the cultural and political ramifications of globalization is only beginning. In light of recent and ongoing political crises involving young Middle Eastern men and Islam, it is foolish and perilous to ignore cultural and political elements, or to accept simplistic explanations that compartmentalize and too often demonize "the Other." My hope i
{"title":"Moi Aussi, Je Suis Musulman: Rai, Islam, and Masculinity in Maghrebi Transnational Identity","authors":"Angelica Maria DeAngelis","doi":"10.2307/1350083","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/1350083","url":null,"abstract":"This article focuses on North African Rai music as a fertile and explosive site of gendered and transnational Maghrebi identity, exploring two separate yet related paths. The first is the \"Rai versus Islam\" binary, which the article demonstrates to be a falsely constructed combat zone that serves to further the political interests of the FIS (Islamic Salvation Front), the FLN (National Liberation Front), and the financial interests of the Western music industry. The second focus is on the role of gender in Rai, and the increasing masculinization of the genre. The article's goal is to reveal the complex intersections of Rai, Islam, and masculinity in the construction of transnational Maghrebi identity. Introduction In a postmodern world where globalization, migration and cyberspace have blurred national and territorial boundaries, identity continues to play a vital role in a network of shifting and overlapping categories that work to construct and deconstruct each other. In this article I focus on Rai as a fertile and explosive site of Maghrebi identity. (1) Rai, originally a Western Algerian/Eastern Moroccan musical genre, traces its roots back to the early twentieth century. In its contemporary form (from the 1970s onward), it has followed Maghrebi immigrants to Europe, and the recent release of the duet Desert Rose (1999) featuring British Sting and Algerian Cheb Mami, has increased its visibility as a global phenomenon. Typically, Rai is associated with youth and immigrant subcultures, and often described as risque or vulgar. (2) Yet as this article will demonstrate, Rai is a much more complex phenomenon that speaks to the multiplicity of a gendered and transnational Maghrebi identity. In order to explore this complexity, my article follows two separate yet related paths. The first focus will be on the seemingly, but not necessarily, adversarial relationship of Rai and Islam, whose conflict has been promoted for different reasons by its Islamist (3) opponents and its Western proponents. I will demonstrate how the \"Rai versus Islam\" binary is a falsely constructed combat zone that serves to further the political interests of the FIS (Islamic Salvation Front), the FLN (National Liberation Front), (4) and the financial interests of the Western music industry. The second focus will be on the role of gender in Rai, and the increasing masculinization of the genre. My goal is to reveal the complex intersections of Rai, Islam and masculinity in the construction of a transnational Maghrebi identity. While considerable attention is being given to the economic impact of globalization, similar scholarly inquiry into the cultural and political ramifications of globalization is only beginning. In light of recent and ongoing political crises involving young Middle Eastern men and Islam, it is foolish and perilous to ignore cultural and political elements, or to accept simplistic explanations that compartmentalize and too often demonize \"the Other.\" My hope i","PeriodicalId":36717,"journal":{"name":"Alif","volume":"78 1","pages":"276"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2003-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80833343","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article examines Turkish Alevi poetry in the twentieth century focusing on how the Alevi community integrates political issues within a traditionally religious genre. The figure of Kemal Ataturk, the state ideology of Kemalism, and the acts of violence the Alevi community have experienced under the Republic are recurring themes in this poetry. A contextual interpretation of Alevi poems contradicts our commonsense understanding of the supposedly distinct categories of religion and politics. The Alevi worldview does not operate with notions of "sacred" versus "profane" and indeed challenges our conception of religion and politics as distinct categories. The Alevi case provides us with a fascinating example of how we are caught in our terminological categories when we ignore the worldview of our subjects. ********** [R]eligious studies as a cognitive discipline may actually distort or reduce that which it is claiming to investigate. As an example of this we shall consider the possibility that the secular framework upon which the modern discipline of religious studies is founded may actually subordinate religious phenomena and emic explanations of it to a secular meta-discourse. (Richard King, Orientalism and Religion, 42f.) Entering Alevi spaces, such as association buildings, private living rooms, or cemevis, (1) one is very often confronted by a surprising visual arrangement: the portraits of the two Alevi saints, Ali and Haci Bektas, accompanied by that of Kemal Ataturk, the founding father and first president of the Turkish Republic, whose picture is almost omnipresent in Turkey. (2) Ataturk is commonly understood as a symbol for the state ideology of Kemalism, especially its key republican and secularist principles. Some Alevis, however, not only strongly uphold these republican and secularist principles, but also give them a religious meaning. These Alevis honor Ataturk as a saint, and also embed laicism and certain themes of republican history into their religious narrative. About twenty percent of Turkish citizens are estimated to be of "Alevi" background. (3) The label "Alevism," referring to the veneration of the first Shiite Imam Ali, became popular at the beginning of the twentieth century, when it was applied to a number of regional socio-religious communities with similar beliefs, rituals, and social structures. (4) The aim of the present paper is to investigate the fusion of religious and political identities of Alevism by examining Alevi religious poems of the twentieth century. Poetry is the medium in which this fusion is the most apparent. The medium of the poem offers a distinct voice that--through the use of the stylistic devices of metaphors and analogies--allows the formulation of positions not necessarily expressible in prose. I will look at the ways political issues are framed in these poems. Categorized according to topics, the given examples of Alevi poetry will illustrate the embedding of a variety of political themes
{"title":"Turkish Alevi Poetry in the Twentieth Century: The Fusion of Political and Religious Identities","authors":"Markus Dressler","doi":"10.2307/1350078","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/1350078","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines Turkish Alevi poetry in the twentieth century focusing on how the Alevi community integrates political issues within a traditionally religious genre. The figure of Kemal Ataturk, the state ideology of Kemalism, and the acts of violence the Alevi community have experienced under the Republic are recurring themes in this poetry. A contextual interpretation of Alevi poems contradicts our commonsense understanding of the supposedly distinct categories of religion and politics. The Alevi worldview does not operate with notions of \"sacred\" versus \"profane\" and indeed challenges our conception of religion and politics as distinct categories. The Alevi case provides us with a fascinating example of how we are caught in our terminological categories when we ignore the worldview of our subjects. ********** [R]eligious studies as a cognitive discipline may actually distort or reduce that which it is claiming to investigate. As an example of this we shall consider the possibility that the secular framework upon which the modern discipline of religious studies is founded may actually subordinate religious phenomena and emic explanations of it to a secular meta-discourse. (Richard King, Orientalism and Religion, 42f.) Entering Alevi spaces, such as association buildings, private living rooms, or cemevis, (1) one is very often confronted by a surprising visual arrangement: the portraits of the two Alevi saints, Ali and Haci Bektas, accompanied by that of Kemal Ataturk, the founding father and first president of the Turkish Republic, whose picture is almost omnipresent in Turkey. (2) Ataturk is commonly understood as a symbol for the state ideology of Kemalism, especially its key republican and secularist principles. Some Alevis, however, not only strongly uphold these republican and secularist principles, but also give them a religious meaning. These Alevis honor Ataturk as a saint, and also embed laicism and certain themes of republican history into their religious narrative. About twenty percent of Turkish citizens are estimated to be of \"Alevi\" background. (3) The label \"Alevism,\" referring to the veneration of the first Shiite Imam Ali, became popular at the beginning of the twentieth century, when it was applied to a number of regional socio-religious communities with similar beliefs, rituals, and social structures. (4) The aim of the present paper is to investigate the fusion of religious and political identities of Alevism by examining Alevi religious poems of the twentieth century. Poetry is the medium in which this fusion is the most apparent. The medium of the poem offers a distinct voice that--through the use of the stylistic devices of metaphors and analogies--allows the formulation of positions not necessarily expressible in prose. I will look at the ways political issues are framed in these poems. Categorized according to topics, the given examples of Alevi poetry will illustrate the embedding of a variety of political themes","PeriodicalId":36717,"journal":{"name":"Alif","volume":"13 1","pages":"109"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2003-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"91054214","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"ثورة التخييل وتخييل الثورة: قراءة جديدة في أولاد حارتنا","authors":"ريشا جاكمون, Rishar Jakumun","doi":"10.2307/1350091","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/1350091","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":36717,"journal":{"name":"Alif","volume":"181 1","pages":"118"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2003-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80250015","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article's point of departure is Rilke's specification that the angels of his Duino Elegies are not to be equated with Christian ones, being more comparable to Islamic angels. Existing efforts to apply this notion to the Duino Elegies have focused on the phenomenological aspect of the elegiac angels, but this article argues that the rhetorical function of the angels within the cycle is key, and it demonstrates how Rilke's angels are rhetorically linked with the angels of Islam. The critical connection between the Duino Elegies and the Qur'an is that the angels in both cases are finally subordinate to the objectives of the poetic persona/poet. The article concludes by showing how Rilke's rhetorical use of his Duino angels is also continuous with the conventions of the classical German elegy. ********** "Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angelic/orders? And even if one of them pressed me/suddenly to his heart: I'd be consumed/in his stronger existence." (1) These lines, the famous, ever startling opening of Rainer Maria Rilke's Duino Elegies (completed in 1922), have been explicated almost as much for their biographical interest as for their primacy within Rilke's text--a cycle of ten elegies expounding nothing less than the mature poet's conception of his own place and calling within the world of creation. Along with his Sonnets to Orpheus, also completed in 1922, this late work is widely considered Rilke's masterpiece, if not in fact the supreme accomplishment of twentieth-century German lyric poetry as a whole. (2) Written in early 1912, well after the Prague-born poet had first established his literary reputation, these opening lines of the Duino Elegies mark a major comeback for Rilke after a long period of inactivity in which he intermittently despaired of ever writing again. Certainly the circumstances surrounding their inception are well known. Since October of 1911, he had been the house guest of Princess Marie von Thurn und Taxis at Duino Castle on the Adriatic. One day in January, after receiving an annoying piece of business mail, he had fled outdoors to mull over his response just as a strong bora was blowing up from the sea. Almost reverentially, the Princess relays what ensued in her memoirs: Rilke climbed down to the bastions which, jutting to the east and west, were connected to the foot of the castle by a narrow path along the cliffs. These cliffs fall steeply, for about two hundred feet, into the sea. Rilke paced back and forth, deep in thought, since the reply to the letter so concerned him. Then, all at once, in the midst of his brooding, he halted suddenly, for it seemed to him that in the raging of the storm a voice bad called to him: "Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angelic orders?".... He took out his notebook, which he always carried with him, and wrote down these words, together with a few lines that formed themselves without his intervention ... Very calmly he climbed back up to his room, set
{"title":"Rilke's Duino Angels and the Angels of Islam","authors":"K. J. Campbell","doi":"10.2307/1350080","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/1350080","url":null,"abstract":"This article's point of departure is Rilke's specification that the angels of his Duino Elegies are not to be equated with Christian ones, being more comparable to Islamic angels. Existing efforts to apply this notion to the Duino Elegies have focused on the phenomenological aspect of the elegiac angels, but this article argues that the rhetorical function of the angels within the cycle is key, and it demonstrates how Rilke's angels are rhetorically linked with the angels of Islam. The critical connection between the Duino Elegies and the Qur'an is that the angels in both cases are finally subordinate to the objectives of the poetic persona/poet. The article concludes by showing how Rilke's rhetorical use of his Duino angels is also continuous with the conventions of the classical German elegy. ********** \"Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angelic/orders? And even if one of them pressed me/suddenly to his heart: I'd be consumed/in his stronger existence.\" (1) These lines, the famous, ever startling opening of Rainer Maria Rilke's Duino Elegies (completed in 1922), have been explicated almost as much for their biographical interest as for their primacy within Rilke's text--a cycle of ten elegies expounding nothing less than the mature poet's conception of his own place and calling within the world of creation. Along with his Sonnets to Orpheus, also completed in 1922, this late work is widely considered Rilke's masterpiece, if not in fact the supreme accomplishment of twentieth-century German lyric poetry as a whole. (2) Written in early 1912, well after the Prague-born poet had first established his literary reputation, these opening lines of the Duino Elegies mark a major comeback for Rilke after a long period of inactivity in which he intermittently despaired of ever writing again. Certainly the circumstances surrounding their inception are well known. Since October of 1911, he had been the house guest of Princess Marie von Thurn und Taxis at Duino Castle on the Adriatic. One day in January, after receiving an annoying piece of business mail, he had fled outdoors to mull over his response just as a strong bora was blowing up from the sea. Almost reverentially, the Princess relays what ensued in her memoirs: Rilke climbed down to the bastions which, jutting to the east and west, were connected to the foot of the castle by a narrow path along the cliffs. These cliffs fall steeply, for about two hundred feet, into the sea. Rilke paced back and forth, deep in thought, since the reply to the letter so concerned him. Then, all at once, in the midst of his brooding, he halted suddenly, for it seemed to him that in the raging of the storm a voice bad called to him: \"Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angelic orders?\".... He took out his notebook, which he always carried with him, and wrote down these words, together with a few lines that formed themselves without his intervention ... Very calmly he climbed back up to his room, set ","PeriodicalId":36717,"journal":{"name":"Alif","volume":"17 1","pages":"191"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2003-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81705709","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article discusses the problematic of identity in Maghrebian literature in French. Through a close analysis of Abdelkebir Khatibi's autobiography, La Memoire tatouee (1971), the author shows how Francophone literature of the Maghreb challenges the established Arabo-Islamic notion of a pure origin and a unified identity. He goes on to argue that the colonial experience has created a new relationship between the Self and the Other. Self-identification in terms of a rigid opposition to the Other (the West) complicates the emergence of a new postcolonial subjectivity liable to ovecome oppositional thought. La Memoire tatouee may be considered, according to the author, in terms of a postcolonial social and cultural project. In it Khatibi invites Arab societies to a "pensee-autre" [thinking otherwise] that challenges the cultural and ideological hegemony of the West as well as the monolithic Arabo-Islamic discourse on identity and difference. ********** Postcolonial theory in its English and Anglophone replications is dominated by such figures as Edward Said, Homi Bhabha, Gayatri Spivak, Stuart Hall, to cite but these. Writers as ideologically and artistically diverse as Frantz Fanon, Aime Cesaire, Albert Memmi, and Edouard Glissant dominate its French and Francophone ramification. In fact, one can easily trace the genealogy of both English and French branches of postcolonial theory to Fanon, and farther down to Hegel's master-slave dialectic. The allegories that permeate the postcolonial imaginary, such as those of Caliban and Prospero; Crusoe and Friday; Kurtz and "the heart of darkness" (or Tayeb Salih's inversion of the imperial adventure by taking it back to the "North"), are all variations on the same pattern. This is to say, in simple terms, that the same Manichean grammar and the same history of imperialism inform most of these theories of postcoloniality, no matter where or when they originate. In the present article, I propose to examine the issue of self-definition in the Maghrebian novel in French. Here I want to examine Abdelkebir Khatibi's La Memoire tatouee (1971) (1) one of the first Maghrebian autobiographies published in the wake of independence. In Black Skin White Masks, Frantz Fanon argues that the colonized subject cannot make a meaning for himself; it is the meaning that is already there, pre-existing him that makes him. (2) Despite his noteworthy psycho-sociological study of the colonial context, Fanon overlooks the socio-cultural reality of the Maghreb. For during the colonial period, two distinct meanings--French (or Western) and Arabo-Berbero-Islamic--seemed to shape the colonized subject's vision of himself and of the Other, and out of which he had to extract a meaning that he would recognize as his. Khatibi opens his autobiography with a reference to the dechirure nominale: "Born the day of Eid el-Kebir [the feast known as "Greater Bairam"] my name suggests a millenary rite, and it occurs to me, for the occasion, to ima
{"title":"Interrogating Identity: Abdelkebir Khatibi and the Postcolonial Prerogative","authors":"M. Hamil","doi":"10.2307/1350050","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/1350050","url":null,"abstract":"This article discusses the problematic of identity in Maghrebian literature in French. Through a close analysis of Abdelkebir Khatibi's autobiography, La Memoire tatouee (1971), the author shows how Francophone literature of the Maghreb challenges the established Arabo-Islamic notion of a pure origin and a unified identity. He goes on to argue that the colonial experience has created a new relationship between the Self and the Other. Self-identification in terms of a rigid opposition to the Other (the West) complicates the emergence of a new postcolonial subjectivity liable to ovecome oppositional thought. La Memoire tatouee may be considered, according to the author, in terms of a postcolonial social and cultural project. In it Khatibi invites Arab societies to a \"pensee-autre\" [thinking otherwise] that challenges the cultural and ideological hegemony of the West as well as the monolithic Arabo-Islamic discourse on identity and difference. ********** Postcolonial theory in its English and Anglophone replications is dominated by such figures as Edward Said, Homi Bhabha, Gayatri Spivak, Stuart Hall, to cite but these. Writers as ideologically and artistically diverse as Frantz Fanon, Aime Cesaire, Albert Memmi, and Edouard Glissant dominate its French and Francophone ramification. In fact, one can easily trace the genealogy of both English and French branches of postcolonial theory to Fanon, and farther down to Hegel's master-slave dialectic. The allegories that permeate the postcolonial imaginary, such as those of Caliban and Prospero; Crusoe and Friday; Kurtz and \"the heart of darkness\" (or Tayeb Salih's inversion of the imperial adventure by taking it back to the \"North\"), are all variations on the same pattern. This is to say, in simple terms, that the same Manichean grammar and the same history of imperialism inform most of these theories of postcoloniality, no matter where or when they originate. In the present article, I propose to examine the issue of self-definition in the Maghrebian novel in French. Here I want to examine Abdelkebir Khatibi's La Memoire tatouee (1971) (1) one of the first Maghrebian autobiographies published in the wake of independence. In Black Skin White Masks, Frantz Fanon argues that the colonized subject cannot make a meaning for himself; it is the meaning that is already there, pre-existing him that makes him. (2) Despite his noteworthy psycho-sociological study of the colonial context, Fanon overlooks the socio-cultural reality of the Maghreb. For during the colonial period, two distinct meanings--French (or Western) and Arabo-Berbero-Islamic--seemed to shape the colonized subject's vision of himself and of the Other, and out of which he had to extract a meaning that he would recognize as his. Khatibi opens his autobiography with a reference to the dechirure nominale: \"Born the day of Eid el-Kebir [the feast known as \"Greater Bairam\"] my name suggests a millenary rite, and it occurs to me, for the occasion, to ima","PeriodicalId":36717,"journal":{"name":"Alif","volume":"126 1","pages":"72"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2002-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90278473","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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