BRIIFS Abstracts vol.7 no.2, 2005

Although In modern times, Jews were nowhere as open to participation in the wider Arabic-Muslim culture, and at home in literary standard Arabic, as from the 1920s in Iraq. Writing in literary standard Arabic, Iraqi Jews produced works that quickly became part of the mainstream of modern Arabic literature. Following the war in Palestine and the establishment of the state of Israel, many Iraqi Jewish intellectuals, poets and writers emigrated to the new state. On their arrival in Israel they faced a new linguistic situation in which the Hebrew language was limited to a single religion, a single nation, and a single ethnic entity. While in Iraq, Arab cultural and national identity encompassed Jews together with Muslims and Christians--in Israel, Jewish identity became enmeshed with cultural and national identity. Such immigrants thus faced a fierce clash between their original Iraqi-Arab narrative and the Jewish Zionist Western-oriented dominant master narrative. The natural Iraqi hybrid of a Jewish-Arab identity became contradistinct and even diametrically opposed identities--Arab versus Jew. As a result, the literature twentieth century Iraqi Jews produced in Arabic has been gradually disappearing; there is no Jewish writer on record born in Israel after 1948 who writes belles-lettres in Arabic. The demise of Arabic literature among Jews has precipitated a controversy regarding the cultural preferences of Israeli society. The dilemma is whether Arab culture can be considered a ‘correct’ source of inspiration for the Israeli Hebrew culture.

Caecilia Pieri

baghdad Architecture, 1921-1958: reflections on history as a

‘strategy of vigilance’

The respective phases of Baghdad’s development between 1921 (the Iraqi Kingdom and British Mandate) and 1958 (the Iraqi National Revolution) remain visible today. Up until the 1940s, the aesthetics of its residential architecture was eclectic--the result of a specific process of invention linked to traditional local brickwork know-how. This eclecticism overlapped with the persistence of a habitat still characterized by a central inner space.

Then the revolution played the symbolic role of vector of a paradoxical identity, as it was experienced simultaneously as a break with the Western world and the integration of international modernism. Therefore the Hashemite Baghdad, with all its particularities, constitutes a brilliant case of elaboration of a modern capital; it was born of a successful hybridization of cultural traditions and the exchange of professional know-how, in which the figures of adaptation and appropriation were determining factors in the enrichment and renewal not only of urban forms, but also of urban practices.

This urban context constitutes a heritage for the Iraqis, since it is not only result of a composite history but also the producer of a composite identity--a fruitful basis of a project for the future. The reconstruction of Baghdad should avoid new surgical operations stemming from radical political agendas, most importantly the temptation of the tabula rasa.

Hashim al-Tawil

the formation of identity in modern iraqi visual art:

a new perspective

Modern Iraqi art has been traditionally treated as a movement that was born after the British conquest of Iraq in 1917 and was based on the western European concept of modern visual art. Hence the early phase of this movement was characterized by strong adherence to the western tradition and transmission of that culture to Iraq. However, the cultural elements of indigenous Iraqi art--part of the wider culture of the region under European colonialism--subsisted and played an important role in shaping the identity of this art in due course. Decisive in this identity is the long tradition of image-making in Iraq, from the Mesopotamians through to the pre-Islamic period. The long heritage of Arabic culture and Islamic tradition was present in Iraq by the turn of the twentieth century. The ethnic diversity and religious pluralism of Iraqi society further defined that dynamic cultural heritage and its sources. This article discusses the different aspects of those indigenous cultural sources that--along with the importation of Western art--shaped the identity of modern Iraqi art. It also provides a brief introduction to the foundations of modern Iraqi art beyond the typical prevalent western-oriented definition found throughout major publications on the subject. It is an attempt to build a new approach to and a new reading of the subject.

Benjamin Isakhan

Read all about it: the free press, the public sphere and

democracy in iraq

Despite a wealth of recent research which has detailed the impact that new media outlets and technologies have had on the Middle East’s nascent public sphere and its role in promoting democracy, there has been little investigation into the re-emergence of the free press in Iraq following the toppling of Saddam Hussein in 2003 and the corresponding end to his tight control over the nation’s media sector. This paper begins by reviewing Iraq’s long relationship with the written word and its corresponding public sphere. It traces the introduction of the printing press to Iraq by the Ottomans and details those periods when the Iraqi press was truly free, fostering the emergence of a civil society and democratic reforms (such as under the Young Turks, the early Hashemite era and following the Second World War). It also examines those periods when the Iraqi media was most restricted and did little else than praise the regime at hand (such as under Ottoman rule and most recently under the Ba†th regime, especially under Saddam Hussein). Following on, this article reviews the developments since the fall of Saddam Hussein and, despite the extensive interference in Iraq’s media sector from governmental entities both outside and inside Iraq, it concludes by arguing that these papers have been central to the re-emergence of an Iraqi public sphere which has openly debated and discussed the issues pertinent to post-Saddam Iraq.

Stephan Milich

Will Iraq Perish?: concepts of exile, hybridity and

intertextuality in saadi youssef’s post-colonial poetry

In a short preface to a number of poems by contemporary Iraqi poets, Salih J. Altoma states that the many Iraqi poets in exile “have much to offer in terms of their views about Iraq’s tribulations in recent years.” Confronted with the current human catastrophe in Iraq in addition to the experienced hardship of a life in exile, the Iraqi poet in ghurba (exile) is carrying a double burden, which often puts him in a desperate situation and creates a very particular dilemma for his poetic writing, torn between the political and the aesthetic. One of these writers of exile poetry is the great Iraqi poet Saadi Youssef (b. 1934), who has lived as an exile in more than ten European and Arab countries. Having presented some of Youssef’s recurrent notions of exile in his oeuvre and strategies of writing by means of intertextual reference, the article goes on to look more specifically at the concepts and notions of exile and hybridity in his post-colonial poetry of the 1990s and the beginning of the twenty-first century.

Nadje al-Ali and Nicola Pratt

researching women in post-invasion iraq:

negotiating ‘truths’ and deconstructing dominant discourses

This article discusses the authors’ experiences of researching the situation of women in Iraq since 2003. It highlights a number of methodological, theoretical and practical issues that arise as part of the research process and their implications for the production of knowledge about women in Iraq. These issues include examining the impact of the authors’ subject positions and the power of dominant discourses put forward by different political actors with regards to the conceptualization of ‘Iraqi women,’ the politics of war and occupation and resistance to it, and the deployment of gender in the political post-invasion transition. The authors attempt to deconstruct the different discourses and, in so doing, to uncover the diversity of Iraqi women and the complexity of their experiences in Iraq and identify both the limitations of and possibilities for researching women in Iraq. The article uncovers the ways in which dominant discourses label issues and problems in ways that are counter-productive to finding just and lasting solutions for women in Iraq--particularly in the process of building a peaceful and stable Iraqi nation-state, which can guarantee rights for all of its citizens.

Fred H. Lawson

The advent of westphalian sovereignty in iraq

During the first three decades after independence in 1922, Iraq pursued a foreign policy that was associated with an expansive conception of national interest. The nationalist leadership in Baghdad actively championed Arab unity and attempted to exercise authority over neighbouring countries. This external posture shifted in the early 1950s to a foreign policy rooted in a more restricted and territory-based notion of national interest. Why Iraqi officials adopted diplomatic practices congruent with “Westphalian sovereignty” is hard to explain in terms of the dynamics of state formation, but is closely connected to the structure of the local economy and struggles among domestic social forces.

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