Decolonizing English Literature Departments At Arab Universities

• Published date: 04 November 2022
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.13169/arabstudquar.44.3-4.0196
• Pages: 196-214
• Date: 04 November 2022
• Author: Tahrir Hamdi
• Subject Matter: decolonizing education,English literature,epistemic disobedience,revolution,Palestine,zero point epistemology

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DECOLONIZING ENGLISH LITERATURE

DEPARTMENTS AT ARAB UNIVERSITIES

Tahrir Hamdi

Abstract: Education in the Arab world is in need of a revolution, and this revolution-

ary transformation is inevitably and intricately linked to the production, ordering, and

dissemination of revolutionary, anti-colonial knowledge. This article emphasizes the

urgency for decolonizing education, specifically English literature departments at Arab

universities. Many thinkers have documented the connection between literature, culture,

and imperialism on the one hand (Gauri Viswanathan’s Masks of Conquest, 1989 and

Edward Said’s Culture and Imperialism, 1993) and literature, culture, and resistance on

the other hand (Fanon, Kanafani, Cabral, Said, and others who wrote about zero point

epistemology). While there have been some decolonization efforts in different parts of

the world, even at Ivy League institutions (Cornell University, for example), Arab universi-

ties ironically maintain a very rigid, government accredited English and American literary

curriculum with no attempt or intention at decolonizing these colonial era curricula. This

article interrogates the aims behind maintaining a purely English (and American) liter-

ary curricula, especially as the Arab region continues to undergo the most violent and

aggressive forms of Western intervention, which has led to massive destruction of Arab

state infrastructures, the loss of Palestine in 1948, the dissolution of the social fabric of

Arab societies and thousands of deaths in the past two decades. Against this destructive

Western agenda, a constructive, awareness raising impulse embedded in a literature/

culture of resistance is in order. It is high time that Arab universities decolonize their Eng-

lish literature departments, a necessary transformation that entails, to quote the title

of an essay by Walter D. Mignolo, “Epistemic Disobedience, Independent Thought and

Decolonial Freedom” (2009).

Keywords: decolonizing education, English literature, epistemic disobedience, revolution,

Palestine, zero point epistemology

Education in the Arab world is in need of a revolution, and this revolutionary

transformation is inevitably and intricately linked to the production, ordering and

dissemination of revolutionary, anti-colonial knowledge. This article emphasizes

the urgency for decolonizing education, specifically English literature depart-

ments at Arab universities. In fact, decolonizing efforts need to encompass all rel-

evant disciplines, especially in the humanities. This change cannot be a cosmetic

Director of Arab Open University, Anman, Jordan

DOI:10.13169/arabstudquar.44.3 & 4 0196

DECOLONIZING ENGLISH LITERATURE DEPARTMENTS AT ARAB UNIVERSITIES 197

ASQ 44.3 & 4 Produced and distributed by Pluto Journals

one, i.e. adding a couple of courses that would include literatures from around the

world. The decolonization of our university curricula is a necessary precondition

for political decolonization and the genuine liberation of our minds and lands.

In his important article entitled “Epistemic Disobedience, Independent Thought

and Decolonial Freedom,” Walter D. Mignolo (2009) argues that the Global South

is in need of delinking their knowledge from that of the imperial West, and this

entails “epistemic disobedience” in the humanities. Mignolo goes on to argue that

the very “making of modern Europe” is deeply entrenched in its colonial history

(174). According to Mignolo, this knowledge-power formula is clear in the West’s

representation of Western knowledge as the “zero point epistemology” (160) that

would be taught/ingrained not only at Western institutions, but especially at institu-

tions in the Global South to ensure that these academic institutions and departments

rely on Western knowledge that all professors and their students must internalize,

making it easier to control colonized (or previously colonized) populations.

The role of departments of English literature in the previously colonized and

“post-colonial” world, in fact, was and still is aimed at training new (epistemic

obedient) members, creating individuals totally oblivious to how their world has

been put together for them by the hegemonic Western curriculum designers/plan-

ners and their indigenous trainees/mimics or comprador intelligentsia. The connec-

tion between culture and power has long been established by the likes of Antonio

Gramsci (Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci, 1971), Louis

Althusser (“Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses” in Lenin and Philosophy

and Other Essays, 1971), Paolo Freire (Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 1970 and

Education for the Critical Consciousness, 1973), Frantz Fanon (Black Skin,

White Masks, 1967 and The Wretched of the Earth), Amilcar Cabral (“National

liberation and culture,” 1994), Edward Said (Orientalism, 1978 and Culture and

Imperialism, 1993), and many other thinkers.

The critic Gauri Viswanathan’s book entitled Masks of Conquest (1989) directly

addresses the role of English literary study in the British colonization of India.

Viswanathan argues that “English literary study had its beginnings as a strategy of

containment” (10) that would be used as a “disguised form of authority” (Ibid.) or

mask of conquest to “maintain[…] social control,” (Ibid.) and I would add mind

control. English literary study rather than religion (missionary campaigns) was

chosen by the English administrators of India because it was less controversial

and created less tension for the religiously minded Indians (Viswanathan, 38).

Although Viswanathan warns against making a direct cause-effect connec-

tion between today’s English literature departments and colonial/imperial

control—that “imperialism can be swiftly undone merely by hurling away the texts

it institutionalized,” she does underscore the absolute necessity of recognizing that

these same literary texts “were put in the service of British imperialism” (169).