review article

behind the wall of meaning

ROGER JOSEPH-California State University, Fullerton

Cultural Expression in Arab Society. JACQUES BERQUE. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1978. 360 pp., appendixes, notes, index. $19.95 (cloth).

Algeria 1960. PIERRE BOURDIEU. London: Cambridge University Press, 1979. viii + 158 pp., index. $19.95 (cloth).

Literature and Violence in North Arabia. MICHAEL E. MEEKER. New York: Cam- bridge University Press, 1979. xvi + 272 p ~ . , figures, maps, appendixes, notes, bibliography, index. $25.00 (cloth), $10.95 (paper).

Islam: Past influence and Present Challenge. ALFORD T. WELCH and PIERRE CACHIA, eds. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1979. xiii + 359 pp., notes, bibliography, index. $35.00 (cloth).

A semiotic approach to cognitive and aesthetic experience has both the advantages and disadvantages of an incomplete paradigm. The disadvantages are more obvious. In any model-building process one must discern whether the model i s about rules of procedure generated by one's thinking about some external reality or whether the model emerges from some rulelike consistencies inherent in the reality itself. Let us say that we want to understand something about a cognitive network and that we can understand that "net- work" by an analysis of its semantic dimensions, which in turn reflect the boundaries of the network Moreover, those semantic dimensions are organized in certain generally related schemata in such a way that relationships in one schema will reflect homogeneous rela- tionships in adjacent schemata. All of this is what a semiotician might assert; but left unset- tled i s whether these relationships reflect a model of the system or whether they are made to appear by the observer.

At a theoretical level, some attempt has been made to resolve this problem. At the ethnographic level, success has been rather limited, and semioticians often shift back and forth between their own cognitive models and the models presumably immanent in their subject matter. The cost of this confusion i s largely that it leaves us uncertain as to lust what entities we are talking about. The benefits are that we can still play around with the

Copyright 0 1980 by the American Anthropological Association ooSeO496/80/040774-05S1.00/1

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model, assuming that it is potentially self-correcting, and that at some point we can get at the structure of symbols and the cognitive processes that generate them

At least three of the books under review start with a semiotic framework, and the tourth (Welch and Cachia) contains some arttcles of a semiotic nature, moreover, all of the books deal with the Middle East. In conjunction with each other, they give us some idea of what a semiotics of Middle Eastern cultures might look like

Pierre Bourdieu's work has followed a somewhat unusual trajectory, the history of which I have noted elsewhere (Joseph in press). Although Algeria 1960 appeared in English in 1979. the three essays of which i t consists have been available in French since the early 1960s These essays serve as a preamble to his Outline of a Theory of Practice (1977, see Eickelman's review, A € 6.386-393. 1979) and his most recent Le Sen, Pratique (1980)

The major essay, "The Disenchantment of the World," i s a kind of economic semiotics. attempting to understand the logic of Algerian economics as it articulates with cultural PX-

perience Bourdieu contends that ethical norms and ritual imperatives are part ot an inve\t- ment calculus. Certain concepts that are in general use in discussing economic organiza- tion (e.g , "calculating," "predictability," "rationalistic") are ways of representing concepts of time, and different modes of production have different attitudes towards time This 1 5

not really dissimilar from the point that Polanyi made, although the language 15 somewh'it different But Bourdieu's aims are not to catalog economic systems, rather, he seeks to

understand how one system transforms into another system I f , as he contends. economics and ethos are inseparable, changes in the precapitalistic Algerian economy will be accom- panied by changes in the ethos Time becomes a matter of calculation, money mediates social relationships, joint ownership and exploitation give way to individualism, and the continuities of cyclic or natural time are replaced by a logic of a contrived and manipulated future. But lest Bourdieu be viewed as an orthodox Mdrxist, we should note that he refuses to see rituals and symbolic behavior as epiphenomena1 to a power structure, and he does not view the world as populated by aggregates passively tollowing some mechanical inclinations No economic system i s divorced from self-interest, yet at the same time self-interest is defined and redefined by a system of meaningful signs (the ethos) Once precapitalistic natural cycles, in which producers relate to one another personally and through symmetrical relations, are displaced by a market cycle and asymmetrical rela- tions, the social fabric of traditional society becomes unwoven; hence, the disenchantment of the world

Over 50 years ago, the Czech Orientalist Alois Musil wrote a remarkable book, The Man- ners and Customs of the Rwala Bedouins. Because of his almost total lack of organization, Musil has remained very much at the periphery of Middle Eastern anthropology In Literature and Violence in North Arabia, Michael Meeker brings Musil back into the foreground and craftily retrieves for us this account of late 19th-century tribal life. Meeker argues that the poetic texts recorded by Musil and other contemporary Orientalists reveal a chain of signs which signify political relationships and views of public life as they are shaped by pastoral nomadism.

The gist of Meeker's argument is that Bedouin poetic expression i s a template of tribal in- volvement in warfare and raiding, a kind of window into their social and political motiva- tions and actions He postulates a relationship between poetic substance and the relation- ship of men to one another and to the aggressive resources (weapons, mounts) they possess The verses Meeker utilizes are indeed signifiers that violence i s a central theme and raiding i s a form of communication; mounted conflict appears to replace other more peaceful forms of ritual. The oral narratives cited portray a deep concern with political life, aggres- sion against other men, and equally, an uncertainty that hostility will be successful

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Moreover, Meeker suggests that men coalesce not around any rigid theory of genealogical unity but because of personal benefits and individual strategies.

Meeker’s argument, based upon the exegesis of those poems he selects, i s convincing. but he excludes some of the poems found in Musil. The narratives about raiding, violence, uncertainty, political instability, and the like may well be an authentic idiom, but i s it the only, or most genuine, voice? This is, of course, an issue common to all semiotic analyses of cognition: whether the units the observer selects are the most pertinent ones. Any selective process brings with it a special set of consequences, and these may not be the necessary ones that govern the structure of our subject’s primary symbolic domains. What we would like to know i s whether the principles which seem to adhere to the political realm are reconstituted in other realms such as cosmology, sex, hospitality. subsistence. or whatever other activities provoke the attention of the culture’s membership.

There are two essays in Welch and Cachia which throw into question Meeker’s generdl thesis An article by James Bellamy on early Arabic poetry suggests a heavier overlay of Islam in the ideas of service to God and kinship with Mohammed than Musil’s poetry con- tains Moreover, the uncertainty that Meeker finds in the late 19th-century poetry of north- ern Arabia is in an earlier time replaced by an assurance of the merit of one’s own tribe and the failures and cowardice of one‘s enemies. An essay in the same collection by James Monroe links the love lyrics in Muslim Spain and North Africa with other Mediterranean trdditions, including Sumerian. Creek, Latin, Hebrew, and Arabic. Meeker i s not trying to link up the culture of northern Arabia with larger geographical units; indeed, part of his thesis i s the considerable difference in sociopolitical experience between the Maghreb and Arabia But, Monroe does identify a substratum of eroticism in popular Arabic oral poetry, i f one examines Musil’s chapter on marriage customs, this erotic topic is quite pronounced Neither Bellamy nor Monroe invalidates Meeker’s argument, but they do suggest that if one were to attempt to develop a general semiotic theory about the Middle East, the number ot variants would considerably increase. Aside from these minor misgivings, I believe Meeker has provided an exceptional contribution, not the least of which has been to resuscitate Musil’s often brilliant but chaotic work and place it within a semiotic frame If we do not w e the Bedouin of the late 19th century in a complete manner, we certainly see that culture more clearly than before. Its semiotic boundaries encompass an agonistic yet ethically centered universe in which rhetoric and action interfuse

The roots of Bourdieu’s disenchanted world are traceable, as Edward Said noted in Orientdl i \m (1978). to the late 18th century when European imperialism launched its expan- sion into the Middle East Pockets of cultural resistance such as northern Arabia remained tree up until this century, but the foundations of Arabic culture were totally transformed, and in the process Arabic identity and cultural expression disintegrated. A cognitive paradigm as deep as the language itself no longer served to think and talk about the world How this happened and what new fields of meaning have emerged are the subjects of Jacques Berque’s Cultural fxpression in Arab Society Today. Berque is perhaps the first ethnographer to attempt a semiological approach to Middle Eastern culture (see Berque’s S r r t i c l t i r e b Sociales du Hauf-Atlas, 1955). and he anticipates the works of both Bourdieu and Meeker

I t colonialired peoples had difficulty making sense of their objective world, increasingly becoming unhinged by imperialism and capitalistic penetration. how much more difficult to keep adrift in an existential sea of imported verbal racket? How do a people give names to intellectual and emotional stimulus that had not existed in previous generations?

While Bourdieu and Meeker focus upon the rural world, Berque takes the city as his text, i t i s in the urban center that all of the new potentialities interact with the old ones to create c~ kaleidoscope of oppositions and new capabilities Berque comes to the disheartening

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conclusion that in the name of unity and stability many of these potentials become stifled The second half of his study i s an examination of what those potentials. at least in aesthetic and cognitive expression, have been for the past 1,400 years within the Arabic community He argues that a poetic continuity reveals the “paradigmatic” structure of Arabic thought The arguments that Bourdieu and Meeker make for specific temporal culture,, Berque ex- pands for a complete region and its history. Arguing in a manner analogous to VICO, he asserts that what i s “real” or historical and what i s mythopoetic are simply parallel medns of ”modelizing” the world-providing a code by which a culture comes to understand the relationship of men to each other and to the cosmos. If the world has become tragmented, it i s the poet’s role to revive the aesthetic, psychic, and social potentials and to transtorni the collective energies into new and more authentic goals One i s reminded of Shelley’, belief that poets are ”the unacknowledged legislators of the world ” Berque SdyS. ‘,Arab poets often play an effective role in the course of events. In this capacity they enjoy power taken quite seriously by political leaders” (p. 295). Berque cannot, of course, give us dnV

assurances that this happy consequence will be developed; given the political event, ot the,

past 20 years. it seems much more likely that the expediencies he decries will continue t o

rule the day Islam: Past influence and Present Challenge i s a festschrift for the noted Orientalist

William Montgomery Watt I t has the defects that one expects of the genre: lack of focus and unevenness Essays range from the formative period to the modern with no linkage other than the fact that, at one time or another, all the contributors knew Professor Watt I have already mentioned the articles by Bellamy on early Arabic poetry and by Monroe on popular poetry in Muslim Spain. The latter essay i s especially useful in focusing our atten- tion on the possibilities of a much broader semiotic tradition encompassing the ancient Semites, including the Hebrew muwashshah tradition, Mesopotamia, and the European Mediterranean. Annemarie Schimmel draws our attention to the 19th-century Persian poet Chalib, and her essay suggests that the Indo-Persian poets operate in a tradition both similar to yet distinct from that of Arabs. One almost feels one i s reading a contemporary semiotician when Ghalib speaks of his poetry as a dictionary and an index

Pierre Cachia, on a much smaller canvas, portrays some of the issues encountered in

Berque’s study. Cachia traces the 19th-century rise of a new Egyptian elite both attracted and repelled by Western beliefs. He notes how poets, novelists, journalists. and educators all sought to rediscover the authentic, yet were unable to achieve cohesion or direction There were, to use Berque‘s phrase, many potentials, but the coup of 1952, rather than releasing these potentials, sought to restrain and truncate them. Cachia quotes a character in NajTb Mahftk’s Miramar to the effect that the state once needed the eloquence of the orators and now it relies on economists and engineers (p 229).

The most interesting essay in the collection from a semiotic point of view I S Professor Marmura’s discussion of Avicenna, the 11th-century philosopher whose thoughts establish a continuity between Aristotle and medieval Europe What makes Avicenna particularly in- teresting i s that he f i l l s in a gap between Aristotle’s semantics and Thomistic semiotics (tor a discussion of early occidental semiotics see Todorov 1978). Moreover, Avicenna set up an indigenous theory of semiotics within the Arabic world He argued that a specific became a universal only through a mental operation in which some “generality” attaches to it

through its relationship, or what 900 years later Charles Peirce would label “thirdness ” The connection between Peirce and Avicenna is through John Duns Scotus (see Boler’s Charles Peirce and Scholastic Realism, 1963). Avicenna rejected the Platonic notion of independent ontologies by insisting that logical categories existed only in relationship to other categories When Avicenna talks of Porphyry’s five predictable5 -genus, species, dif- ference, property, and accident-as universals of which the concept “genus” serves as a

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paradigm for the rest, he sounds very much as though he is speaking of the transformations and logical restatements that modern-day semioticians contend stand behind the wall of meaning Avicenna’s arguments are very complex and subtle, but his insights into the human mind appear to mark a heretofore unexamined area of semiotics.

I commenced this review questioning whether semiotic models reflect some basic elements in organized thought among the subjects or whether they are instead ways that observers tend to think about subjects. Such a question lies at the heart of the emicletic debate and forms the basis of several works in history and sociology (cf. White’s Metahistory, 1973 and Brown’s A Poetic for Sociology, 1978). I think each study demonstrates that there i s a logic by which social meaning is constituted and that this logic can be found in the way a set of conventions or signs articulate to create a special con- sciousness But in each case the signs are posited to relate to a social context which i s ac- tually or potentially shifting Both Berque and Bourdieu have built into their models a kind of antideterminism whereby contingencies, strategies, and happenstance all work towards an indeterminacy which may reflect the agonistic nature of their subjects. It may be that in the Middle East the absence of formal or quantifiable matrices such as have been posited for other areas simply reflects the flexible set of combinatories upon which rest the modes of expression of this area The semiotic paradigm for the Middle East has obviously not been completed; these studies give us some hints, however, of the directions it must take.

references clted

Joseph Roger in press Towards a Semiotics of Middle Eastern Cultures International Journal of Middle East

Studies Todorov, Tzvetan

1978 L Matelka and P Steiner. eds pp 1-42 Ann Arbor University of Michigan

The Birth of Occidental Semiotics In The Sign Semiotics Around the World R W Bailey.

Submitted 17 July 1980 Acrepted 28 July 1980

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