Anas MahafzahArabic 288 Prof. GanaPsychoanalysis and the
Challenge of Repressing Islam or, why a psychoanalytic session with
Joseph Massad might be traumatic (yet revealing) if youre a
Europeanized Arab/Muslim intellectual The Construction of the
Liberal Identity Islam, as I will show, resides inside liberalism,
defining its iden tity and its very claims of difference. It is an
internal con stituent of liberalism, not merely an external other
(1) though the ruse of ex ternalizing them as outsiders intends to
hide the operation of projecting them as an outside so that
liberalisms inside can be defined as their opposite, as their
superior. (1) unless one is a barbarian, a despot, an irrational
psychopath, a neurotic, a totalitarian, an intolerant brute, a
misogynist, a homophobe, in short, a Muslim, the answer must be the
latter. (2) As Talal Asad put it, the liberal mission is to have
the Islamic tradition remade in the image of liberal Protestant
Christianity.6 (3) The multiplication of referents (4) See page 5
Translation: Contexts of power (7); untranslatable words (8-9) What
I seek to understand in this book is the intellectual and political
histories within which Islam operated as a category of Western
liberal ism, indeed, how the anxieties about what this Europe
constituted and constitutesdespotism, intolerance, misogyny,
homophobiawere pro jected onto Islam and that only through this
projection could Europe emerge as democratic, tolerant,
philogynist, and homophilic, in short Islam-free. (12) Orientalism
included Semitism initially it broke off when Semitism became
Zionism. In this way, Muslims needed to be expelled not only
psychologically but physically.
Who Wants to Psychoanalyze Islam? Anybody? Helloooo? Islamists
for Psychoanalysis Inc. (306-307) European (lack of) interest
Freud: I dont know dudeits probably just a repetition of Judaism.
(275) Islam is an empty space in the theory of psychoanalysis.
(276) Arab intellectuals Treated it seriously.with a glossary to
boot (277) French Arab intellectuals (beginning in the 80s)
Moustapha Safouan (Egyptian), Fethi Benslama (Tunisian), Adnan
Houbballah (Lebanese), Abdelkbir Khatibi (Moroccan), Jurji
Tarabishi (Syrian). Islam as (Reified) Analysand Multiple Islams
Multiples of What? (281-282) Slipping from Islams to Islamism
(Islam?) Islamism (Islam?) as neurosis (278-279) Problems of
Construction (280-281) Islam was born from the stranger at the
origins of monotheism, and this stranger remained a stranger in
Islam. (281) [Which Islam?!] While Benslama explains at the outset
that the many Islams he posits are diverse, various, and sometimes
unconnected, even though they may all hide behind the singular name
Islam,37 he soon abandons this multiplicity in favor of a singular
Islam whose signifieds and referents remain multiple but
unspecified even as they are presented consciously and
ideologically as singular. (285) This is indeed a culture of
individuality, but one that is essentially governed by an
identification with God. (288) 302: What is an individual? Benslama
ambivalently posits this singular Islam, as the other (or the
Other?) of liberalism. How? Contemporary Islamism; fear and wish
Houbballah Individual is eclipsed by al-raiiya the caliph rules by
divine order. Thats why democracy has failed to take hold. European
concepts! (the kings subject) Once again, religion is not separated
from science/authority Dont seem to be aware of internal debates
about the compatibility of Islam and science (i.e. the
Afghani-Renan debate). In turath: `ada vs. shar Safouan and
language: inherited Orientalist tropes (283-284) The Problem of
Definition (282) Abandon or Deliverance Is Islam submission
(khudhu)? Balibar: Why is it that the very name which allows modern
philosophy to think and designate the originary freedom of the
human beingthe name of subjectis precisely the name which
historically meant suppression of freedom, or at least an intrinsic
limitation of freedom, i.e. subjection? Translation as a Gateway to
the Unconscious he wants to insist that translation in this case
gives access to the unconscious of the tradition ( son insu). While
this may be so, it does not do away with his initial concern.
Translation in this case is not annexation but assimilation , in
that Benslamas Freudian deconstruction, whether it uncovers an
Islam that is individualist or anti-individualist, can only do so
in relation to a modern liberal European value that Benslama posits
as universal, namely, individualism. The Bifurcation of Languages
into Formal, Elite and Informal Language of the Masses Modern
Standard and Classical Arabic: Borrowing Misnomers from the
Orientalist Why isnt this a problem for Latin? What does this have
to do with psychoanalysis? Yes, Islam Blows But wait, theres
another Islam! Declaration dinsoumission A Declaration of
anti-Islam! Benslama is very critical of those Western
psychoanalytical pronouncements on Islam and Muslim cultures that
represent it as the obliterating of the individual, and which see
the Western achievement that gave birth to the individual as the
ultimate achievement of civilization tout court . (287-288) The
reference to multiple Islams might be said to be an ideological
position (the position of political correctness?) and/or an
expression of a wish , while the references to one singular Islam
in the many slips seem to betray what Benslama actually fears to be
the case. While Benslama cautions us (and perhaps himself) to use a
new vocabulary and to adjust to a new epistemology wherein we (he)
must hear Islams when we say Islam, it would seem that he often
remains deaf to his own warning. My Islam is the Right one Unless
youre crazy It is possible here that Benslama is engaged in
deploying this Islamic individualism as a way of passing his Islam
off as European, and that this passing off is indeed a form of
resistance to Orientalist liberal accounts of Islam as lacking in
individualism, while simultaneously condemnatory of Islamist
resistance to this passing off, which he brands as pathological or
as suffering from some form of group delirium ( dlire collectif)
But heres the catch: Benslamas use of these taxonomies of
rationalism and irrationalism, science and faith, knowledge and
ignorance, is in fact shared by many Islamist thinkers. Wheres the
Psychoanalysis?* Benslama: It is in the context of discussing
contem porary Islamisms, however, that Benslamas book shows less
engage ment with psychoanalytic thought and concepts and moves to
liberal critiques concerned with the individual, freedom of
thought, tolerance, and the separation of the theological from the
political. (281) Safouan: Arabs were open to foreign science until
they lost poweror maybe it was the Turks who destroyed science
actually, its the fact that the Muslims unlike the West refuse to
separate religion from science. The church in Islam = the state
(orientalist tropes) Homayounpour: Traditional cultures (i.e.
Muslim?) settle for castration to avoid being killed Shiism created
by Iranians to assert independence against Arabs (didnt happen
until centuries later) Muslims as the primitive modern: Taking
responsibility for our neuroses
Im Not CrazyYoure Crazy What is not thought in these
propositions, though, is the possibility that the return of the
repressed is a feature of these thinkers own anxiety and not only,
or necessarily, that of other Muslims or Islamists. (279) This
return reopens the scene of the trauma, for these thinkers, of the
persistence of Islam as not only religion in the life of Arabs and
Muslims; and this causes some of our psychoanalytic thinkers
embarrassment and shame before their European counterparts and,
more importantly, before their Europeanized selves. (279) 310:
Liberalism as universal neurosis Benslama: Repressing Salamah
308
Questions: 1. Isnt Massad (and Asad, and others) making the
reverse mistake of the liberal who defines his identity in terms of
anti-Islam? If Islam is at the heart of liberalism, as Massad puts
it, and if Massad is correct in suggesting that Islamists today
define Islam (much as liberals do) as the other of Liberalism, then
is liberalism really doing violence to Islam by constructing an
Islam in its own image? If assimilating into liberalism comes at a
cost of abandoning tradition, then isnt this an implicit
acknowledgment that Islamic tradition does, in fact, stand in
contradistinction to liberalism?2. Given, as Massad has masterfully
demonstrated, that psychoanalyses of Islam reveal more about the
psychoanalysts than about Islam, isnt it high time that we question
(again) whether or not psychoanalysis has any potential of working
outside a European/Europeanized context? 3. Is it possible for a
Muslim to seek reform without being Europeanized?
