The Great Issues Forum | SEMINARS: Lee Quinby

SEMINARS @ THE FORUM

Last year online discussions took place about power in the contemporary world with prominent intellectuals and select City University of New York faculty and graduate students.

Every two weeks, a prominent guest from the world of journalism, politics, academia, or the arts composed a blog entry responding to a key text that addresses the concept of "power". You can view the daily responses from seminar participants, as well as the associated reading.

SEMINAR MEMBERS RESPOND

Lee Quinby
On AbuKhalil and Drezner
April 9, 2009

Both of these blogs were new to me. Part of the question I had in mind when reading the blogs themselves and, more particularly, the reviews each blogger wrote for the seminar, is whether I would likely return to either one in the future. Based on what I have seen thus far, although both AbuKhalil and Drezner are both highly knowledgeable about their respective fields, not so much. Of the two, Angry Arab News Service was the most useful insofar as it did act as a source of focused information of daily news events regarding the Middle East. As AbuKhalil indicates, his site provides coverage that is largely absent in mainstream Western journalism. So I can imagine checking his site about a specific incident to gain more coverage. Drezner’s site struck me as mostly self-promotional, guiding readers toward longer pieces he has written or works by like-minded colleagues. The shortcoming for me was that neither site provides much beyond polemics. There was just too little room for the kind of dialogue that gets beyond the point of predictability of tone and response.

That said, I did appreciate what AbuKhalil wrote about the “art or task of blogging,” especially his reflection on blogs as a “therapeutic self-reflection and reflection” which allow him “to express some of the frustration and anger against what I read: in journalism and in scholarship.” In this respect, what he said reminded me of Foucault’s discussions of the ancient Greek practice of the art of the self in which such daily writings “enable individuals to question their own conduct, to watch over and give shape to it, and to shape themselves as ethical subjects” (Use of Pleasure 13). But, in practice on the blog itself, I did not see much self-reflection and reflection of the sort that a dialogue might prompt. There was little space for the kinds of questions about already held views that could prompt reflection beyond what readers could anticipate as a reaction.

It may simply be my own lack of blog familiarity, but I couldn’t really find a comments section on Angry Arab (not counting the postings sent by others). This was puzzling, because on Feb. 26, 2008, AbuKhalil posted the following on his site:

Dear readers and jerks: I have no rules to speak of for the comments section. I have insisted on not censoring comments as awful and offensive as they have been (from people on opposite sides as both sides have racists and bigots in their midsts unfortunately). But I have asked that people 1) observe the laws here in the US which prohibit death threats or calls for murder or violence; 2) that they don't use other people's names; 3) that they don't out other people who choose to write under other names--that is their right; 4) that they try as much possible to reduce the level vile expressions. It being clearly understood that the comments don't speak for me and don't represent this site or its owner. I write my opinions under my own name.
Posted by As'ad at 1:41 PM

These are sensible requests, but I am not sure at this point where the comments were to be found. That he has fans is clear from the comments on the post on our site.

A lack of real dialogue (with self and others) was even more pronounced in Drezner’s review and on his site. Perhaps in keeping with his stated pride in his own narcissism, there seemed to be no room for any kind of self-reflection or self-questioning of already formed opinion. This was disappointing, given the commendable third way he suggests as a purpose of blogging, with “public intellectuals/blogs as critics.” He rightly focused on the value of “networks that cross the disciplinary and hierarchical strictures of academe” and on the importance of critique. But his criticism of most of the Angry Arab posts (other than their shared dislike of Christopher Hitchens) seemed to me to apply as much to his own expected and partisan takes on various topics, albeit in a more conventional academic tone.

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Lee Quinby said:

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Just a small point--I didn't complain about not seeing comments, but rather puzzled over the rules about comments when I couldn't find them--but the update on where they are clarified this.

April 10, 2009

Dan Drezner said:

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Professor AbuKhalil: just to be clear, I did not complain about the lack of comments on your site -- that was Lee Quinby. And I completely agree that, "we can't really evaluate blogs by a few occasional visits," a point I explicitly made in my opening essay.

April 10, 2009

As`ad AbuKhalil said:

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Truth be told: we can't really evaluate blogs by a few occasional visits. Drezner for example complained about not seeing comments on my site when it is known for long rants because the days he visited there were none. To be sure, I also had a partial view of his blog. I did used to have an free and uncensored comments' section until it went out of hand: I had to choose: either to control and manage or to take out. People were posting personal information of other commentators and threats against me and my family, etc. I have reluctantly, decided to abandon although some readers set up a separate independent blog known as Angry Arab Comments Section. As for dialogue: the beauty of blogging is that you only communicate with whomever you want, and in the way you want.

April 10, 2009

Dan Drezner said:

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Thanks for your clarifying response. You correctly observe that I did not talk much in my essay about my reasons for blogging vis-a-vis AbuKhalil. In part, this is because I've written a fair amount about my own reasons for blogging over the years; I thought referencing this material via hyperlinks superior to droning on about me, me, me (as previously noted, an occupational hazard for bloggers). In part, however, I focused on Angry Arab because, well, that was what the Great Issues Forum asked me to do. I suppose that the way in which I interpreted those instructions differently from AbuKhalil is revealing in and of itself.

I would dispute the notion that using the language of social science to evaluate another person's work really counts as narcissism. Perhaps it would be better described as an exercise of Foucauldian power, in that the language invoked could discipline how the reader should evaluate the text under review. In this case, however, I'm not sure how powerful that effect is, since I suspect most people reading these words are keenly informed about Focuault, etc.

On the "status quo" critique, I suppose I must plead guilty (though if we're going to talk about Foucauldian power, then I don't think the word "partisan" means what you think it means). Between describing the way the world is and describing the way the world should be, my blog largely -- though not exclusively -- focuses on the former. To a sharp-eyed observer such as yourself, these insights might seem banal. To others, however, merely trying to determine the current state of the world is a fantastically difficult enterprise. I frequently question whether my read of the truth is correct, but you are correct to observe that one of my ontological givens is the existence of such a "truth" out there.

April 09, 2009

Lee Quinby said:

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Hi Dan, thanks for your response, prompting me to consider this more (about myself as well as about your blog). I did recognize the tongue-in-cheek humor of your narcissism line, especially given the Alex Rodriguez reference. But what I was thinking about was how it might be somewhat accurate after all, in terms of the way your review of the Angry Arab site had an all-enveloping voice of analysis that foreclosed on reflection about its own standing. You said a great deal about AbuKhalil’s blog but little about your own in light of your three lenses or, as he did, in light of personal reasons for blogging. It might seem that this is the opposite of narcissism, but I think such a stance has a similar sense of entitlement, assumption of privileged voice, lack of empathic connection, and presumption of correctness. So this would be a form of narcissism inherent in or at least detectable in the voice of social science training which seemingly negates itself for the sake of claimed objectivity while actually judging other people, discourses, and practices solely from one’s own enlarged but nonetheless partisan perspective. Your characterization “as someone who operates in the Anglo-American liberal tradition” is still a partial vision even though it is more comfortably mainstream, which enables it to be less angry and frustrated in tone. It doesn’t seem to question its own presumptions of truth at any point.

This all sounds more personally insulting than I intend. I am more interested in the way that academic training embodies these traits which don’t go very far in self-reflexivity. In your blog, to give an example as you asked, you sometimes follow your post with this kind of gesture: “Question to readers: will Obama's trip pay any long-term policy dividends?” and “So, my question to readers: will the short-term moves actually throw off long-term projections about power trends?” But these don’t strike me as the kinds of questions that push toward making the object of one’s analysis or the approach one typically takes open up to much beyond the status quo.

April 09, 2009

Dan Drezner said:

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Lee,

The "stated pride in his own narcissism" on my blog is intended to be tongue-in-cheek -- I apologize if it comes across as real. Bloggers, almost be definition, have some aspect of the self-promotional in them. successful bloggers should always be prepared to admit when they are wrong or when their knowledge is incomplete.

So, can I push you a bit in your critique? You assert that my blog posts are "expected and partisan takes on various topics, albeit in a more conventional academic tone." Can you provide specific examples to back this up?

April 09, 2009

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