Sunday, September 03, 2006

And now ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Tahar Ben Jelloun (who can't even properly transliterate his own name into French). OK, Mr. Ben Jelloun: now jump for the White Man. OK. Good jump, Mr. Ben Jelloun. Now, show the White Man that you can sit. Good job; good job. OK, Mr. Jelloun: now mimic the Orientalism of the White Man: "In fact, until the beginning of the 20th century, Arabs didn’t write novels, in large measure because Arab society didn’t recognize the individual." Good job, Mr. Ben Jelloun. Please don't hesitate to share similar wild stereotypes about Arabs with the White Man. He will really love it. (First of all: what does that mean, that Arab society didn't recognize the "indidvidual?" What did Arab society recognize instead? The falafil? And was the West recognizing the "indidividual"? Was that during the slave times and holocaust years and the world wars and Clinton and Bush years? Please enlighten me, oh Mr. Ben Jelloun. And I don't understand why somebody who writes in French is seen, just because of his ethnic background, as an expert on Arabic literature especially when he can't even write in Arabic. Are African-Americans, for example, just by virtue of ethnic background experts on African literature? Also, Ben Jelloun clearly does not know what he is talking about. The Maqamat tradition in classical Arabic literature for example was all about the individual, as was classical Arabic poetry, as in Mutanabbi's: "I am the one at whose literature the blind looked; and my words have reached those who are deaf.")