Paradise Lost

Abstract

In Paradise Lost, a collection of rewritten and updated articles spanning a period of twenty-five years, C.A.O. van Nieuwenhuijze attempts to tackle issues of identity and interaction in the Arab-Islamic world. Together they constitute phenomena of virtual reality, reifying concepts as instruments of intelligibility, being at once the product and frame of human intellect and action (p. 3). Both components, as the common thread which ties and pervades his work, comprise the conceptual himework within which the “forever problematic” relationship between the Middle East and a revitalizing Islam on the one hand, and a Western Europe undergoing a post-Christian, postmodem phase, on the other, is probed. This nexus of collective identity and interaction manifests a “logical complementarity” inasfar as both presuppose and negate each other (p. 1). Identity evokes an all encompassing eclectic representation of an individual‘s or collectivity’s cosmos, be it in the form of someps pro toto (nation, polity, economy, or culture; u r n or din) or an intentional comprehensive indication (lifestyle; patrimoine; htruth). In recognizing no other beyond its cosmic domain, identity connotes a seemingly timeless and placeless unicity which frequently bestows upon it an impressive though mistaken aura of static permanence and absoluteness @. 2). Interaction conversely represents the “practice of identity as a plural phenomenon” (p. 405) and thus incorporates all the complexities which emanate from the dynamics of a highly variable reality. The formulae it gives rise to purs pro toto are correspondingly much more fluid (communication, harmony, strife, domination) or reflective of inherent, large ly imbalanced ambiguities (mission civilisatrice; development aid or, euphemistically, cooperation; ddwuh). In contradistinction to identity significations asserting the positive aspects of constituency (i.e., what one is), these interactional code words are summary evocations arrived at by the intervening perception of a counteridentity of the “other” (i.e., what one is not). Hence, it gives rise to polar images of binary opposites of such orders as Greek vs. barbarian; Islam vs. jahiliyuh; or &zr ul-Islam vs. dar al-harb. In and of themselves, interactional identifications bear limited significations to those concerned except in tacit conjunction with each term’s opposition (p. 2). In other words, self-identification is arrived at by detour. Consequently, interaction is relegated to an instrumental role on behalf of a pre-established and, in most cases as AmbDslamic-European historical experience has shown, dominating self-centered structure. As a result, “the fundamental complementarity bemeen identity and interaction is neglected, and with it the contingency inherent in identity” (pp. 2-3). Entrenchment in the face of an aggressive ethnocentrism, henceforth, becomes the order of the day. Intellectual exploits of Western Enlightenment elevated objectification to the highly esteemed means toward ethnocentrically motivated mastery over “reality.” Its basic mode of analysis combined empirical observation with critical rigor and methodological empathy and an overwhelming penchant to universalize conclusions--method being confused for truth. In the process, social sciences and Oriental studies came to reflect national categories contrived by an ...