Mayssa Chehata, Blog #6: Anticipatory Strategies, Fear Politics, the Subaltern, and the Middle East

In chapter 6, Anderson discusses an “anticipatory strategy” as it pertains to “official nationalism.” He describes Wachiwarut employing “all the policy levers of the official nationalism: compulsory state-controlled primary education, state-organized propaganda, official rewriting of history, and militarism” (104) Anderson is discussing the anticipatory strategy especially in regards to colonialism, in that the colonizers—the British in India for example—would preemptively seek to control the nation through official nationalist strategies. I really liked this chapter and thinking about how the dominant or hegemonic power in imperialism, i.e. the colonizer, is actually the entity which is threatened, or at least which feel threatened, of being marginalized. This can occur if the population arises against them through their own national identity.

In terms of the present day, I think the Middle East is a really good region to consider. Looking at the way leaders like Saddam Hussein and Bashar al-Assad have led (Iraq and Syria respectively), it really reflects that “anticipatory strategy,” with a great fear of becoming marginalized. Saddam Hussein kept power over the Iraqi people primarily through the Mukhabarat institution, which were basically his secret police and a highly sophisticated and effective intelligence agency. This allowed Saddam’s regime to keep tabs on everything going on within the country, and make sure people were behaving as Saddam saw fit, and ensuring they were punished if they were not. While this is a little different from official nationalism, I think it is similar in many ways, in that the leader is using nationalism to quell dissent in society. And I think in these cases the fear of internal dissent, almost to the point of paranoia in the case of Saddam and arguably Muamar Ghadaffi (and other leaders as well), is representative of that “anticipatory strategy” Anderson discusses.

Another instance where a current case of an anticipatory strategy comes to mind is in the oil rich countries of the Middle East. For example, you see wide scale social welfare projects and low tax rates thanks to extremely high government revenue from oil in several Gulf states (e.g. Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, UAE, Oman, Kuwait, etc.). These political strategies allow the government to control dissent before it even arises, because the people of those countries are kept at bay because they don’t have grueling economic concerns to protest about. Furthermore, the government can suppress any opposition by buying them out. And in exchange for those economic benefits, the population forgoes many of its social and political rights. In Bahrain, there actually were protests that broke out following the Arab Spring, and the government’s response was to issue a multi-billion dollar ($70 billion to be exact) social welfare package which was handed out to the citizens of the country. This has since kept the protests to a minimum. So you see how oil wealth has served as a key driver for an “anticipatory strategy” in the Middle East.

Another important Middle Eastern case to mention is Tunisia. This is where the Arab Spring began, and it all started with a man named Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire after having his vegetable cart confiscated, the only source of income for him and his family of 8. This brings me to Spivak, and her discussion of self-immolation. She discusses the issue of banning sati, and the way the practice is conveyed to society and to the world. The question, can the subaltern speak, is raised in this context in that everything we know about sati, and whether we should think it is good or bad, comes from Western, particularly colonial, sources. So what about the women participating in sati? How do we hear from them? I think the question is extremely complicated and makes me think about the Tunisian revolution. As we learned about the revolution through social media, the news, and now scholarship which is emerging about it, who was speaking? Was it Bouazizi? Did he speak through his self-immolation? I don’t think that he did, but in turn he had others, the Tunisian people who engaged in protest and ultimately revolution, speaking for him. But nonetheless, even if these people were trying to give him a voice, it still was not his voice. Bouazizi still has not and now never will have spoken.

Then you think about how we learn about the revolution, which is through the news. The news shows us things, as much as it may attempt not to, through a Western lens. So when watching MSNBC or Fox or even Al-Jazeera, the Subaltern is still not speaking. Spivak writes about an important problem with information which is that knowledge is never innocent, and there is always an interest in mind when it is produced, which she argues is often Western economic interests. I would say the closest, in this particular situation, we get to the subaltern speaking is through social media, which was an extremely important catalyst and driving force of the revolution, in Tunisia and elsewhere. However, who is that written for, and who is accessing that? I would say those sources are the subaltern communicating with the subaltern. I don’t know many, if any, Americans who were getting their news on the Arab Spring through social media.

I guess I come to two main questions from this long and unorganized train of thought. When considering the anticipatory strategy of threatened groups as discussed by Anderson, do you think that governments which are the most paranoid and act on fear are engaging in official nationalism, or do you think that is something different entirely? And secondly I am curious what people think about the subaltern and its ability to communicate with the First World. Shouldn’t we be skeptical of information about the subaltern which is not coming from the subaltern? And more importantly, why aren’t we more skeptical of it?