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Hisham Sharabi: In Memoriam
Michael C. Hudson
Published in 2005
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Professor Hisham Sharabi, who passed away on January 13th in Beirut, was widely eulogized across the Arab world—he was, after all, one of the premier Arab intellectuals—and also here at Georgetown University, where his accomplishments as scholar and teacher were deeply admired. Former Provost and History Department colleague Dorothy Brown said: “What marked his teaching, of course, was his respect for the ideas and for his students. His Socratic method, his intellectual challenge, his exquisite courtesy, his warm encouragement, and finally, his wonderful smile left his graduate students in awe—and wanting more.” Professor Jim Collins, another colleague and close friend, wrote: “Memoirist, theoretician, novelist, devoted Hoya hoops fan, bon vivant, raconteur extraordinaire—our friend Hisham was all of these. To some here and to many half a world away, however, he was far more: he was a mentor and a role model, shining the light of rigorous intellectual inquiry into dark social shadows, including those of his own past.”
For all of us here in the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, he was both a “founding father” and a friend. He was largely responsible for my coming to Georgetown and taking the directorship of the Center. Over the years—on the AUB beach, on his back porch in Bethesda, at Georgetown basketball games, traveling together in the Gulf—our friendship deepened. We mourned the premature death of his wife Gayle. We watched his two daughters grow up, and the younger one—Leyla—was a playmate of my daughters. To paraphrase the aphorism of Romain Rolland, quoted by Antonio Gramsci—which serves as the frontispiece for Neopatriarchy (see below), he displayed the pessimism of his intellect, especially on the condition of the Arab world; but it was matched by the optimism of his will. How many times did I hear him remark, after a depressing discussion about some Arab world issue or other, “But…the situation is pregnant with possibilities!” Around the 40th day following his death there will be commemorations of his life in several Arab capitals, and in Washington at the Palestine Center, and here at Georgetown. Friends and colleagues will offer tributes and reminiscences. Perhaps the most fitting remembrance we can offer here would be some of the thoughts of Hisham himself…..
From Neopatriarchy (Oxford University Press, 1988, Chs. 1 and 10):
A basic assumption of this study is that over the last one hundred years the patriarchal structures of Arab society, far from being displaced or truly modernized, have only been strengthened and maintained in deformed, “modernized” forms. That is to say, the Arab awakening or renaissance (nahda) of the nineteenth century not only failed to break down the inner relations and forms of patriarchalism but, by initiating what it called the modern awakening, also provided the ground for producing a new, hybrid sort of society/culture—the neopatriarchal society/culture we see before us today. Material modernization, the first (surface) manifestation of social change, only served to remodel and reorganize patriarchal structures and relations and to reinforce them by giving them “modern” forms and appearances. Neopatriarchy, from the standpoints of both modernity and traditionality, is neither modern nor traditional….
It is true, liberation can never be a fix. This is the hard lesson the last Arab generation has, over the past thirty years, learned and suffered. Fundamentalists now invoke the same cataclysmic vision of redemption as did the defeated secular nationalist and leftist ideologists….For even if fundamentalism were to gain the upper hand in some Arab country or countries, what guarantee is there that it would bring about any basic change in the existing neopatriarchal structure? The likelihood rather is that with a fundamentalist victory, the essence of neopatriarchal society would survive.
[What is to be done?] The first goal should be the devising of new and realistic modes of theorizing. Consider the futility of the progressive or revolutionary models of neopatriarchal ideology: the bourgeois model of parliamentary democracy—an antiquated political order that has no basis in Third World social reality and experience; the nationalist model of complete pan-Arab unity—perhaps arealistic and feasible goal until the creation of the twenty-two entrenched sovereignties, and now a quixotic dream; the revolutionary vision (Marxist or Maoist) which ignores the state of the world and the region’s barely reformist situation…[C]oncepts of political democracy, unity, social justice and so forth, must be rethought in the light of past experience and refashioned in terms of existing new reality….Violence will always lurk in the background and can be legitimately invoked (certainly where settler colonialism persists); but commitment to legal, nonviolent terms of political exchange may, at least in certain regimes, lead to some concrete results: limiting violence, humanizing social relations, liberating political life. In concrete terms, the most immediate concern right now might be the question of human and political rights….
The way to renewal, in terms of the radical-democratic paradigm I have been trying to elucidate, requires a method that is both critical and contestatory: critical in the manner of the different disciplines and approaches of the radical critics…; and contestatory in a dialogical, nonviolent way, with civil disobedience as its basic form of struggle. Such practice would involve various forms of organizing: single individuals (intellectuals), groups of individuals organized in professional workers’, women’s, and students’ organizations, as well as political parties and groups; it would be predicated on pluralist representation, with professors, writers, artists, doctors, lawyers, clergymen, workers, students, and women joining together in common struggle….Of all these groups, potentially the most revolutionary is the women’s movement. If this phase of struggle were to open up to radical democratic change, women’s liberation would necessarily be its spearhead….I must, then, proclaim not only the inevitable victory of the rising radical democratic forces over both the neopatriarchal status quo and its fundamentalist destroyers-redeemers, but also the coming of modernity, secular democracy, and libertarian socialism. Yes. To fight the pessimism of the intellect, one must hold fast to the optimism of the will.
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