Читать книгу Livin' la Vida Barroca. American Culture in an Age of Imperial Orthodoxies онлайн

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The reason is clear. We have learned far too much too in the last several decades about the layered and fundamentally dynamic nature of identity formation to ever believe that the “mind” of any single national group, never mind the breathtakingly diverse transnational agglomeration of peoples that is the object of Patai’s concerns, could be summarized in so facile a manner.

Despite this overarching methodological problem, Patai, who was by most reports a very careful and conscientious scholar with a genuine affection for Arab culture, manages to provide the reader with a wealth of seemingly well-grounded anthropological information.

However, his mask of disinterested informer slips off in his chapter on “The Question of Arab Stagnation.” Here, Patai, the European-born settler of a state, Israel, created out of forcefully depopulated Arab lands, explains the “the Arabs’”inability to claim their rightful place in the contemporary world—and the ensuing frustration and anger this failure engenders—in terms of their inability to “measure up” favorably to Western culture, especially its relatively new Israeli “branch office” in their midst. In his analysis, the history of European colonialism in the region is relevant only insofar as it offers Arab leaders a dishonest excuse for not confronting the legacy of their own stunted development.