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CHAPTER 5
Colonial Globality, Postcolonial
Subjectivities in the Middle East
Pinar Bilgin
INTRODUCTION
The meaning of the ‘global’ is often taken for granted in the study of
world politics. Studying globality is commonly understood as tran-
scending state-focused analyses that characterise the study of the ‘inter-
national’. However, while “globality identies the planet – the earthly
world as a whole – as a site of social relations in its own right” (Scholte
2002, 14), not all conceptions of the global acknowledge the place of
the postcolonial. Indeed, as with the study of the international, that
has come under criticism for being less-than-sociological (Chan 1993;
Rosenberg 2006; Seth 2013), the very meaning of the global that we
take for granted overlooks the experiences, contributions and contes-
tations of those who also constitute the global (and the international)
while relying on particular historical narratives on (a presumably auton-
omously developed) Europe. The idea here is not to overlook the “the
historical role that EuroAmerica, empowered by capitalism, played in the
© The Author(s) 2019
D. Jung and S. Stetter (eds.), Modern Subjectivities
in World Society, Palgrave Studies in International Relations,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90734-5_5
P. Bilgin (*)
Bilkent University, Ankara, Turkey
e-mail: pbilgin@bilkent.edu.tr
86 P. BILGIN
shaping of the modern world” (Dirlik 1999, 16), but to (temporarily)
disentangle the historical phenomenon from the mark it has left on our
understanding of world history. Following Himadeep Muppidi (2004),
I understand such Eurocentric understandings of the constitution of the
global as ‘colonial globality’. Where colonial globality views the colon-
iser as having single-handedly constituted the global, thereby determin-
ing the postcolonial’s subjectivity as merely responding to a (presumably
pre-constituted) global, postcolonial coloniality allows studying postco-
lonial subjectivity as having been shaped but not determined by coloni-
alism (Muppidi 2004). The more specic point advanced in this chapter
is that the self-styled anti-global subjectivity of some regional actors is
merely one instance of postcolonial subjectivity in the Middle East, and
that adopting a notion of postcolonial globality reveals multiple and var-
iegated postcolonial subjectivities. As such, the chapter proposes to study
postcolonial subjectivities by considering both assumptions regarding the
universal and the particular, the colonial and the postcolonial.
I understand the postcolonial as those who have been caught up with
the hierarchies created and sustained by colonialism (Shohat 1992; Hall
1996; Loomba 2005). Such hierarchies have survived beyond decoloni-
sation, as evinced by the persistence of the “standard of civilisation” and
its more contemporary guises (Bilgin 2016c). ‘Postcolonial subjectivities’
refer to those whose subjectivity has been shaped (though not deter-
mined) by the experiences with colonialism and beyond. Accordingly,
having come under direct or indirect rule (Mamdani 2001) by outsid-
ers is not the determining factor here. Subjectivities of those who were
caught up with the hierarchies shaped and sustained by the age of coloni-
alism have been shaped by the actuality or threat of direct or indirect rule
by outsiders.
Adopting the notion of postcolonial globality allows the following
response to the editors’ question as set out in the introduction (“how
can […] particularities be studied and understood without applying a
more general standard to which the practice and observation of such par-
ticularities constantly relate?”): by studying the postcolonial as the ‘con-
stitutive outside’ of the global. In offering this response, I draw on the
postcolonial studies insight that what is limiting is not the idea of having
a general standard but ‘our’ forgetting of the ways in which particular
experiences have been solidied into method which, in turn, has allowed
a particular ‘general standard’ to pass as ‘universal’. In our case, under-
standing the global in terms of colonial globality is the particular that has
5 COLONIAL GLOBALITY, POSTCOLONIAL SUBJECTIVITIES … 87
been allowed to pass as the denition of globality. The idea here is not
to replace one notion of (colonial) globality with another (postcolonial
globality), but to highlight how the particularity of what often passes as
the general standard, thereby making a case for considering the ideas and
experiences of the postcolonial when re-thinking the general standard.
For, the absence of any general standard in the study of particularities
runs the risk of—in Michael Hardt’s (2001, 246) words—“[ending] up
with a history that is only a series of unarticulated particularities, unable
to recognise the relatedness and commonalities that allow us to construct
common notions”.
I begin by discussing the notions of colonial and postcolonial glo-
bality. Next, I look at the case of ISIS to highlight how even those
postcolonial actors who seek to fashion an anti-colonial and anti-global
subjectivity may not escape their conditioning by a colonial notion of
globality. Finally, I suggest that we study postcolonial subjectivities as the
constitutive outside of the global to reveal how postcolonial subjectivities
are multiple and variegated. I illustrate this point by contrasting two por-
trayals of postcolonial subjectivity in contemporary ‘Middle East’; from
within colonial globality and postcolonial globality, respectively.
COLONIAL AND POSTCOLONIAL GLOBALITY
Moving beyond Eurocentric narratives and understanding the global in
terms of co-constitutive dynamics goes to the very heart of responding
to the editors’ question (see Introduction). I understand Eurocentrism
as allowing a particular narrative about ‘Europe’ and its place in world
history to be solidied into method, thereby informing research (Amin
1989; Wallerstein 1997; Dirlik 1999; Hardt 2001; Hobson et al. 2010).
That particular narrative is widely recognised as limited (if not mis-
leading) by many; and non-Eurocentric historical accounts are availa-
ble (Wolf 1982; Halperin 1997; Mignolo 2003; Hobson 2004; Buzan
and Lawson 2015). Yet the same ‘Eurocentric’ narrative is nevertheless
allowed to inform research design in the study of world politics by vir-
tue of the persistence of Eurocentrism as “a theory of world history and,
departing from it, a global political project” (Amin 1989, 154; see also
Mignolo 2002; Halperin 2006).
As such, addressing Eurocentrism in the study of world politics is
not about looking outside Europe (Bilgin 2016b). For, Eurocentrism
has shaped our understanding of world history—that is, not only the
88 P. BILGIN
rest of the world, but also Europe. As such, Eurocentrism has rendered
limited our understanding of Europe and its place in world history.
Furthermore, it is through concepts developed through reading such
Eurocentric histories that students of world politics make sense of the
world (Dirlik 1999). It is in this sense that Immanuel Wallerstein (1997)
cautioned against “anti-Eurocentric Eurocentrism” in reference to the
efforts of those who seek to identify traces of progress and modernisa-
tion outside ‘Europe’ while failing to recognise how their very notions
of ‘progress’ and ‘modernity’ are shaped by a particular understanding of
world history. Eurocentrism, then, is limiting not only for understanding
the world beyond Europe but world politics in general.
Hence Muppidi’s call for distinguishing between two notions of glo-
bality, “colonial” and “postcolonial”. The distinction is based on how the
constitution of the global is understood. Muppidi wrote:
[T]he production of the global is a systemic phenomenon that necessarily
has a mutually constitutive relationship with the situated practices of social
actors. In that sense, the systemic production of the global, frequently con-
ceptualized as globalisation, is not outside of individual actors but is con-
stantly reproduced or transformed through their identities, meanings, and
practices. (Muppidi 2004, 28)
As Jan Aart Scholte (2002, 30) noted, globality “links people anywhere
on the planet, but it does not follow that it connects people everywhere,
or to the same degree”. Indeed, not everyone’s agency is recognised in
prevalent understandings of the constitution of the global. Put differ-
ently, the notion of postcolonial globality addresses the Eurocentric lim-
itations of colonial globality in understanding the constitution of the
global. To quote Muppidi again:
[M]uch of the problem arises from their a priori neglect of the intersub-
jectively constituted politics of meaning governing the constitution of the
global. They rarely stop to ask: What does the global mean? How are those
meanings produced? How are particular shared conceptions of the global
institutionalized? Failing in that interpretive task, they fall back on the con-
ventional framework of the international. The politics of the global then
gets reduced to the conventional politics of “interdependence,” and the
rationalist debate about the global becomes yet another site for the recy-
cling of the realist/liberal cant. (Muppidi 2004, 6)
5 COLONIAL GLOBALITY, POSTCOLONIAL SUBJECTIVITIES … 89
Put differently, where colonial globality takes the meaning of the global
for granted without interrogating its conditions of possibility as regards
multiple faces of power and inequality (pertaining to knowledge pro-
duction about the global), a postcolonial notion of globality under-
scores co-constitutive relations between the coloniser and the colonised
(Muppidi 2004).
Muppidi’s (2004, 19) analysis builds on Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak,
who noted that “to think globality is to think the politics of thinking glo-
bality”. That prevailing approaches to the study of world politics over-
look the experiences, contributions and contestations of those who also
constitute the global, even as they discuss globality, is the point about
interrogating ‘the politics of thinking globality’. Such oversight on the
part of prevailing approaches to world politics has two aspects, suggested
Muppidi. One aspect is related to “the constitution of a shared under-
standing of what ‘the global’ is from among multiple imaginations”. The
second aspect is regarding the “‘real-isation’ of this specic imagination
of the global over/against alternative imaginations” (Muppidi 2004,
20). Inquiring into these two aspects of the constitution of the global,
argued Muppidi (2004, 20), “must implicitly or explicitly involve a social
negotiation of difference – at the level of imaginations, identities, and
interests”. In the absence of such curiosity as to the difference that “dif-
ference” makes in the making of the global, we are likely to fail to move
away from a colonial notion of globality “structured around the silencing
of difference” let alone adopt a postcolonial notion “that relates to differ-
ence through democratic engagement and dialogue” (2004, 20).
To recapitulate: what is at stake in adopting the notion of postcolonial
globality is not merely about the elusive notion of ‘global democracy’.
Rather, what is at stake is rendering visible the experiences, contribu-
tions and contestations of those who also constitute the ‘global’. For the
postcolonial are the “constitutive outside” of the global. As discussed by
Timothy Mitchell (1988), Stuart Hall (1996), and Pal Ahluwalia (2005),
the notion of “constitutive outside” refers to the ideas and experiences
of those who have shaped ‘us’ even as ‘we’ are not always aware of and/
or acknowledge what we owe each other often due to the prevalence of
aforementioned Eurocentric narratives.
Consider, for example, Siba Grovogui’s (2006) archival study on
the contributions of African intellectuals to European debates on the
post-World War II order in Europe. While these intellectuals’ contribu-
tions and contestations shaped debates during World War II, Grovogui
90 P. BILGIN
showed, their contributions were not always acknowledged when the
intellectual history of this period was written. Nor was their advice
regarding the post-war order given due value, noted Grovogui. Once the
war was concluded in a way that was favourable to the allies, the camara-
derie between European and African intellectuals that was formed during
the war came to an abrupt end. The point being that understanding the
global South as “constitutive outside” of the global North is not a con-
tradiction to be resolved, but only acknowledged and thought through
as regards their implications for the study of world politics. Those who
are ‘outside’ are not always physically outside (i.e. in the global South)
but they have been left outside of conventional narratives on world his-
tory due to the prevalence of Eurocentrism in history writing (Bilgin
2016a).
As such, the concept of constitutive outside highlights a contradiction
that is central to thinking postcolonially about world politics: that others’
ideas and experiences have shaped world politics and yet these contribu-
tions and contestations have not been acknowledged explicitly in schol-
arly studies on the international (Blaney and Inayatullah 2008). Those
who are outside need to be recognised as such without explaining away
the differences or subsuming their identity under ‘ours’. Yet the ways in
which ‘outsiders’ have contributed to making us who ‘we’ are also need
acknowledging by becoming aware of these mutually constitutive rela-
tions (Bilgin 2016c).
Consider, for instance, the relationship between post-structuralism
and postcolonialism. Postcolonial scholars are sometimes criticised for
their debts to post-structuralist thought and the rather privileged posi-
tions some of them enjoy in North American and Western European
institutions. There is no denying the issue of privilege. As Arif Dirlik
(1999, 24) underscored, postcolonialism “is not just a matter of class”.
It is also a matter of a class relocated to the centres of capital, in the new
contact zones to which I referred earlier, which serve as sites of nego-
tiation “in the belly of the beast”, as Gayatri Spivak once put it. Dirlik
noted that the privileged position of some postcolonial scholars means
they are located in
‘contact zones’ at the heart of EuroAmerica provide locations where cul-
tural difference may be asserted while sharing in the powers of the center,
in which culture serves as a means to evade questions of inequality and
oppression in interclass relations but is a useful means to identity in intra-
class negotiations for power. (Dirlik 1999, 25)
5 COLONIAL GLOBALITY, POSTCOLONIAL SUBJECTIVITIES … 91
Yet, the privileged positions of some postcolonial scholars does not
diminish the value of the contributions they have made to social and
political thought, including post-structuralist thought. As Pal Ahluwalia
(2005), and Julian Go (2013) have highlighted, post-structuralist
thought has had its beginnings in France’s colonial encounters. Such
encounters shaped the experiences and thinking of key contributors to
post-structuralist thought. Yet, such colonial roots of post- structuralism
are often overlooked by those who critique postcolonial scholars for their
indebtedness to post-structuralism. They are also overlooked by those
who dispute the relevance of post-structuralist thought for the postco-
lonial (Gurtaudon 2012). Hence, the need for inquiring into the ‘con-
stitutive outside’ of post-structuralism among others. As illustrated in
the relationship between postcolonial and post-structuralist thought,
the former has been the constitutive outside of the latter. Postcolonial
encounters are absent from most narratives on the development of
post-structuralist thought. They are outside in this sense. Yet, postcolo-
nialism has been “constitutive” of post-structuralist thought, as shown
by Ahluvalia and Go. Therein lies the contradiction inherent to the
notion of constitutive outside—a contradiction that cannot be resolved
but has to be thought through.
Adopting the notion of postcolonial globality is warranted by a
(critical) constructivist approach to subjectivity that understands the
postcolonial as the constitutive outside of the global. Where colonial
globality sees unidirectional relationship between the global and the
postcolonial, postcolonial globality sees multidirectional relations. For,
as Vivienne Jabri (2013, 14) noted, studying postcolonial subjectiv-
ity “requires rst and foremost a move beyond negation and essentiali-
sation” that is characteristic of colonial globality. As such, postcolonial
globality allows a different understanding of the past and a grasp on the
future. For, as Jabri (2013, 12) highlighted,
the postcolonial subject’s relationship to the international is one that is
not determined by the colonial legacy, but generates a new political rela-
tionship between the West and the postcolonial, but includes relationships
within, through the constitution of forms of political community sugges-
tive of a space of hybridity, negotiation, and articulation.
That said, while postcolonial subjectivity is not determined by the colo-
nial legacy, postcolonial actors’ self-understandings may be conditioned
by a colonial globality, as observed in ISIS articulations on Sykes-Picot
92 P. BILGIN
in 2014 (see below). The broader point being that studying and under-
standing “particularities” is not merely about turning to articulations of
the self-styled anti-colonial and anti-global subjectivity of local actors
(such as ISIS), but re-thinking Eurocentric narratives that have solidied
particular experiences into method, thereby warranting a colonial notion
of globality through which even the anti-colonial and anti-global make
sense of their subjectivity. Indeed, self-styled anti-colonial and anti-global
subjectivity of ISIS is only one instance of postcolonial subjectivities in
the Middle East. Adopting a notion of postcolonial globality, in turn,
renders visible multiple and variegated postcolonial subjectivities.
ISIS PREOCCUPATION WITH SYKES-PICOT, AN INSTANCE
OF THE PREVALENCE OF COLONIAL GLOBALITY
In the summer of 2014, the Sykes-Picot agreement, a secret wartime
deal between the UK and France from 1916, became (in)famous follow-
ing a tweet announcing the launch of a propaganda video by the vio-
lent extremist group that call themselves the Islamic State of Iraq and al
Sham (ISIS). The video showed ISIS bringing down the border barriers
between Syria and Iraq, declaring the “end of Sykes-Picot”. To quote
from the video:
[T]oday we are happy to participate in destroying the borders placed by
the tawaghit [oppressors] to prevent the Muslims from traveling in their
lands. The tawaghit broke up the Islamic Khilafah and made it into coun-
tries like Syria and Iraq, ruled by man-made laws […] today we begin the
nal stage after the Ummah was divided […] Their plot was to divide and
conquer. That is what they had done with us. (quoted in Tinsley 2015)
This section of the chapter inquires into the particular notion of the
global against which ISIS launched its apparent act of resistance, suggest-
ing that the self-styled anti-colonial and anti-global subjectivity of ISIS
bears the marks of a Eurocentric narrative on the Middle East, thereby
betraying the group’s conditioning by a “colonial” notion of globality.
“Sykes-Picot” is the better-known name of the “Asia Minor agree-
ment” negotiated in May 1916 by Sir Mark Sykes (Britain) and
Georges Picot (France) to decide on their countries’ post-war inter-
ests. The agreement was kept secret until 1917 when the Russian revo-
lutionaries divulged the ‘secret deals’ made by the ‘imperialist powers’.
5 COLONIAL GLOBALITY, POSTCOLONIAL SUBJECTIVITIES … 93
The agreement had to be kept secret, for it betrayed Britain’s promises
to those Arab leaders who had agreed to join the ght against the
Ottomans in return for promises regarding the governance of the
Arabian peninsula. The agreement concluded by Sykes and Picot was
never fully implemented. It was revised numerous times. One such revi-
sion came after the Allies lost the war in Asia Minor (the part of the
world that the agreement was originally named after), thereby making
way for the formation of the Republic of Turkey. The Lausanne Treaty
(1923) signed between the Allied powers and Turkey decided the newly
established Republic’s borders.1 What is currently problematised by ISIS
as the ‘Sykes-Picot order’ was shaped at San Remo Conference in 1920
but was further negotiated in the coming years.
What is important for the purposes of this chapter is that ISIS’ cel-
ebration of the end of Sykes-Picot order is an instance of colonial glo-
bality insofar as the group’s self-styled anti-colonial and anti-global
subjectivity is informed by a Eurocentric narrative on the constitution
of the global in general and the Middle East in particular. Portraying
borders in the Middle East as ‘articial’ remnants of Sykes-Picot is
a remnant of colonial erasure of histories that underscores the agency of
the colonial powers in wreaking havoc into this part of the world while
underestimating the amount of agency exercised by regional actors.
This is not to underestimate the destructive consequences of the divide
and rule tactics employed by the colonial powers, which is considered
as having “postponed the rise of a new order shaped from within the
region” (Kamel 2014, 8). Rather, my point is that the critics of the
‘articiality’ of Sykes-Picot boundaries betray their obliviousness to
the history of the region and its peoples. Following Kamel, “modern-
day Syria and Iraq have both several meaningful antecedents in the
pre-Islamic world” and that
the claim that Iraq is an articial creation concocted by the British after
World War I overlooks the fact that […] for much of the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries […] Basra, Baghdad and Mōsul were governed as a
single entity with Baghdad as their center of gravity. Already at the time
numerous local intellectuals indicated the area as ‘Iraq’. (Kamel 2014, 8–9)
This is not to claim better access to ‘historical facts’ about the region
and its peoples. Rather, the point is that self-styled anti-colonial and anti-
global subjectivity of ISIS betrays a Eurocentric notion of articiality and
94 P. BILGIN
statehood that presumes some states that have “natural” borders, which,
in turn, makes them “proper” states.
To recapitulate, ISIS preoccupation with Sykes-Picot has been viewed
(approvingly) by some as an instance of its anti-colonial anti-global sub-
jectivity. I have suggested that insofar as it subscribes to a Eurocentric
narrative on the Middle East, ISIS subscribes to a colonial conception of
globality. The point about Sykes-Picot is not (only) that it was a secret
agreement concluded between the colonising powers, but (also) that it
was warranted by a colonial notion of globality that informed the prac-
tices of international society which decides the fate of those that were
deemed as not-yet capable of governing themselves, i.e. non-members
(Bilgin 2016d). ISIS preoccupation with the “end of Sykes-Picot” is
conditioned by the very same colonial globality that it apparently seeks
to resist by declaring the end of Sykes-Picot order. In what follows,
I will suggest that what ISIS exhibits is only one instance of postcolonial
subjectivity.
POSTCOLONIAL GLOBALITY AND POSTCOLONIAL SUBJECTIVITIES
IN THE MIDDLE EAST
The notion of postcolonial subjectivities refers to those whose subjectiv-
ity was shaped (though not determined, see above) by the experience of
colonialism. Following Stuart Hall (1996), I understand postcolonialism
as a ‘re-staged narrative’ on world history. For Hall, colonialism “refer-
ences something more than direct rule over certain areas of the world by
the imperial powers”. Rather, it “[signies] the whole process of expan-
sion, exploration, conquest, colonisation and imperial hegemonisation
which constituted the ‘outer face’, the constitutive outside, of European
and then Western capitalist modernity after 1492” (Hall 1996, 249).
Insofar as colonialism “refers to a specic historical moment” as well as
“a way of staging or narrating history”, postcolonial studies re-stages this
narrative by de-centring the coloniser and looking at the experiences and
perspectives of the colonised as the “constitutive outside” of modernity.
The “constitutive outside” is a key concept in thinking about “postco-
lonial globality” insofar as it allows us to see multiple subjectivities. In
what follows, I will contrast two ways of considering postcolonial sub-
jectivities, one through colonial globality and the other postcolonial
globality.
5 COLONIAL GLOBALITY, POSTCOLONIAL SUBJECTIVITIES … 95
The rst one underscores the agency of the coloniser. While taking
responsibility for some of the current ills of the region, this portrayal
belies an understanding of the global in terms of colonial globality with
the coloniser viewed as determining the subjectivity of the postcolonial.
A prime example of this portrayal is the myths surrounding Gertrude
Bell (1868–1926), popularly known as ‘the woman who made Iraq’.
Oftentimes, the narrative about Bell is invoked to underscore the self-
styled anti-colonial and anti-global subjectivity of ISIS (see for example
Rifkind and Picco 2014; Al-Marashi 2016). “Gertrude Bell scaled the
Alps, mapped Arabia, and midwifed the modern Middle East”, wrote
one author when reviewing a biography of Bell (Hitchens 2007). The
reviewed book’s title is also worth pointing to: Gertrude Bell Queen of
the Desert, Shaper of Nations (by Georgina Howell). That Bell’s agency
is underscored when telling the history of the state system in the Middle
East is an instance of the prevalence of colonial globality insofar as the
agency of local actors is rendered invisible.
Bell was an English traveller and author who journeyed to the Arabian
Peninsula during World War I and explored its history and peoples by
making use of the opportunities offered by the British Empire’s colonial
practices. Bell’s role was recently memorialised in Werner Herzog’s lm,
Queen of the Desert (2015), which underscored her agency in shaping the
Middle East. As the lm highlighted, Bell learned local languages, gath-
ered information (including intelligence at times) and wrote multiple
books about this part of the world. Her biography on www.biography.
com credits her for “[contributing] to the construction of the Iraqi state
in 1921, as well as the National Museum of Iraq”.2 Hence the agency
attributed to Bell in the shaping of Iraq (Hitchens 2007).
There is no denying that the Middle East as a term and as a spatial
construct is a colonial legacy—as with many other ‘regions’ and ‘con-
tinents’ it has to be said. The term Middle East was offered in the late
nineteenth and early twentieth century when thinking about the security
of the British Empire’s route to India. Throughout the twentieth cen-
tury, a variety of external actors adopted the term Middle East while the
spatial construct to which it referred kept moving in line with the secu-
rity interests of the same actors (Lewis and Wigen 1997).3
Furthermore, boundaries in many (but not all) parts of the Middle East
were shaped by the European colonisers, as we are reminded by the con-
temporary debates on the Sykes-Picot. While self-consciously critical in
96 P. BILGIN
acknowledging the catastrophic legacy of colonialism in the Middle East,
such efforts that highlight the agency of Sykes and Picot or Gertrude
Bell in shaping contemporary insecurities in the Middle East nevertheless
betray a colonial notion of globality. This is because such portrayals over-
look the legacy of a century-long history of security governance in this
part of the world. For, it is not only those who drew the borders but also
those who have shaped security governance inside and across those bor-
ders whose practices need scrutinising (Bilgin 2000, 2004).
Adopting the notion of postcolonial globality, we begin to view the
relationship between the coloniser and the colonised in multi-directional
terms. This involves considering the Middle East as a constitutive outside
of Europe. Such considerations would entail acknowledging the colonial
past and present (Bilgin 2016d) and studying the ways in which the rela-
tionship between Europe and the Middle East has been constitutive of
not only the latter but also the former. Where prevalent representations
of the Middle East emphasise the mark the former has left on the latter,
colonisation has shaped both Europe and the Middle East. Indeed, even
those otherwise self-critical and vehemently anti-Eurocentric approaches
to the relationship between the coloniser and the colonised, do not
always avoid what the literary critical and public intellectual Edward Said
characterised as an “asymmetrical” approach:
[T]he asymmetry is striking. In one instance, we assume that the better
part of history in colonial territories was a function of the imperial inter-
vention; in the others, there is an equally obstinate assumption that colo-
nial undertakings were marginal and perhaps even eccentric to the central
activities of the great metropolitan cultures. (Gregory 2004)
More often than not we are accustomed to seeing the traces of the
European in the Middle East but not the other way around. For Said,
however, it was imperative to study both. He asked:
[W]ho in India or Algeria today can condently separate out the British
or French component of the past from the present actualities, and who
in Britain and France can draw a clear circle around British London and
French Paris that would exclude the impact of India and Algeria upon
those imperial cities? (Said 1993, 35)
Over the years, such asymmetry has produced anti-Eurocentric critiques
of continental thought and an underestimation of the contributions
5 COLONIAL GLOBALITY, POSTCOLONIAL SUBJECTIVITIES … 97
of the Middle East—other than in oil, coffee, rugs and spices, that is.
Considering the accomplishments of the late Iraqi architect Dame Zaha
Hadid (1950–2016), underscores the need for a notion of postcolonial
globality where the Middle East is analysed as a constitutive outside of
Europe. To clarify, let me outline key moments in Hadid’s life and career.
Hadid was born in Iraq in 1950 to a family who was at the centre of
Iraqi politics. Her father was a Minister of Finance and member of the
National Democratic Party of Iraq, which closed down after the Ba’ath
coup in 1963. Hadid’s coming of age took place at a time in the his-
tory of the Arab world where families of a certain class and/or persua-
sion were rmly committed to women’s entry into various professions.
Her family gave Hadid a signicant degree of freedom in following her
passions. Her mother taught her how to draw. She was sent to a Catholic
girls’ school in Baghdad to be trained with a mix of Iraqi and interna-
tional students (Said 1993, 15). As she was getting ready to follow her
brothers for higher education in Britain in 1968, Iraq was thrown into
further political turmoil. Hadid went to the American University in
Beirut instead. Finding engineering departments too male dominated,
she chose to study mathematics (2016a, b).
It was not in the early 1970s when she moved to London to study
at the Architectural Association (AA) that Hadid committed to architec-
ture full time. Even then, she divided time between painting and design-
ing. During those years, the AA housed the most visionary architects
of the time. Rem Koolhas took Hadid under his wing and eventually
bequeathed his position to her. She taught at the AA for ten years before
setting up her own rm in 1980 (BBC 2013).
Hadid is widely considered to be one of the most talented and vision-
ary architects (a.k.a. starchitects) of recent decades. She is the rst person
to win the prestigious Stirling prize two years in a row 2010 and 2011.4
She is also the rst woman to win Britain’s Royal Institute of British
Architects (RIBA) medal and an even bigger one, considered to be the
greatest honour in architecture, the Pritzker prize (2004). She is widely
respected by her peers as having imagined natural contours and curves
even before the advances in computer technology allowed them to be
drawn and developments in construction technology managed their
realisation.
Until her untimely death in 2016 at a high time in her career,
Hadid won and built projects in more countries than her peers. Yet,
she seems to have had a harder time in getting projects built in Britain
98 P. BILGIN
than anywhere else. One particular example of her difculties in being
accepted in Britain was observed at a time when Iraq made the head-
lines with the two wars in 1991 and 2003. During that period, she won
the Millennium Commission’s competition to build an opera house in
Cardiff. To the horror of architecture circles, her project was rejected
twice (after she won the second competition that was set up follow-
ing the rst rejection). No doubt a combination of factors tied up with
Welsh devolution played a role as well. However, the reason offered by
one of the local politician Rhodri Morgan (who went on to become First
Minister of Wales in 2000) was telling for the purposes of this paper. The
project “looked too much like the shrine in Mecca”, Rhodri Morgan
said and warned about “the likelihood of a fatwa to be issued on the
building” (BBC 2013). It is not easy to understand what in the design
made it look like “the shrine in Mecca” to Morgan. We also do not know
whether his attempt at securitising Hadid’s design resonated with oth-
ers in Wales. What is signicant for our purposes here is that his words
were uttered in a discursive economy that is Eurocentric insofar as he was
not able to recognise Hadid as “constitutive outside” of Europe. Instead,
he portrayed Hadid as a threatening (Muslim) other viewed through the
lens of “colonial globality”.
Not everyone was prepared to go as far as Morgan in expressing their
reservations about Hadid and the kind of architectural design her ofce
offered. Many in London, Hadid said, hesitated because her designs
were ‘weird’. In responding to her critics, Hadid said the following:
[T]hat weird work came out of London, you know. Well, not just us, many
of these ideas which developed in the last 30 years is really an outcome of
being part of the AA and being part of the English situation. So, I say, it
is very curious that these things don’t have a presence here. (BBC 2016a)
Here, in not so many words, Hadid pointed to her (and AA colleagues’)
work as a product of Britain in general and London in particular even as
the very same products are rejected for their “foreignness” or “weird-
ness”.5 Indeed, Hadid embodied the constitutive outside of Britain.
She was an outsider who was born and raised in the Middle East. She
was also an insider for she was trained by Catholic nuns in Baghdad,
and international faculty at the American University in Beirut and the
Architectural Association in London. She was a naturalised British citizen
who received a CBE three years after the Cardiff opera house incident
5 COLONIAL GLOBALITY, POSTCOLONIAL SUBJECTIVITIES … 99
and a DBE (Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire)
10 years after that. Put differently, Hadid was a product of both a post-
colonial Iraq that was undergoing signicant transformation as part of
decolonisation, and a post-imperial Britain that both trained and fed off
the talents of the best and the brightest in the former colonies and the
Commonwealth.
To recapitulate, in contrast to discussions on the anti-colonial and
anti-global subjectivity of ISIS as determined by colonialism through
portrayals of Gertrude Bell as the woman who invented Iraq, Zaha
Hadid constitutes another instance of postcolonial subjectivity—one that
is shaped but not determined by colonialism. As an instance of the post-
colonial as the constitutive outside, Hadid highlights another kind of
postcolonial subjectivity that becomes visible through the lens of postco-
lonial globality. Where Hadid embodies the Middle East as the constitu-
tive outside of Europe, myths about Bell underscore European agency in
the shaping of contemporary Middle Eastern insecurities while overlook-
ing the latter’s contributions to the former.
CONCLUSION
From the very moment in 2014 when ISIS brought up the Sykes-Picot
agreement, anti-Eurocentric critique about the Middle East has come
to focus on the ills caused by colonialism, thereby conating postco-
lonial subjectivity with the self-styled anti-global subjectivity of ISIS.
Consequently, Gertrude Bell as the woman who made Iraq has come to
make the headlines. This chapter suggested that the eventuality that we
think about Gertrude Bell and not Zaha Hadid when thinking about the
Middle East says more about our Eurocentric predilections that belie a
“colonial” conception of globality.
The issue is not choosing between studying globality and/or par-
ticularities, but re-thinking the relationship between the two in the
constitution of what we understand as the global. Adopting the notion
of colonial globality, we understand the postcolonial subjectivities in
the Middle East as ‘determined’ by colonialism, thereby leaving next-
to-no agency for the postcolonial. The notion of postcolonial globality,
in turn, underscores a mutually constitutive relationship by consider-
ing the postcolonial as the constitutive outside of the global. The post-
colonial is outside insofar as its constitutive role is not recognised in
Eurocentric narratives. Yet its identity being determined as anti-colonial
100 P. BILGIN
and anti-global is not the only subjectivity open for the postcolonial. For,
the postcolonial may be absent from the narratives on the global, but not
the processes of its constitution.
NOTES
1. Another revision was made between France and Turkey before the begin-
ning of World War II deciding the fate of the Hatay province which was
then under French mandate rule in Syria.
2. http://www.biography.com/people/gertrude-bell-21149695 (accessed
10 June 2016).
3. On the one hand we know that geographical constructs always serve a
purpose (“geography is for waging war”, Yves Lacoste (1998), wrote) and
that regions and continents in different parts of the world have evolved
as products of colonial engagements. On the other hand, when thinking
postcolonially about the Middle East we do not seem to be able to go
beyond this “rst moment of anti-Eurocentric critique”: blaming the con-
temporary ills of this part of the world on the colonial experiences (Lewis
and Wigen 1997).
4. It is interesting to note that she won these prizes for very different pro-
jects, representing two very different aspects of her oeuvre: ‘artistry’ and
‘utility’. The 2010 prize went to the MAAXI in Rome, a signature build-
ing that is an art work showcasing other art works. 2011 prize went to the
Evelyn Grace Academy in Brixton, a small school building in a relatively
deprived area designed for the purposes of the school’s character. The
building which won the 2004 Pritzker prize for her was the BMW factory
and ofce building in Leipzig, embodying both aspects.
5. For many years, Hadid did not have a signature project in London, not
counting the spectacular aquatics center of the London Olympics or ‘the
mind zone’ of the Millennium dome, both in the Greenwich area.
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