Reflections: Making one's mark By Hani Shukrallah Forever bemoaning the "crisis of the intellectuals", the Egyptian intelligentsia seems nevertheless content to allow vulgar demagogues, self-seeking hypocrites and generally the most ignorant, opportunistic and empty-headed of its members to set the terms of debate for everyone else. The power of intimidation that this group enjoys is as bewildering as it is phenomenal. Some of its members literally reek of petro-dollars, of both the revolutionary and conservative varieties. Others are known to have developed their meagre, if invariably mawkish, writing skills drawing up secret reports about their colleagues for various security bodies. To these two routes of self-advancement, the past years of economic liberalisation have added the apparently lucrative avenue of what we might call intellectual entrepreneurialism. This largely takes two forms. The first is for the enterprising "intellectual" to ally himself with this or that network of businessmen/ bureaucrats (such private/public networks are essential for doing good business). As its "literary representative," he is then charged with the task of singing his patrons' praises and, more importantly, maligning competing networks with as much mud-slinging, slander and abuse as his "literary" and tabloid-journalism skills allow. The second form of intellectual entrepreneurialism is to play the field. It goes something like this: pick a "network" and start throwing some restrained mud: a little investigative journalism, a few large ads and maybe something under the table. Later -- surprise! -- you discover that the target was the victim of vicious slander, and is in fact a shining example of bureaucratic entrepreneurialism (or entrepreneurial bureaucracy), not like some others we could name; nudge, wink, and on to the next target. All three methods of making one's mark in the world, as Flaubert might have put it, are usually pursued in unison, as if the one course of self-advancement (report-writing usually begins while one is still an aspiring undergraduate) led quite naturally into the other. Such people, however, may be of interest to writers of fiction (from Balzac to Mahfouz); for our purposes here, they tend to be extremely predictable and eminently boring. My real interest is in the disproportionate influence they seem to exercise today among a fairly large group of people who, by and large, possess a fair share of talent, intelligence and integrity (even if these are subject to the double bind of authoritarianism and a market economy). I am hardly looking for consensus, though, whether among the intelligentsia or in society as a whole. It's debate that we need; and it's debate that we continue to lack, at least on any level that could be designated an intellectual one. Nor is there a shortage of real gems out there: the monthly Kutub: Wughat Nazar, to cite one prominent example, has been a breath of fresh air in Egyptian intellectual life, and it is produced by Egyptians, not khawagas. Invariably, however, the gems can hardly be seen for all the muck and, worse, original and sophisticated intellectual production is determinedly neutralised by being completely ignored or reduced, through an often vicious process of omission and wilful misrepresentation, to fit within the already established, crude and vulgar terms of the debate. Take two prominent examples: normalisation and the so-called NGO movement. The simple fact that these two "issues" have, for several years now, been major (indeed, the major) arenas of fierce debate and contention among Egyptian intellectuals is telling in itself. Has anyone wondered recently whether normalisation, or rather anti- normalisation, is really as crucial to the Arab peoples' solidarity with the Palestinian struggle against Israeli occupation as it is made out to be, let alone to the urgent task of drawing up an overall strategy of Palestinian liberation? Is it not time to move on to something even a little more energetic than merely abstaining from meeting with Israelis? In the heyday of Egyptian-Israeli treaty-making, the government was leaning hard on the intellectuals to "normalise," and refusing to do so was an act of resistance, albeit of a rather modest nature. Who's leaning now? The anti-normalisation movement (and I was present at its birth) was the creation of a dejected intelligentsia at once outraged by Sadat's about-face and horrified to discover that the majority of the people welcomed what it saw as an act of "historic treason." Has anyone bothered to notice that things have changed massively since then -- in particular with respect to the Egyptian people's sentiments? And what of the raucous uproar over "NGOs"? The debate, after all, is not about the alleged 15,000 civil associations in the country, nor is it even remotely interested in Egyptian "civil society," the bulk of which is to be found neither in these thousands of state-controlled organisations, nor for that matter in the handful of advocacy groups on which the whole hysterical commotion is centred. Contrary to the postulates of fashionable liberal dogma, civil society in Egypt is not weak, but extremely complex and sophisticated and, rather than acting as a force for democratisation, it is joined at the head to the authoritarian state bureaucracy, and functions essentially on the basis of patronage -- one of the fundamental survival strategies of the Egyptian people. The absurdity seems to strike no one. The health of the nation, its independence, integrity and the future of its democracy hinge on some two dozen groups accounting for no more than a couple of hundred harassed people, who are, moreover, as hopelessly "isolated from the masses" as everyone else. Keep it crude and vulgar -- that seems to be the golden rule of " intellectual debate" in Egypt these days. It is well suited to the knaves and imbeciles among us. Why should it satisfy the rest? Issue 539 - 21June 2001
