The middle East and the disciplinary (re)production of knowledge

Andrea Teti

pp. 81-101

in: Begüm Özden Fırat, Sarah De Mul, Sonja van Wichelen (eds), Commitment and complicity in cultural theory and practice, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2009

Abstract

Reading recent accounts of the 'state of the art" in the study of Middle East politics, one might believe there was a politically and intellectually unprecedented state of crisis, particularly in Middle East Studies (MES). Such narratives are dominated by the theme that the supposedly new — if not necessarily brave — world since "9/11" can ill-afford an antiquated intellectual sectarianism and political partisanship of which MES is apparently doubly culpable. To strike a blow in defense of freedom, scholars are asked to abandon such academic parochialism and converge upon a common ground which, through the adoption of Social Science's objective methodologies, would not only produce policy-relevant scholarship in the "War on Terror",1 but also end the narrow factionalism of traditional academia. By virtually universal agreement, interdisciplinarity — understood as enquiry across fields under the epistemic umbrella of Social Science — is the key to such a common ground. Academics are asked to commit to this cause, their silence or reluctance construed as tantamount to complicity with the "enemy". These claims, however, do not hold up to scrutiny: on closer inspection, these political and intellectual debates appear to be embedded into the very way in which Social Science is articulated as an intellectual enterprise. This chapter sketches some ways in which this articulation takes place.