Nuanced reading is possible without having to label every enjoyable work decolonial, argues Arzu.
Fatima Manji’s Hidden Heritage: Rediscovering Britain’s relationship with the Orient (2021) is exquisitely written. It is beautifully vivid in its descriptions not just of the objets d’art, historical artefacts and buildings she finds on her travels around British heritage sites, but the histories she unearths around them. It’s a joy to read prose like this. That’s why what follows is hard for me to write. Because I did love reading this, despite various misgivings, some of which I relate below.
Orientalism 101
I had assumed that the title’s use of the word Orient was at the behest of editor and or publishers – a sop to a prospective audience of middle and upper class socially concerned liberals. I could have lived with it if it was just that – a way in for readers to then be confronted with the homogenising and deeply racist connotations of the term. As a graduate of English Literature, I can remember the dispensing of this term in my first year by lecturers, many of whom were not what you would term post-colonial. Edward Said’s seminal book Orientalism, had made short shrift of the usage of the term, AND the creation of the ‘Orient’ as ‘other’. The prevalence of the orientalist gaze even prior to Said was a concept central to burgeoning critical studies[i]. Both these points are apt here. I am not talking about the current moment of decolonising the curriculum, I am talking about 35 years ago at Cambridge University.
Sadly, Manji, despite it seems understanding the Oriental gaze (see quote below), goes down the route of explicitly using and justifying the usage of the term and then proceeds to use it with a type of abandon.
All the objects and places described in this book are derived from or inspired by the ‘Orient’. Though the term Orient has become unfashionable, I have deliberately chosen it in full knowledge of the connotations. Geographically it encompasses West Asia (described through the British imperial gaze as the ‘Middle East’) and South Asia. Much of this region was, in some important ways, culturally contiguous for centuries until the fall of the Ottoman Empire. Using only contemporary labels for countries or regions ignores how they were interconnected and influence each other. For instance, in the Victorian period, a pair of wooden carvers from modern-day Pakistan (then India) were inspired by elements of North African architecture, and they use these inspirations to decorate an object due to be displayed in London, they then sign their names in Persian calligraphy. Only the word ‘Orient’ captures the multitude of influences here. (p.3)[my emphases]
Islamicate. Islamicate is a word that can cover the ‘multitude of influences’ above. Even and including those from outside Islamic traditions. Other words that detail the minutiae of the influences exist: from the specificities of the many geographical, cultural and linguistic theatres of the Ottoman territory /ies to to other that can in some way cover some if not all of those influences, which in turn can be spoken about in conversation with each other: Islamicate, Byzantine, and Sassanian; Mughal, Timurid, and Rajput.
There are of course limits on words, as well as the attention spans, knowledge and interest of the readership. To that end, the book is marvellous in condensing a lot of history, highlighting the enormous gap in an understanding of ‘Britishness’ that is currently being exploited by ever more nativist discourses to a (mainstream) audience that may (despite their best intentions) in the dark about this oversight. However the homogenisation of the ‘other’ that the term ‘Orient’[ii] facilitates, is exactly how the exclusionary discourses that have ensured knowledge of cultural transfer, historical interconnectedness of social and political polities, and colonial hierarchies of soft and hard power, have held sway on all our imaginations.
The Hole in History versus the Whole of History
Hidden Heritage reminded me in part of reading Natasha’s Dance: A Cultural History of Russia (2003) by Orlando Figes. That book’s sweep was immense, covering music, literature, visual arts, handcrafts and more – you felt Figes (not exactly my favourite writer when it comes to the Soviet Union) was in love with every aspect of Russian culture from the consolidation of Rus to twentieth century Soviet cultural innovations. That is until those little mis-hits where he slips into denigrating and even racist tones and text about Russian culture and society e.g. on issues of literacy levels, or the ability of the masses to appreciate high culture. Yet, it can be read, in order to find out more about the immense cultural output of ‘Russia’ – and how it has impacted and been impacted by its European and Asian neighbours, its complicated and conflicting desires to emulate and reject Western Europe, its own overlooked and immense influence on other cultures, including that of Western Europe. This piece is not about boycotting writers, but how we engage with them. Figes is not (considered to be) from a particularly critical camp.
Manji’s focus is narrower – it is ultimately a conversation about Britishness and what that might be based on the cultural memorabilia we imbue through museum and other heritage experiences. But that broad sweep of understanding the importance and symbolism of what is there and what is hidden feels similar. Her focus is (largely) on the British Empire and the erasure of its subjugated people from the cultural memory of the British nation, as well as other moments of exchange described through the histories of certain items to be found around the UK: paintings, jewellery, clothing, handicrafts, photographs and more. She makes the case convincingly , that the full story of the ‘British’ Isles is neither what we are commonly told, nor what successive governments have wanted to enforce onto the next generation – a narrow English nativist narrative that excludes all else as ‘other’, alien, barbaric.
Just filling in the gaps however, is not enough to set this systemic injustice straight. Yes, it is important to know about the millions of soldiers from across the Empire who fought in the First World War as the book does (and also in the Second[iii]). At one poignant point, Manji finds the graves of some of these soldiers, buried in different locations in the UK, and reflects on how despite much effort from different quarters, it feels as if these men are forgotten. That is true. She goes on to talk about ‘true remembrance’ in the wake of the poppy hijab debacle, where narratives of remembrance (with the launch of a scarf bearing the symbol of annual remembrance, the poppy) were turned into aggressive public conversations about Muslims needing to use such moments to assimilate into the practices of remembrance to show that they eschew ‘radicalism’, ‘extremism’ and wish to integrate. Though not quite naming this discourse as racist, Manji rightly calls out this type of media bullying of Muslims.
What she misses however, is the fact that many Muslims (of which I am one), found the poppy hijab[iv], and the general culture of remembrance increasingly problematic, racist and often a cynically levelled narrative to justify the now permanent wars. We were not alone, as this piece I wrote in 2014 recounts: armed forces veterans of different. generations, academics, artists, journalists and activists all voiced similar concerns. It was part of a tradition that problematised the First World War, as an epic and grotesque sacrifice of human life by colonial powers embroiled in colonial wars of power. This historiography used to be the main one in this country – it is the one I grew up with. It is also one that has been supplanted by design by recent governments, in pursuit of reductive nationalism, blind patriotism and uncritical, defanged politics. Not acknowledging that battle of historiography, inadvertently: erases the very people whose (cultural) exclusion she has been narrating; and elevates remembrance (and the very particular narratives of remembrance now being imposed by government) to the exact level of cultural touchstone that the change in historiography demanded.
Ways of seeing (to borrow from Berger) are not ahistorical, unfiltered or unmanipulated. In talking about history, showing at least that there are multiple ways of looking at the same events is as important as highlighting that certain ways of seeing have (intentional / unintentional) gaps.
Erasing (Antiracist) Civil Society and Research
Manji highlights how omissions result in not only the injustice of erasure, but contribute to a deepening crisis of racism in this country. Many of her points are indeed on point, and her overall contention – that the conversation of what it means to be British needs to be more nuanced and inclusive – needs to and will have been brought to a wider more mainstream because of her work on this. More power to her for that. But here’s the rub. Manji is not the first person to say this (Myriam Francois has been eloquent on this, her thoughts and those of many others such as Sariya Contractor, Fatima Rajina, Sumayya Afzal, all of whom informed the relevant section in the Counternarratives to Islamophobia project of 2018). Likewise the operation of exclusionary and racist discourses, whether charted through omission in prevailing narratives, or through the operation of oppressive historiography in public and institutional discourse, are well documented. There is no acknowledgement that such work exists. Not in the otherwise copious notes or bibliography.
I concede there is a mention of an unnamed organisation working on getting fallen soldiers from across the Empire included in remembrance narratives. I was going to make a guess, but there have been a few such projects and I don’t want to get it wrong.
Again, I appreciate the issue of length, but without acknowledging such work exists, vast swatches of anti-racist work, whether academic or part of civil society, is obscured or even erased.
So, not Everything is Decolonial
I go back to Figes and Natasha’s Dance. I am glad I read Hidden Histories just as I am glad I read Figes’ book. But rich content and vivid passionate text about knowledge that is missing or misunderstood, does not make either title a decolonial work. Not understanding how the erasure works through what we are talking about and writing about now, the terms we use and how they have been employed against us (mea culpa) is where much of our attempts at rewriting history are stuck. Decoloniality is all of that and much more, specifically the reconstituting of knowledge as well as they ways of knowing.
I hope Manji’s next work gets a better grasp of that. I look forward to reading it.
Arzu Merali is a writer and researcher based in the UK.
[i] It’s worth remembering that Said’s Orientalism is itself criticised for essentialism of ‘Orient’ and ‘Occident’, a critique from both fellow post-colonial thinkers and activists, as well as those working on decolonial modes of thinking and action. If we are to truly engage with what is missing from social, political and historical discourses, and what impact that has had on us as a society, explicitly rehabilitating a term that has done much to flatten and obscure, demonise and destroy, is not consonant with any form of critical thinking.
[ii] This from Tasha Vorderstrasse, was a useful piece on the usage of the term Orient across the centuries, including ways it was leveraged politically.
[iii] We can see the difference in cultural representations of soldiers recruited from parts of European empires and even the issue of erasure of these soldiers from the narrative between the popularity and critical and public receptions of the French film Indigenes (2006) and British film Dunkirk (2016). The former’s depiction of four Algerian soldiers who formed part of the almost half a million soldiers recruited into the French army from North Africa after the fall of France, provoked astonishment from cinema goers and also a demand that actual veterans from North African whose pension had been withheld, have their rights reinstated. Incredibly the two British films caused different responses in the public debate. Dunkirk was a critical and box office success, but was criticised from various quarters for failing to represent any soldiers of colour among the British forces. As it happens, there were very few, perhaps 600 odd, on the beaches that day, however it is estimated that of the 8.5 million men raised for military service 5 million came from the UK, and 1.5 million from India.
[iv] See the excellent ‘No, I won’t wear the “Poppy Hijab” to prove I’m not a Muslim extremist’ by Sofia Ahmed (4th November 2015)
