Western Imaginings. Rohan Davis
neoconservative intellectuals’ representations of Wahhabism appearing in the online magazine The Weekly Standard. This publication is widely regarded as one of the most prominent neoconservative publications.
At this point I should also talk about some of the major theories and frameworks influencing my work. I have drawn on the dialectical tradition Bertell Ollman has done a lot to resurrect and clarify.77 This tradition, as Ollman and Smith argue, is a way of thinking about and using a set of categories that captures the real changes and interactions happening in the social world. It offers a way of investigating social reality and presenting what we find to others. A dialectical imagination encourages us to think less about things and more about relations and processes that are constantly affecting one another. It emphasizes the evolving nature of things and the relational nature of the social world. This approach has two key elements that are influencing my work, namely a philosophy of internal relations and a process of abstraction.78
To help show how this process of abstraction works, I will highlight the major role played by several important elements in constituting representations of Wahhabism. These elements are what Gerald Holton calls themata and what Kurt Danziger calls generative metaphors.79 Holton defines themata as those presuppositions that often exist for long periods of history and which are not derivable “from either observation or analytic ratiocination.”80 Danziger describes generative metaphors as metaphorical descriptions that have been used over long periods of time and which have come to be thought of “as expressing some kind of literal truth.”81 I will describe both of these in greater detail later. At this point I want to point out that my ability to make sense of liberal and neoconservative representations of Wahhabism relies in part on my ability to abstract the roles both of these processes play when considering how intellectuals make sense of the world and the representing process.
This dialectical framing is particularly congruent with a critical discourse analysis approach I draw on when analyzing some of the different rhetorical techniques employed by liberal and neoconservative intellectuals. Since foundational work by key figures like Ruth Wodak, Norman Fairclough, and Clive Holes, this kind of approach has helped us to focus on the different ways social and political domination are reproduced in text and talk.82 As a result of this work critical discourse analysis has become a well-known interdisciplinary approach to the study of discourse as a social practice and seems especially appropriate when engaging the work of intellectuals, whose practice is essentially discursive in nature. That critical discourse analysts treat language as a social practice means it is especially helpful in highlighting the dialectical nature of language as a constitutive medium that is made in and makes the world. This approach appreciates in particular the relational character of power and the often opaque nature of the relations between discourse and society. It also recognizes that these relations play integral roles in securing the interests of those in power.
Intellectuals have a plethora of rhetorical techniques available to them when constructing their representations of Wahhabism. Generally speaking, the more skilled and versed intellectuals are in applying their trade, the more rhetorical techniques they will have in their arsenal and the more complex their rhetorical techniques will be. All research faces limitations, and one of those I have encountered is that I am not able to analyze all of the different rhetorical techniques employed by intellectuals. Such a task would likely result in thousands of pages of textual analysis that would no doubt bore readers. I have chosen to focus on five specific elements of discourse, namely metaphors, similes, analogies, neologisms, and the structuring of accounts of violence. The general case for focusing on metaphors, similes, and analogies as crucial elements of discursive practice has been made by George Lakoff, Mark Turner, and Mark Johnson in a series of groundbreaking works, and more recently by Douglas Hofstadter and Emmanuel Sander.83 Philosophers like Mary Midgley have also acknowledged the way these central features of language are integral to the mythmaking process.84
I have chosen to focus on neologisms primarily because many neoconservative intellectuals have chosen to deploy them when representing the apparent threat posed by Wahhabism. I think of how prominent neoconservative intellectuals like Frank Gaffney Jr., who uses the neologisms “Islamofascist” and “Islamofascism” when representing the apparent threat posed by Wahhabism.85 I have also adapted Karen Cerulo’s cognitive approach to establishing the ways the architecture of narratives of violence work to mobilize a range of ethical and emotional responses on the part of readers.86 This is valuable because it allows me to abstract and make sense of intellectuals’ claims relating Wahhabism to violence. The fact that Wahhabism received very little, if any, attention from Western scholars pre-9/11 and pre-global war on terror suggests its relation to violence is significant to some of the intellectuals representing it in the modern political context. Focusing on the structuring of violent accounts also helps to reveal some of the more subtle rhetorical techniques writers use in their attempts to persuade their audience. While many readers may have an understanding of what metaphors, similes, and analogies are and how they work, very few may be aware of the cognitive structuring of violent accounts.
Finally, I want to outline the structure of the argument in the book. In Chapter One I provide a cursory review of some of the scholarly literature dedicated to Wahhabism, teasing out some of the dilemmas that inspired this book. This involves looking at some of the truth claims scholars rely on when representing Wahhabism, examining how some scholars construct Imagined communities and Imagined geographies, and dealing with the problem of translation.
In Chapter Two I take a more concentrated look at the role of the intellectual. This involves taking a close look at the sociology of intellectuals tradition and establishing some of the key issues it has set loose. I also talk about making sense of truth, which helps us to deal with the different truth claims intellectuals rely on when representing Wahhabism, and the key role prejudice plays in influencing how we make sense of the social world.
In Chapter Three I describe some of the key theories influencing how I go about deconstructing and making sense of liberal and neoconservative intellectuals’ representations of Wahhabism. I describe the dialectical imagination I have adopted, what fuzzy categories are and how they work, and how I make use of Max Weber’s ideal type. I also describe the critical discourse analysis approach I have adopted and the epistemological assumptions it carries with it.
In Chapter Four I begin the interpretative and analytic process and deal with how liberal intellectuals have gone about representing Wahhabism. In Chapter Five I describe what generative metaphors and themata are and how they work, and then make sense of the different representations of Wahhabism. In Chapter Six I continue the interpretative, analytical, and sense-making process by looking at the different ways neoconservative intellectuals have gone about representing Wahhabism. In the Conclusion I explicate and clarify the wider significance of the book, particularly in the context of the sociology of intellectuals and the policy- and decision-making processes.
Wahhabism as a Contested Category
For last year’s words belong to last year’s language
And next year’s words await another voice.
—T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets
Wahhabism is both conventionally and popularly understood to be an extremely conservative, fundamentalist, or radical version of Islam. Historians agree that it has its origins in Saudi Arabia in the eighteenth century and that its founder was Muhammad Ibn Abd al-Wahhab. Abd al-Wahhab is said to have developed a version of Islam he insisted was a rigorous and conservative interpretation of the Qur’an. The general consensus is that Wahhabism played a decisive role in creating the Saudi state in 1932, where Wahhabism is credited as having a substantial following today.1 Beyond this, Wahhabism is a hotly contested category and this contest begins with those who are said to be followers of this version of Islam. Those who are labeled followers of Wahhabism tend to reject this term, instead referring to themselves as Muslims or Salafists. The contest continues when dealing with the