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Book extract: The Mind of the Islamic State

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Robert Manne, La Trobe University

Robert Manne’s new book, The Mind of the Islamic State, traces the evolution of the jihadist group’s world view. By poring over Islamic State’s texts, online magazines, and prison accounts by key figures, Manne offers insight into an ideology that most have heard of but few understand. In this extract, Manne unpacks the split between Islamic State and Al Qaeda.

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian Islamist who led the Sunni insurgency in Iraq following the US-led invasion, was a man of action not of words. There exists, however, one fascinating lengthy letter from him to the leaders of Al Qaeda, dated January 2004, whose purpose was in part to begin what turned out to be a protracted negotiation for his movement’s entry into Al Qaeda.

Zarqawi begins within an apocalyptic frame. In Sham (the ancient name for Iraq and Syria) “the decisive battle between the infidels and Islam is taking place”. As Al Qaeda no doubt already grasps, he continues, the Zionist-led American administration of George W. Bush entered Iraq under “a contract to create the State of Greater Israel from the Nile to the Euphrates”. Their purpose was “to hasten the arrival of the Messiah”.

What is the political situation following the invasion? Zarqawi regards not the Americans but the Shi’as as the overwhelming problem for the Sunnis. They are “the most vile people in the human race”, “the insurmountable obstacle, the prowling serpent, the crafty evil scorpion, the enemy lying in wait”. Throughout history, the Shi’a have stabbed the Muslims in the back. Their religion “has nothing in common with Islam”. Perhaps worst of all, throughout history they have served the interests of the Jews.

What then is to be done? The key, according to Zarqawi, is to provoke a Sunni-Shi’a civil war:

We will trigger their rage against the Sunnis… [forcing them] to bare their fangs… If we manage to draw them onto the terrain of partisan war… soon the [Sunni] sleepers will awaken from their leaden slumber.

Prospects in this struggle are bright. Zarqawi concludes his letter by asking the leaders of Al Qaeda whether they accept his plan. If they do, he promises, they will have his allegiance.

The leaders of Al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri must have faced a difficult decision in pondering future relations with Zarqawi. On the one hand, the ferocious battle Zarqawi was leading in Iraq was the most promising ever mounted by the Salafi jihadist movement. On the other, the war against the Shi’a Zarqawi was intent to fight represented a radical break in the history of the mujahidin. Clearly however admiration for Zarqawi and a judgment of the political advantages of alignment with him, overcame concern. In December 2004, Al Qaeda accepted the formal allegiance Zarqawi offered.

In July 2005, a long letter was sent by Al Qaeda Central to Al Qaeda in Iraq. All scholars say that this letter was sent directly to Zarqawi from Zawahiri. This cannot be right. Towards its conclusion it reads:

By God, if by chance you’re going to Fallujah, send greetings to Abu Mus’ab al-Zarqawi.

Most likely, although its contents were intended for Zarqawi, it was sent via another Al Qaeda member.

The Mind of the Islamic State, by Robert Manne, is published by Black Inc Books.
Black Inc Books

The letter documents Al Qaeda’s ambivalence about their new supporter. Zawahiri mounts a series of harsh and fundamental criticisms of Zarqawi’s leadership. The battle for the Islamic State cannot succeed without the support of the Muslim masses. They will never understand the disrespect that has been shown for the Sunni religious leaders. Zarqawi and his followers must not think of ruling on the basis of the mujahidin alone.

Even more sternly, Zawahiri chides Zarqawi for his anti-Shi’a sectarianism. No doubt many Shi’a have behaved treacherously during the American occupation. No doubt their understanding of Islam is deeply mistaken. But the Muslim masses will never understand a program based on the destruction of holy sites or systematic killing, especially of ordinary Shi’a. They will ask: “Can the mujahidin kill all the Shi’a in Iraq?” Zawahiri urges Zarqawi not to be seduced by those who praise him as the “sheikh of the slaughterers.”

Zawahiri’s letter was obviously ignored. Some three months later, a senior Al Qaeda leader, Atiyatullah al-Libi, sent another, far blunter warning. If Zawahiri’s letter concerned Zarqawi’s political mistakes, al-Libi’s concerned the defects of his character. Although this letter is almost unknown in the scholarly literature, it is even more revealing than Zawahiri’s.

Al-Libi’s letter contains a devastating catalogue of the dangers of Zarqawi’s style of leadership. Zarqawi must strive to win the love of the Muslim people. “Do not be harsh with them or degrade them or frighten them.” He must learn to accept disagreement. It does “not require hatred, clashing, hostility or enmity”. He must not become “arrogant” because of praise. His inner circle must avoid “injustice, conceit, haughtiness, superciliousness, excessive harshness and violence.”

Al-Libi reminds Zarqawi that Islam is a religion of “mercy, justice and good deeds”. A balance must be found “between severity and softness, between violence and gentleness”. “Let us not merely be people of killing, slaughter, blood, cunning, insult and harshness”. Zarqawi is warned:

You need to look deeply within yourself and your character.

If he fails to heed these warnings he will be replaced.

It was clear by now that not only through his unrestrained brutality and the expanding circle of what he regarded as permissible under Islamic law but also in his attitude to the Shi’a that Zarqawi had transformed and radicalised the Salafi jihadist tradition.

Zarqawi was killed by the Americans on June 7, 2006. Shortly after his death, his successors fulfilled his wishes by announcing the existence of the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI). For a time, the warnings al-Libi had issued about the dire political consequences of Zarqawi’s brutal behaviour seemed accurate. The Americans found eager partners among the Sunni tribes in the anti-insurgency movement called the Sahwah, the Awakening.

As a consequence, the Islamic State of Iraq was forced during 2008 to retreat to the arid lands of al-Anbar in the west. One of the wives of a leader, Abu Ayyub al-Masri, inquired:

Where is the Islamic State you’re talking about? We’re living in the desert.

The Islamic State of Iraq (ISI), by now under the leadership of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, emerged from the desert in 2011 at a propitious moment – the military and political withdrawal of the Americans from Iraq, the increasing persecution of the Sunni by the Shia-dominated government of Nuri al-Maliki, and the descent of Syria into civil war.

ISI began taking territory in the Sunni Triangle and despatched a small force to Syria led by Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, in what became known as the Nusra Front. In April 2013, ISI and the Nusra Front fell out speedily, spectacularly and bloodily after Baghdadi’s unilateral announcement of his leadership of a new political entity called the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), covering the lands of both Iraq and Syria.

By this time, Osama bin Laden had been killed by the Americans. Al Qaeda’s new leader, Zawahiri, attempted unsuccessfully to arbitrate the differences, requiring Jolani to limit his authority to Syria and Baghdadi to Iraq. His negotiating team was murdered near Aleppo by members of the Islamic State.

In September 2013, Zawahiri published what he called General Guidelines for Jihad, an apparent and belated attempt to re-assert Al Qaeda’s ideological authority over the global Salafi jihadist movement. Zawahiri reminded the mujahidin that their main struggle must be conducted against the Americans, whose weakening grip on power has been revealed by the Arab Spring. Fighting against “deviant sects”, like the Shi’a, ought also to be avoided except in the case of self-defence and even then only in proportion to the danger posed.

Zawahiri warned the mujahidin to:

refrain from killing non-combatant women and children… from harming Muslims by explosions, killing [or] kidnapping… [and] from targeting enemies in mosques, markets and gatherings where they mix with Muslims or those who do not fight us.

Zawahiri’s guidelines were an attempt to rescue the Salafi jihadist movement from what he regarded as the grievous strategic, jurisprudential and sectarian errors introduced into it in Iraq by Zarqawi and his successors. Its publication formalised an ideological division in Salafi jihadism, between ISIS and Al Qaeda, as fundamental as the split that tore the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks apart in the years before the Russian Revolution.

The Mind of the Islamic State is published by Black Inc. Robert Manne is Emeritus Professor of Politics and Vice-Chancellor’s Fellow at La Trobe University.

The Conversation

Robert Manne, Personal Chair in Politics, La Trobe University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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Health Break

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Due to continuing bad health I am taking another break from most of my Blogs and will only be posting in an irregular manner over the next few weeks. I think I need to take care of myself a little for the time being. Hopefully, regular service will return before too long. There is nothing too threatening happening, just a long-term issue that flares from time to time.

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Sweek

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The link below is to an article that takes a look at Sweek, a free writing and reading app.

For more visit:
http://www.noshelfrequired.com/free-mobile-reading-and-writing-platform-for-all-to-use-yes-please-and-thank-you-sweek/

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How to teach literacy so no child is left behind

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Kevin Wheldall, Macquarie University

Children who do not learn to read in the first few years of schooling are typically destined to a school career of educational failure, because reading underpins almost all subsequent learning.

Even when exemplary reading instruction is available, there will always be some children who take longer than others to catch on to what reading is all about. It is important to identify these low-progress readers as early as possible so that they do not fall too far behind their peers.

We need a clear plan in place to ensure that no child falls through the net. Such a plan needs to be both effective and cost-effective.

A three tier model of reading instruction, known as Response to Intervention (or RtI) has become known in recent years as the best way of achieving this.

Kindergarten

The three tier RtI model is based on the first tier of exemplary, quality initial instruction in reading for all students during their first year of schooling.

The instruction offered to all children beginning school should be based on what internationally conducted scientific research has shown to be most effective.

To the layman, this sounds patently obvious but this is not what is currently the case in many Australian schools. For the last few decades an implicit model of reading instruction has held sway.

Most of this implicit approach to reading instruction makes a good bedrock to build effective reading instruction on. But it is not enough for every child to learn to read.

The majority of children will need direct, explicit and systematic instruction in the five pillars or “five big ideas” of reading instruction: phonological awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension.

What is often lacking in initial reading instruction, in particular, is effective instruction in what is known as synthetic phonics: specific instruction in how to relate letters to sounds and to blend letter sounds into words.

In New South Wales and some other states, many schools typically screen students at the beginning of year one for possible placement in Reading Recovery, one of the most well known and most widely utilised remedial reading program in the world.

Whatever the debate about the efficacy of Reading Recovery, it is necessarily very expensive. It is based on a daily, half hour, one-to-one session with a highly trained Reading Recovery teacher, for two or more terms.

The bottom 25 per cent

The RtI model recommends that struggling readers should be offered more intensive Tier 2 intervention in small groups of three to four students.

Again the instruction provided to these students is based on what the scientific research evidence has shown to be most effective.

In effect, this is essentially the same emphasis on the same five big ideas of reading instruction but it is both more intensive and more individualised. Teachers also need to be more responsive to the specific idiosyncratic needs of the students with whom they are working.

Research suggests that good small group instruction can be just as effective as one-to-one instruction.

However, even with a solid Tier 2 small group reading intervention in place for young low-progress readers, there will still be a very small number of students who “fail to thrive”, perhaps about 3 to 5 per cent of the total population of Year 1 students.

Intensive instruction

The small number of students whose reading problems seem to be more entrenched and who are resistant even to specialised intensive small group instruction are the ones who should receive Tier 3 one-to-one intensive reading instruction.

By now it will come as no surprise that the general nature of the instruction provided in a one-to-one Tier 3 intervention is exactly the same as offered at Tier 1 and Tier 2.

What is different is the intensity of instruction provided to this very small minority of students.

Because we have successfully taught the vast majority of Year 1 students the basics of learning to read by Tier 1 and where necessary, Tier 2 teaching, we can afford to provide these remaining students with the individual support they need.

Some of these students may need this support for some time, but this is a far more manageable proposition with a smaller number of students.

Monitoring progress

With this three tier Response to Intervention model in place, most, if not all, children will learn to read, given the necessary time and resources.

The RtI model does not stop at the end of Year 1. It’s important to monitor all students’ reading progress closely, especially for the first three years of schooling.

By following these models, it’s not too much to ask to expect all of our children to learn to read.

The Conversation

Kevin Wheldall, Emeritus Professor of Education, Macquarie University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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Not My Review: In Order to Live, by Yeonmi Park

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Not My Review: Carve the Mark, by Veronica Roth

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Grolier Codex ruled genuine: what the oldest manuscript to survive Spanish conquest reveals

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Elizabeth Graham, UCL

The Maya were, at their height, one of the world’s great civilisations. In the “classic” period, from AD 250–900, Maya cities with monumental architecture and huge populations spread across a large area through what is now Mexico, Belize, Guatemala and western Honduras. Extensive trade networks connected the Maya to the rest of Mesoamerica, producing the dynamic landscapes and bustling ports reported in early Spanish accounts.

Much of what we know of the Maya comes from codices – screenfold books made of paper from the bark of a fig tree. Pages were coated in a white stucco wash and then painted by scribes with text, which was often accompanied by images. The Spanish in the 16th century reported a flourishing manuscript tradition comprising histories, prophecies, songs, genealogies and detailed information on the movements of the heavenly bodies.

Of the thousands of books produced throughout the Mayas’ long history, however, only three Maya codices were known to have survived, all written in the “postclassic” period after AD 900 and brought to Europe sometime after the conquest. They are named after the cities where they were archived: Dresden, Madrid, and Paris. Now, after years of debate over its authenticity, we can add a fourth manuscript – the Grolier Codex.

The last Maya codices

Information in the surviving codices is presented as either tables or almanacs. Tables record historical events in the absolute calendar system used by the Maya, known as the Long Count, in which time is reckoned after a fixed date. Our Gregorian calendar reckons similarly in that years are counted after the birth of Christ. The Maya counted from a day which in the Gregorian calendar is August 11, 3114 BC. Almanacs on the other hand are organised around the 260-day calendar used throughout Mesoamerica for keeping track of named days for various events. Unlike the Long Count, this 260-day calendar is cyclical, like our own repeated cycles of named weekdays and months.

Of the surviving codices, the Dresden is the most finely executed and best preserved, containing astronomical tables as well as almanacs. Some scholars have speculated that the Dresden was in the spoils of conquest sent by Cortes to Charles V, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. About eight inches high and 11 feet long when unfolded, some of the Dresden’s content is believed to have been copied from Late Classic sources, but most of it seems to have been written just before the Spanish conquest.

Six sheets of the Dresden Codex, showing the sequence of eclipses, multiplication tables and the flood.
SLUB

At 56 pages, the Madrid Codex is the longest of the surviving manuscripts. It is believed to have been written in the Yucatan region of Mexico or perhaps by Yucatec speakers living in Guatemala in the 17th century. The Madrid Codex contains about 250 almanacs concerned with a range of activities related to agriculture, rituals associated with the coming of the rains and the rain deity Chaak, the cycle of the solar year, deer hunting and trapping, the killing of war captives, carving images of the gods, and beekeeping.

The Paris Codex contains histories that have so far eluded translation, but also includes pages devoted to deities, dates, and unique set of pages devoted to constellations. Its origins are unknown, but scholars agree that the book was in use at the time of the conquest and was very likely produced in Mayapan in Mexico, around AD 1450.

A new survivor

A page from the Grolier codex.
Justin Kerr/www.mayavase.com

The fourth codex came to light in 1971, when the Grolier Club in New York City exhibited a manuscript reportedly found in a cave in Mexico. Because the manuscript was recovered by looters, rather than archaeologists, and then passed into the hands of a private collector, its authenticity has been questioned. A major critic was the famous British Maya scholar Sir J Eric S Thompson, who maintained that the codex was a forgery – modern painting on Pre-Hispanic paper.

Recently, four Maya scholars carried out an exhaustive study of the Grolier codex, bringing together and thoroughly analysing all available data on the manuscript. The overwhelming conclusion is that the codex is authentic, making it the oldest known Mesoamerican manuscript. It is believed to have been written between AD 900 and AD 1250, when Classic traditions were fast disappearing and the scribes of the Maya area were becoming heavily influenced by artistic styles associated with central and southern Mexico. As someone who works at Maya sites that thrived during this period (Lamanai in northern Belize, and Marco Gonzalez on Ambergris Caye), the relatively early date of the manuscript makes it especially exciting to me.

The manuscript’s authenticity has been supported in several ways. Details in the Grolier Codex of astronomical tables and gods are what would be expected for the early Postclassic period. The manufacturing of the paper and the book all match what we know about Maya paper-making traditions, and radiocarbon analysis dates the codex to the end of the Early Postclassic period, around AD 900–1250. The appearance of red sketch lines beneath the black ink of the final version matches what is known of Maya painting methods, especially methods in use at Chichen Itza in the Yucatan. The proportions and conventions of the way bodies are drawn match works that span the period from Chichen Itza’s peak until the conquest.

The Grolier contains astronomical Venus tables and day signs, but the later Dresden, Madrid and Paris codices are marked by more complex grammar, explanatory texts and denser imagery. It seems the Grolier is a scaled-down work meant for use by individuals less skilled in reading and writing, but capable of keeping time and linking the days, the gods and their significance to the cycles of Venus.

That so few Maya books have survived is partly owing to the humid tropical climate, which is not conducive to preserving paper. Only rarely are codices encountered by archaeologists – and then as unreadable stucco fragments. In the 16th century, however, the Spanish invaders described vast numbers of books on a range of topics in use by the Maya. Their loss is attributable to the Spanish friars, who believed all Maya books promoted heresy and burned them. The most zealous was Diego de Landa, a Franciscan friar who served as bishop of Yucatan, who burned thousands of books. It is a tragedy that has left just four remaining, with the Grolier Codex taking its place as the oldest of these remarkable manuscripts.

The Conversation

Elizabeth Graham, Professor of Mesoamerican Archaeology, UCL

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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As Man Booker winner Paul Beatty is about to find out, literary celebrity changes everything

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Rebecca Braun, Lancaster University

Paul Beatty has won the Man Booker prize, becoming the first American to win the award since it was opened up to authors outside the Commonwealth in 2013. Most won’t yet have heard of the 54-year-old author of The Sellout, a satire of US racial politics. Because if one thing united this year’s shortlist, it was the lack of literary celebrity.

As the Man Booker website itself commented, of the six authors shortlisted, only Levy had even been heard of before in Booker circles. All were on the list on the literary merit of their books. But celebrity such as the Booker changes all this.

Literature is generally held to be the opposite of popular culture, something that requires solitude and sustained engagement with words and ideas beyond the everyday. So its relationship with celebrity, that most visual and ephemeral of phenomena, is in some ways unique.

It is certainly true that even a very famous writer is unlikely to pack out a football stadium, although the award of the Nobel Prize to Bob Dylan, coupled with his signature failure to acknowledge it, must make the literary establishment check their assumptions about both literature and celebrity. But what is peculiar about literary celebrity is that it is not about “the literary” at all. It is about our obsessions with the biographical person.

Elena who?

Enter the author. Following the announcement of any major literary prize in the UK and Europe, the immediate focus falls on the author’s biography. In the case of Elena Ferrante, as we have recently seen, this public hunger for the personal can suppress pretty much everything else, including the actual writing. Although Ferrante’s efforts to keep her private person out of the public eye are as extreme as the Italian journalist Claudio Gatti’s distasteful obsession with tracking her down, her dislike of the celebrity machine is shared by the many other authors who also try to shift attention back to their books.

Beatty clung to his after the first awkward minutes during which he foundered on the podium after winning the prize, clearly uncomfortable with having to share his immediate thoughts and emotions with the international media. “Maybe I should talk about the book a bit,” he suggested. But his book will not hide him now. Herta Müller’s claim that it was her books that won the Nobel Prize in 2009 could not do anything to stop speculation about her hairstyle and choice of dress doing the rounds in the international broadsheets.

Beatty will also have to get used to the invariable discussion of the cash, and whether it is really desirable for one author to hit the jackpot at the exclusion of everybody else. Mention of money sullies the literary for some.

All of this could be uncomfortable for Beatty, who told the Booker dinner guests of how he cried with joy in front of readers in Detroit some years back when he read aloud from his work for the first time. He had realised just how perfectly it replicated the language in his head. This touching tale from an author who loves his craft made up for his being, in his own words, “woefully underprepared” for speaking as a celebrity at the gala dinner.

Not so the publishers, who have been working up to this for months and will now take every opportunity they can to push their product with shiny stickers and prime displays, just as the laws of celebrity require. Beatty should expect to have numerous meetings with numerous publicists lined up to expedite sales at home and abroad. He may start to feel a little bit like Beyoncé. Unlike Beyoncé, however, literary celebrity doesn’t travel. This could be his writerly salvation.

Beatty making his winning speech.
John Phillips/PA Wire

Beyond English

Although the English-speaking book market is huge and highly influential, it is still just one geographically-bounded market, and not a very cohesive one at that.

Julian Barnes has a strong following in the UK. But he is not such a big deal in the US, where he is (justifiably) described as particularly British. Jonathan Franzen is an A-list literary celebrity in New York, and he’s pretty famous in the UK, but the further east he travels, the more he is in need of mediators. While still a well-known face in Germany, he mainly goes there to bird watch.

Travelling back the other way, Joël Dicker’s French blockbuster The Truth about the Harry Quebert Affair sold 2m copies in Europe, but bombed in the US. Just 13,000 of Penguin’s 125,000 copies sold on its much trumpeted launch, and reviews quickly turned negative. Routinely accosted in his home town of Geneva, he is safe in New York.

Can Beatty take some comfort from these regional quirks that accompany even bestsellers? “I love being lost,” he quipped on the stage as he searched for words. “It’s the only way I get anywhere.” He has been found for English readers, but once his book starts to travel to other places, there are no guarantees that the same piece of writing will arrive as set off. There could be an escape route here.

Readerships are diverse, knowledge and expectations are different, and the more mediators are needed (translators, foreign-language editors, international rights departments), the more the book becomes detached from its biographical author. Some famous authors make it on a global stage, for sure. But there is often remarkably little left of the original author by then.

So here’s a plan for Beatty. He can take the money and settle down to write somewhere where English is not the primary language. He doesn’t have to deny the literary establishment entirely like Bob Dylan, but he could look to put more of the rest of the world on the literary map. Not by selling books there, but by writing them. That would be another kind of sellout – one that might just make people stop and think.

The Conversation

Rebecca Braun, Senior Lecturer in Languages and Cultures, Lancaster University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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Tipped to win Nobel literature prize, Kenya’s Ngugi misses out — again

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Peter Kimani, The Aga Khan University Graduate School of Media and Communications (GSMC)

Kenyan author Ngugi wa Thiong’o was the bookies’ favourite for the second year to win the Nobel prize in literature. But singer songwriter Bob Dylan won it for creating “new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition”. But, as Kenyan academic Peter Kimani tells The Conversation Africa’s Julius Maina, this doesn’t take the sheen off one of Africa’s greatest living writers.

Who is Ngugi wa Thiong’o?

Ngugi wa Thiong’o is regarded as one of Africa’s greatest living writers. He grew up in what became known as Kenya’s White Highlands at the height of British colonialism. Unsurprisingly, his writing examines the legacy of colonialism and the intricate relationships between locals seeking economic and cultural emancipation and the local elites serving as agents of neo-colonisers.

The great expectations for the new country, as captured in Ngugi’s seminal play, The Black Hermit, anticipated the disillusionment that followed. His fiction, from the foundational trilogy of Weep Not, Child, The River Between and A Grain of Wheat, amplify those expectations, before the optimism gives way in Petals of Blood, and is replaced by disillusionment.

What sets Ngugi above and apart from the hundreds of other African writers?

African fiction is fairly young. Ngugi stands in the continent’s pantheon of writers who started writing when Africa’s decolonisation gained momentum. In a certain sense, the writers were involved in constructing new narratives that would define their people. But Ngugi’s recognition goes beyond his pioneering role: his writing resonates with many across Kenya and Africa.

One could also recognise Ngugi’s consistency at churning out high-quality stories about Africa’s contemporary society. This he has done in a manner that illustrates his commitment to equality and social justice.

He has done much more in scholarship. His treatise, Decolonising the Mind, now a foundational text in post-colonial studies, illustrates his versatility. His ability to spin the yarns while commenting on the politics that goes into literary production of marginal literature is a very rare combination.

Finally, one could talk about Ngugi’s cultural and political activism. This precipitated his yearlong detention without trial in 1977. He attributes his detention to his rejection of English and embracing his Gikuyu language as his vehicle of expression.

Which work or works best illustrate his thinking?

It’s hard to pick a favourite from Ngugi’s over two dozen texts. But there is concurrence among critics that A Grain of Wheat, which was voted among Africa’s best 100 novels at the turn of the last century, stands out for its stylistic experimentation and complexity of characters.

Others consider the novel as the last signpost before Ngugi’s work became overly political. For other critics, it’s Wizard of the Crow – which came out in 2004, after nearly two decades of waiting – that encapsulates Ngugi’s creative finesse. It utilises many literary tropes, including magical realism, and addresses the politics of African development and the shenanigans by the political elite to maintain the status quo.

What are Ngugi’s lasting contributions to African literature?

Without a doubt, Africa would be poorer without the efforts of Ngugi and other pioneering writers to tell the African story. He is also an important figure in post-colonial studies. His constant questioning of the privileging of the English language and culture in Kenya’s national discourse saw him lead a movement that led to the scrapping of the Department of English at the University of Nairobi and replaced by the Department of Literature that placed African literature and its diasporas at the centre of scholarship.

Ngugi is still active in writing and his latest offering is the third instalment of his memoir, Birth of a Dreamweaver that looks back on his years at Makerere University in Uganda. This is the period when he published his novels, Weep Not, Child and The River Between, while still an undergraduate. Also at this time he wrote the play, The Black Hermit, which was performed as part of Uganda’s independence celebrations in 1962.

His work has been translated into more than 30 world languages.

Ngugi has appeared on the list of favourites to win the Literature Nobel for a number of years. This was yet another year.

Yes indeed, Ngugi has been among the bookies’ favourite for the past couple of years. But since the workings of the Nobel award committee remain secret —- the list of the committee’s deliberations are kept secret for 50 years —- its choice for this year, the American singer Bob Dylan raises interesting questions about the Nobel committee’s interpretation of artistic production as writing.

As one unimpressed pundit commented on Twitter,

“the idea that Dylan is a greater writer (rather than song versifier) than Philip Roth is, frankly, absurd.”

But author Salman Rushdie, who bookies listed among this year’s possible winners, commented:

“From Orpheus to Faiz, song & poetry have been closely linked. Dylan is the brilliant inheritor of the bardic tradition. Great choice.”

The Conversation

Peter Kimani, Lecturer, The Aga Khan University Graduate School of Media and Communications (GSMC)

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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In honouring Dylan, the Nobel Prize judges have made a category error

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Jen Webb, University of Canberra

In 1920, Rudyard Kipling (Nobel Prize in Literature 1907), published The Conundrum of the Workshops. This poem about review culture features the Devil as “first, most dread” critic who responds to human creative outputs with: “it’s pretty, but is it art?”, a review that hurls the makers into confusion, rivalry and anguish. What could be worse, for an artist, than to discover that what you were making is not art after all?

Social media has taken over the Devil’s role as “most dread” reviewer, and all night the twitterverse has been alive with commentators expressing their outrage at, or rejoicing over, the decision of the Nobel Prize Committee to award the Literature prize to musician and songwriter Bob Dylan. As journalist and writer Jason Diamond tweeted: “My timeline is like watching a ‘Dylan deserved the Nobel’ vs ‘Dylan didn’t deserve the Nobel’ ping pong match.”

Much of this ping-pong commentary operates less according to the rules of evidence and argument than according to the rules of quarrel; of personal taste; of anger directed at established privilege; and of teasing Boomer nostalgia.

Billy Collins, one of the most popular poets in America, supports Dylan’s win.
David Shankbone/Flickr, CC BY

On the Affirmative team we have not-a-poet Salman Rushdie tweeting that “From Orpheus to Faiz, song & poetry have been closely linked. Dylan is the brilliant inheritor of the bardic tradition”.

And there’s actual poet Billy Collins, who affirms the prize because Dylan’s lyrics are “in the 2 percent club of songwriters whose lyrics are interesting on the page”.

From the team for the Negative, there’s editor Chloe Angyal: “Literally zero women were awarded Nobels this year. Maybe someone can write a poignant, gravelly, somewhat atonal folk song about that”.

Or the writer Shay Stewart Bouley who tweeted about “peak white man music.” Or music journalist Everett True, who pokes fun at the committee: “Bob Dylan winning a Nobel Prize for Literature is like your third-rate English teacher at school, trying to look ‘cool’.”

Not all commentators have relied on personal taste or social politics: several observe something that struck me too: there seems to have been a category error in the awarding of this prize.

Novelist Jodi Picoult tweets: “I’m happy for Bob Dylan. #ButDoesThisMeanICanWinAGrammy?” From novelist Joanne Harris: “Is this the first time that a back catalogue of song lyrics has been judged eligible for a literary prize?” More bluntly, from novelist Jeff VanderMeer:

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Is it possible that this award was determined according to the sort of logic set out by The Logician in Ionesco’s Rhinoceros: The Nobel Prize in Literature is awarded only to those who have created literature. Bob Dylan was awarded the Prize. Therefore Dylan is a creator of literature?

Perhaps. I am very interested in the relationship between song lyrics and poetry, and it is a close relationship – the first poems were almost certainly sung – but centuries ago, the two creative modes parted company. They operate now according to a different logic, depend on different traditions, and are located within very different ecosystems. This is not a question of relative quality; it is a question of categories.

So, whether I admire Dylan’s body of work or not, whether I am a fan or not, I think the Nobel Prize Committee has made a category mistake. They awarded the prize to Dylan “for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition”.

Why not Patti Smith?
Alessandro Garofalo/Reuters

And I don’t argue with this at all. But does that mean his output is “work in the field of literature”? Not for my money. Dylan is a musician; he has been well recognised for his contributions to music, and more broadly to cultural life.

When Swedish Academy member Per Wastberg gushes that “He is probably the greatest living poet”, I can only say that Mr Wastberg should not be let anywhere near a literature prize.

And – taking my own place on the team for the Negative – if it must go to a songwriter, why Dylan? Did he need the money more than, say, Patti Smith or Joni Mitchell or Aretha Franklin? Has he not had enough public attention? And were there really no writers – no poets, novelists, essayists, no people who have spent their lives in the field of literature – considered Nobel-worthy?

It’s very good to see that literature can still spark passion and outpourings of personal commentary; but I can’t help but read this decision as one that was discourteous to members of the field of literature, dismissive of women’s achievements, and fundamentally kinda nostalgic. Let me leave the last (tongue-in-cheek) word to writer Leah Kaminsky: “No woman wins any Nobel prize this year. Oh the times they ain’t a changin’.”

The Conversation

Jen Webb, Director of the Centre for Creative and Cultural Research, University of Canberra

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.