Ezzedine Enaya
The expatriate intellectual grows like a wild seedling searching for a presence in a soil other than his own, and in a climate where he is not accustomed to growth.
Therefore, the different reality often forces the immigrant intellectual to live on the outskirts, on the margins of the new reality, far from the center and the controls of the institution. He is content to maintain his physical existence, postponing his dreams and ambitions to an unknown date. The journey of searching for integration may be long or short, and may never come, as many of those who are tempted to immigrate do not know the consequences of what the days hold.
It is not only the illegal immigrant who gives up on dreams, but the intellectual and the student share it. It is striking that the temptation of immigration blurs awareness and underestimates the consequences. I have noticed this in many university and non-university colleagues, who work in the field of culture, who are motivated to immigrate as if the process is a passing outing.
In the diaspora, there are many wandering intellectuals, forced by the new living conditions to change course and give up what was on their minds before departure. Because the battle to settle residence permits, arrange legal status, and find decent work is a fierce and renewed battle that may drain the immigrant and take the last of his remaining energy and determination.
It is easy for the floating intellectual to become an additional asset in the world of the marginalized in the West, so his main concern becomes the morsel with which he satisfies his hunger and the shelter he seeks in the social shelters that the marginalized resort to when their paths are stranded. Many imagine that immigration is the ultimate achievement, while the immigrant is faced with difficulties every time he goes a long way.
Dreamers often collide with an unimaginable reality that robs them of their remaining ties to the world of culture and intellectuals, and “Covid” has made matters worse with the coldness in relations, stagnation in communications, and stagnation in the work of administrations. It is noticeable that most intellectuals who dream of immigration come to the West carrying purist visions of the world of research, creativity, writers and studies, devoid of realism and sometimes filled with naivety.
On the basis that this environment is free from the disadvantages of exploitation, opportunism, discrimination and frenzied competition, and that talents and abilities are appreciated and capabilities are welcomed, due to the prevalence of many myths about the welcoming West and the repellent East.
It is enough for a person to be a university graduate, poet or writer to be welcomed and revered. Therefore, the dreaming intellectual hopes for a quick integration into the circles of Western intellectuals working in the fields of journalism, teaching, cultural circles, artistic fields and the like.
In fact, those who control these sectors, as soon as one of them becomes aware of the fragility, need and poverty of the newcomer, turn him into a prize in his eyes. It is brought closer to the extent that it adds to the improvement of their writing, research and academic projects, and at this point another journey begins for the immigrant intellectual with blackmail, which is sometimes coercive and imposed.
Few escape from this miserable situation, because cultural exploitation is worse for the intellectual than material exploitation, in which he suffers the worst types of forced labor.
Among the Western contractors in the field of culture, especially those who invest in the culture of the East, are those who produce translations, studies and research for them, and they may raise you to the position of editor-in-chief or include you in the advisory boards in research centers and periodicals. So that the ignorant person may think that his cultural contribution is based on respect and appreciation for him, as a partner in the achievement.
With the accumulation of experiences and the multiplicity of facts, he becomes aware of the horror of exploitation and the baseness of morals in a field that he thought was innocent of faults. In fact, the fragile Eastern intellectual is nothing but a bridge to pass over, and a facade for display only. Even if those in charge of these institutions tell you at length about their universal leftist convictions, and that all free people, in the East or the West, are one front against savage capitalism and against the commodification of knowledge.
Many cultural contractors in the West occupy the orientalism and Arabism departments, and many fields of archaeological and anthropological research and the like, and their names are on everyone’s lips and their fame is widespread at home and abroad, but dealing with them closely reveals to one that they are men of contracting and profitable deals, not owners of scientific research projects or civilizational dialogue, as they repeat whenever they have the opportunity to ascend high platforms.
You see them hunting for generous awards in the East, and some of them submit one request after another, without shame, begging for such and such an award on the grounds that they are the most deserving of it. There are those who invent fake cultural projects (magazines, research institutions, translation works, holding seminars) to create a false pretense to blackmail the good people of the East under the pretext of serving Arab, Chinese, Persian or other cultures.
This suspicious situation prompts the immigrant intellectual to pause and reflect, in an attempt to take stock of what is revealed to his eyes of the entrepreneurial work in the cultural sector, in which interest prevails and creativity diminishes. There are Western names in the field of Orientalism, and in the field of Arabic literature studies and translation from Arabic, who in the last stage of their academic journey turn into godfathers rather than flags and references, arranging deals between the interior and the exterior and nothing else.
Based on the accumulated credit of fame in the past years, their undertaking of any cultural achievement becomes based on a material evaluation, and is often transferred to collaborators, assistants and students. I once attended a verbal altercation between an Arabized Arab godmother and a hired Arab translator. Because the godmother was not paying attention, her name was dropped from the completed work and did not appear on the main cover, which led to a major catastrophe.
The question arises: what role does the expatriate intellectual have?
In fact, this intellectual should not be burdened with what he cannot bear, nor should he be burdened with commitment, or asked to become a bridge for ideas and news to cross, but a sincere testimony from him about a reality whose secrets we have always lacked from within is sufficient.
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Ezzedine Enaya – Professor at the University of Rome – Italy
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