Govand Khalid Azeez
Macquarie University, Humanities, Faculty Member
- Dr. Govand Khalid Azeez is a Lecturer in the Department of Modern History, Politics and International Relations at Ma... moreDr. Govand Khalid Azeez is a Lecturer in the Department of Modern History, Politics and International Relations at Macquarie University, Sydney. He is a philosopher whose trans-disciplinary work sits at the intersection of political economy (class inequality, core-periphery relations, neo-imperialism), political philosophy (history of ideas, theories of subjectivity, revolution and radical change), and History of Technology and the future of global society in the face of novel and unprecedented technological systems and power (Artificial Intelligence, big data analytics, biotech, etc.).
Dr. Azeez was a Visiting Fellow in the Department of History at Harvard University, Cambridge. He was subsequently nominated for the Junior Fellowship in the Society of Fellows at Harvard University by his doctoral thesis examiner A.J. Meyer Emeritus Professor of Middle East History Roger Owen. Dr. Azeez was also a visiting fellow in the Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies (MESAS) at Columbia University, New York. Dr. Azeez has published extensively in journals like Research and Social Epistemology: A Journal of Knowledge, Culture and Policy, Middle East Critique, the Journal of Intercultural Studies, [full journal name], Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies, Critique and Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies, amongst others.
Dr. Azeez's current research interests include a Marxist examination of how the local and global symbiotic relationship between capitalism and the state is manufacturing novel instruments of production and systems, technologies and techniques of exploitation, expropriation and commodification, and how the asymmetrical accumulation of capital and power shapes social relations and ecological crises.edit
In the context of the reconfigured global relations of production amidst the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR), technology has rapidly become the overarching question of our times. Apropos the future of humanity, key theoretical... more
In the context of the reconfigured global relations of production amidst the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR), technology has rapidly become the overarching question of our times. Apropos the future of humanity, key theoretical questions have dominated scholarly debates. Namely, does technology qua 'universal' science bring with it the promised possibility of an emancipated, thriving society? Or, is technology best epistemologically understood as a geist in itself, autonomously and violently determining the course of humanity worldwide? In engaging with these critical questions, this research nuances contemporary philosophical debates at the intersection of technology, authoritarian power and capital. It does so by reconceptualising technology as a sociohistorical process and a site of class struggle, placing it within the dialectics of global relations of production and historical apparatuses of state-system. Through an in-depth political-economic study of technology in the Middle East-from telegram and steam engine to electricity and Artificial Intelligence-it situates technology within capitalist expansion, colonial and imperial power, expropriation, commodification, hierarchy, and social stratification. As such, it lays bare technology as an inherent site of opportunities, conflict, struggle and contradiction, between the imperial core, state power, and the capitalist structures of accumulation; and its inverse, the periphery, dominated colonized masses and the global working classes.
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The global capitalist order is premised on the impossibility of change. Under the veneer of a harmonious oneness, capitalist totality spreads in predatory motion—its expansion as commensurate and homologous with the deep environmental,... more
The global capitalist order is premised on the impossibility of change. Under the veneer of a harmonious oneness, capitalist totality spreads in predatory motion—its expansion as commensurate and homologous with the deep environmental, economic, and socio-political contradictions and crises. Contrary to its ideological assertion of the ‘end’ of history and ‘death of politics’, recent social ruptures have demonstrated that global capitalism is haunted by anti-status quo social forces and movements.
This article examines the possibility of social change at the crux of the global system. Social change is envisaged as a dialectical continuum formed apropos three interconnecting, fluid topological nodes: ubiquitous, significant, and transformational. Grounded on this materialist ontology, the article argues that the structural-conjunctural contradictions and agential interests congealed in the Arab Spring may present the qualitative emergence of new, unknown possibilities. Possibilities that reveal that global capitalism is a site of ongoing struggle, and history an open-ended process.
This article examines the possibility of social change at the crux of the global system. Social change is envisaged as a dialectical continuum formed apropos three interconnecting, fluid topological nodes: ubiquitous, significant, and transformational. Grounded on this materialist ontology, the article argues that the structural-conjunctural contradictions and agential interests congealed in the Arab Spring may present the qualitative emergence of new, unknown possibilities. Possibilities that reveal that global capitalism is a site of ongoing struggle, and history an open-ended process.
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Perhaps, today we can reverse Hegel's objective idealist formula in The Philosophy of History. It is not reason but foolery that rules the world and foolery is the false-true, eternally apparent and the absolutely powerful. The Fool in... more
Perhaps, today we can reverse Hegel's objective idealist formula in The Philosophy of History. It is not reason but foolery that rules the world and foolery is the false-true, eternally apparent and the absolutely powerful. The Fool in 'thought', orientation, action and expression (destruction of the planet, submission to traditional and modern hierarchies, deification of private property, granting free movement to corporates and capital over beings, mass caging of the vulnerable, populism, virtual lynching, 'cancel culture', hoarding toilet paper and canola oil, etc.) poses an existential social and planetary threat. All of this begs the urgent question, who is the being that commits to such acts? And, what social forces, processes and apparatuses give birth to or encourage the emergence of this being? In other words, who or what is the Fool, and what is their tomfoolery? Here via a historical materialist account I put forward eleven ontological, epistemological and ethical theses on what constitutes, manufactures and defines the properties of the Fool. It would seem that foolishness is one subset of the set of alienation derived from statist hierarchical relations and the regime of private property. A Fool is always alienated but an alienated being is not necessarily a Fool.
Research Interests: History, Sociology, Cultural Studies, Psychology, Comparative Literature, and 15 moreAnthropology, International Relations, Political Economy, Philosophy, Ethics, Philosophy of Science, Philosophy Of Religion, Social Sciences, Political Theory, Marxism, International Studies, Political Science, German Idealism, Neoliberalism, and Moral Philosophy
What exactly is Islamophobia? How can we best define this cultural force and ideological technique? Is it an anachronistic cultural construct emerging out of the old engines of the colonial apparatus, amongst them economicism, culturalism... more
What exactly is Islamophobia? How can we best define this cultural force and ideological technique? Is it an anachronistic cultural construct emerging out of the old engines of the colonial apparatus, amongst them economicism, culturalism and what Mignolo calls the ‘imperial racial matrix’? Is it a contemporary phenomenon shaped by the Huntingtonian ‘clash of civilizations’ hypothesis and the events of 9/11? Or, is it as some claim, the case of an individualized prejudiced logic, one amongst many in society and the existing mode of cultural production? This paper addresses these questions by exploring Islamophobia while decoding contemporary ideology in Michel Houellebecq’s oeuvre. Houellebecq’s bestsellers, as cultural artefacts, allow us to map out how culture, in conjunction with the ideological apparatus, is able to produce power-saturated politico-ontological typologies. Typologies which are indexed to the existing status quo, which in turn assigns them metaphysicalized attributes, a certain value and a predetermined fate.
Research Interests: Islamic Law, French Literature, Political Economy, Philosophy, Political Philosophy, and 15 moreSocial Sciences, Middle East Studies, Postcolonial Studies, Political Science, Identity (Culture), Race and Ethnicity, Ideology, Michel Houellebecq, Capitalism, Islamic Studies, Postcolonial Literature, Islam, Islamophobia, antisemitism and Islamophobia, and Orientalism
The ‘Yes for independence’ campaign in Iraqi Kurdistan has been predominantly explained as an act undertaken by an omni-representative political governing structure (Kurdistan Regional Government) and a homogenous ethnic group univocally... more
The ‘Yes for independence’ campaign in Iraqi Kurdistan has been predominantly explained as an act undertaken by an omni-representative political governing structure (Kurdistan Regional Government) and a homogenous ethnic group univocally voicing a ‘Yes for independence’. However, the role of what Engels calls the ‘first great cleavage of society’: the historically conflicting exploiting and exploited classes and the manner in which they influence the cause, the means of articulation and the materialisation of this ‘Yes’ have been overlooked. This paper aims to demonstrate that this ‘Yes’ is a site of contestation between these two classes and their transcendental subjective political position and real material structural condition and interests. It exposes the fallacious and reactionary ideological proposition that KRG, the instrument of a semi-feudal and semi-bourgeois class, is the universal and legitimate representative of ‘Kurdish society’ and that there is a homogenous politico-ontological typology (the ‘Kurd’) articulating a cohesive and consistent ‘Yes’ for a new state.
Research Interests: Social Movements, Humanities, Social Sciences, Marxism, Marxist Economics, and 13 moreMiddle East Studies, Kurdish Studies, Nationalism, Marxist theory, Turkey, Middle Eastern Studies, Kurdish Question in Turkey, Middle East Politics, Marxism (Political Science), Marxist political economy, Kurdish Nationalism, Karl Marx, and Kurds
The Middle East finds itself plagued by imperial and civil wars, capital ravaging and plundering its societies, dictatorships and plutocracies, the migration catastrophe, ecological crises, the rise of various forms of fundamentalism and... more
The Middle East finds itself plagued by imperial and civil wars, capital ravaging and plundering its societies, dictatorships and plutocracies, the migration catastrophe, ecological crises, the rise of various forms of fundamentalism and unimaginable poverty and inequality. Yet, today we find that, to borrow from Marx, the ‘arm of criticism’ has been hijacked by a cohort of postmodern-postcolonialist Saidians, who are unwilling or unable to provide an appropriate prognosis for these fundamental political and economic problems. Moved by cultural relativism, identitarianism, pathological religiosity, ad hominem logicality and postmodern epistemological nihilism, this epistemico-political faction has redirected scholarly critique in the region from an examination of class and private property to identity politics. Fetishising ‘alterity’, ‘hybridity’ and ‘Otherness’, dismissing the idea of a radical-truth that links the particular to the universal and impossibilizing a world beyond capital and the state, this worldview whilst always radical in tone manufactures a set of domesticated and interpellated subjectivities. Following the tradition of radical emancipatory and egalitarian positions of European and ‘Third World’ thinkers, this paper argues for a return to revolutionary universal politics
Research Interests: Marxism, Middle East Studies, Postcolonial Studies, Race and Racism, Identity (Culture), and 15 moreRace and Ethnicity, Islamic Philosophy, Identity politics, Post-Colonialism, Capitalism, Islamic Studies, Postcolonial Theory, Postcolonial Literature, Islam, Critical Race Theory and Whiteness theory, Middle East Politics, Postcolonial theory (Cultural Theory), Third world Marxisms/Tricontinental Marxisms (Mao, Postcolonialism, and Contemporary Muslim society
At the forefront of critically examining the effects of colonization on the Middle East is Edward Said’s magnum opus, Orientalism (1978). In the broadest theoretical sense, Said’s work through deconstructing colonial discourses of... more
At the forefront of critically examining the effects of colonization on the Middle East is Edward Said’s magnum opus, Orientalism (1978). In the broadest theoretical sense, Said’s work through deconstructing colonial discourses of power-knowledge, presented an epistemologico-methodological equation expressed most lucidly by Aimé Césaire, colonization=thingification. Said, arguing against that archaic historicized discourse, Orientalism, was simply postulating that colonialism and its systems of knowledges signified the colonized, in Anouar Abdel-Malek’s words, as customary, passive, non-participating and non-autonomous. Nearly four decades later, Said’s contribution has become tamed and domesticated to an extent that most heterodoxic critical endeavours in the field have become clichéd premeditated anti-Orientalist tirades. At best, these critiques are stuck at analysing the impact of power at the macro-level, polemically regurgitating jargons like “hegemony”, “misrepresentation” and “Otherness”. At worst, they have become dogmatic or ethnocentric, closing space for scholarly debate through insipid cultural relativism, pathological religiosity or pernicious Occidentalism. I argue there is a need to go beyond that old postcolonial epistemological equation through examining the follow on effects of thingification on the thingified subject’s Weltanschauung, cultural practices and more importantly, subjectivity. I aim to undertake this critical endeavour through theorizing what I call Counter-Revolutionary Discourse (CRD). This discourse is an historicized, Eurocentric-Orientalist implicit programme of action and an analytical tool, which functions as a cognitive schema and a grammar of action that assists the colonial apparatus in surveillance, gauging, ranking and subjectifying Middle Eastern subjectivity and resistance according to imperial exigencies. Through tracking the matrix of Western statements, ideas and practices, I demonstrate that imperial enthusiasts in encountering Middle Eastern revolutions, from the Mahdi, Urabi, Zaghloul, Mossadegh, the PLO and the PKK to the ‘Arab Spring’, draw on a number of Counter-Revolutionary Discourse systems of thoughts, which I argue are responsible for re-interpellating Oriental subjectivity and resistance. In the process, I put forward a new post-Saidian equation that not only transcends that tried and tested scholarly narrative, but a formula much better suited for tracing the infinite and insidious effects of neocolonial power that aims to negate the negating act: Colonization= thingification + re-interpellation of subjectivity.
Research Interests: Critical Theory, Cultural History, Cultural Studies, Social Movements, Philosophy, and 31 morePolitical Philosophy, Social Sciences, Marxism, Middle East Studies, Middle East History, Arabic Language and Linguistics, Postcolonial Studies, Islamic Contemporary Studies, Continental Philosophy, Turkish and Middle East Studies, Post-Colonialism, Postmodernism, Islamic Studies, Modern Middle East History, Middle Eastern Studies, Postcolonial Theory, Islamic History, Postcolonial Literature, Islam, Middle East Politics, Empire, Edward Said, Political Islam, Karl Marx, Middle East, Orientalism, Oriental Studies, Marxismo, Edward Said; orientalism; Anti-Westernism, Postcolonialism, and Social Science
Colonization, I postulate, has a far more profound effect on the colonized than conceptualized in Aimé Césaire's postcolonial equation, colonization = thingification. Rather, here I put forward a new postcolonial equation for tracing... more
Colonization, I postulate, has a far more profound effect on the colonized than conceptualized in Aimé Césaire's postcolonial equation, colonization = thingification. Rather, here I put forward a new postcolonial equation for tracing the infinite and insidious effects of colonialism: Colonization = thingification + re-appropriation of subjectivity. I argue that Western imperial narratives and what Edward Said calls its ‘evaluative judgment’ and ‘implicit program of action’ also subjectify the thingified subject's Weltanschauung, cultural practices and more importantly, subjectivity. I present this equation through theorizing what I call Counter-Revolutionary Discourse (CRD). This discourse is an historicized, Eurocentric-Orientalist implicit program of action and an analytical tool, which functions as a manual that assists the colonial apparatus in surveillance, gauging, ranking and subjectifying Middle Eastern subjectivity and resistance according to imperial exigencies. Through tracking the matrix of Western statements, ideas and practices, this genealogical exploration demonstrates that imperial enthusiasts, from Napoleon, Renan, Le Bon and Stoddard to Winston Churchill and David Petraeus, in encountering Middle Eastern revolutions—from the Mahdi, Urabi, Zaghloul, Mossadegh, the PLO and the PKK to the ‘Arab Spring’—draw on four Counter-Revolutionary Discourse systems of thought, which, I argue, are responsible for interpellating Oriental subjectivity and resistance, and which I denominate as: Recrudescence of Fanaticism, Progress Fetishism, Outsourcing of Agency, and the bipolar cognitive device Revolutionary Narcissism-Red Peril.
The Middle East Critique
Western Notions of Middle Eastern Revolutions 2
The Middle East Critique
Western Notions of Middle Eastern Revolutions 2
Research Interests: Critical Theory, Cultural Studies, Social Movements, Philosophy, Political Philosophy, and 45 moreMedia Studies, Media and Cultural Studies, Critical Discourse Studies, Middle East Studies, Genealogy, Cultural Heritage, Postcolonial Studies, Poststructuralism, Cultural Theory, Revolutions, Islamic Contemporary Studies, Critical Race Theory, Identity (Culture), Race and Ethnicity, Politics, Nationalism, Enlightenment, Lebanon, Culture, Resistance (Social), Middle Eastern Politics, Critical Discourse Analysis, Modernity, Islamic Studies, Michel Foucault, Middle Eastern Studies, Islam, Social movements and revolution, Theories Of The Other/Postcolonialism, Edward Said, Frantz Fanon, Karl Marx, Colonization, Orientalism, Postmodernity, Decolonization, Colonization studies, Colonisation, Muslims, Kurds, Islamic and Middle Eastern studies, Arab Spring (Arab Revolts), Arabs, Nationalism and Decolonization, and Postcolonialism
Edward Said’s Orientalism through deconstructing colonial discourses of power-knowledge, postulates that colonization for the colonized has a particular ontological finality, reification. I contend here that the process of subjection has... more
Edward Said’s Orientalism through deconstructing colonial discourses of power-knowledge, postulates that colonization for the colonized has a particular ontological finality, reification. I contend here that the process of subjection has a far more profound effect than merely reifying the colonized, to borrow from Anouar Abdel-Malek, as customary, passive, non-participating and non-autonomous. Rather, Western imperial narratives and what Said calls its “evaluative judgments” and “program of actions” also come to interpellate the reified subject’s cosmovision, agency and its forms of resistance. Focusing on the Middle East, this study is a genealogy that exposes how techniques and technologies of imperial power have symbolically and materially produced the Oriental rebel in Western history. Through re-reading institutionalized knowledges and resurrecting a counter-history, this paper reveals a hidden and buried discursive formation, one which I call counter-revolutionary discourse. I argue that this system of thought is built through dispersed and heterogeneous but power-laden statements from Aymeric and Comte de Volney to Napoleon Bonaparte, Ernest Renan, Gustave Lebon, and Thomas Friedman.
Research Interests: Critical Theory, History, Cultural History, Philosophy, Social Sciences, and 14 moreArabic Literature, Medieval History, Middle East Studies, Postcolonial Studies, Kurdish Studies, Culture, Social Media, Post-Colonialism, Michel Foucault, Postcolonial Theory, Kurdish Question in Turkey, Social movements and revolution, Middle East Politics, and Arab Spring (Arab Revolts)
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A new wave of social mobilisation has emerged in recent years. At its epicentre lies the question of monuments, statues, and edifices of colonial and statist power. These colonial commemorations sit at the intersection of interconnected,... more
A new wave of social mobilisation has emerged in recent years. At its epicentre lies the question of monuments, statues, and edifices of colonial and statist power. These colonial commemorations sit at the intersection of interconnected, local and global, historical, geospatial, and politico-economic assemblages of power. But what constitutes a colonial monument? What is its essence? And why is this radical struggle to rupture and open new futures perceived and treated like a snagged social thread, that if pulled, has the potential to unravel and obliterate the entire socio-cultural fabric of capitalist system and its Eurocentric history? This paper aims to address these questions by demonstrating that the monument is polysemic and mediates different kinds of phenomenological and political stimuli and output to different subjects and social forces. This phenomenological division is linked to historicosociological polarisations anchored in the nexus of colonial historical apparatuses, the state, class, and private property.
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Assessing and examining the causes and impact of 9/11.
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What exactly is Islamophobia? How can we best define this cultural force and ideological technique? Is it an anachronistic cultural construct emerging out of the old engines of the colonial apparatus, amongst them acquisition of private... more
What exactly is Islamophobia? How can we best define this cultural force and ideological technique? Is it an anachronistic cultural construct emerging out of the old engines of the colonial apparatus, amongst them acquisition of private property and wealth, culturalist paradigms and the ‘imperial racial matrix’? Is it a contemporary phenomenon shaped by the Huntingtonian ‘clash of civilizations’ hypothesis and the events of 9/11? Or, is it, as some claim, the case of an individualized prejudiced logic, one amongst many in society and the existing mode of cultural production? This paper decodes Islamophobia in contemporary capitalist society by exploring Michel Houellebecq’s oeuvre. Houellebecq’s bestsellers, as cultural artefacts, allow us to ideologically map out how culture in conjunction with the ideological apparatus is able to produce power-saturated politico-ontological typologies. Typologies which are indexed to the existing status quo, and as such, are assigned metaphysicalized attributes, a certain value and a predetermined fate.
Research Interests: Cultural Studies, Political Sociology, Sociology of Religion, French Literature, Philosophy, and 15 moreMarxism, Identity (Culture), Islamic Education, Michel Houellebecq, Literary Theory, Capitalism, Islamic Studies, Islamic History, Islam, Islamophobia, antisemitism and Islamophobia, Racism, Identity, Islamophobia, Islamophobia and Media, Houellebecq, and Islamophobia In Europe
Focusing on the Middle East, this study is a genealogical excavation and a rehistoricization of Western notions of Oriental resistance. Through resurrecting subjugated local knowledges and by default, a counter-history, this paper exposes... more
Focusing on the Middle East, this study is a genealogical excavation and a rehistoricization of Western notions of Oriental resistance. Through resurrecting subjugated local knowledges and by default, a counter-history, this paper exposes a concealed and somewhat overlooked discursive formation, one which I call Counter-Revolutionary Discourse. This discursive structure, I postulate, is built through dispersed and heterogeneous but power- laden statements from Robert the Monk and Hughes of Payens to Napoleon, Ernest Renan, Gustave Lebon, Winston Churchill, Lothrop Stoddard, Henry Kissinger and David Petraeus. In this process, I demonstrate that Western hegemonic beliefs, norms, principles and truths around Oriental revolutions are fundamentally empty and hollow, built on nothing but a solidified and internalized falsehood erected into a lofty truth for the purpose of colonization and denying the Other the right to resist.