Dang, if you want to talk about how the Middle East/South Asia is full of contradictions. I think that’s boring and you should consider not doing that anymore.

So, this article in the NYTimes about these Pakistani brothers that run a fetish and bondage factory  is making the rounds.  In total,  I think the piece is totally compelling, highlighting some of the complex economic relationships that the Pakistani state has with the the West and perhaps highlighting the histories of objects we take for granted. Furthermore, the piece offers a varied gaze from the Talib-Pakistan-failed-state rhetoric we we find ourselves obsessed with at the moment.  And certainly, i’m way invested in all that is “queer” in Middle East / Central and South Asia — which is more about challenging certain muscular concepts about nationalism,  Islam, etc. and is generally more of internal conversation.

However, the effort of this article and others like it (Pakistan: Struggling to see the Shards of a Country) seem to work towards this old-shallow point of – Gee! Pakistan, Iran, Turkey, etc.  are full of contraditions! WTF?! The “Pakistan: Struggling to see the Shards…”  seems particularly invested in this project and is otherwise uses totally sloppy language. And I quote, “There is rural Pakistan, where two-thirds of the country lives in conditions that approximate the 13th century.” Because poverty just approximates ye-olde-times living, right? Right.

So, let’s back it up to the contradiction/paradox  stuff. If we consider the fact that the human experience is complex and that there is nothing real or legitimate about nation-states, citizenship, etc. Certainly, one could say that all societies are full of contradictions and we will forever be struggling to see the shards of XYZ. 

It seems like lots of the journalism coming out of the Middle East / South Asia is like being in some college, but not just any college, some uber liberal college where the students gesticulate wildly when they speak and call things “interesting” far too much and are far too burnt out (I have no idea, what this must be like). Anyways, it seems that now we’re all writing for the NYTimes or making a film about state-sponsored sex-change operations in Iran and talking about how paradoxical XYZ Islamic state is.

I guess my problem is, is that I take the world far too personally. I have trouble beating back my training as an anthropologist and the ways in which I understand people, culture, what-not.  I read this piece on Counterpunch a couple months ago by Brian McKenna, advocating for some collapsing of anthropology and journalism.  He wrote:

We need a new wave of writers and journalists, unafraid to do the most radical thing imaginable: simply describe reality. Their ranks will largely come from freethinkers, dissenting academics and bored mainstream journalists who rediscover what got them interested in anthropology in the first place, telling the truth.

Word.

Also  in the news:

• Afghanistan’s only pig
• The West Bank Archipelago