The Curation of Jordan's National Identity
Christina Tadros
(FR) Colonial Effects : The Making of National Identity in Jordan, de Joseph A. Massad, publié en 2001, s’adresse à la création du nationalisme jordanien et de sa culture en tant qu’ensemble parvenant d’une culture coloniale typique et atypique. Massad identifie le rôle joué par les institutions à la création de cette identité nationale, avec une réelle attention portée à l’armée et aux droits, deux institutions clés aux rôles disciplinaires et autoritaires. Cette dissertation conduit une évaluation des propos de Massad, ainsi qu’une analyse de ce concept d’identité jordanienne ; l’origine de cette identité jordanienne proviendrait du passé colonial britannique, étendu par les droits d’inclusion et exclusion entre la Palestine et la Jordanie.
Published in 2001, Joseph A. Massad’s Colonial Effects: The Making of National Identity in Jordan studies the “production of national identity and national culture within Jordan as both a typical and atypical post-colonial nation-state.”[1] Massad identifies the role played by institutions in forming and producing a national identity, with a clear focus on both the law and military as key institutions with a judicial and disciplinary role. Massad brings forth Louis Althusser’s study of ideology and ideological state apparatus to further reinforce his argument.[2] Althusser suggests two elements which contribute to the superstructure of a nation: a repressive state apparatus (RSA) and an ideological state apparatus (ISA). The base consists of material forces of production that shape the Superstructure and impacts the RSA, while the ISA maintains the base and the social relations of production. The RSA ultimately impacts the ISA. The RSA consists of institutions that act with force if rules are not upheld; this includes the military, the police, the legal system, and the political system. On the other hand, the ISA are institutions which act collectively to construct the ideologies and values that govern the behavior of people in the nation, which includes schools, religion, families, and media.[3] Massad argues that these two institutions, the law and the military, were formed by and served colonial rule, yet ironically played a pivotal role in granting national independence in post-colonial Jordan.[4] He outlines how the Jordanian national identity was further bolstered by the adoption of gender-laden vocabulary and terminology from 1921 up until this day.[5]
Massad structures the book in a thematic and historical manner, where the opening chapter discusses how the judicial system was used as a mode of developing a standard national identity. In his analysis, Massad emphasizes the Organic laws (which outlined the normal laws of the constitution, serving as the foundation of the state) and the Nationality laws (which delineated the obligations and rights of citizenship within the jurisdiction) in 1928.[6] These laws set clear definitions and criteria for who is Jordanian and who is a foreigner, where women and Bedouins are categorized as the latter.[7] In his second chapter, Massad explains how the Jordanian society was affected by the emplaced legal structure. For example, Bedouins had their own legal framework and were accounted to the military rather than to the government since 1924.[8] Bedouins were only granted rights in the electoral law in the 1960s, yet the law still forbade members of the armed forces from voting and the majority of armed forces were Bedouins.[9] The third chapter brings forward both the authentic and ingenuine roles taken in forming the Jordanian military. It is here where Massad brings the reader’s attention to the British commander of the Arab Legion, Sir John Bagot Glubb. Also known as Glubb Pasha from 1939 to 1955, Massad analyzes Glubb’s agenda of de-Bedouinizing and subsequently re-Bedouinizing the Bedouins in a way that catered to his preconceived Orientalist notions of what the Bedouins should be and how they should behave.[10] The fourth chapter documents the rising anti-colonial attitudes which culminated in the nationalization of the army. This “Jordanization” of the military led to the removal of Glubb Pasha, as well as other supplementary British officials which questioned Jordanian loyalty under King Hussain.[11] In the fifth and final chapter, Massad delves into the social and political ramifications of Palestinian refugees in Jordan, particularly from the 1948 and 1967 Israeli invasion, which ultimately affected Jordanian demographics and territorial contraction and expansion.[12] Palestinian existence on Jordanian territory further shaped the Jordanian national identity as it created a demarcation of who is and who is not Jordanian, which was vividly seen during King Abdallah I’s annexation of the West Bank in 1950.
Colonial Effects gives readers a clear explanation and example of how national identity can be manufactured and fabricated through a nation’s RSA’s and ISA’s. It also showcases how the inorganic creation of Jordanian national identity waters the seeds of nationalism by creating a sense of belonging within the respective borders of a state. This is shown through Glubb Pasha’s policies while he was stationed in Transjordan. He had a vision of what the Arab Bedouins “should look like:” what they should wear, how they should act, what they should know, what the Bedouin “should view as tradition and culture,” how to reach modernity, and who the Bedouin “should consider a friend and whom he should regard as foe.”[13] In this regard, Glubb aimed to cast the new Bedouin national identity into his Orientalist-codified mold, which he believed was the ‘true’ Orient.[14]
Glubb re-created his own version of the Bedouin through various means. He changed the Bedouins’ national dress; instead of their long dresses, they were forced to wear uniforms with pants and boots.[15] Moreover, there was a constant comparison of the Bedouins’ conception of masculinity to that of the West, with critiques decrying the Bedouins’ “feminine appearance” as one that is similar to a “Victorian landlady in curling pins.”[16] Some Bedouins had long hair, which Glubb forced them to cut after British officers in the Middle East previously referred to Glubb’s Bedouins as “Glubb's Girls.”[17] Moreover, Glubb controlled the education system in Jordan at this time. He only taught Bedouins military education because nonmilitary education would “cause mayhem and instability” as “intellectual pride is a common and unattractive quality” of the Arabs.[18] As Glubb supervised these military schools, it was here that the production of Glubb’s imagined Transjordanian was born, and a “gendered Transjordanian nationalist agency was first conceived.”[19] Other ISA’s including culture, food, sports, and music were all state apparatuses which were transformed by Glubb: the increased use of bagpipes in Transjordanian music, the introduction of rice into the ‘traditional’ cuisine (mansaf), and the adoption and integration of European sports by the Bedouins themselves.[20] Glubb aimed to civilize the “wild” Bedouins for British colonial policy. [21]
Glubb imposed reforms and new traditions as measures to achieve an ‘authentic’ Bedouin identity. These new customs and norms were able to be ingrained in the Jordanian national identity as they were adopted by the military, where the majority of new norms were implemented. As an RSA, the military automatically influences the ISA’s, which solidifies the base of the country and strengthens the nation’s superstructure.
Massad suggests a possible psychoanalytic reasoning behind Glubb’s engineering of the new Bedouin. He calls upon Freud’s findings that suggest a fetish “is a substitute for a loss,” and thus Glubb’s Bedouin is the substitution of the “real” Bedouin that he had fetishized from European Orientalist literature yet “could not find in real life.”[22] This caused Glubb’s “sense of loss” as he realized that the real Arab Bedouin is incompatible with that of his Orientalist fantasy and thus attempts to overcome this loss by “substituting a simulacrum of the Bedouin for the real one.”[23] In this regard, Glubb’s scheme in Transjordan, and his production of the Bedouin, enabled him to maintain the false image of the Orient.
Massad’s end chapter which delves into Palestinian migration into Jordan is a matter examined by Laurie A. Brand in her piece, National Narrative and Migration: Discursive Strategies of Inclusion and Exclusion in Jordan and Lebanon.[24] She discerns how the Jordanian government uses the Jordanian ‘national narrative’ to either include or exclude Palestinian emigrants from the nation as an effort of identity-making, state-building, and consolidation, through national school history books.[25] The two major waves of Palestinian migration into Jordan discussed by both Massad and Brand were the 1948 and 1967 Arab-Israeli war, with the ensuing demographic change affecting Jordanian state policy. Before the Zionist invasion of Palestine in 1948, King Abdallah I had various corresponding contact with the leader of the Jewish community in Palestine regarding the future of Palestine and Hashemite-Zionist relations. Once the 1948 Palestine-Israeli war took place, there was a large influx of Palestinians into Transjordan and Abdallah aimed to take parts of Palestine for himself rather than defend it as a separate Arab state.[26] When 700,000-900,000 Palestinians faced expulsion in 1948 and made their way to Transjordan, Jordanian textbooks presented Jordan as being “able to save many Palestinian villages and towns from Zionist occupation.”[27] Nevertheless, there is no mention of the Hashemite-Zionist discussions which were taking place. If it were to be mentioned in today’s Jordanian curriculum, it might create resentment between the Jordanians of Palestinian origin and the current Hashemite monarchy in place, ultimately weakening support for the monarchy.[28][29]
After King Abdallah I took over Palestine and renamed it the West Bank — similar to Transjordan which was referred to as the ‘East’ Bank in 1950 — all residents of the West Bank were given Jordanian citizenship.[30] This is an example of forced inclusivity and how the state is an elastic entity, which was proposed by Massad.[31] During this period, there was still a divide between ‘pure’ Transjordanians and Jordanians of Palestinian origin. This was further aggravated by the establishment of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) in 1964 which was an entity created to gain the political loyalty of the Palestinians under Israeli occupation and those who obtained Jordanian nationality.[32] The 1970 civil war (also known as Black September), which broke out between the Jordanian government and various Palestinian resistant groups within Jordan, led to state policy changes which further exacerbated the divide between Transjordanians and Jordanians of Palestinian origin.[33] The laws included implementing a policy where Transjordanians were given preference in the recruitment of state bureaucrats. This policy formed a narrative in which only Transjordanians are ‘loyal’ to the Hashemite regime, while the excluded Jordanians of Palestinian origin are not; Palestinians were therefore “largely exiled from working for the state.”[34] If Jordanians with Palestinian origins were taught about their exclusion in Jordanian society today, this would hinder the state’s plan of unity between Palestinians and Transjordanians.
In this regard, one can infer how the law was used to form a Jordanian identity through adopting a framework of inclusion and exclusion. Massad has a clear focus on how the RSA of the military is used to create a national identity, as seen in the Black September civil war between Palestinians and Transjordanians. Brand, however, focuses on how national identity is continuously reproduced through the ISA of the Jordanian school system curriculum.
Colonial Effects is a comprehensive study of the Jordanian national identity. Nevertheless, despite it being published in 2001, it is limited when it comes to addressing contemporary Jordanian identity. I am a Jordanian who studied in a private school for 12 years and a major insight I realized while I was reading this book was the extensive control the ministry of education exercises while curating the curriculum. The curriculum affects how students conceptualize their own history and maintains the Jordanian identity constructed by Glubb. In my high school, only 4 out of 50 students were Jordanian — me being one of the four — with the rest of the students being of Palestinian origin; I understand why issues like Black September were never mentioned in our school curriculum.[35] It is very difficult to preserve Glubb’s notions and sense of identity when the truth of the construction and establishment of Jordanian identity is brought to light. I am a product of Glubb’s ideals: I identify with Jordan’s ‘shared history’ of Bedouin culture including its food, dress, music, and Arabic dialect despite me being from the north (Al-Salt) — where my culture is more similar to that of Syria or Palestine — instead of the south of Jordan, where the majority of the Bedouins reside. From my experience, Jordanian identity (the product of both Glubb and the Hashemites) does not execute itself through the military today. Instead, they use the school system, which marks the shift from using an RSA to an ISA, to bolster national identity. If I have learned anything from the modern national education system, it is that educational institutions have immense power to mold the youth into their own subjects and to form their ideal future state through them.[36] One of Massad’s points is that people internalize these stories and these identities pushed by the government, ultimately becoming part of the subjects’ worldview.[37] Powerful control over education and other institutions are key in maintaining the status quo of the Jordanian identity. If I was not enrolled in the Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations program at the University of Toronto, I would probably only know less than a fraction of what I currently know today about the Arab world and its history, which is alarming as I am Jordanian.
Conclusively, Massad succeeds in explaining the evolution of the Jordanian state and how the Jordanian identity came to be formed since 1921 as it moved from a colonial to a post-colonial state. Massad places a large emphasis on the role Glubb Pasha played in reconstructing the Bedouin identity through the military and judicial system by de-bedouinizing and then subsequently re-bedouinizing the Bedouins to cater to his vision of ‘Bedouin’ identity. Glubb’s Oriental social fetish was easily molded into Jordanian national identity. Moreover, the Hashemite’s exclusivist framework, which was promoted due to Palestinian migration to Jordan from the 1948 and 1967 wars, was further used to reinforce the boundaries of who is Jordanian and who is a foreigner. This framework was used throughout Jordanian history to either include or exclude the Palestinian-Jordanians within Jordan. Both Glubb Pasha’s efforts and the history of the Hashemites are two integral elements of the Jordanian identity that are almost completely ignored in modern Jordanian education systems, which is something I have experienced firsthand. Selective teaching and broadcasting only strengthen the current Jordanian national identity, as no one questions whether or not our Jordanian identity is a true, organic identity, or whether it was constructed. In the end, Massad is not arguing that the Jordanian identity is “false,” only that it is “constructed” in the foundations of British colonial rule.