Mohamed Zayani

Arab Satellite Television and Crisis Reporting Covering the Fall of Baghdad

The question as to what dictates the choices of various media outlets and what guides the professional practices of journalists when reporting on international military crises is particularly pertinent when considering Arab media, who have been claiming a space in the global media scene by virtue of their intense and often controversial coverage of wars and crises in the postSeptember 11 era. This article is concerned with the coverage of the war against Iraq. It examines how Arab media reported the fall of Baghdad and the collapse of the regime of Saddam Hussein. The study focuses on how three pan-Arab satellite news channels that have been at the forefront of the coverage of the war against Iraq – Al Jazeera, Al Arabiya and Abu Dhabi Channel–handled the news from a narrative and visual perspective.

Toward a Cultural Anthropology of Arab Media: Reflections on the Codification of Everyday Life

This paper explores the potential of cultural anthropology to reinvigorate the study of Arab media and to help deepen our understanding of the complexity of media practices in the changing Middle East region. Drawing on critical theory and recent ethnographic work, the paper is an attempt to refocus the study of Arab media within cultural anthropology. It argues that the study of the evolving Arab mediascape calls not so much for consolidating the field within the purview of the discipline of media and communication, but for a cross‐disciplinary, theoretically informed and empirically grounded study of localized practices that is amenable to articulating overlapping dynamics of correspondences and disjunctions set in motion by mass‐mediated everyday life processes.

Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari and the total system

This paper is concerned with an aspect of Deleuze and Guattari’s thought which has not been duly analyzed: systematicity. More specifically, it deals with their conception of the system in three co-authored major works: What is Philosophy?, Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus. These works are of renewed interest because they tease out, each in its own way, a particular type of system. Regardless of whether it has a philosophical import, a botanical reference, a social dimension, or a libidinal investment, the system that Deleuze and Guattari advocate is allegedly a hyper-dynamic system that resists closure. Thus, in an interview with Didier Eribon, Deleuze points out that philosophy is ‘an open system’ and then, referring to A Thousand Plateaus, he further observes that what he and Guattari ‘call a rhizome is also one example of an open system’. The purpose of this essay is not merely to explore how the system in the works of these two prominent poststructuralists is conceived, how it is structured, and how it works, but also to show how it is only superficially open. Paying a special attention to Deleuze and Guattari’s exegesis on capitalism, I argue that the proposed system is cynical and ultimately untenable.

Arab Media, Political Stagnation, and Civil Engagement: Reflections on the Eve of the Arab Spring

The advent of the information revolution has been generally heralded as a promising development and a flattening factor,2 providing new opportunities for communication, participation, and deliberation. In the Arab world, however, the effects of the information revolution prior to the Arab Spring were not obvious. Clearly, the changing Arab media ecology brought in new dynamics, expectations, and opportunities. From the ubiquity of pan-Arab satellite television to the ever-expanding Arab blogosphere to the increasing popularity of interactive programs and the rise of social media, Arab audiences have been arguably better informed and more engaged. For some observers, the accessibility of information and the ease of communication have further contributed to the inclusion and politicization of Arab viewers in an authoritarian region.3 For years, the Arab world has been experiencing a disjuncture between the liberal and potentially democratizing impulse of Arab media, on the one hand, and the stagnant political culture and immutable political structures that characterize much of the Middle East, on the other hand. Whence the conundrum: what can possibly be expected from a rejuvenated and dynamic media that emanates from, is sponsored by, thrives within, and serves the interests of inherently authoritarian systems?

The labyrinth of the gaze : Nicholas of Cusa's mysticism and Michel Foucault's panopticism

Panopticism, the title of Foucaults famous chapter in his book Discipline and Punish,1 derives fromJeremy Benthams panopticon, an architectural plan to reform prisons at the end of the eighteenth century. The fundamental conception of this utopian project is to build an inspection house in which prisoners are permanently subjected to an invisible and omnipresent surveillance. The panopticon, as Bentham conceives it, is an annular building composed of a central tower pierced with windows that overlook a peripheral building. From this watch tower, and through the effect of backlighting, a supervisor can constantly spy on the individuals enclosed in segmented spaces all around it without ever being seen. Foucault uses the principle on which the panopticon is built — i.e. power through transparency and subjection by illumination — to account for the technologies of observation and the mechanisms of power that organize the social space in our contemporary society. Although Benthams project has never been realized, Foucault finds in its ‘marvelous machine’2 a perfect model for the new forms of control and exercise of power — one which is not aimed at the body, but the soul. The focus of this machine is not on punishing the individual but rather on knowing and altering him or her. Panopticism, as Foucault points out, constitutes ‘the technique, universally widespread of coercion.’3 Its ultimate goal is the exercise of control and the intensification and perfection of the new methods of power.