Nationalist Voices in Jordan: The Street and the State

2. THE “DOMAINS” OF NATIONAL IDENTITY

12 12 t w o THE “DOM AINS” OF NATIONAL IDENTITY O Sister of Rumm!! How is Rumm? And how are Bani Atiyyah? Are their highlands still proud and lofty? And is their land still healthy and wholesome? Are the hillocks of Wadi al-Yitim still smiling? And is its soil still fertile? Are Shihan lower slopes still gorgeous, Abounding in luxurious plants? When Franks had no sway in our land And when foreigners had no posts erected in your desert? mu stafa wahbah al-tell,
ar ar1 All poetry, books, volumes [speak] about the Arab nation. It’s rooted in the mind that there is one nation, called [the] Arab nation. hamad al-farhan2 These nationalist songs and others implanted in the souls of our generation a spirit of freedom and nationalism. bahjat abu gharbiyah 3 The history of Jordan and Palestine illustrates that ideology does matter ; that debates about national identity can alter day-to-day events and relationships. In Partha Chatterjee’s terms, the “domains” of national T3118.indb 12 T3118.indb 12 1/4/05 12:53:32 PM 1/4/05 12:53:32 PM t h e “ d o m a i n s ” o f n at i o n a l i d e n t i t y 13 identity give structure and meaning to new state institutions and feelings of shared experiences.4 In Jordan and Palestine, the debates about the “inner” and “outer” domains played out on the ground in the twentieth century because political activity came hand in hand with nationalist discourse. Nationalism became a passion for political activists of all stripes, whether for those in Palestine fighting against the British, or for others in Jordan fighting against the Hashemites, because nationalism became equated with political freedom. Everywhere, people sang nationalist songs and recited poetry extolling past Arab glories, expressing sentiments evident in the passage from Bahjat Abu Gharbiyah quoted at the beginning of the chapter. The story of the Jordanian National Movement ( JNM) can only be told within this context. The actors within the Movement continually placed their activities within the context of nationalism , and the Hashemites used their own defined nationality to counteract Movement influence. Given this reality, of course, the parameters of the “nation” were hotly contested. To construct their national identity, the Hashemites and the Palestinians looked inward, from the boundaries that “limited”5 their lives. Institutions constructed by the British, the Hashemites, and the Palestinians began slowly to define the two nations. However, many Jordanians, and the Palestinians who joined them in the JNM in the 1950s, also began to widen the parameters of their national consciousness . For them, Arab nationalism supplied the answers not only to the political divisions within the region, but also to the economic and social problems they deemed inextricably connected to them. The loss of most of Palestine to Israel exacerbated this view. Throughout the 1950s, a nationalized solution to these problems would be put forward by the leaders of the JNM. The proponents of these different national forces—the Hashemites, the Jordanians, and the Palestinians—had to initiate the process whereby, as Homi Bhabha says, “the scraps, patches and rags of daily life must be repeatedly turned into the signs of a coherent national culture, while the very act of the narrative performance interpellates a growing circle of national subjects.”6 To facilitate this process, Fatma Müge Göçek believes that nationalism is constructed through a similar process of social closure whereby a social group assumes the cloak of the “nation” to contest, negotiate , and determine which groups, meanings, and practices ought to define the imagined community of the nation. As this group identifies certain T3118.indb 13 T3118.indb 13 1/4/05 12:53:33 PM 1/4/05 12:53:33 PM n at i o n a l i s t v o i c e s i n j o r d a n 14 shared characteristics of what comprises a nation, as it creates common myths, employs specific cultural symbols, passes particular laws, it concomitantly starts to form social boundaries around the imagined community that include some elements and exclude others.7 In Jordan and Palestine, the competing territorial and Arab nationalisms found the defining symbols and myths differed depending on their national parameters and their constituencies. Each of the “social groups” chose the “scraps, patches and rags...