Saudi intellectual Saad Al-Bazai on modernity and national identity

What is the relationship between legacy and modernity in the Arab world? Some separate one from the other, while others believe that legacy cannot be neutralised and should be a foundation upon which to build.

This is a timeless question; I believe there is no simple black-or-white answer.

There is no culture without legacy, but there is also no culture without modernity and growth. One can lean towards one or the other, but abandoning either is impossible.

Saudi Arabia has gone through an impressive transformation in recent times. How were the seeds of this transformation sowed in the past century, and how are they relevant today?

The transformation of Saudi Arabia began with its founding.

King Abdulaziz spearheaded the transformation of Saudi Arabia at the political level and in terms of putting the Kingdom on the map through communication and openness to others.

We encountered many hurdles that occasionally derailed the Kingdom from that development track. Still, today, we are back on the original path of openness and development that he forged.

This latest Saudi transformation has caught the attention of the whole world. How are these changes manifesting on the ground?

How can one answer this question in only a few lines?

The changes are difficult to quantify, but foremost among them is the decline in religious extremism and the Kingdom's elevated global presence, which is both proactive and interactive.

I am delighted to see that culture has been pushed to the forefront of these positive changes, and I hope this progress will persist with the same enthusiasm.​

Where do Saudi women fall in this landscape? We know that feminist writings in the Kingdom evolved significantly between the '70s and the '90s.

I have not seen any significant change in the presence of Saudi women in the literary scene over the past two decades, at least.

Recent developments have helped boost women's presence in literary forums and festivals at home and abroad, which may have positively impacted literary and intellectual production. This is what I think, but whether this is true remains to be seen.

One of the changes I expect to see is a decline in dissenting and protesting voices demanding fundamental rights. However, the impact at the literary production level is not clear yet.

Most of your translations revolve around modernity and the reception of the culture and differences of others. Are there any topics or titles whose introduction into Saudi culture, in particular, and Arab culture, in general, is a top priority in your opinion?

My interest in these topics is a natural result of my specialisation in English literature despite English not being my native language.

This allowed me to get to know others closely, not by living with or near them, which thousands of others have done, but rather through their culture since literature is always deeply rooted in culture.

My deep knowledge of English literature has enabled me to learn about Western theories and notions and discover the gaps in the Arab literary critique landscape.

When you first arrived in the US in 1975, you were worried about losing your identity. Were you afraid of anything when you returned to Saudi Arabia in 1984?

When I returned from the United States, I was keen on re-affirming my Saudi identity by immersing myself in studying Arab, Saudi, and Gulf literature. I think I was having an identity crisis and needed to reassert my belonging to my native country.

To calm this anxiety, I dove into learning about desert culture. After that, I continued my defence of the Arabic language in the face of the dominance and spread of English at the expense of Arabic.

Does religious affiliation remain present in the consciousness of the intellectual? In your book The Jewish Component in Western Civilisation, there are two sides to the topic.

On the one hand, we have Jewish intellectuals such as Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, and Hannah Arendt; on the other, there is you, an intellectual with a different religious background whose research focuses on these intellectuals.

This brings us once again to the question of belonging.

The book is not concerned with Jews from a religious standpoint but rather with secular intellectuals who belong to the Jewish community without necessarily being religious – save for Spinoza, whose fame stemmed from his criticism of the Bible.

My religious background has no significant role here, but rather my intellectual background, so to speak: belonging to a different culture and approaching the subject through a specific critical angle.

The book seeks to highlight how the ethnic rather than religious affiliation of these intellectuals, scientists, and creators to Jewish communities in Europe (in other words, their belonging to a minority that had been persecuted for centuries and had its own legacy) influenced their contributions to science, philosophy, and literature in the West.

This is what the book is all about.

From a modernist lens, how do you explain the growing influence of right-wing movements in some Western societies and official policies?

Does this relate to the concept of liquid modernity proposed by Zygmunt Bauman, whose book you translated jointly with Syrian translator Buthaina Al-Ibrahim?

I do not see the right-wing having much to do with liquid modernity.

The rise of the right-wing stems from various factors, the most important of which is the prevailing feeling in Europe that there is a threat to European ethnic and religious identity.

You have written the book The Migration of Concepts. Are concepts struck by alienation, like people, when they migrate? Why were Arabs unable to establish their own concepts since concepts are the product and mirror of historical contexts?

Concepts feel alienated because they change and perform intellectual roles that are somewhat different from those they performed in their original environment.

There are Arab concepts that were born in the context of interaction with others. Some other concepts emerged to address existing situations.

For instance, the concept of "colonisationability", ideated by Algerian intellectual Malek Bennabi, is a purely Arab-Islamic concept. Moroccan intellectual Taha Abdel Rahman has also posited concepts of his own.

Arab culture abounds with concepts that have developed throughout history, which we don't have enough space to tackle here.

In the last century, then-emerging Gulf states benefited from the experiences of intellectuals from Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, and Iraq. How do you view the level and nature of interaction among intellectuals within Arab geographies at present?

The interaction between Arab communities and Gulf societies was a natural interaction necessitated by economic and perhaps political circumstances, in my opinion.

Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states have undoubtedly benefited from the Arab presence just as much as those brotherly Arab peoples benefited from their presence in the region's countries – where they would not be strangers anyway.

I believe that the Arab states that are suffering today will benefit later on when conditions improve, just as they benefit now from the presence of their people in the region.