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Zubeda Jalalzai, "Literary License and the West’s Romance with Afghanistan" (Bloomsbury, 2023)
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Dr. Zubaydah Jalalzai
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Podcast Host Intro/Outro
Welcome to the New Books Network.
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Qasim Ahmad Zai
Hello and welcome to our podcast channel for the New Books Network. My name is Qasim Ahmad Zai and today I'm very pleased to be joined by Dr. Zubaydah Jalalzai, the author of Literary License and the West Romance with Afghanistan, published by Lexington Books in 2023. This book offers a historically rich and theoretically nuanced examination of how Afghanistan has been imagined, narrated, and aestheticized in English language travel writings and fiction from the 18th century through the post 911 era. What makes this work especially compelling is how it treats literariness itself, not merely a stylistic feature, but as a political and epistemological force shaping Western engagements with Afghanistan. Dr. Jelazi, welcome to the podcast and thank you very much for joining us. I would like to begin thank you for inviting me. Thank you. I would like to begin by asking about the intellectual origins of this project. What initially led you to investigate literature and more specifically the notion of literary license as a key framework for understanding Western representation of Afghanistan? I mean, one of the central conceptual contribution of this book is the idea of literary license. The permission wister writers seems to grant themselves to blur fact, fantasy and effect. When writing about Afghanistan, could you elaborate on how you define the tree license and why you see it as especially consequential in colonial and postcolonial context?
- [03:08]
Dr. Zubaydah Jalalzai
Sure. So in terms of the intellectual origins, my training is in early American literature and history. And it was after September 11th that I know, after being in the US and seeing the profound level of ignorance that was all over American media and newspapers and everything that was around the incident of 911 and the subsequent war on terror in Afghanistan, that's when I. I decided to shift a little bit, well, actually significantly, to thinking more about the way that Afghanistan itself had been framed by Western writers for a very long time. But my area of attention, it was sort of interesting, is co temporaneous. Like both my American literary studies and my Afghan literary studies take place basically at similar historical time periods and view those as two sites of British settlement and imperialism. So in terms of literary license, what I find fascinating is that literature offers a unique point of contact and intersection, interaction between self and other, as is imaginative space. And some of the most compelling works that I read were works that allowed that free play to take place. So this romantic connection or intersection with this Afghan other. So, yeah, it's extremely telling, though not so much about the Afghans themselves, which has eluded Western writers and readers from the very beginning. But that tells us much more about the authors and the points of view of the people writing these kinds of works.
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Qasim Ahmad Zai
Well, thank you. That's a very good explanation. But my question was like more about the literary license. Do you see, like literary licenses, primarily an aesthetic practice or as something more structurally tied to imperial power and knowledge production?
- [05:26]
Dr. Zubaydah Jalalzai
It's completely implicated. It issues from and affects colonial power relationships and knowledge production. But it's not always self conscious. You know, it's not always that the authors are aware of the way that they're framing what they're seeing in ways that may not always be factual. But there are moments where, depending on their agendas, right, their personal or colonial agendas, they're highlighting certain aspects of the terrain, of the people, of their own personalities and characters. So that's the part that I see as literary license, that it has everything to do with colonial power, but it doesn't always maintain colonial power depending on the particular text that we're talking about.
- [06:19]
Qasim Ahmad Zai
Well, thanks. My second question is about the genre and epistemology. A major strength of the book. It is careful engagement with travel Writings as a genre, particularly its instability between documentation and imagination. How does genre ambiguity between, like ethnography, romance and fiction shape what Western audience came to know about Afghanistan? Like how this genre as a base of epistemology works?
- [06:48]
Dr. Zubaydah Jalalzai
Well, I think it's precisely in that slippage between, you know, what kind of a text are we talking about? Is it documentary, is it scientific, is it geographic? Since it, since travel narratives contain these other types of subgenres, that's where that slippage that move into romance or more, more fiction comes into play. And depending on the writers that I was studying and the writers that we're looking at, some of them provided very specific kinds of safeguards. The ones that were more concerned about maintaining objectivity wouldn't indulge in as much romancing, at least in certain parts of their writing, that they would in others where they had freer play. On the other hand, you might have a writer like Alexander Burns who was not at all concerned about keeping the lines between recording and intelligence gathering and romance writing separate.
- [07:55]
Qasim Ahmad Zai
Thanks for that. You mentioned Alexander Bernus. Is it the same Lord Burns famous in Afghanistan by Lati Bernus?
- [08:04]
Dr. Zubaydah Jalalzai
Yes.
- [08:04]
Qasim Ahmad Zai
Okay, that's amazing. And when like, it comes to the colonial knowledge and power you mentioned in the, I mean, in the last chapter of your book that the Afghanistan studies has been changing or we see like a post colonial turn studying Afghanistan, do you see your work as a part of that process or like. It was very new for me as I have also written about decolonizing the Afghanistan story and there was a new book by Wej Mousman. Where do you place your book in this new post colonial turn in Afghanistan studies?
- [08:47]
Dr. Zubaydah Jalalzai
I think it's very much part of that. For a long time, Afghanistan and Pakistan and all of that was subsumed in studies of the relationship between Britain and India. But there's a very unique character to the way that colonization worked in Afghanistan, as you know. And so it's good that it's getting more attention as a. More. I mean, there's certainly ways that certain conventions and certain practices are recast by the British in various scenes in various locations. But there are differences, right, in the colonial character and relations in Afghanistan as opposed to say, India or even eastern Pakistan.
- [09:33]
Qasim Ahmad Zai
And my other question is about like the colonial knowledge and power. Your analysis resonates strongly with the postcolonial theories of power knowledge, especially those associated with the adverse aid and other school likes, Decolonial and the subaltern studies. How does your book extend to the complicated or complicates The Orientalist critique when it comes to Afghanistan. I mean, Afghanistan has not been like the center of the post colonial analysis. How do you see that relation regarding Afghanistan?
- [10:07]
Dr. Zubaydah Jalalzai
I think this is probably true in other cases as well, but particularly in the Afghan case, is that there's such a range of responses, even in the British writers themselves to the Afghan landscape, to the Afghan people, and as I said earlier, to their own perceived role there. And that's what I think. It's not always an easy thing to pinpoint like who is in power here. It's not always the Westerner that's in power in certain situations. Now that's complicated by the fact that the way we're getting these accounts are through the Western writers themselves. And that's a great deal of power. But they're not always heroic and they're not always in control. And we can see that especially in a writer like Arthur Connolly, who is. His work is really self effacing and illustrates that the, you know, the sort of bumbling way sometimes that the British maneuvered through spaces like Afghanistan. So I think what I was surprised by, and I think like the, the traditional discourses of Orientalism don't haven't taken into account, it's just how complex these interactions were. And so I think I align more with people like Homi Bhabha who talk about hybridity and mimicry and these other kinds of dynamics that are, you know, that aren't really touched on by people like Edward said, the holidays have a.
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- [13:21]
Qasim Ahmad Zai
Thanks for that. When I was reading your book like it was about more about literature, but it resonates very strongly with the historiography and in the non literary texts. How do you see like the themes that are you see in the literature, do you see any similarity between like the historical writings from the 19th century and between these literature literary texts? Is the Afghanistan in the historiography in the Afghanistan of the literary text? Is it the same Afghanistan, the same tribal and the colonial turpoise? Like the tribal, the violent, the ungovernable, the unknowable. Is it the same Afghanistan or do you see a different picture of the country?
- [14:06]
Dr. Zubaydah Jalalzai
Well, yeah, that's kind of what I was saying about the complexity is that there's certainly a good share of that same repertoire of the Afghan other the ungovernable, the unknowable, the unpredictable that's there in some of these characters too that they create. But then there are other places I was especially intrigued by S.S. thorburn's work. He was that colonial civil servant, not so much a soldier, but the way that his work, the ethnography and policy documents and his novels actually have a lot in common with each other. And there's a lot of room in his work in particular for local voices and local complaints. It doesn't erase the sort of inherent racism and racialism of Thorburn's work, but I hadn't heard those similar kinds of critiques coming from elsewhere and other writers regarding Afghans.
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Qasim Ahmad Zai
Thank you for that. But I think that one of the most amazing thing in your work is that you were talking about and writing and exploring the 19th century as well as the post 9 11. But to the readers and to our listeners who haven't read your book yet, what are the divergence and Convergence in this discourse. Like what's the difference between the discourse in the 19th century and the discourse in our time in the 20th century? What are like the similarities and the differences?
- [15:49]
Dr. Zubaydah Jalalzai
Right. Well, depending on who we're talking about. Like the right after 9 11, those writers, like Khalid Husseini's Kite Runner or Tamim Ansari's book, and especially Sara Shah's Storyteller's Daughter, they in many ways replicate those more romantic parts of the British writers, images or understandings of the Afghans. But they do it in a kind of. Kind of turn the tables and present this as an anti imperialist strategy. So for example, like for American audiences, they don't know, they didn't have any of this background or references to Pashtuns. They didn't know anything about who Pashtuns were. And in fact, I don't think they still know anything about Pashtuns and have forgotten what they did learn. But these Afghan writers who are writing from other parts of the world are trying to reintroduce those tropes to say, hey, remember us, we're the unconquerable, we're the unknowable, and you better be careful of us because we have a long history of defeating invaders. So that's interesting and really problematic at the same time because they're riding that same trajectory that we get from some of these British writers. And so in a sense they can only go so far critically. Right? They can't really critique what's happening. In fact, that's the one thing really missing, especially from Shah's work and Hosseini's work, is that they don't take the American intervention and role to task as much as just kind of building the space to kind of reintroduce themselves as Afghans to a new Western audience.
- [17:39]
Qasim Ahmad Zai
Okay, so basically you are saying that the romance of Afghanistan persists even in ostensibly critical or anti plastics too. So their lack presence in this anti imperialists ticks also in that moment.
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Dr. Zubaydah Jalalzai
In that moment. But their anti imperialism is questionable because they don't criticize. They weren't as vocally critical of the US role in the war on terror as they could have been.
- [18:08]
Qasim Ahmad Zai
And about the methodological contribution. Your work sits at the intersection of literary criticism, history and postcolonial studies. What do you see as the main methodologies intervention of this book, particularly for scholars working on empire representation and global intellectual history?
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Dr. Zubaydah Jalalzai
Can you explain what you mean by mythological or do you mean critical?
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Qasim Ahmad Zai
Yes, yes, I mean like the methodology. How like.
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Dr. Zubaydah Jalalzai
Oh, methodology. Sorry, sorry. Yeah, so what I feel like is important about my methodology is the way that I see the connection between the literary and the non literary and the so called more journalistic or scientific documentation, both then and now, must be read through the same sort of critical lens that we do. Any kind of constructed literature, like fiction and poetry and fable. And I mean, that's a strategy that I would very much say that I'm in the new historicist school still of like complicating historical fact and being much more aware of the mediation of any kind of written information, whether it's fiction, fact, journalism, et cetera. But like when I was doing my research, there's not a lot of works that look, we have a lot of documentation or historical works that look at some of the figures that I look at, but they're very scant in their attention to those authors, literary contributions, like direct literary contributions, their poetry, their novels, and also the way that that imagination does inform their other works as well.
- [19:59]
Qasim Ahmad Zai
Well, thanks. And another question that I want to ask is about the, like, the broader implication of your work. I mean, what does reading Western writing on Afghanistan critically, with attention to aesthetics, genre and narrative desire, allows us to rethink contemporary policy, media discourse and humanitarian interventions. So like, what does reading these texts have the implication on the policies regarding Afghanistan? What do you see should be the implication?
- [20:34]
Dr. Zubaydah Jalalzai
If I say yeah, yeah, for sure. I mean, I think overall, I think, I hope that it could just contribute to understanding of, I want to say Afghanistan. But what I'm really looking at here is our Western English speaking interactions with Afghanistan as a space, as a site, an imaginary space, and with very real world material implications for that intersection. It's ongoing, right? With the recent shooting in the US with the Afghan national Rahmanullah. Like, we still, like people are still ignorant of where that event fits into recent history. And so I hope that my work keeps that space for interrogation of Afghanistan open. But in general, like what we really are, what I am trying to understand is who we are. And that that would necessarily, hopefully help, not necessarily hopefully help us do better, right, do better in our role in the international framework, but we're living under the era of Trump too. And so our role in the international arena is much. There's bigger issues going on right now, but I hope to keep this thread, this thread alive and to encourage other people to do more work in the area. There's just so much to be done both in terms of Western writings on the region and definitely bringing more Afghan voices and literatures into the American and European reading publics. There's a lot of work still to be done.
- [22:30]
Qasim Ahmad Zai
Well, thanks. I would say that I agree with you. There is a lot of things to be done, and not just in the literature, but also in the histography. In my field and especially like intellectual history, there is a lot of things to do, but nothing now exist that anyone can read about the intellectual history of the country. And I would say, like, what would you most like readers, whether scholars, students, or journal leaders, to take away from the literary license and the Western marsh with Afghanistan? Like, what is the most important thing for you that any readers should take with her or have from reading your book?
- [23:15]
Dr. Zubaydah Jalalzai
So the most important is just how rich our history, Western interactions with Afghans has been and how long it's been happening. And if you really dive deeply into these works, there's so much there that tells us about the personalities of the authors, for sure, the context in which they wrote, but also the glimmers of Afghans themselves, even if they're highly mediated, that contributes, that could contribute in some small way to us knowing a little bit more about Afghanistan.
- [23:49]
Qasim Ahmad Zai
Well, thanks. The question that we usually ask in the beginning of the podcast, which I would like to ask you in our as our last question, what is your relation with Afghanistan and why was it important for you to write a book about Afghanistan? And how is, like, do you have any personal connection or why is Afghanistan important for you as a person?
- [24:13]
Dr. Zubaydah Jalalzai
Yeah, for sure. I am a Pakistani Afghan. I was born in Quetta, and I have my whole extended family is in Balochistan. And that's why after September 11th, I was just doing my own academic thing with early America until I was hearing all of these. I wouldn't say they're mistakes necessarily, but there were some mistakes and some misconceptions about who people were and what they were doing and what they look like. In my own city of Providence, there was a Sikh gentleman who was pulled off a train and arrested because he had a turban. And so that was the level. Like they thought he had something to do with the September 11th bombing. And so I just felt myself more and more called upon to correct the record, even though I'm not Afghan, right? I'm not. I can't claim to be Afghan in terms of nationality, but ethnically, you know, I'm ethnic Pashtun and so, and I speak Pashto. And so I felt really involved in a way that I hadn't in some of my other academic areas.
- [25:34]
Qasim Ahmad Zai
Well, thank you. That was a very interesting story. And thank you very much, Jalal, as I said, for such a thoughtful and engaging conversation. And the book is Literary License and the Western Romance with Afghanistan. And I highly recommend it to anyone interested in literature, empire historiography and the politics of knowledge. Thank you to your to our listeners for joining us, and thank you for listening. Have a great time.
- [26:00]
Dr. Zubaydah Jalalzai
Thank you. And thank you so much for having me.
- [26:15]
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Dr. Zubaydah Jalalzai
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