Shami 27creation and imagination of other national public spheres, that of the “vic-
tims of English domination.” The colonial public sphere was thus formed
transnationally—through efforts of nationalists both at home and in the
colonial metropole—but also internationally, through parallel national-
isms that collaborated in their anti-imperialist struggles, thus foreshad-
owing third world internationalism and the non-aligned movement.
han describes the ways in which the European metropolitan K
landscape was negotiated by these young nationalists and international-
ists, with different countries and cities providing different freedoms and
constraints. She also focuses on the spaces carved out by the activities,
the congresses, associations, cafes, salons and newspapers that shaped
these new public spheres that were both subaltern and not. Paradoxically,
“the public sphere cultivated in Europe and protected by its own society’s
shared assumptions was a direct threat to the political, economic, and cul-
tural dominance of that society globally.”
xamining the case of colonial and post-colonial Iraq, Eric Davis E
presents an analysis of the development of one such national pub-
lic sphere. Among the “means of communication” important in creat-
ing a national Iraqi consciousness at the turn of the twentieth century,
he examines the role of poetry, short story-writing and art as well as the
press. The spaces for these discussions were clubs, coffeehouses, profes-
sional organizations and literary and artists’ salons, the nature of which
changed over the course of the century, reflecting the changing class
structure and political context and contestations. In light of challenges
faced by the Iraqi state and society today, Davis pays particular attention
to the ways in which these communicative and discursive spaces crossed
ethnic, sectarian and regional lines, as did labor movements and, by the
mid-century, political parties. It is political parties that show most clearly
the transnational and Arab and/or Islamic character of the institutional
underpinnings of the Iraqi public sphere.
urning to contemporary Iraqi politics, Davis shows how this T
understanding of the roots of Iraqi nationalism and of the importance
of the nationalist public sphere is crucial to interpreting the instigators
and targets of internecine violence. It explains the “hostility of sectar-
ian groups towards a historical memory based in tolerance, diversity of
knowledge, and cultural pluralism.” As with their counterparts across