In the Vidal-Buckley debate’s climax,blows were exchanged – figurative,of course,but not without the threat of their literalisation. Moderator Howard K. Smith concluded the episode generated more “heat than light”. Still,it was a heat whose strength both men,until the day they died,would not fail to feel.
Vidal dubbed Buckley a “crypto-Nazi”;Buckley,reeling,labelled Vidal a “queer”. Buckley reprised the incident by devoting hundreds of words to it inEsquire the following year. He could not help pondering the Talking Heads’ existential conundrum:Well,how did I get here?
Yassmin Abdel-Magied’s reckoning was never as ignominious as all this,although her pain at the Australian media trial by fire is clear,ongoing and not wholly incomparable. The psychic wound stems not from any one event or conservative pundit,but a gradual accumulation of them:first,the global spectacle of walking out on Lionel Shriver during Shriver’s 2016 Brisbane Writers Festival keynote speech;five months later,a stand-off with Tasmanian senator Jacqui Lambie on Q&A;finally,the tweet – whose contents Abdel-Magied never repeats between these covers – encouraging her Twitter followers,on Anzac Day,to remember Syria,Palestine and the asylum seekers languishing on Manus Island and Nauru.
In the instance of the Lambie incident,much of the consternation was based upon misunderstanding,or the refusal to countenance,Abdel-Magied’s attempt to separate liberationist theologies of Islam from the state-mandated regimes that today predominate – and all in the space,admittedly,of a soundbite. Abdel-Magied is interested in the possibility,or concept,of a progressive Islamic theology,while her critics are focused only on the question of dictator-states instrumentalising religion for craven,selective ends.
Of the 23 essays published here,about four are contemporaneous withL’affaire Yassmin. They are occasionally interrupted by occasional pieces:two on oil rigs (no place for women,apparently,but Abdel-Magied is nothing if not drawn to a challenge),cars (see challenge,above;cf also global warming,Catch that Kid and Paul Walker),hobbies (knitting,cryptocurrency;the latter is called,half-ironically,wholly unconvincingly,revolutionary),and her reactions to the Boris Johnson cabinet,freedom of speech,Black Lives Matter,abolition and the 2019 Sudanese uprising (roughly one piece each).
Much of the writing replicates the rhythm of her viral 2014 TED talk What Does My Headscarf Mean to You? Virality is a metric of success with which Abdel-Magied has formed a weary,if otherwise fairly genial,relationship. At two different points in the collection we are reminded that her TED talk has more than 2.5 million views,a quantifiable measurement,even as its longer-term impact remains trickier to evaluate.