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In class, we often discussed to what extent Lawrence truly despised his fame. It seemed that our class’s  general consensuses was that Lawrence likely enjoyed the notoriety that he received from his exploits. As time passed, though, he came to have a great distain for said fame. This resentment likely coming from a place of shame over his inability to secure Arab independence. However, I disagree with the general consensuses. I believe that Lawrence likely always had, at least, some aversion to any sort of stardom. My opinion is largely based in the writing of Lowell Thomas. This may come off as surprising, because Lowell is know for saying that Lawrence “had a genius for backing into the limelight.” At first, this quote might seem to imply that Lawrence always unintentionally found himself in the spotlight. Describing this tendency as a genius, however, implies that to some degree it was intentional. I find this assertion to directly contradict statements Lowell made in the Foreword and Chapter 1 of this book With Lawrence of Arabia. In the Foreword Lowell states:

“During the time that Mr. Chase and I were in Arabia, I found it impossible to extract much information from Lawrence himself regarding his own achievements. He insisted on giving the entire credit to Emir Feisal and other Arab leaders, and to his fellow-adventurers, Colonel Wilson, of the Sudan, Newcombe, Joyce, Dawney, Bassett, Vickery, Cornwallis, Hogarth, Stirling, etc., all of whom did magnificent work in Arabia.”

Additionally in Chapter 1, Lowell comments:

“Even concerning his connection with the Arabian army he would say nothing, except to give the credit for everything that happened in the desert campaign to the Arab leaders, or to Newcombe, Joyce, Cornwallis, Dawney, Marshall, Stirling, Hornby, and his other British associates.”

From these quotes it is evident that, even while in Arabia, Lawrence did not desire to receive any credit. At this time, Lawrence still likely believed that he could secure Arab self-determination. In fact, he was likely aware that his level of influence was directly correlated to his notoriety. Yet, he still kept fame at an arms distance.

Despite these dismals, Lowell would still go on to make the aforementioned comment on Lawrence’s genius for backing into the spotlight.  Why would he do this? I think Lowell’s words likely stemmed from circumstance. Lawrence criticized Lowell for apparently exploiting his image in the latter’s films. So, in order to abstain himself,  Lowell likely played into the idea of Lawrence covertly finding the limelight.

I was struck, especially in our more recent classes, about how much of Lawrence’s life has been dedicated to ordering and “making right” various events, actions, memories, etc., and failing to do so. He tried to reorder his sexuality to align with the British male heterosexual ideal and failed; there’s evidence that he pursued relationships with boys like Dahoum, along with those first lines from Seven Pillars. He tried to do right by the Arabs into whose political life he had inserted himself unsolicited but refused to abandon British imperial interests, and so failed, since he could not do right by every standard, all of the time. He tried to order and control thoroughly his own body by testing its limits, and failed, and his testing devolved into the erotic, masochistic flagellations he inflicted on himself. 

If I had to guess, I would locate the origin of this impulse in his childhood and the strictness of his upbringing, interrupted by bursts of chaos or violence, like when he discovered his parents’ scandal and when his mother beat him. Perhaps he inherited the impulse to make things right from his mother, who some of the scholars we’ve read postulate brought her children up so strictly and religiously to compensate for the nonconformity of her marriage.

To me, Lawrence’s impulse toward ordering also makes Mousa’s clarifications about the holes in his accounts of his time in the Middle East more interesting. What purpose did it serve for him to invent, at least in some respect, these incidences of violence and nonconformity, such as the events of Deraa, or to take credit for more work in the Revolt than he actually deserved? He could have, as some scholars wrote, been inventing these episodes as a means of self-punishment and self-revelation—i.e., he knew there was something nonconformist about him, or he recognized internally some homosexual impulse, and so felt the need to invent Deraa so that he could order himself in the world. He felt the need to punish his own nonconformity by exaggerating/falsifying it and projecting it to the world, so that people would understand where he lay in the order of the world.

He might have taken more credit than he deserved for the Arab and British efforts in the Middle East because of his guilt over his failure to safeguard the rights he had promised the Arabs. By making it appear as though he had done more than he had, Lawrence could right his place in history; his misdeeds could be outweighed by revolutionary action.

If I had more time/space, I would have tried to understand Lawrence’s upbringing through a psychoanalytic framework, which I believe would help in understanding some of his choices, especially those that seem contradictory. Altogether, I believe that Lawrence, despite appearances, was unsure of who he was, what he wanted to be, or even what he was doing as he did it. He was passionate, but frequently irresponsible, not dissimilarly from Isabelle Eberhardt. His impulse to order the world to his vision is more Bell-like, and the fluidness of his identity was in some ways like Freya Stark’s. I’m glad we saved Lawrence for last—I’ve liked being able to compare him to our previous spies.

Looking back over my portfolio, I can see a clear progression in the way I think and write about travel literature, empire, and the figures we studied. My earliest post, the Yasmina playlist, was driven by empathy and atmosphere. My initial approach was to look for feeling and emotional resonance. As the semester continued, I began to shift my writing to focus more on examining power, especially with Gertrude Bell and Freya Stark. At the end, with Lawrence, I was more intrigued about the psychology of the spies we were studying.

One of my favorite ideas I developed this semester was presented in my “Bystander” blog post. Reframing Lawrence’s torture writing helped me confront something that his narrative often avoids: the uncomfortable representation of performance, trauma, and discipline that is embedded in his demeanor. I explored how the heroic silence was simply a form of survival strategy that could be linked to his internalized need for punishment and also just trauma from the past. I liked this idea because it helped me do a more complicated and human reading of Lawrence.

An important thing I was able to do through these blog posts and the midterm was experiment between analytic and creative writing. Creative writing, like Bystander, the Yasmina Playlist, and the play I wrote, allowed me to look at the spies’s travel writing as performative. They were constantly staging themselves after all, whether as experts, wanderers, diplomats, or heroes. I was able to question why these authors chose to present themselves in the way they did, which I have never done before in a class. Through analytic reading and writing, I was able to learn to read these texts with a specific lens in mind. Looking at the writing with all of these factors, like political structure and alliances, helped reframe it.

Going forward, I would love to know more about how people actually affected by these spies remembered these figures. A lot of what we read came from the Western world. But I would like to know how, say the local people of the past saw Gertrude Bell. I am also a sucker for psychoanalytic analysis, so I would love to see what psychologists think about some of these spies. Something else that would be interesting is to think about what these narratives would look like if they written today. How would Lawrence write about himself today? 

Around ninety-seven years ago, Cornhill Magazine would publish an article about the French imperium in Syria. The author of this work went by the name of Tharaya. We now know that this was only a pseudonym for the legendary Freya Stark. The name Tharaya is actually the Arabic name for the open star cluster commonly referred to as the Pleiades. This cluster contains seven stars and can be found to the right of the Orion constellation.  The above image— or rather the stories and meaning that humanity has ascribed to the stars whose majesty this picture tries to replicate— manages to capture a fair amount of Ms. Stark’s essence.

The fact that Freya Stark even chose the name Tharaya is itself insightful. As previously mentioned, Tharaya was and is still more commonly known as The Pleiades. Most of Stark’s western audience would likely not even know that the two names referred to the same stars. However, as someone who prided themselves in truly assimilating with Middle Eastern culture, it is unsurprising that she would adopt an Arabian moniker despite the culture dissonance it may have caused. Moreover, Tharaya’s literal English translation is “She Who Illuminates the World.” This is quite a heavy title to impose on oneself. While some may see this as arrogance on the part of Stark, it may be more accurate to interpret this as her having an understanding of the gravity of her work. In an age before the internet, most people’s perception of the world came from the experiences and writings of adventures like Freya Stark. As a result, Stark likely felt a duty to shine a light on and shape the narrative of the Arab world she came to love.

Further connections between Freya Stark and these stars can be seen when considering their significance to the Greeks. In Greek mythology, the Pleiades were seven sisters who, due to their immense beauty, were chased by Orion the Hunter. This chase continued until Zeus turned the sisters into stars in order to escape. However, Orion would eventually also be turned into a constellation, and continue to chase the sisters through space. It would not be unreasonable to assume that Stark wished to be desired and pursued in a similar way to the Pleiades. When referring to her adventurous life, Passionate Nomad asserts, “In the beginning she did not have a specific goal, other than wanting to be a writer—and, above all, to be loved. Yet in the end love was the one thing at which she failed…” While Freya Stark had attachments to various men, she always felt as though the injury she sustained diminished her looks so severely that she would truly never be desired.

Some may have noticed that the Passionate Nomad refers to Tharaya as “the dazzling star at the center of the constellation Pleiades.” So, why did I discuss the Pleiades as a whole? Upon doing my own research, it seems that when people mention Tharaya they are almost universally referring to all seven stars. Within the same sentence, Passionate Nomad also refers to the Pleides as a constellation instead of a star cluster, so they may just need a general astronomy lesson. With that being said, even if we take Tharaya to be the central star of the Pleiades, we still see a desire for love. The central star of the Pleiades is called Alcyone. In Greek mythology, outside of being part of the Pleiades, Alcyone is best known for her love stories with Poseidon and Ceyx, The particulars of these stories are of lesser importance. What is noteworthy is that, as a mythological figure, Alcyone is deeply associated with a lover. This association is one that, for previously mentioned reasons, Freya did not have yet desired greatly.

For my anime fans, Alcyone is what Neo Genesis Evangelion (Eva) was originally going to be titled. Without going into too much detail, Eva, at its core, is a story about self-acceptance and the importance of loving yourself even without external validation (whether that be from lovers, parents, etc.). Seeing as Eva released in 1995, Freya Stark obviously had no idea this story would be created, let alone almost be named Alcyone. Regardless, she struggled with many of the problems that Eva tackled, and I believe could have really benefitted from experiencing the show. To be honest, I just thought it was a cool connection.

After reading Prof. Fawzia’s article about R.F. Kuang’s novel Babel, I started reading The Wretched of the Earth, Franz Fanon’s key decolonial text. I haven’t made it through the entire book yet, but one key idea from Jean-Paul Sartre’s preface is that men are made when they “[thrust] out the settler through force of arms” and decolonize themselves (Fanon 18).  The decolonized, realized man forms himself by throwing back at the colonizer who “no longer clearly remembers that he was once a man; he takes himself for a horsewhip or a gun” his own violence (Fanon 14). “The rebel’s weapon is the proof of his humanity,” and his violence is a direct response to colonial violence imposed on him (Fanon 19). 

Colonization, then, makes non-humans out of both the aggressor and the colonized. I found myself curious about how Fanon’s theory fit into Bell’s experience and action, especially because her work was mostly nonviolent—at least, not overtly so, and especially not from Wallach’s perspective, who provided most of our biographical information on Bell. It may be because England was more insidious in its influence in Iraq in comparison to its unfettered brutality in India, for example; or it might be a function of Bell’s gender, since she was permitted less access to decisions that involved combat than contemporaries like Lawrence or Wilson.

Mostly, though, I was interested in the first part of what Fanon wrote (as it was recounted by Sartre); that colonialism unmakes both the colonizer and the colonized. This theory provides a possible explanation for Bell and even Eberhardt’s ability to “unsex” themselves in the East and take on more male social roles, as with Bell’s negotiations among sheikhs and independent travel, and Eberhardt’s independence and sexual exploits. Fanon’s “unmaking” of colonizing men could be reframed as a movement so far to the masculine end of an imagined masculine-feminine spectrum, such that men become more like pure instruments of violence. Could it be possible that women colonizers are “unmade” differently from the male, in that they are pushed into traditional masculinity instead of total brutality? I was reminded in this train of thought of someone’s comment from class about how colonizers conquered land in an eerily similar way to how men “conquer” female bodies, as well as the references in Wallach’s biography to Bell’s desire to “penetrate” Arabia. 

Bell’s colonialist activities in Iraq could then be conceptualized as a more feminine, but still violent, mode of conquering, something based more in exploitative social, cultural, and economic relations than in direct violence. This might contextualize the quote from A Woman in Arabia, too: “If the American and British invaders of 2003, after ousting Saddam Hussein, had read and taken to heart what Gertrude had to say on establishing peace in Iraq, there might have been far fewer of the bombings and burnings that have continued to this day” (A Woman of Arabia 17). The author would likely advocate for a more neocolonialist, soft-power approach to relations with the East—in the context of Bell, a more ‘feminine’ form of power, enabled by a combination of Orientalism, racism, and the sense of freedom colonialists derived from cultural and spatial distance from the colonial motherland. This strain would be perpetuated not by men “unmade” into pure weaponry, but by women made into effective agents of imperial power.