In Middle Eastern countries, reading and analyzing the literature of so-called Western countries in a more-than-6-year and painstakingly manner sounds like but a myth. The scene is rather dispiriting, for one’s imagination fails to outline much of a better future with totalitarian governments persistent in dictating what to do and how to be to all individuals, with massive budgets (billions of dollars per year) spent on fortifying the strongholds of fundamentalism against those intellectuals, politicians and artists in search of revitalizing the spirit of change, with endless economical breakdowns which, in turn, have made the majority of people irretrievably indifferent to any sort of cry or concern for new visions whatsoever, with ideologies all risen against independent voices of our time, with consumerist globalizing culture overshadowing any chance to settle a different, perhaps more genuine, perspective of what is going on here; yes, with all these obstructions reading and analyzing literature through the eyes of radical theories not even sounds unpromising but seriously bring into mind the question of confusion of priorities. Is it really worth it, spending one’s effort right to the farthest extreme in order to appreciate a better deal of literature? Why bother thinking about literary and cultural theories, why being committed to a praxis whose authority has been shrinking day after day in such way that now from what it used to be remains only an apparition too vague too defenseless to make any change? And, of course, our answer, regarding why we keep theorizing, analyzing, translating, reading and appreciating literature, gathers into one single word: “to protest.”

We believe that when political means, financial sources, authentic institutions, and whatever else that gives shape to the social scene is irrevocably occupied with antediluvians and fossilized authorities, translating a theoretical essay, or putting a piece e of literature under a pair of searching eyes may lead to unstoppable consequences. This is how literature, whose audience have lessened in a great deal, will be given a chance to redefine itself, to adjust itself with the new circumstances driven by globalization, war crisis, poverty, netocratic sophistication, unprecedented religious and racial conflicts, and many other serious issues engulfing us, the residents of Middle East. To us, appreciating literature is but a part of developing a strategy in order to step beyond too restricted a territory within which we’re now confided.

So, we see what we are doing as a part of our identity - the identity that we have neither inherited from our devastatingly imposing tradition nor from negligently oversimplifying globalization. In short, we’re not translating poetry, nor we discuss art, nor we tend to analyze literature, we are just making ourselves.

Despite all the breakaways, disagreements, intolerances, dissatisfactions, and numerous other drawbacks, still we try to widen the horizons, to make the Western ears listen to us, and Western eyes witness what is going on here, without escaping to the ready-made clichés and pinning our culture, our lebenswelt, our existence simply into the narrow frame of a handful of media.

We, the members of Hopkins Club, strive for communication, to hear out and to be heard, and, as long as our entire background is concerned, that is why we still keep raising such a confident voice high in the air.