Arabic thought against the authoritarian age. Towards an intellectual history of the present

Description

In the wake of the Arab uprisings, the Middle East descended into a frenzy of political turmoil and unprecedented human tragedy which reinforced regrettable stereotypes about the moribund state of Arab intellectual and cultural life. This volume sheds important light on diverse facets of the post-war Arab world and its vibrant intellectual, literary and political history. Cutting-edge research is presented on such wide-ranging topics as poetry, intellectual history, political philosophy, and religious reform and cultural resilience all across the length and breadth of the Arab world, from Morocco to the Gulf States. This is an important statement of new directions in Middle East studies that challenges conventional thinking and has added relevance to the study of global intellectual history more broadly. 1. Introduction: towards a postwar intellectual history of the Arab world Max Weiss and Jens Hanssen Part I. Arab Intellectuals in an Age of Decolonization: 2. Changing the Arab intellectual guard: on the fall of the udaba', 1940-60 Yoav Di-Capua 3. Arabic thought in the radical age: Emile Habibi, the Israeli communist party and the production of Arab Jewish radicalism, 1946-61 Orit Bashkin 4. Political praxis in the Gulf: Ahmad al-Khatib and the movement of Arab nationalists, 1948-69 Abdel Razzaq Takriti 5. Modernism in translation: poetry and intellectual history in Beirut Robyn Creswell Part II. Culture and Ideology in the Shadow of Authoritarianism: 6. Regional specificities of modern Arab thought: Morocco since the liberal age Hosam Aboul-Ela 7. Sidelining ideology: Arab theory in the metropole and periphery, circa 1977 Fadi Bardawil 8. Mosaic, melting pot, pressure cooker: the religious, the secular, and the sectarian in twentieth-century Syrian social thought Max Weiss 9. Looking for 'the women question' in Algeria and Tunisia: ideas, political language and female actors before and after independence Natalya Vince Part III. From (Neo)Liberalism to the 'Arab Spring' and Beyond: 10. Egyptian workers in the 'liberal age' and beyond Joel Beinin 11. The redemption of women's liberation: reviving Qasim Amin in contemporary Egypt Ellen McLarney 12. Turath as critique: Hassan Hanafi and the political subject in modern Arabic thought Yasmeen Daifallah 13. Summoning the spirit of Taha Husayn's enlightenment project: the Nahda revival of Qadaya wa-shahadat in the 1990s Suzanne Kassab 14. Revolution as ready-made: art, aesthetics, Arab uprisings Negar Azimi 15. For a third Nahda Elias Khoury 16. Where are the intellectuals in the Syrian revolution? Rosa Yasin Hasan 17. The intellectuals and the revolution in Syria Yasin al-Hajj Salih.