Creative Radicalism in the Middle East: Culture and the Arab Left after the Uprisings

Description

In the face of vicious oppression and years of authoritarian and neoliberal ideology, how did the Arab Left assert itself during the Arab Uprisings? In this bold new account, Caroline Rooney outlines the importance of aesthetic strategies and creative expression in the left’s critique of authoritarian and Islamic extremist discourse during the revolutions. Using a wide array of texts and sources, both Arab and non-Arab, the book engages affect theory to show how a poetics of disappointment, despair and distrust, to dignity, solidarity and reconfigured senses of the sacred, offered a way for the left to reclaim ethical and progressive ‘radical’ values co-opted by political leaders and extremists in the Middle East. In so doing, the book offers an original conceptual framework for differentiating ‘radicalization’ from the creative radicalism of the Arab avant-garde. Title page Copyright page Dedication page Contents Acknowledgements Introduction: From radical distrust to the darwish avant-garde Chapter 1: Politics as theatre in Hannah Arendt’s The Human Condition Chapter 2: Discourses of authenticity and poetic good faith: Algeria, Israel and Syria Chapter 3: From hegemonic interpellations to revolutionary signs or amāra Chapter 4: Chronic disappointment, humiliation and pariah elitism in the Arab novel Chapter 5: Cults of pride and cultures of right-wing populism Chapter 6: The poetics of karāmah or why the Egyptian revolution was a poem Chapter 7: Figuring the sacred in martyr art Chapter 8: Equine messianism in Palestinian literature and art Concluding remarks Notes Work cited Index