Arabic Thought against the Authoritarian Age: Towards an Intellectual History of the Present

Cambridge University Press, 8/22/2019
EAN 9781316644195, ISBN10: 1316644197

Paperback, 455 pages, 22.9 x 15.2 x 2.3 cm
Language: English

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 udabaʾ, 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.